This TNT drama is arguably the least clichéd and most accurate depiction of a man's midlife crises ever put on television.
TNT
TNT’s sophomore drama Men of a Certain Age is the epitome of a series flying under the radar.
With ratings steadily dropping since the series launched in fall 2009 (co-creator Mike Royce parially attributed the drop to confusion with the network’s weekly programming in Season 1), one question looms: Will the show be return for a third round?
Though the answer may not come in the very near future, Royce, Ray Romano, Scott Bakula and Brittany Curran touted the last three episodes of the second season, which ends July 6 — and even revealed a small spoiler or two.
1. Everyone is at a crossroads: The show centers on people who have lived half their lives, and though their issues may seem miniscule (at least in television standards), in life, they are all the more significant. “In the last three episodes, [Joe’s] fallen into the hole with his gambling,” Romano, co-creator and star, tells The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday at the Paley Center. “His bookie friend is sick and behind his back, he’s taking the bets. It gets a little darker but hopefully he’ll find himself.” But that’s not all, Romano — who made his return to television with Men of a Certain Age — says his alter ego Joe has to figure out if he is “ever going to do” golf, “the dream that he hasn’t fulfilled.”
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“Scott’s character Terry has been on quite a journey romantically, trying to quote-unquote grow up,” Royce tells THR. Bakula added, “He’s trying to get back on the love train with his girlfriend and trying to figure out if that’s actually going to work. He’s getting ready to make a big career shift again, which he’s hoping will be more fulfilling for him as opposed to being a car salesman.”
“We wrap them up pretty well,” Romano shared. “I’m not going to say whether they’re all successful, but we address them all. And then there’s a vampire — and a Transformer.”
2. More inappropriate relationships?: Curran, who plays Romano’s on-screen daughter Lucy, joked that there would be one storyline that she would personally love to see play out — mainly because it is out of left field. “You know what I think would be funny? And I can tell you they’re not going to do this, I think it would be hilarious — you know how Scott Bakula’s character likes younger women — if something happened between me and his character and Ray just died,” Curran said to THR with a laugh. “It would be just a crazy twist. Ray would lose his mind, Scott would los his mind. It’s Hollywood, anything can happen.”
3. Men of a Certain Age and guest stars do not equal Glee: If there was an definition for stunt casting, the answer would be Fox’s Glee, which has employed Gwyneth Paltrow, Neil Patrick Harris, Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel as some of its guest stars during the course of only two seasons. “I want to be on Glee … separately,” Bakula teased. “But we can’t be Glee. Glee is it’s own perfect universe.”
4. The softball game episode was a great surprise: Royce admitted that the reception to last week’s episode, in which Andre Brauger and company duked it out in a softball game, was one of the greater surprises of the season. “There’s been a million movies and shows that had done similar things and I was really hoping that people saw that we did our own spin on it and that people would see hte nuances that we hoped to achieve in there,” Royce explained. “I’m very grateful that people did. I was curious if people would go, ‘Oh it’s one of those softball, underdog stories.’ “
5. Parents are people too: “In the finale, there is this scene between me and Ray,” Curran tells THR, who noted that her favorite storylines dealt with Lucy butting heads with Joe. “It’s just us and I end up really identifying with him and I end up really seeing him — not as my dad who’s always telling me what to do — but as another human being who also has dreams of his own.”
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Email: philiana.ng@thr.com
