We all love George Michael, but is the U.S. ready for George Michael regularly during prime time? Here’s an article that says that George Michael may alienate viewers: Eli Stone” Pilot Thoughts And More Fun Stuff.
The Ugly
Will George Michael sing several times in every episode? I like him as much as the next guy, but it could get tiring pretty quickly. What about viewers who aren’t amongst the George Michael faithful. The writers don’t seem to understand that may alienate viewers who dislike the pop singer. It would be a shame if the show lost fans because George Michael was rammed down their throats. (No pun intended)
About Melanie
Melanie is the co-founder of Yours Only George and has been the webmaster of the site since 1997. Melanie has been a George Michael and Wham! fan since "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" in 1984.
Okay, this writer’s contact information is at the end of the article if you want to complain or give him a list of George Michael’s hits: Dave on Demand: George Michael visions (Link is no longer available).
The show certainly represents an image upgrade for George Michael. The last time we saw him in prime time, in the series finale of Extras on HBO, he was playing himself, cruising a park in London for anonymous gay sex.
In Eli Stone he gets to play his old pop-star self. But I can’t help but wonder: If they use one of Michael’s songs each week, won’t they run out of hits pretty fast? By next month, I’m afraid there will be episodes of Eli Stone set to claptrap like “The Strangest Thing” and “Flawless (Go to the City).”
Not even the streets of San Francisco can redeem that.
Eli Stone stars Jonny Lee Miller as a lawyer who begins to have hallucinations that lead him to a higher purpose. Episodes from the first season include George Michael songs, with occasional appearances of George Michael in a hallucination or as himself.
All titles of the first season are George Michael songs, including “Faith,” “Freedom,” “Father Figure,” “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “One More Try,” “Something to Say,” “Heal the Pain,” “Praying for Time,” “I Want Your Sex,” “Heartbeat,” “Patience,” “Waiting for that Day,” and “Soul Free.” Many of the musical numbers also include George Michael songs.
Melanie is the co-founder of Yours Only George and has been the webmaster of the site since 1997. Melanie has been a George Michael and Wham! fan since "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" in 1984.
“Eli Stone” kept most of the “Lost” audience, according to Nielsen Ratings. It’s interesting that in the following article, George Michael is being credited as being a draw for “Eli Stone.”
More surprising to me was the performance of the premiere of ABC’s Eli Stone following the Lost premiere. The results for the first half hour will likely change some as Lost technically ran past 10pm, but Eli averaged ~12.5 million for the first half hour and 10.75 million in the second half hour. This is not dramatically great performance, but given the George Michael tie-in, many more gave it a chance than I would’ve thought.
Eli Stone stars Jonny Lee Miller as a lawyer who begins to have hallucinations that lead him to a higher purpose. Episodes from the first season include George Michael songs, with occasional appearances of George Michael in a hallucination or as himself.
All titles of the first season are George Michael songs, including “Faith,” “Freedom,” “Father Figure,” “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “One More Try,” “Something to Say,” “Heal the Pain,” “Praying for Time,” “I Want Your Sex,” “Heartbeat,” “Patience,” “Waiting for that Day,” and “Soul Free.” Many of the musical numbers also include George Michael songs.
Melanie is the co-founder of Yours Only George and has been the webmaster of the site since 1997. Melanie has been a George Michael and Wham! fan since "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" in 1984.
Melanie is the co-founder of Yours Only George and has been the webmaster of the site since 1997. Melanie has been a George Michael and Wham! fan since "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" in 1984.
Yes, we all know George Michael is irreplaceable. And I still want him in MY living room (aka the office of Yours Only George)! From: On the Futon With … Eli Stone Co-creator
Brian Ford Sullivan: Let’s start with the question on everyone’s minds – why George Michael?
Marc Guggenheim: [Laughs.] Oh God. You know, let me explain, I’ll answer the question by explaining what life was like without George Michael. Because we wrote the show with George Michael in mind. And we wrote it basically like, we picked George because of a lot of different reasons I’ll get to – but we picked him sort of knowing that he probably wouldn’t do it… wouldn’t do it in a million years. So we wrote George Michael, we got word back from his agents saying that he wasn’t interested. So then we went about the part of trying to find a replacement. And through the process of finding a replacement, we learned – or rather, really saw – it was impossible to replace him. Because no one had the right mix of ’80s icon, but not overexposed today… fun, the right song, the right name, there were like all these elicit elements that worked perfectly with George. [There were] like five elements, another artist would satisfy maybe three out of the five. George was just perfect from day one. And I don’t think we realized how perfect he was until we tried to replace him. Luckily, a different agent of his learned about the script and said, “You know, I think this is something that George would like to do.” And he went to George – and George is a big television fan, a total TV-ofile. Even when he’s in England he downloads everything off of iTunes and watches a lot of American television. And he really responded to it – as a show, as something he wanted to do – so we really got lucky because I think I did four of five drafts for different artists and they were never as good as the original one we had for George.
BFS: And he comes back beyond the pilot?
MG: Yup. We bring him [back] in episodes seven, nine and 13. And in episode nine actually he appears, not as a vision, but actually as his flesh and blood self, and wants Eli to represent him in a legal case.
Eli Stone stars Jonny Lee Miller as a lawyer who begins to have hallucinations that lead him to a higher purpose. Episodes from the first season include George Michael songs, with occasional appearances of George Michael in a hallucination or as himself.
All titles of the first season are George Michael songs, including “Faith,” “Freedom,” “Father Figure,” “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “One More Try,” “Something to Say,” “Heal the Pain,” “Praying for Time,” “I Want Your Sex,” “Heartbeat,” “Patience,” “Waiting for that Day,” and “Soul Free.” Many of the musical numbers also include George Michael songs.
Melanie is the co-founder of Yours Only George and has been the webmaster of the site since 1997. Melanie has been a George Michael and Wham! fan since "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" in 1984.
