What's Alan Watching
Inside Television with Alan Sepinwall
'Men of a Certain Age' - 'Let the Sunshine In': Mid-season post-mortem with Mike Royce
By Alan Sepinwall - On the brief, truncated season, Ray Romano's mind bets, Andre Braugher's weight and more

Monday, Jan 10, 2011 11:00 PM

'Men of a Certain Age' - 'Let the Sunshine In': Mid-season post-mortem with Mike Royce

Joe (Ray Romano) takes the guys golfing on the "Men of a Certain Age" mid-season finale.
Credit: TNT

"Men of a Certain Age" wrapped up the first half of its season tonight, and the end came so quickly that a lot of us (myself included) were a little shocked to realize we'd only be getting 6 of the season's 12 episodes now, with the rest coming in the summer.

So when I got a chance to talk to the show's co-creator Mike Royce during an afternoon at press tour, I asked him about the odd scheduling, and he said he and Ray Romano take the full blame for it. In lieu of a review of the mid-season finale - which I thought had some funny moments at the hotel (particularly Owen's heater) and then some fine acting from all three leads in the final scene - I'm going to run the full transcript of my conversation with Royce, which covered the scheduling, TNT's feelings about the show, the stories told so far this year, and even a few hints about the back half of the season. Some very mild spoilers, but "Men" is a show that's kind of spoiler-proof, no?

The first and most obvious thing is people are freaking out about the 6 episode thing, so please walk us through that.

Well, the thing is this was always the plan. We had a number of no- great choices. Mostly based on our unwillingness to do more than 12 episodes. Ray actually had to have his arm twisted just to do 12. He wanted to do 10. He wanted to do it basically just like last year. He would have preferred - and actually I would have preferred in a perfect world - to just run 10. You know, who cares when it’s on? The problem was last year we ran 6 episodes, and TNT has all these deals with the NBA, so when January rolls around their Monday nights start getting taken up, plus there’s no lead in - not that we’re the most compatible show with "The Closer" - but nonetheless, we’d be even more out there (alone). So what happened last year was we ran 6, then took a week off. Everybody thought we were canceled or something. And the ratings had been going up from the premiere, and then they were in the toilet for the 7th and 8th episodes. And there was another week we had to take off, then 9 and 10 we kind of came up a tiny bit because of the season finale, but the rating just went off a cliff. So TNT wanted to put us on in the summer (of 2010), and there was no way that we could turn things around that quickly.

So this was what they proposed: "Why don’t you do 4 and 8, or 6 and 6?" And the problem with doing less than 6 is you’re not eligible for things - Emmy-wise and things like that. Otherwise we could have maybe done a mini-season - and then that would have pissed somebody off too. It all pisses everybody off, but the bottom line is that this is the only way we can get on into the summer because the summer is where the ratings are. And for us, it’s the best plan even though it sounds like right now it’s pissing people off.

But the alternative, and TNT did indeed leave it up to us, would have been to say, “No, TNT. We know better. We’re going to run the 10 again just like before." And then we might have our ratings suck and then have them go, "Well, see, we told you so and sorry.” You know, that’s the end of everything. So right now, I wouldn’t say they’re happy with the numbers, but we’re not dead or anything like that. We've been reassured so many times because Ray and I obsess about it.