Spoilers for Torchwood USA

[tencrush]

Casting call reposted at ONTD:

TORCHWOOD
Episodic
1 Hour Drama
BBC Show that will air on STARZ
UNION

Executive Producers: Julie Gardner, Russell T Davies
Writer: Russell T Davies
Director: TBD
Casting Directors: John Frank Levey, Melanie Burgess
Work Dates: starting approx Jan 12, 2011 for 10 eps
Location: Tentatively Los Angeles

SUBMIT ELECTRONICALLY

[REX MATHESON] CAUCASIAN, Late 20s, CIA agent, a fast-tracked high-flyer. And he knows it! Rex is fast, sharp, smart, clever, and when the situation demands it, ruthless. He's got a lethal sense of humor - he doesn't care if he makes enemies, he's too busy enjoying himself. But when Rex's life is put in danger, he feels his own mortality for the first time, and has to balance the demands of the job, and his duty to his country, against his desperate desire to survive. Though that doesn't defeat him - if anything, it makes him even more arrogant and unstoppable than ever. For Rex, all rules are off! Like him or loathe him, you can't miss him - and that's exactly how Rex wants things to be…..SERIES REGULAR

[ESTHER KATUSI] She's early 20s, a Watch Analyst at the CIA - it's one of the less glamorous jobs, filtering information to pass along the chain. But Esther's determined to better herself! She's still young, so the job hasn't made her cynical yet - she's still an optimist, ever hopeful, and her faith in mankind is sustained by her own Christianity. She's hopelessly in love with one of the CIA agents, Rex Matheson, though she'd never tell him. Nevertheless, she's no pushover - she's more than capable of thinking for herself, and can break the rules when she needs to. And when Esther's forced off the grid, and on the run, she learns to survive, fast. She turns out to be a natural, learning to fight and run with the best of them, without ever losing her essential good-hearted nature. Please submit actors of all races and ethnicities EXCEPT Caucasian. Recurring Guest Star. Will appear in many, or possibly all 10 episodes.

[OSWALD JONES] CAUCASIAN, Late 40s, a convicted murderer and pedophile. But he's no thug - this man is dangerously clever. Oswald escapes his sentence on a technicality, and finds himself becoming a media celebrity. And he's sharp enough to make the most of the situation, and profit from it. He's always thinking, always aware, always looking for the chance to promote himself - while living with the fact that many people want him dead. He appears to be wonderfully, genuinely repentant - but underneath, he's still boiling with lust and rage. And one day, he's going to lose control again. But this man is destined to become more important than even he could have foreseen, as terrifying events of worldwide significance begin to turn around him... Recurring Guest Star. Will appear in many, or possibly all 10 episodes.

I think Rex should be called Max Power. Shame he'll never know how much the non-white wimmens is pining for him, that's a nice storyline there, Russell. We've not seen that one before.

BUT HEY, RUSSELL, THE LOVEABLE ROGUEISH PEDOPHILE ANGLE?? LOVE IT. LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT, IT'LL BE TASTEFUL AND ARTY AND... I JUST LOVE IT. YOU'VE CONVINCED ME TO WATCH THIS SHIT THEY CANCELLED PARTY DOWN FOR. I'VE BEEN SWAYED BY THE JOLLY, SEXY, BROODING CELEBRITY PEDO. I'M IN! I'M IN, YOU HEAR ME! WHEN'S IT STARTING????

My favourite bit, apart from the obvious, is where it doesn't mention aliens or that it's sci-fi, anywhere. At all.

Comments

[sbs-01.livejournal.com]

Excuse my stupidness but what site is ONTD? I may need to see this for myself to shake my head at the general awfulness of this crap.

[tencrush]

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/

It's since been locked, I think because it's spoilers or something, I never quite understand the rules at ONTD.

[furius.livejournal.com]

he's still boiling with lust and rage.

WTF!

I hope this is a joke...

[tencrush]

A sexy joke? The sexy pedophile you can't help but like? It's like when they made Owen a rapist and lots of people still liked him so Russell thought let's take that up a notch.

[qthewetsprocket.livejournal.com]

Shame he'll never know how much the non-white wimmens is pining for him, that's a nice storyline there, Russell. We've not seen that one before.

0_ô

It never ceases to amaze me that there really are some people out there who genuinely NEVER LEARN ANYTHING.

And btw, a character who's female, an ethnic minority, AND a Christian? Dear sweet gods of cipher-dom...how on earth is he going to find a way to make her commit suicide to save the plot every single week?

[tencrush]

I hope they turn her into one of those black wimmins that goes to a shouty church, there's a lot of laughs to be had from that scenario. LOLTIEMS! I can see this not being offensive AT ALL.

[talulahk.livejournal.com]

fuck..........

I, just. no. just no.

Yeah.

pedophile? IN THE US? HAVE THEY LOST THEIR FUCKING MINDS?!!!!!!!!!!!

funny thing: i actually pay for STARZ in San Francisco. I can always stop, yes? :)

[tencrush]

Oh, come on, you guys have loads of celebrity pedos. YOU LOVE THEM, YOU CRAZY YANKS.

It's going to be a scathing political attack on celebrity culture, with added pedophilia, it'll be really deep and meaningful, don't you see??? Russell has the talent to make that TOTALLY WORK and not be exploitative and disgusting IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.

Brb, puking in a corner.

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

W.T.F?

[tencrush]

Yeah, I don't know, they lost me at "For Rex, all rules are off!" I love a rogueish law enforcement type who doesn't do things by the book. Maybe he could somehow set it in the seventies, and then it would be PERFECT TELEVISION. With pedophiles.

[vertrauen.livejournal.com]

I was first going to go on a tirade on how we can't have a RTD show without a character with the last name of "Jones"...

and then I read the profile.

And threw up a bit in my mouth.

JULIE. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE ONE WITH A GOOD HEAD ON HER SHOULDERS. WHY ARE YOU GREENLIGHTING THIS TRIPE?

I never watched Party Down, but if this is what caused its demise? FUCK YOU RUSTY. This makes me so glad he's out of my Who... or does he still have a majority say in SJA, since it's a RTD/Julie/Phil/Piers production?

God, I miss Phil. :(

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

RTD is sipping champagne and congratulating himself on another pre-emptive job well done AS WE TYPE.

[tencrush]

As well he should.

[jo02]

I'm sorry - when did I fall into the Twilight Zone ???

[nikki4noo.livejournal.com]

I love how rusty's thought process went from well we had such a ratings success with all that child killing so lets go up a level from that. How can we do it? Pedophiles? Yeah, that's be awesome, especially if they are loveable. No one will get upset at all about the subject matter, particularly in the middle of america. Those same people who thought that Terry Pratchett's Mort was a real good idea for a film, they just needed to lose the 7ft Skeleton from the story.

[tencrush]

I hope he's a murderer and pedophile in the sense that he raped and murdered one or multiple chilren, and not in the sense that he raped one or multiple children and murdered one or multiple adults, because losing the child-killing ratings-puller would be a great shame indeed.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

See, I got told that the US would never stand for his "unrequited black woman" shit. I never thought we would get to see if that was true.

Also WTF PEDO?

[tencrush]

Nah, they love that stuff where black wimmins pine for rogueish, possibly bordering on assholeish, white guys who barely notice them. THEY'LL EAT THAT SHIT UP OVER THAR.

I keep reading the word pedophile again and again, just to see if I've misread it and he's a pediatrician or a podiatrist or something. I think this pedophile thing is a brilliant idea that Rusty has had there. It will not be WRONG in any way.

[lukita.livejournal.com]

Right... Hoax? Somebody else made it up for shits and giggls? Cause my brain thinks STARZ might have paid too much for this tripe, hope they didn't spent a lot on it.

[juliet316]

I want desperately to say hoax. Or at the very least the pedo angle is dropped before production. Otherwise this is going to be too triggering for me to watch.

[stlscape.livejournal.com]

I've read your post, and all the comments, and the only thing I can think to do is laugh hysterically. Surely, *surely* this is a joke.

[lawsontl.livejournal.com]

So, will Oswald Jones be played by Roman Polanski? There's a good director and America's favorite pedophile all rolled into one. Plus, they could set an ep in Switzerland that way! V v international.

And, gee, a Christian. How long before she becomes an atheist because she realizes the power of unrequited love to fuck with her moral center? This is Rusty after all. Gotta mock any God Lubbers or convert them!

And what's with all this CIA crap? What happened to hiring shit bobbies, hot rent boys in suits, nerds and angry doctors?

I want it above and beyond the government. Not yet another CoE where it's all politics and the occasional token alien.

Oh, wait, I wasn't really planning to watch anyhow (though I was open to being proven wrong). Hey, Rusty, don't let the door hit you in the ass.

BTW: I AM Middle America. Ohio baybiez.

[takenatwork.livejournal.com]

I read it and was muttering to myself about CIA and mainstream, when the word pedophile suddenly crashed into my brain. And he swears there's going to be plenty of humour and laughs!

[lawsontl.livejournal.com]

I just figured it out. He's writing Brian Kinney/Stuart Jones (JONES!) all over again. Oswald is going to be a convicted pedophile who had sex with a teenage boy that, like, totally wanted it and was almost legal, and we'll have MAN!PAIN.

Does he ever write anything new?

Don't answer that.

[dick-grayson.livejournal.com]

Well, Rex is clearly Rusty's Mary Sue self-insertion character what with all that not caring if he makes enemies, he's too busy enjoying himself business coupled with adversity making him even more arrogant and unstoppeable. Like him or loathe him!

Poor Esther is clearly Tosh 2.0. I feel sorry for her already.

And Oswald Jones, *convicted* murderer and pedophile who also happens to have gotten off on a technicality -- how does that work? Either you're convicted or you get off on a technicality, right? Anyway, the part where he's destined to become more important than even he could have foreseen due to terrifying events of world significance probably includes aliens. Maybe there is a race of aliens who want him to be their king, like Owen and the Weevils.

This is not making me want to subscribe to Starz.

[coldwater1010.livejournal.com]

Well he could be convicted, then get out on appeal on a technicality. So I guess it's possible, but why would that make him a celebrity? Unless this is set in some alternate universe I doubt there'd be too many people celebrating the fact that a pedophile got off. Especially in America.

So they've gone from kiddie killing to kiddie porn? Heh!

[love-jackianto.livejournal.com]

'Shame he'll never know how much the non-white wimmens is pining for him, that's a nice storyline there, Russell. We've not seen that one before.'
Of course not. Russell is far too brilliant to repeat himself. *eye roll*

If it wasn't Russell T Davis we were talking about, I'd think these spoilers were someone's idea of a sick joke. I mean pedophile, really?

[juliet316]

I'm praying it's a joke based on the pedophile stuff. Otherwise, I ain't watching!

[cirrocumulus.livejournal.com]

Wowww. This sounds shit-tastic already. I already hate Rex and Esther just based on their obnoxious Mary Sue descriptions and obviously Oswald is just too WTF to even process. Whyyy did I even have a sliver of hope that this was going to be worth watching?

[radiant-pip.livejournal.com]

We loved Dekker so much, we're gonna LOVE Oswald Jones!!

[venusinchains.livejournal.com]

So... Rex, Ester and Ozzy. lol.

Their descriptions seem meticulously structured to be as unlikable to a pre-CoE fan as possible. This makes them both expected and suspect. (I'll keep waiting to hear how the show plays out on screen. I mean, they can't all be Even Worse than you'd expect based on early spoilers, right?)

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

I saw it on ONTD and think it's bogus. Agree that the descriptions are suspect.

[tencrush]

I don't actually think it's bogus. The descriptions are awful and I think there's every chance there won't be a whole lot left of them by the time they film, but the premise of the non-white girl unrequiting all over the white guy and the repentant and possibly loveable pedophile sounds suspiciously Russell to me. The random throwing in of Christianity, again, sounds exactly like the sort of issue Russell would like to think of himself as being able to address in the States, where he knows it's controversial.

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

MAYBE JACK CAN FUCK THE PEDOPHILE. HAHA THAT GUY WILL HAVE SEX WITH ANYBODY.

Wow...this all sounds deeply...boring.

[fide-et-spe.livejournal.com]

Oh you are a genius. This is priceless. Even the names of the characters are hilarious. Thing is, if you are going to kill a child horribly last time, well how else can you improve on that unless you have a paedophile? It's an obvious move.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

they cancelled party down? damn, i was going to start watching that b/c i'd heard good things

also, i kinda think this callsheet is fake, or at least mostly fake... i hope

[radiant-pip.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I suggest watching Party Down anyway. It has sort of a natural end even though the story could have continued. It's not like Carnivale! (Yes, I'm still fuming about that one; thanks a lot, "It's Not TV, It's HBO." Ha. Canceling a show 1/3rd of the way into the story smells of TV to me!)

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

Pedos! Cause America loves Pedos! What is it with the British writers and child molesting (anyone see the play Blackbird or The History Boys). I loathe the concept of the sympathetic child molester. Is this his nod to Polanski?

And with all these new Mary Sues, will Gwen just get lost in the shuffle? Oh the angst.

And you want me to pay EXTRA for this. HAHAHAHAHAHA!



As for ONTD - you have to be a member to see some of the locked posts.

[mscatmoon.livejournal.com]

Well, why not a child molester? They've had date rape portrayed as acceptable, workplace sexual harrassment for the thrills, homophobia played for laughs, a gay relationship as the comic relief... (am I missing anything?) definitely need some underage sex to round it off.

I was gonna say I hope it's not true, but then I realized... I don't care if it is or not since I won't be watching.