By Lynn Elber, Television Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Patricia Heaton is having a recurring dream she describes as "half prosperity, half panic," in which she and her husband are remodeling a massive apartment in New York City with a squad of designers. Then comes the unsettling part, when she wonders why and how they bought the money pit.
Heaton, who starred in the long-running family sitcoms "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "The Middle," realized the imaginary apartment is a metaphor for her new CBS sitcom, "Carol's Second Act," about a divorced empty nester who's pursuing a medical degree surrounded by decades-younger interns. Heaton also is an executive producer for the workplace comedy.
"I get this shiny, glorious show that we're building, and I'm feeling, 'OK, am I going to be able to handle it?' … So clearly, internally, I'm having a big adjustment," Heaton said of the series debuting 9:30 p.m. EDT Thursday. The cast includes Kyle MacLachlan.
She's not struggling with age, pegging hers at 61 — "And I don't have a problem with that" — during a Q&A with reporters. Her character is 50, deemed a more realistic age to start out as a doctor.
Heaton discussed the show's generation gap, the challenge of producing and her rear-view mirror view of the wife and mom she played opposite Ray Romano.
Q: How does "Carol's Second Act" find humor in the differences between age groups without mocking them?
Heaton: I do feel there is a balance between making old-people jokes, and we do make them and they're funny and I enjoy them. Let's face it, I'm older and it's an experience that has its particular moments. I do find we have a cultural gap. We were talking about Joan Jett and I said something about Suzi Quatro (a pre-Jett rock star) and they all looked at me like, "Who's Suzi Quatro?" We don't want it to be, "Oh, I don't know how to use the computer" or "I wear adult diapers." We don't want to go into that kind of cliche. We're also working on finding those places where they come together, and what Carol can learn from her co-workers who are not her peers generationally.
Q: You're a producer on the series as well as lead. What's been unexpected about taking on that added responsibility?
Heaton: I don't know how Ray Romano did it. He was producing, and he would leave rehearsal and go into the writers room and then editing, so his day was really long. I don't know how I did it either on "Raymond." I have four kids, and the first and third seasons I was giving birth to two of them, so I was going through surgery and then right back to the show. With the fourth one, I think I was back two weeks later. So it's pretty crazy, and there have been moments I'm like, "Why did I think I'd do this?" But what's really important in keeping vital in life is to challenge yourself, and to step out into the unknown and be OK with that. Get going and keep learning.
Q: You became known for playing homemaker s, flippant and feisty ones as compared to, say, Florence Henderson's Mrs. Brady. How do you rank yourself as a TV mom?
Heaton: I was recently watching an episode of "Raymond" and I could tell how angry and mean Debra was. If I went back and did it today, I think I would temper it a little bit. Debra was a mom who had toddlers, and I think for all of us women, that stage of life is difficult. I had four of them, and you're just going and going and going and you get upset when your husband doesn't step up to the plate. I look back on it and think, "Wow, Debra." It was a bit harsh, but it was written that way. She wasn't Florence Henderson, that's for sure.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More