Huffy Flounce

Thanks to Hulu and Netflix, I'm getting to watch more TV shows. Thanks to watching more TV shows, I'm beginning to notice that the world of television acting can be pretty insular. I guess the world of cinema is also pretty insular. People cross over, but for the most part, they're their own distinct worlds.

Anyway, I thought I'd use this thread to make a note of actors I've recognized from one show while watching another show. Sometimes they'll be bit players, other times they'll be more prominent.

I'm sure there are some pretty big-name actors show up as guest stars you're expected to recognize. I'm guessing that was the case when Chris Meloni showed up on Scrubs, for example--especially since Scrubs had a bunch of pretty well-known actors dropping in for an episode or two. (To be honest, I only know of Chris Meloni because Felt Pelt once told me he had mistaken him for Elias Koteas. I'm not even sure what Meloni's famous for. I think maybe he was on Oz?

Maybe I won't add the big names. I might add some big names without realizing I'm adding them.

Feel free to add your own, as always.

Chris Meloni was on Law and Order: SVU for like 12 years.

Jack and I were just talking about him not too long ago, but I'm not sure why we were talking about him. It might be because he has a new show coming up soon called Surviving Jack.

I've never seen an episode of SVU. I've probably seen twenty-ish episodes of Plain Jane Law and Order, but I don't think I've seen any of the spinoffs. How many were there?

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The first person I'll add is Sam Witwer. He has a pretty distinctive look. I finally watched the first episode of the US version of Being Human last night. He's the vampire third of the trio. I knew I had seen him in something recently. It took about five minutes of me plumbing the gooey depths of my brain to figure out that I had just seen him in a handful of episodes of Dexter. His head's shaved and he's wearing glasses, but it's clearly the same dude. He's also in an episode of Angel. I watched all of Angel about a year ago.

It turns out he's also the same dude who's dead in the tank in that episode of Walking Dead. I remember reading an interview with Frank Darabont where he talks about the direction he had wanted to take the show before he left, and he mentions he wanted to do a flashback episode showing how the Witwer wound up in the tank. It appears Witwer was also in The Mist, so I guess that makes him a Darabont regular. It looks like he's also pretty involved in Star Wars stuff.

I think one of the reasons he stands out so much is that he looks kinda like a prettier, duck-lipped version of Henry Rollins.

Jonathan Banks, the guy who plays Mike on Breaking Bad, just showed up on Dexter. Turns out he's also in 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, Airplane!, Gremlins, and all kinds of other shit I've probably seen him in, but I didn't recognize him. I looked at some older pictures of him, and I recognized him from the older movies once I saw the older pictures, but I don't know that I would have made the connection otherwise. He's gained weight and lost hair. Looks pretty different.

Speaking of Breaking Bad, I just realized today that the actress who plays Marie is also the actress who plays the wife on The Michael J. Fox Show. I guess I've technically been watching The Michael J. Fox Show longer than I've been watching Breaking Bad, but I've seen more episodes of Breaking Bad. How I missed this is beyond me. Maybe it's because she always has on her drama face on Breaking Bad.

Going back to Dexter, I also recognized Jay Jackson from an episode. He plays a reporter. He also plays Perd Hapley on Parks and Recreation. Perd Hapley is also a reporter. I went to his IMDb page. The dude has played a shit-ton of reporters. I mean, look at his IMDb credits.

I don't if you've watched much Smallville, but Witwer played Doomsday. I mentioned that when the US Being Human first aired, and you mentioned it had a second Superman connection in Sam Huntington, who played Jimmy Olsen in Superman Returns.

I keep recognizing actors I've seen on Scrubs on shows that they've done after Scrubs. Neil Flynn plays the father in The Middle now (and Patricia Heaton of Everybody Loves Raymond fame plays his wife). Christa Miller, who played Dr. Cox's ex-wife on Scrubs was familiar to me as Kate O'Brien from The Drew Carey Show. Travis Schuldt, the guy who played Elliot's boyfriend Keith on Scrubs, has popped up in other stuff (I think he plays a character in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia).

I wonder if actors who were on a successful show at some point and then get a major role in another show later pull some strings to help out some of their friends from the previous show. I'm curious if that's what happened with Johnny Galecki and Sara Gilbert on The Big Bang Theory.

My wife used to watch Roswell back in the day and when she watched this CW show Life Unexpected, which featured Shiri Appleby as the mom character, she recognized that the guy who played her ex-husband had been a minor character on Roswell. Another actor from Roswell, Brendan Fehr, played Booth's brother on Bones. Fehr also got a recurring role on CSI: Miami and I wonder if he got it thanks to Adam Rodriguez, who played Jesse Ramirez on Roswell.

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As far as crossovers between movies and television are concerned, the one that is jumping out at me right now is Ken Jeong, best known for his roles in The Hangover series and Community.

To Goits earlier question, the L&O shows I've heard of are L&O, L&O: SVU and L&O: Criminal Intent. Looking at epguides, I see there was also a L&O: LA that ran a season and a L&O: Trial By Jury that lasted 13 episodes.

One actress that I've been seeing for awhile before she became a hot property on Modern Family is Sofia Vergara. I first saw her on The Knights of Prosperity, and then later she showed up near the end of Dirty Sexy Money. I believe both of those shows were also on the ABC network.

Mal Shot First wrote:As far as crossovers between movies and television are concerned, the one that is jumping out at me right now is Ken Jeong, best known for his roles in The Hangover series and Community.

Ed Helms is also in The Hangover series, and is from The Office on tv.

Cheryl Hines, whom I first saw as Larry David's wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm, plays a major character in Suburgatory.

Quasar wrote:I don't if you've watched much Smallville, but Witwer played Doomsday. I mentioned that when the US Being Human first aired, and you mentioned it had a second Superman connection in Sam Huntington, who played Jimmy Olsen in Superman Returns.

I remember saying this.

I just reminded myself of another Being Human/Dexter connection: the guy who plays Bishop (Mark Pelligrino) is the guy who plays Dexter's girlfriend's ex-husband. Dexter's girlfriend, of course, is played by Julie Benz, who plays Darla on Buffy and Angel. The actor who plays Dexter was also apparently on Six Feet Under, but I've never seen Six Feet Under.

Julie Benz has a voice that can sometimes approach Tilly Sister levels of annoyance. It's not too bad most of the time. It's closer to Meg Tilly's voice than it is to Jennifer Tilly's voice.

The things I know about Six Feet Under: 1.) it involves mortuaries, 2.) it has an actor on it who was also on Sports Night, 3.) it's responsible for "NARM!"

There's also Zeljko Ivanek. Took me a while to find the dude's name, because he's usually a generic "intelligent bad guy." I think he also plays doctors a lot. I've noticed him on Bones, The Mentalist, Heroes, and True Blood. (I've only seen three or four episodes of True Blood, but he happened to be in one of the episodes I saw.) I've also seen him in some movies, but I'm blanking on the movies. I'd look him up on IMDb, but I'm already pretty Ipsed out from searching for his name.

I'm sure Dalty can tell us about ubiquitous actors on British television.

Does anyone know if actors are bound to networks over there? I know actors in the US used to be--or at least they seemed to be. I don't think they are anymore.

If you watch CBS shows from the late fifties and early sixties, you'll see a lot of the same actors popping up. You might see the same guy show up on Have Gun -- Will Travel, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, and Perry Mason. (Note: Alfred Hitchcock Presents went back and forth between CBS and NBC a couple times. I'd be curious to see if the stable of character actors changed back-and-forth, too. I'm more familiar with actors associated with CBS than I am with actors associated with NBC.)

All right. I don't know if there were (m)any actors who showed up on all five of those specific shows, but I wouldn't be surprised.

It seems like there were also genre-specific TV character actors. I've seen some people show up in westerns for different networks.

John Thaw (RIP), David Jason, David Tennant lately..... all on a hell of a lot. I don't think there are any network ties here.

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:There's also Zeljko Ivanek. Took me a while to find the dude's name, because he's usually a generic "intelligent bad guy." I think he also plays doctors a lot. I've noticed him on Bones, The Mentalist, Heroes, and True Blood. (I've only seen three or four episodes of True Blood, but he happened to be in one of the episodes I saw.) I've also seen him in some movies, but I'm blanking on the movies. I'd look him up on IMDb, but I'm already pretty Ipsed out from searching for his name.

He was also a big bad on a season of the Jack Bauer Power Hour, er, 24.

I was thinking of starting a thread for TV/movie miscellanea, but I figure I'll just use this thread instead. And yes, Chris Meloni was Keller, a central character on 'Oz'. The love story between Keller and Tobias Beecher was probably the most memorable thing from the show, along with J.K. Simmons's nazi leader and the ridiculous amounts of man-rape. Anyway, just this minute I've been reading a pretty entertaining oral history of 'Swingers'. I still haven't finished it, but figured I'd post it anyway, since I'm far enough through to vouch for it. It has a lot of familiar elements of this type of thing about how crazy it was, and how close it came to never being made, or being made in a far different form, and how nobody ever thought it was be seen by anybody but friends of the filmmakers. Still, of the few different ones of this type of thing I've read/watched, this sounds like the most lunatic, fly-by-night production of a successful film that I've heard of. Of course, the movie's mostly dialogue-based, so it'd be a bit easier to make in this style than some, I suppose (though a lot of indie-type movies are similar). Anyway, link: Swingers.

Another link I think is worth sharing is from a year ago, an excerpt from Alan Sepinwall's book 'The Revolution Was Televised', about twelve dramas that, in the author's mind, changed television. I was familiar to some degree with every show in the book, but it turned out that it was more interesting to read about the shows I knew less about (partly just because there was more new info; the 'Buffy'' chapter was my least favorite in the book, and basically a complete waste of time to read (for me, leastways)). Anyway, possibly my favorite chapter was on 'Lost', and this excerpt goes through quite a bit of that chapter (unfortunately not the whole thing, so there's some good stuff not in here): Lost.

I've only seen about half an episode of 24. I got the impression that it was the kind of show that would be too tense for my tender nerves. Breaking Bad is getting that way. I'm already on the fourth season at this point, though. No turning back.

I've seen the first two episodes of Lost. I've also seen another episode from some other season. It's one of those shows I figure I'll watch eventually.

I am coming to the end of S3 of Breaking Bad now as I continue the marathon due to my recouperation. Top stuff!