I’m told one or two of you are interested in The Lost Tomb of Jesus, the documentary airing Sunday night on Discovery, produced by James Cameron, which purports to reveal the ossuaries containing the physical remains of Jesus Christ, and, in case that were not controversial enough, his wife (Mary Magdalene) and son. This morning, [...]

YouTube fans hoping to get to the sweet nutmeat of the Oscars without having to digest the massive, fibrous husk that is the rest of the broadcast are out of luck. Variety reports that the Academy has compelled the video-sharing website to pull popular excerpts of actual, entertaining portions of the broadcast, including the opening [...]

NBC Photo: Paul Drinkwater Finally caught up with this week’s Heroes, which was easily the best of the year. Of course, I might just be saying that because it was essentially an episode of Lost (one present-day story, built around a flashback). But we don’t want to go down that road again, do we? Taken [...]

According to TV Week, NBC is launching a multimillion-dollar campaign to rebrand its Thursday sitcom block from “Must-See TV” to “Comedy Night Done Right.” Which begs the question: Is this a TV network or an Applebee’s?

Returned from vacation to a stack of screeners, which means I’ll be catching up on my Future TV for a while, including Showtime’s The Tudors, FX’s The Riches, ABC’s October Road and–saving the classiest for last–The CW’s The Pussycat Dolls Present the Search for the Next Doll. Something tells me this is one singing contest [...]

The premise of this post is flawed. Because it’s pretty clear that the Academy doesn’t want to fix the Oscars, isn’t it? It wants them to run for three hours and 52 minutes. It wants them to be dull and self-indulgent. And it wants you to shut up and sit there and remember how much [...]

In the print edition of Time, my Culture Complex column is on America’s love affair, or at least its like affair, with lesbian talk-show hosts. Is it a landmark, or entirely unremarkable, that Ellen DeGeneres is uncontroversially hosting the biggest mass-media event besides the Super Bowl? Or is it a landmark because it’s so unremarkable? [...]

UPN’s Gary & Mike In the Tom-Sawyer, I’ll-let-you-whitewash-my-fence-if-you-pay-me-a-dollar spirit of modern business, here’s another post lifted straight from an idea in the Comments, where filmex identifies him/herself as a fan of short-lived series Significant Others, The Lyon’s Den, That Was Then and Related. I watch TV for a living, and I had to look up [...]

SPECIAL LOSTWATCH NOTE: Since I’m still not officially on the company clock, I’m going to keep this brief. You want detailed analysis, you’ll need to pay a special premium fee. Put a quarter in the slot on your computer, and the Internet will send it to me. * A bit of a blah, going-nowhere episode, [...]

This year American Idol is holding its first songwriting contest, to choose new songs for the finalists. But what American Idol really needs is a competition among the old songs. Some of them need to be voted off. Last night, Mrs. Tuned In and I brainstormed the beginnings of an American Idol Retirement List–overused, battered [...]

Finally caught up with The 1/2 Hour News Hour, Fox News’ experiment in conservative political comedy produced by Joel Surnow, executive producer of laff riot 24. And while I wasn’t surprised to see that the show was as limp as the YouTube leaked clips suggested, I was surprised that it was as dated as most [...]

Still on vacation, but I was watching Heroes and had to tell this to someone: the bit with the guy killing the grass radiating around him in a concentric circle? Totally ripped off from Carnivale, no? (Look around the 7:00 mark on that clip.) Granted, it doesn’t seem like the grim-looking dude in question is [...]

I’m on vacation this week. I’ll probably post occasionally, because I’m a sad, lonely man who needs the attention. In the meantime, why not entertain yourselves by fighting with each other in the Comments section? I’ll start you off. The Office–are you on Team Pam or Team Karen? I say Beesly had her chance and [...]

It seems like just the other day I was speculating that, with the shifting political balance in Washington from Republicans to Democrats, activists who want more regulation of primetime TV would shift their focus from sex to violence. Oh, wait: it was. Well, today comes news that, in fact, the FCC wants to ask Congress [...]

Sunday brings us the third, and it looks like unfortunately last, season of Slings and Arrows, Sundance’s Canadian-import backstage comedy set at a theater festival. (No relation, the producers swear.) In this season, the once-struggling New Burbage festival is struggling with success, flush with money and praise from a recent hit but wondering if they [...]

Has there been a better episode of The Office this year than last night’s? (I’d ask if there had been a better episode of any sitcom this year, but that would be redundant.) The show worked on so many levels, used so many characters well, hit so many different notes of comedy and pathos that [...]

Maybe Tuned In readers don’t need to be pointed to my essay on Anna Nicole Smith in the new TIME magazine, since it’s essentially an expanded version of this blog post. But think of it as the DVD director’s cut. There is one other thought I didn’t manage to work into the piece. Was anyone [...]

My encounter with the rough-and-tumble world of confessional-parents’ literature continues, as “new urban parent” magazine Babble’s Strollerderby blog hosts the first part of a Q&A with me, about my thoughts about Strollerderby’s thoughts (and thoughts and thoughts) about my thoughts. That’s right: the first part–the literary free-for-all over alternaparents’ writing is too big a subject [...]