It occurred to me after I posted my rambling last week about the similarities between Lost and the computer game Myst that I actually brought that up in an interview with Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof last fall, and that I should go back and ransack my recording. Here are the producers on how the [...]

We’re all about Web 2.0 here at Tuned In–you keep feeding us the ideas, we’ll keep billing the hours for them! This one comes from Keith in the Andy Richter comments: What show doesn’t grow stale? I used to be a diehard fan of ER many many moons ago and everytime I see and ad, [...]

Robert Voets/CBS Yes, I’m still watching Jericho. Yes, still not ashamed to admit it. But I do keep getting frustrated–not by the show’s bad writing and phoned-in acting, but by the implausibilities and the weird streak of authoritarianism. (The decision this week, for instance, to keep most of the town in the dark that a [...]

The newly redesigned print version of TIME magazine includes a newly redesigned version of my column, complete with an author photo, which is mercifully smaller than the one you’re forced to look at on this blog. The first installment of the new-style Culture Complex looks at a theme I first sounded out here at Tuned [...]

Tonight on NBC, we say a brief see-you-later to 30 Rock (which, with every episode, I regret a little more not putting on my 2006 10 Best list) and a welcome-back to Andy Richter. In 30 Rock’s time slot, Andy Barker, P.I. has Richter playing a mild-mannered CPA (like there’s another kind on TV) who [...]

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s Lost, don’t cross the invisible threshold below, unless you want blood to spurt out of your ears. ABC/MARIO PEREZ Lostwatch fans–yes, both of you–are probably wondering about now why I’ve fallen asleep on the job. Technical problems, involving time.com, or our blog-hosting company, or an electromagnetic pulse, [...]

The final twelve contestants took the Big Stage last night, but the dramatic vocal performance of the night was a duet by Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell, as they continued their ongoing tango of homophobia, or -philia, I’m not quite sure which. During a sidebar on, of all things, Melinda Doolittle’s shoes, Ryan sniped at [...]

I haven’t had time to do a proper review of Comedy Central’s Halfway Home, which debuts tonight, and my deadlines being what they are, it doesn’t look like that’s likely to change soon, so: watch it. That review enough for you? OK, a little more elaboration: this largely improv comedy–set at, yes, a halfway house–is [...]

The leading website of indie TV criticism just got a little less indie. Television Without Pity, home of endless fan discussions and nearly endless, snarky TV-show recaps, is being purchased by Bravo cable network. As Tim Gunn is wont to say, this worries me. After all, Bravo is home to some of TWoP’s richest targets, [...]

My post this morning about MTV reality shows yielded some comments on the age-old theme: remember when MTV used to play videos? The short answer, of course, is that if you can answer yes to that question, you are really too old to be watching MTV. The longer answer to that question is that MTV [...]

Is MTV having a crisis of conscience? I’ve become hooked, lately, on two of MTV’s latest reality shows, Juvies and Engaged & Underage. (MTV shows are ideal for storing up on Tivo, because the channel has one of the highest commercial-to-program ratios on cable.) The former show, shot in raw documentary style, looks at the [...]

SCI FI Channel Photo: Carole Segal Not nearly as much to comment on in this week’s Galactica, though, after all, you can’t expect them to kill off (or pseudo-kill off) a major character every week. While I was glad they got back to the fascinating character of Baltar, I was less interested in the legal [...]

Great TV is often con artistry: a show takes an outlandish premise and gets you to buy it, not so much by making you believe that it’s plausible as by making you want to imagine a world in which it is. That’s the case with The Riches, FX’s mordant con-artist drama, which debuts tonight. It’s [...]

Entourage. Because I can. Because I have the first five episodes. And yes, I am doing a little taunting dance as I write this. Makes it kinda hard to type. Actually, I’m excited and a little trepidatious. I thought season 3 was a comedown from the stellar season 2, partly because it swung too far [...]

On the CW series Veronica Mars, the sharp-tongued eponymous college detective manages to get the best of–among other people–the pretty young airheads who get in her way. That’s how you can tell it’s a TV show. In the real, meta-world of TV ratings, things don’t always work out so nicely. This week, Mars went on [...]

In the analog version of Time magazine this week, my Culture Complex column looks at new Comedy Central programs featuring Middle-Eastern-American comedians–including the Axis of Evil comedy special this weekend–and asks: if this ethnic group amounts to “the new blacks,” as the pundits say, are they ready for their own Richard Pryor? If comedy is [...]

A couple commenters have reminded me of something I thought of during last night’s Lost but didn’t get into in my Lostwatch: What was the deal with that cat? Or rather, Keith asks: So, was the cat at the farm the same cat at the restaurant or just similar looking? My boss thinks it is [...]

Since the text-voters of America, in their infinite wisdom, are likely to finally boot Antonella Barba from American Idol tonight, this may be my last chance to pander for hits weigh in on the most important news story on the Internet. Why should Rosie O’Donnell get to milk all the sweet, sweet attention for herself? [...]

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched last night’s Lost yet, order a comrade to shoot you before you read any further. Mario Perez/ABC It is good when you get a Sayid episode, because when you get a Sayid episode, stuff happens. For as it is written in the Scripture: If Jack is a man [...]