Competing at the 2006 bee, Finola Hackett and winner Katharine Close (seated). ESPN Photo: Mark Bowen The 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee, baby! I can’t even do this event justice in a small blog post. American kids of far-flung nationalities puzzling over the etymologies of the same dead languages. The dissonance of the ding! of [...]

The people have spoken, and the people want something to do for eight months until we get another Lost. The first suggestion I’m taking from the Memorial Day robo-poll is for a weekly Lost discussion. Think of it as a Lost Summer Seminar, with me as the lazy professor who delivers the phoned-in lecture, and [...]

Hidden Palms, on The CW. Because it’s Kevin Williamson, because Dawson’s Creek gave me such pleasure for its first few years, and because I have subsequently felt obligated to give a chance to Wasteland and Glory Days. Because even though I saw the first episode months ago and didn’t like it, and even though the [...]

HBO: Craig Blankenhorn Here’s one thing I love about blogging. I post a question. You write stuff for me. My employer considers this “work,” and continues to issue me paychecks. To the extent that you buy our advertisers’ products or watch TV programming produced or delivered by Time Warner, you are literally paying to do [...]

Can Friday Night Lights survive the loss of its friend in the front office? NBC Photo: Bill Records NBC’s entertainment president Kevin Reilly–the man who programmed Heroes and pushed to keep 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights on the air–is leaving his job. (Technically, but only technically, he quit.) Replacing him, sort of, is Ben [...]

Charles Nelson Reilly, who introduced schoolchildren of a certain age to the art of the brilliant double entendre on Match Game, died Friday. In the lull between his death and my re-opening the blog for business post-holiday, the comments on my Price Is Right post became a sort of impromptu shrine to Reilly, and commenter [...]

Dear Mark Burnett, We like our summer reality TV at the Tuned In household. We have fond memories of sultry nights watching Big Brother, Project Runway, the first season of American Idol–hell, even American Juniors. So Tuned In was quite the receptive audience for On the Lot, your filmmaking competition. I told people I had [...]

No, I’m not working today! Why, I’m so lazy, I barely have the energy to not work today! But it’s the unofficial beginning of summer, and with the change of season comes the end of many of our regular and semiregular franchises at Tuned In: Lost, American Idol, Heroes, The Office and soon The Sopranos. [...]

Two days after her split-screen throwdown with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, TMZ.com and the AP are reporting that Rosie O’Donnell will not be returning to The View, ending her run on that show three weeks early. TMZ quotes an ABC statement saying, “We had hoped that Rosie would be with us until the end of her contract [...]

In HBO’s lamented Western Deadwood, we rarely saw or heard from Native Americans, except as severed heads and as a cynically-invoked threat that rationalized brutality and power grabs. HBO’s movie Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, debuting Sunday, begins just before Deadwood did–with the massacre at Little Big Horn–but has a distinctly different perspective. The [...]

Cliff Lipson/CBS Everybody’s praising Bob Barker as he gets ready to retire, but in my Culture Complex column this week, I take a minute to give the love to that most American of game shows itself, The Price Is Right: [U]ltimately, what wins Price are the skills that matter. Remembering facts (and I say this [...]

Well, it’s the first night of the TV summer. Reruns and whatnot. Perhaps I shall take up an instrument, or read an improving book! Just kidding. I’ll be watching On the Lot. Because I’m a sucker. Recommended, although I’ve already watched the screener, is Sundance’s Aussie-import docuseries John Safran Vs. God. It’s an irreverent-and-a-half, but [...]

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s Lost yet, come back at a point in the future when you have. ABC/Mario Perez So I am enough of a dork that I watched the prequel clip-show, “Lost: The Answers.” And irony of ironies, it turned out the show actually had an answer in it, though [...]

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s American Idol yet, don’t read this. Or listen to the radio, open the paper, talk to your family or go to work. I’ll confess that I didn’t catch Jordin Sparks’ coronation last night: I was watching Lost (in re which: OMG!, and yes, you’ll get your freaking [...]

Not much suspense as to what I’m watching tonight, on Ragnarok, the last day of the 2006-07 TV season, the night of coronations and cliffhangers. There’s Lost, of course; and I’ll also be watching American Idol for the blog, because (1) it is a Truly Important Cultural Event That Defines Us As a Nation and [...]

HBO has put the entire first episode of its new comedy series, Flight of the Conchords, online at MySpace. [Update: it's also at hbo.com, but oddly, with fewer bells and whistles.] The premise: “New Zealand’s fourth most-popular folk parody duo” seek success and cheap dates on New York’s Lower East Side. Give it a half-hour [...]

Last Idol review of the year is posted on the Time.com homepage. The final night played out pretty much as I suspected, playing wholly to Jordin’s strengths. Idol ballads are written precisely with a 17-year-old’s sense of melodramatics in mind, and I have a feeling that Jordin’s peer group will reward the 17-year-old wunderkind for [...]

Like you have to ask? But also: The preview/debut of On the Lot, the moviemaking reality show from Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg. I’ve seen only a few-minute trailer, from which I can’t tell much (lots of overwhelmed would-be directors touring real-life movie sets and saying “This is where it all happens!”). I don’t know [...]

WARNING: Heroes spoilers ahead! Don’t think of the bogeyman! NBC Photo: Trea Patton So the Heroes season 1 — sorry “Volume 1″ — finale: I wasn’t overwhelmed. I wasn’t exactly underwhelmed either. Call me whelmed. Nathan Petrelli, for better and worse, has been the subject of many of my questions this season. Such as: why, [...]