John from Cincinnati. You’ll notice there is no spoiler warning on this post. There’s a reason for that. The chief significant development–John announcing (again) that “Sean will soon be gone”–was in last week’s preview. Other than that, while there were a few nice moments in Palaka’s motel-tub treatment session and Dickstein’s going all Close Encounters [...]

ADULT SWIM Because it’s a Friday, and because by the time September rolls around I may be too buried in fall debuts to remember to tell you about it, I’m asking grown-up animation fans to mark Sunday, September 9 on your calendars: Loren Bouchard (Home Movies) makes his return to Adult Swim with Lucy, Daughter [...]

I finally caught up with last night’s rebroadcast of Victoria Beckham: Coming to America. I could offer all sorts of excuses for not having watched the original Monday broadcast, but the fact was, I just didn’t care that much. In this respect, it would appear I am a true red-blooded American. Despite all the media [...]

I’ve decided to add AMC’s advertising drama Mad Men to the Watch rotation this summer, although, truth be told, it’s been so long since I watched the pilot that this first one is going to be a bit more of a Mad Men Did-You-Watch post. When I first saw the pilot, I was worried it [...]

ABC/MARIO PEREZ Keeping it simple this week, I’ve noticed a lot of divided opinion on Locke and his status on the show. He’s the spiritual and moral center of the show. He’s a selfish bastard, stopping at nothing to keep the rest on the Island because he likes walking. He has insights into the Island [...]

So, Boston Legal is a better drama than The Wire, Deadwood and Friday Night Lights. Battlestar Galactica and Lost are unworthy of recognition. Awesome! Seriously, thanks for clearing that up, Emmy! Glad we can move on now! If you agree with those sentiments, you are welcome to move on and miss the annual installment of [...]

Last season on Lost, Richard Alpert offered Juliet Burke a dream job, only to spirit her off to an island in the middle of nowhere, where she would be held captive and, possibly, never heard from again. Well, two can play at that game, apparently. Nestor Carbonell, who plays Richard, costars in Cane, CBS’s rum-family [...]

Because I know there’s a strong Friday Night Lights contingent at Tuned In, here’s a link to Maureen Ryan’s spoiler-heavy (you’ve been warned) preview of FNL season 2, after producer Jason Katims spilled heavily on the show’s plans at the TCA press tour. Among the most welcome plot points: bigger dramatic things in store for [...]

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announces the 2007 Emmy nominees tomorrow morning. Pretend that I am an angel, descended from Heaven, with the power to grant you a miraculous wish. Pretend that after you asked me for world peace and eternal life, I said that, ahem, sorry, actually I was a relatively weak [...]

A choice, 100% postconsumer-recycled nugget from the New York Times’s NBC press tour coverage this morning: [NBC entertainment chief Ben] Silverman also announced that all of NBC’s prime-time shows would participate in a companywide pro-environmental project called “Green Is Universal” for a week in November. Every show on NBC would have a story line with [...]

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s Big Love, watch out for that Holy Spirit sucker punch. HBO photo: Lacey Terrell Last week we watched Bill take off his ring with Ana in the diner and wondered: was it love or was it lust? Turns out it was love–just on a different person’s part. [...]

Levi, left, with Joshua Gomez. NBC Photo: Greg Gayne Test Pilot is a semiregular feature this summer sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next fall’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots may be rewritten, recast and reshot before airing, and end up much better or worse. But, premature opinions are why God [...]

Weekend travel plans cut in to my weekend TV plans, so I probably won’t get around to Entourage until tonight. Feel free to discuss here. Did quite enjoy Flight of the Conchords, although with the insertion of Business Time, I finally understood what some longtime FOTC fans mean when they’ve complained that the songs were [...]

NBC has announced a celebrity edition of The Apprentice to air next season. That is not the scary part of this post. The scary part, as James Hibberd reports at TV Week, is that new NBC chief Ben Silverman wants to recruit actors from The Office to compete in the show–thereby not only unnecessarily extending [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read further until you’ve looked for the Word in the Video. HBO photo: John P. Johnson So, it turns out John has his own words after all. And as is so often the case with quiet types, once he gets a head of steam and starts monologuing, it turns out you [...]

HBO photo: Doug Hyun HBO has held its TCA press tour session in LA (headlines: Deadwood movies possible but don’t bet on it; Curb Your Enthusiasm coming back in September; nobody knows if Tony’s dead) and brought out the stars and producers of Tell Me You Love Me, its new fall drama that the New [...]

My Culture Complex column this week looks at how Lifetime’s hit Army Wives has managed to deal with the impact of a war that’s still being fought, even though two years ago, the Steven Bochco Iraq drama Over There had people in a tizzy: The analysis was that it was too risky to dramatize a [...]

Top Chef has become a Tivo show for me this summer, recorded and saved for Thursday night to take the place of Survivor, as Pirate Master has so thoroughly failed to do. I spend Thursday carefully avoiding any spoilers. Therefore, I’m not reading the comments–la la la, I can’t hear you–until I’ve watched. But I’ve [...]

Moeser and Brady rock out. Greg Gayne/FOX In the middle of the first episode of Fox’s Don’t Forget the Lyrics last night, as the first contestant ran through a rendition of the Jackson Five’s ABC, a line from the song ran in giant capital letters on the onstage video display and the screen chyron: “READING, [...]