In my Halloween-TV post earlier today, I mentioned local horror-movie hosts and yet inexplicably omitted The Ghoul– – Detroit’s (and OK, Cleveland’s) premier bizarre horrormeister of my youth. (Apologies, Sir Graves Ghastly.) The Ghoul and sidekick Froggy, my Midwestern readers may be glad to know, are now kicking it online, with a paid webcast to [...]

Is there any doubt that Halloween is the greatest holiday of the year? It combines the greed of Christmas with the gluttony of Thanksgiving in one paganistic package, celebrating terror, evil and death. Yet TV doesn’t go nearly as hog-wild on this most theatrical of holidays. I’ve already given a shout-out to It’s the Great [...]

He can’t predict what’s going to happen, either. BOB D’AMICO / ABC Halloween is the witching hour for the Writers’ Guild and the networks, as the midnight deadline (spooky!) looms for the strike. Today’s Variety runs down the programming scenarios. (And notes that the writers may decide to wait a week or so before walking [...]

Every once in a while as a critic, you have an “Is it me or is it them?” review–one on which you part company with pretty much every peer in the world. Most of the ones I’ve had in the past (the American version of The Office [pro], Studio 60, Fat Actress annd Bette [con]), [...]

Despite the NBC minisodes’ best efforts to warn me away, I’ll be seeing a screening of Bee Movie with the rest of the Tuned In family. I’m just sayin’. Actual viewing of the television machine curtailed accordingly. For those of you at home and uninterested in another episode of Carpoolers, however, may I suggest The [...]

“It’s not about boys. It’s about me.” –Isabella Alan Fraser / HBO I started this post with Isabella’s quote, but I could add Katie’s from a few episodes ago, when she discussed her daughter’s early puberty with her doctor: “It’s like a horror movie.” Katie was talking about the various environmental influences–movies, Barbie dolls, hormones [...]

Michael Becker/FX Ah, Nip/Tuck. Let me tell you what I don’t like about yourself. For a few seasons, Ryan Murphy’s arch, audacious plastic-surgery drama was one of the most ludicrously provocative treats on TV–not a guilty pleasure, just a pleasure. There were murders, coupling of every possible combination of characters, self-circumcisions, feedings of bodies to [...]

NBC Photo: Dean Hendler So nice to see HRG back to being a badass again! Or at least an essentially-good-but-forced-to-be-bad-for-the-sake-of-his-family-though-it-may-come-at-the-cost-of-his-soul-ass. Killing someone for information is bad. Taking someone’s memories for information is bad. But taking someone’s memories to extract information, knowing all the while that you’re going to kill them anyway–that’s a reminder of the [...]

I’ve reached my peace with Chuck: I like it, but don’t feel compelled to watch it every week. So I’ll let you do that for me. Or update us on The Big Bang Theory, the Bachelor season that I’ve totally ignored or–hey, we never talk about Monday Night Football! I understand from Friday Night Lights [...]

Fox’s Are You Smarter passes the PTC’s test. Does it pass yours? Rachel Devine/FOX I tend to be hard on the Parents Television Council and its campaigns for TV decency, but in truth the PTC is a bit of a two-edged sword. Some of its efforts–the most-publicized ones, which I spend the most time bashing–involve [...]

NBC Photo: Bill Records Well, that was fast. For all the attention that’s gone to the Tyra-Landry stalker-killing subplot, I’m more bothered by how quickly Jason Katims decided to undo Coach Taylor’s abandonment of the Panthers to coach college ball. Yeah, I realize this is TV; yeah, I realize that everyone expected that somewhere, somehow, [...]

Here’s a TV business story that could actually affect the way some of you watch TV: The FCC is reportedly preparing to strike down contracts that limit apartment building residents to one exclusive cable company. In theory, anyway, this could lead to that most mythical and dreamed-of scenario for TV viewers: the ability to choose [...]

After talking up Dexter at the beginning of the season, I’ve fallen behind, so this is your opportunity to take the law into your own hands and comment on it–or any other weekend TV. Did anyone manage (unlike me) to get through to the end of History Channel’s bloated Nostradamus special? (It ends with him [...]

Let me leave you with a cheerful discussion topic to spend the weekend with. Let’s assume that when the WGA contract runs out Halloween night, there will in fact be a writers’ strike. There’s been a lot of talk about what the writers would do. There’s been a lot of talk about what the networks [...]

CRAIG SJODIN / ABC I finally caught up with this week’s Pushing Daisies. Charming episode again, the budget cutbacks not bothering me so much, and who’d have ever thought I’d be watching a network primetime show that involved a They Might Be Giants singalong? In a valley of windmills? I’m starting a betting pool on [...]

A trailer for season 7 of 24 is now streaming online. (WARNING: Trailer features a spoiler about the status of a certain character, which, by virtue of being in the trailer, I suppose is not such a spoiler anymore.) Maureen Ryan at the Chicago Tribune suspects that the new season may have Jack Bauer lashing [...]

NBC Photo: Anne Joyce The cavalcade of stars on 30 Rock rolled on last night, with Carrie Fisher guesting as Liz Lemon’s comedy-pioneer idol/cautionary tale, and it was just another example of why I’m glad somebody gave Tina Fey her own sitcom. Though Fey didn’t write last night’s episode, who else could you imagine making [...]

NBC Photo: Scott Garfield I’ve thought for some time that I should have a term for a show that I generally admire, enjoy whenever I by chance end up watching it, then promptly thereafter forget its existence for months, for no reason I can satisfyingly explain. Maybe I should call this kind of show a [...]