NBC Photo: Justin Lubin I will be watching 30 Rock live, or almost live, this evening, even though, for the second week in a row, I have the DVD sitting right here, begging me to watch it now. I have the self-control of the Buddha, really I do. We’ll also be seeing yet another hourlong [...]

I have recently come into possession of a “book.” Contrary to the stereotype of TV critics as illiterates, I even began to read it, after a brief time trying to figure out how to turn it on and flinging it across the room angrily while making ape noises. The book is Reality Show, Washington Post [...]

RON TOM / ABC OK, I can tell this improbable petit-four of a show is going to walk that fine line between winning my heart every week and annoying the crap out of me. For instance, the lime-green Dandy Lion SX. Pro: A car that runs on dandelions! That’s too cute! Con: A car that [...]

Monty Brinton/ CBS It’s your regular invite to discuss what you did instead of paying attention to your loved ones last night. Chirp in on Pushing Daisies (which I’ll get around to reviewing later today), Bionic Woman (which I may or may not), Gossip Girl or anything else on the Wednesday night docket. Speaking of [...]

I’ll be watching, like many of the rest of you, it seems, to see whether Pushing Daisies can live up to its pilot, and if the set designers have any new goodies to unveil from that big yard sale that Tim Burton apparently had. But I must also confess–actually, I already have–that I have not [...]

John P. Johnson (2) / HBO Afraid I’m not going to get around to a Tell Me You Love Me Watch this week–knee-deep in a deadline for TIME’s “magazine,” which is kind of like a large blog with staples in it. I’ll try to catch up next week. In the meantime, here’s the next-best thing: [...]

OK, we’re into the third week of the fall season. It’s decision time. It’s TiVo-disk-space, evening-time allocation time. What new shows this fall are you actually still watching? Here’s my list: 1. Pushing Daisies.* This gets an asterisk, as it has the advantage of having aired only its pilot. 2. Tell Me You Love Me. [...]

Robert Voets/CBS Do any Tuned Inlanders watch NCIS or The Unit? Have we ever discussed NCIS or The Unit? Should I be watching NCIS or The Unit? (I was briefly interested in the latter, mostly for employing Scott Foley, but lost interest upon seeing there was so little staccato swearing for a David Mamet show.) [...]

BOB D’AMICO / ABC We can finally say that there is, indeed, an award for everything: on Oct. 15 the organization Human Rights First will award the first Award for Excellence in Television, presented by Sam Waterston. And by “excellence,” they mean “excellence in depicting torture.” (I’m picturing a statuette of a little gold man [...]

Good primer in today’s Variety about the impact of a possible Hollywood writers’ strike after the Guild contract expires at the end of the month. (In an extremely small nutshell, the writers are looking for a bigger share of revenue from all those non-TV ways in which you’ve been watching TV–downloads, DVDs and so on.) [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, open the hilt of the samurai sword I’ve placed in your desk drawer. Boy, was it hard getting that thing past security! NBC Photo: Chris Haston So, Nikki Reed’s loss was Missy Peregrym’s gain was Candice Wilmer’s loss. Peregrym (the original illusionist-villainess Candice on Heroes) was cast over [...]

Monty Brinton/CBS Your open invitation to weigh in on last night’s Chuck, Journeyman, Boondocks, or what have you. Or How I Met Your Mother, which, while I’m not sure I have a full-fledged Watch in me, was back in top form even though the episode did nothing to advance the whole meeting-your-mother business. But as [...]

I liked The Boondocks when it first came out on Adult Swim; then time wore on, my TiVo backlog built up and the show went off the air, by my recollection, for 47 years. Season 2 starts tonight, and I’m curious to see whether its mix of anime, pop-culture parody and racial pissed-offness holds up. [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Don’t read this post until you’ve watched the latest Friday Night Lights, and checked outside your house for skunks. NBC Photo: Bill Records The first thing that worried me about the new episode of FNL was not the controversial Landry-kills-Tyra’s-stalker scene (which still sounds like a parody even as I type it, as [...]

The early ratings numbers for the Fall 2007 season are in, and the most astonishing one is not for any particular show. New NY Times TV reporter and former TV Newser Brian Stelter reports that DVR ownership has gone up from 9 percent a year ago to a whopping 20 percent this fall. This fits [...]

David Bloomer/The CW Little action on the new-show-debut front this weekend, although if anyone wants to report on Life Is Wild (above), go crazy with it. Otherwise, feel free to offer your comments on the second week of Dexter, the first week of Friday Night Lights (work and other commitments may postpone my doing a [...]

So the good news: for the BSG-starved, Sci Fi begins showing two-minute “flashback” minisodes that lead up to the two-hour Battlestar Galactica movie Razor, November 24. So the bad news: Sci Fi is airing them in the middle of Flash Gordon, one of the worst series anyone has committed to video this season. Clearly an [...]

NBC Photo: Bill Records In the current TIME, I make a brief plea for readers to check out Friday Night Lights, which returns tonight. There’s been a lot of discussion among fans who’ve watched the episode (which streamed online earlier) about a pivotal scene near the end, which Alan Sepinwall at the Newark Star-Ledger has [...]

MITCH HADDAD / ABC Glen Levy over at Time Europe emailed me this morning with a tidbit: British television, he writes, has decided to begin the new season of Ugly Betty early, for fear of having its audience cut into by downloads. This reverses the usual practice of having American shows air overseas months, or [...]