NBC photos: Chris Haston, Ron Tom Who needs Seinfeldvision? America’s favorite comedic non-actor came to 30 Rock last night. Sure, it was a pleasure to see him–”How about I buy NBC and turn it into the biggest Lane Bryant in midtown?”–and if he brought a few million new viewers with him, all to the good. [...]

RICHARD CARTWRIGHT / ABC If anyone watched a second week of Big Shots, reports are welcome, because I can’t bring myself to go near it again. Otherwise, general Thursday-night discussion welcome. Ugly Betty? CSI? The game where they hit the baseball with the baseball stick?

NBC Photo: Chris Haston I have a couple of projects for the dead-tree edition of TIME that involve a lot of (1) watching shows that were on TV a long time ago and (2) watching shows that won’t be on TV for a long time. Some of my watching-TV-that’s-on-right-now has suffered. Therefore, even though I [...]

Doug Hyun / HBO File this under News I Didn’t Expect to Be Reading This Soon and Come to Think of It Probably Ever: The Hollywood Reporter says that HBO has renewed Tell Me You Love Me for a second season. Having watched the entire season, I’m delighted; having read the mixed critical reception and [...]

SPOILER ALERT: That ringing in your ears is telling you to watch Bionic Woman before you read this. NBC Photo: Alan Zenuk Say this for the producers of Bionic Woman: they seem to have paid attention over the summer to the criticisms of the pilot. Too bleak! people complained. Too humorless! Well, between the revised [...]

Addison is #18. But is there a bullet? RICHARD CARTWRIGHT / ABC It’s pretty fascinating, the little tidbits of info about viewing patterns that TiVo is able to accumulate, if you can get past the creepy, a box-in-my-living-room-is-reporting-back-to-corporate-HQ aspect of it. For instance: after a summer full of hype and advance screenings for new shows, [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Watch Top Chef before you read this post, or it’ll be spoiled like a spoonful of salmon roe in the hot sun. Bravo Photo: Barbara Nitke If nothing else, I’m glad for Hung that Top Chef 3 is over, if only so he can stop trying to act like he has a soul, [...]

SCOTT GARFIELD/ABC So at long last you’ve seen the double-super-mega-hyped magic-piemaker dramedy Pushing Daisies. Were you won by the whimsy? Will you never listen to a professional television critic again? Update: Actually, here’s a starter question: were you convinced by the emotions in the show? One of my big reservations about the pilot was that [...]

Comedy Central isn’t going to let any flipping network premiere weeks scare them off: new seasons of South Park and The Sarah Silverman Program kick off tonight. I don’t need to tell you about South Park. Either you’ll watch it or you’re beyond hope. Sarah Silverman–Sarah is a divider. People love her or hate her, [...]

SCOTT GARFIELD / ABC Some enterprising game manufacturer needs to come up with a version of Monopoly, but for network TV. You’d buy up shows, try to monopolize contiguous “programming blocks,” and bankrupt your opponents by charging, not for rent, but for commercials. In the Fall 2007 version of Network Monopoly, Grey’s Anatomy (an estimated [...]

ABC/MITCH HADDAD Reader, a confession: I laughed at the first line of Cavemen. “There’s this tiny waitress and she’s carrying around a rack of ribs so big that they can tip over a car made of stone? I just don’t see what’s so funny about it.” Call me unevolved, but it makes me laugh. The [...]

Sergei Bachlakov / The CW If last night’s episode of Reaper had been the first one I’d ever seen, I’d have been delighted with it. The problem with it was that it was more or less the same, with a few elegant variations, as the very first episode we ever did see, last week. There [...]

ABC/SCOTT GARFIELD The Second Coming Pushing Daisies debuts tonight on ABC. You may have heard of it. I reviewed it in our fall arts preview, so you’ll have to excuse me for not doing so a second time here. I am very curious to see how this show does in the ratings. It’ll be a [...]

Ron P. Jaffe/CBS You know the drill. Second week impressions of Reaper or Cane? Did ABC’s single-camera comedies elicit a single laugh? (I’ll try to post a review of Cavemen later.) Have you ditched any of your old Tuesday-night appointments to make room for new ones? At least one inquiring mind wants to know.

David Oyelowo (As You Like It), as the missing woman’s husband. HBO photo: Nick Brigg HBO’s miniseries Five Days is another victim of my new-season triage, but I’m going to try to keep up with it as it goes (Tuesdays, consecutive weeks though Oct. 30). Don’t consider this a review, therefore, but from what I’ve [...]

Matt Frei, international anchor of mystery. Sean McCormick / BBC Worldwide The title of BBC World News America needs a comma between “News” and “America.” As in: This is what world news looks like, America. Do you remember it? I exaggerate slightly, but last night’s inaugural newscast on BBC America was relatively light on the [...]

Greg Grunberg as Matt Parkman; Adrian Pasdar as Grizzly Adams. NBC Photo: Trae Patton The great advantage of Heroes story-arc structure–setting up a new storyline, e.g., Save the Cheerleader, every half-season or so–is that it allows the show to reinvent itself with a new Big Bad every few months. The disadvantage is that the show [...]

BOB D’AMICO / ABC Last week, ABC debuted Big Shots, a show about the relationship problems of a group of heterosexual alpha males. Tonight, it debuts Carpoolers, a sitcom about the relationship problems of a group of heterosexual beta males. You’re better off with the betas. True to its name, the show is about four [...]