“They call us Care Bears… because we care for human flesh! Mwahahah!” / NBCU Photo: Ali Paige Goldstein Happy Thanksgiving. Now stop surfing the Web and avoiding your family! That’s why you have a television.

Cain, center, within Pegasus’ heart of darkness. SCI FI Channel Photo: Carole Segal Note: Friday’s a work day for me–at least, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it. But since I suspect it’s neither a work day nor much of a blog-reading day for you, posting will probably be light, and I thought I’d [...]

An interesting bit of speculation buried in today’s New York Times story on the writers’ strike: what if the strike, like many a TV show, went on hiatus? Here’s the thinking. We’ve discussed the short-or-long theory of the strike before. The writers’ hope is that, by shutting down TV productions fast, they could hurt the [...]

Jamie Traceblood /The CW I’ve pretty much been AWOL on Tuesday night reality TV this fall: Beauty and the Geek (used to love it, but triage issues), Dancing with the Stars, The Biggest Loser (how long is each episode now, like five hours?). What am I missing? Anything to say about The Bachelor: After the [...]

LEE MENDELSON PRODUCTIONS,INC. Why are there not more Thanksgiving holiday specials? (I’m not talking parades or football, but specials aired before the holiday.) It’s no Christmas, maybe, but it’s no slouch: a four-day weekend holiday of Americana and overeating. Is it a market-driven thing? No one gives Thanksgiving presents, so the advertisers aren’t there for [...]

We haven’t talked about the Lost Missing Pieces webisodes, have we? Probably because there’s not so much to talk about. In the first installment, Jack gets a watch, and another heapin’ helpin’ of daddy issues. The second is more appealing, simply because we get to meet Neil Frogurt and discover that he something of a [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, watch last night’s Heroes. And FINISH YOUR CEREAL. In this very special episode, a major character dies… for an entire commercial break! Oh, right. That’s what a good episode of Heroes looks like. There’s been a lot of hashing over this season about Heroes’ plot problems–storylines that moved [...]

Monty Brinton/CBS ‘Tis the time to convene about last night’s TV, and since the clock is running down on its remaining pre-strike episodes, this is a good time to look at How I Met Your Mother. Despite–or perhaps because of–the fact that this season has backed off the meeting-your-mother premise, it’s been on a tear [...]

NBC Photo: Justin Stephens Question of the Day: Which reality show is more badly misnamed–Dancing with the Stars (a.k.a. “Dancing with Where the Hell Is She From Again?”) or The Celebrity Apprentice? The list of Donald Trump’s, ahem, celebrities–whose show debuts January 3–was released today, and is herewith reproduced and annotated: Trace Adkins: I’ll give [...]

After spending nearly, like, a whole entire week as a web-only series, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick’s quarterlife has been signed up on NBC as a TV series to start in February. The big irony here, as I robo-wrote last week, is that Herskovitz wrote an impassioned L.A. Times editorial earlier this month that aligned [...]

No sooner did the sun go down on Friday, the last official day of my vacation work stoppage, than I saw that my bold labor action had its intended effect, as the producers and writers agreed to resume contract negotiations a week from today. Because let’s face it. People can go a few months without [...]

Hello! Good to be back! Thanks for not trashing the place while I was gone. And I hope Robo-James didn’t launch into any binary solos or attempt to exterminate you while I was away. I’ve been surprised how little I’ve been bothered by the Tyra/Landry/murder plot fallout in the last few episodes of Friday Night [...]

The always-brilliant PopMatters has come up with an exhaustive, eye-opening and nimbly argued list of the best TV shows on DVD. The list went up in October, but that’s the beauty of DVD: there’s no such thing as coming to it too late! Having done a gigundous TV list of my own recently, I have [...]

This is Robo-James. In the absence of my inferior carbon-based colleague, this automatically generated post exists to provide humans a space in which to discuss programming transmitted the previous evening on your video-display device. Flesh-James will return on Monday. If I were sufficiently flawed to experience irrational emotion, I would have felt pleasure serving you [...]

It will not surprise you that I am starting to work on a top 10 TV list for 2007. The top 10 reasons that it will not surprise you… 1. I work for a magazine. 2. That’s what magazines do. 3. And even though you may hate to admit it. 4. Magazines know you. 5. [...]

This is Robo-James. In the absence of my inferior carbon-based colleague, this automatically generated post exists to provide humans a space in which to discuss programming transmitted the previous evening on your video-display device.

Let’s get this out of the way up front. No, I do not know who the TIME Person of the Year is. If I did know, I would not tell you anyway, it’s true. But not only do I doubt the decision has been made yet, most years I don’t know the choice until the [...]

This is Robo-James. In the absence of my inferior carbon-based colleague, this automatically generated post exists to provide humans a space in which to discuss programming transmitted the previous evening on your video-display device.

I could be all coy and sly about this, but the fact is, I’m preparing a list of my favorite Christmas / Non-Christian Late-Year-Holiday Programs for time.com. (Or I would be, if I were working at the moment.) So this seemed as good a time as any to ask what yours are, since there are [...]