The striking (sorry) Tina Fey pickets the site of her fictional show and her real employer. The TV and movie screenwriters’ strike is, of course, about significant issues: the value of labor in the digital age, the shifting paradigms of entertainment, the importance of Hollywood in the national discourse. But let’s not lose sight of [...]

Conan O’Brien and the Red Sox’s David Ortiz, both of whom have some spare time on their hands now. NBC Photo: Meghan Sinclair Even as this post goes up, TV writers should be beginning to picket Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, within convenient walking distance of a zillion TV-news camera crews. As I’ve mentioned before, it [...]

Robert Voets/CBS We had to sit through two whole episodes of Viva Laughlin to get it, but The Amazing Race 12 debuted on CBS last night, and it kicked off in typical form with a race of peat-laden donkeys in Ireland. The big question thus far is how Kynt and Vyxsin–the goth couple, above, who [...]

The WGA TV and movie writers’ strike will begin Monday, Variety is reporting. What happens then? When you turn your TV on Monday, there will be no picture. (You may hear a faint hissing sound from the remaining electrons escaping.) Your cable line will dry out and shrivel, not unlike a newborn’s umbilical stump, and [...]

Tonight on Animal Planet: The season 3 finale of Meerkat Manor. This week in the print TIME: I look at the tearjerking bloodbath that the series has become–Shakespeare! Flower! Mozart!–and what it is about this particular animal and this particular show that inspires such passionate, interactive mourning. As in: And I’d link to the article, [...]

Several weeks into its new season, and The Office has finally figured out what to do with its PB&J combo: split them up. Well, not break Pam and Jim up romantically, but give them some physical distance and each their own storyline. First, Jim, who was shanghaied into the A plot by Michael and Dwight, [...]

Well, the Democratic Party and liberal Hollywood finally joined forces to stick it to Stephen Colbert. First came word, delivered to Colbert on The Colbert Report itself, that he had been rejected from the Democratic primary ballot in South Carolina: Then the Writers’ Guild announced that it was going to go on strike, which will [...]

Here’s your spot to discuss last night’s TV, including what–though I won’t spoilerize it for you–had to be the most hilarious Survivor elimination of all time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pry off the wainscoting. There might be something valuable there.

The South Park Imaginationland trilogy concluded last night, and I have only one question: why wasn’t this the next South Park movie that Matt and Trey keep saying they’d only make if they had a big enough idea? Really, what idea could be bigger than an extended disquisition on the difference between real and imaginary [...]

TV and movie writers’ contract deadline passed at midnight; no strike yet, though one could be called any day. The LA Times has the deets. The Writers’ Guild dispute–and strike, if it comes to that–is about a lot of things, but in a nutshell the biggest is: how TV and movie writers get paid when [...]

The good news: Joss Whedon has a seven-episode deal to make a new series, starring Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Faith). The bad news: it will be on Fox, the same people who brought you, then immediately started doing their damnedest to un-bring you, Firefly. Let’s savor the good news for now, though, shall [...]