What do I, a professional TV critic, watch on New Year’s Eve? The inside of my eyelids. I pride myself on passing out well before the stroke of midnight these days, partly from parental exhaustion, partly because Mrs. Tuned In and I throw a New Year’s Day Open House and I need to wake up [...]

How well do we really know each other? I mean sure, you know what I watch on TV and I know what you watch on TV. But heretical as it is to say it, there are other things in life besides TV. You’re all people of strong opinions and distinct tastes: What’s on your iPod, [...]

I’ve said this before, but any top-10 list is really a top 9 list, plus about a 20-way tie for 10th. When I put together my lists of the top 10 new and returning shows, there were numerous shows that might have made the lists, had they been a touch better, had I been in [...]

You didn’t think I’d let the year end without doing this list, did you? To hell with the holiday spirit! 1. The Writers’ Strike. You need not have a side in this confict to hate it, so long as your side happens to be opposite a TV screen filled with reruns and game shows. Pay [...]

Isn’t there anyone out there who can tell me what Christmas is all about? Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you. Lights, please. Christmas is about shaking it like a Polaroid picture. Happy hols, all.

I decided not to robo-post a daily Morning After thread over break, there being so little original TV on during the holiday weeks. But I’ll leave this up as a general hangout / do-it-yourself discussion area for the week. Have fun! Use the coasters!

In the TIME landing with a papery thump on a newsstand near you, I wrap things up with a closing essay dedicated to a certain Person of the Year from the recent past… Hey there, You! It’s been, what, a year? I don’t think I’ve seen You since we named You Person of the Year [...]

The same caveat applies here as to my ten-best episodes list yesterday–I didn’t keep a list through the year, this is largely off the top of my head and impressionistic–only more so. In fact, for fairness’ sake I’m not going to bother to number it. Here we go: Flight of the Conchords, Foux de Fa [...]

Mario Perez / ABC I promised you a list of the 10 best TV episodes of the year, and here it is. But first a caveat. Because I didn’t really plan ahead well, I didn’t do what I do for my top 10 shows list, which is to keep a running tab throughout the year. [...]

Photo by Greefus Groinks. It’s December rerun season, the Person of the Year issue has been put to bed, and even as you read this, I am slipping daintily into a hot tub filled with creamy, high-proof egg nog. Yes, the holidays are here, and between TIME’s offices closing down (“special double issue”–the three sweetest [...]

For your listening pleasure, time.com’s podcast of The Best Thing of 2007. The premise: six Time Arts staffers (me, music critic Josh Tyrangiel, book critic Lev Grossman, book/art/architecture critic Richard Lacayo, film critic Richard Corliss and Arts editor Belinda Luscombe) enter a podcast studio. We each select one work from our genre as the Best [...]

Tuned In must be a fertile ground for people looking for online sex and cheap meds, because we’ve been under a vigorous spam attack the past few days. Unfortunately, it seems that as a result the spam filter has been made so sensitive it’s been picking up every comment as spam, including one by Mrs. [...]

Watching the Today Show this morning to watch my boss announce TIME’s Person of the Year–turns out there’s still a Russia! Who knew?–I caught Mike Huckabee defending his Christmas campaign ad to Meredith Vieira. Vieira pressed him on the issue of whether the bookshelf was subliminally framed as a cross in the ad, which follows: [...]

SPOILER ALERT: I cannot believe I am seriously writing a spoiler alert for a post about Clash of the Choirs. Well, America, you disobeyed Mrs. Tuned In’s specific instructions and voted off Team Rowland instead of Team Bolton on Clash of the Choirs last night. Mrs. Tuned In’s theory: “It’s Michael Bolton. He’s got the [...]

I haven’t found an embeddable version, but James Hibberd at TV Week has the new extended trailer for season 4 of Lost. It’s 1:47 minutes in heaven! If and when anyone locates the inevitable slowed down, frame-grabbed versions, do please share with the class and post a link.

It’s nearing the end of December, and you all know what that means: Time to bribe your local TV critic! OK, “bribe” might be an excessive term to describe the tchotchkes I’ve been receiving from various publicity departments in the biz, but it makes me feel roguish. Among the holiday swag items I’ve come across [...]

So those seven episodes of The Wire I got? Watched ‘em. Oh, the things I could spoil for you. Oh, the wonderful, heartbreaking things I could spoil for you. But I won’t. Because I’m a good man. Because I’m a bad man. More than usual, it’s hard to get into the storyline of this final [...]

What part of “We’re on strike” don’t people understand? For a while, the desperate hope has persisted that the writers’ guild would extend a waiver to the Golden Globes and the Oscars to allow WGA writers to script jokes for them. Because yeah, when you go on strike, it really means you’re going on strike [...]

NBCU Photo: Virginia Sherwood It’s called choralography. That little thing choirs do, where they make little joyous motions with their hands, or–gospel-choir-style–push them up toward the sky like they’re trying to hold up heaven? Choralography. This is one of the many things you learn when you watch Clash of the Choirs with an actual choral-music [...]