In the first scene of AMC’s Breaking Bad, debuting Sunday, Bryan Cranston crashes an R.V. in the New Mexico desert, staggers out of it wearing nothing but tighty-whitey underwear and a gas mask, then turns to look in the passenger door. Because it’s Bryan Cranston, it’s hard to see the scene and not expect him [...]

In the print edition of TIME this week, my column is about how rock-and-holy-roller Mike Huckabee has used, and been used by, pop culture this election cycle: In the popular and political mind, pop culture and conservative Christianity are separated like church and state. Britney, The Da Vinci Code and MTV are here; homeschooling, Left [...]

Yesterday, the directors’ guild and the AMPTP announced they had reached a contract agreement, which, if it’s accepted as the template for negotiating a writers’ deal, is our best shot at ending the strike in weeks rather than months. I’m not a lawyer or a contract negotiator, so I won’t pretend to say whether it [...]