The chief question I have after last night’s How I Met Your Mother is: Was “The Cheerleader Effect”—Barney’s theory of how unattractive women look better in groups—a cryptic slam at Heroes? Beyond that, not much to comment on in last night’s fair but unremarkable episode. The chief storyline, in which Lily and Marshall decide to [...]

…we’ve got answers. Sort of. At least to one question, about Lost. In yesterday’s thread about Lost’s return date, several commenters asked how long the season would be—since, if the show airs weekly, a 16-episode season would end before the TV season did.  Before the fourth season of Lost, the producers and ABC reached an [...]

It’s not that Sarah Palin didn’t want to make herself more available for mainstream media interviews. It was just that, when you’re in the middle of running for vice president, who has time for that kind of thing? Now that that bit of business is over, however, Palin has become a regular camera hound. Last [...]

You didn’t have to be Jewish to watch Sarah Silverman’s The Great Schlep video, but it helped. As you know if you’re one of the millions of people who watched it, in the spot, Silverman made a tongue-in-cheek-but-also-serious argument for Jewish grandkids to visit bubbe and zayde in Florida and convince them to set aside [...]

  I don’t ask a lot of Entourage. I know that it will never be deep or groundbreaking or one of my favorite shows on television. I just expect it to amuse me and give me a break: to be a funny, reasonably Hollywood-savvy diversion. So call this faint praise if you want, but I’m [...]

Since Heroes is a show about synchronicities and loosely-connected global events, here’s a few related links this morning:  * The New York Times weighs in on the show’s ratings and creative troubles, which have led to firings and shakeups, and have caused agita at the network’s highest levels. (One good point the piece makes: it’s [...]

ABC has announced the return date for Lost, which will have a two-hour premiere (preceded by an hourlong clip show) in its new timeslot at 9 p.m. E.T., Wednesday, January 21. Which also happens to be Mrs. Tuned In’s birthday. It’s going to be hard to top that gift.

  Friday night, Animal Planet debuted its new series Whale Wars. Inexcusably, it does not involve a tournament of mortal battles between orcas and spermaceti. The reality series follows the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a group of militant environmentalists who set sail to confront and stop Japanese whaling ships, sometimes under threat of gunfire.    [...]

  What did drama teachers ever do to the entertainment world? The job has become a shorthand for vain, deluded, imperious, frustrated hack—look at High School Musical, Hamlet 2 and (at the community-theater level) Waiting for Guffman. Or they’re vampiric, insulting predators, like Frank Langella’s acting coach in HBO’s Unscripted a few seasons back. I [...]

  I watched last night’s 30 Rock weeks ago, but my new motto of life remains, There are only two things I love: Everybody, and television. This was simply one of those episodes where everything clicked: Kenneth’s moral dilemma and Jack’s determination to tempt him; the Olympics parody (“octuples tennis”); the Black. White. racial switch [...]

    Before you read this post, turn on the world’s smallest bluetooth television and watch The Office. 

The other day I posted the new trailer for Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, saying that I was anxious about the premise, but that I held out hope anyway. I may have been wrong about the “hope” part. Not because of the show itself, but because Fox just put out its midseason schedule, and it’s banished Dollhouse [...]

CNN’s Star Wars Episode VII: A New Change-and-Hope may have been the most-mocked election-night broadcast, for its various Industrial Light and Magic effects, but that didn’t hurt it in the Nielsens. It drew over 12 million viewers during primetime, beating its cable news competition and every broadcast network except ABC (which used Lord of the [...]

  Not really a Shield Watch per se, but I’ve been writing about the Shield finale for the print TIME, and it got me thinking. Writing about The Shield, I tend to focus on Vic, but I should probably pay more attention to Shane. Not just because the cat-and-mouse between him and Vic is so [...]

CNN just aired an ad for this T-shirt. In this case the bias is more for making money off history than anything: those of other political persuasions are welcome to buy Naked Cowboy Predicts McCain Landslide instead. But really, what can top the tear-jerking inspiration of Higher Income Voters Swayed By Obama? Those probably being [...]

Last night, Top Design wrapped up its second season; no spoilers here, because it’s still sitting on my Tivo, but I thought I’d open the doors to anyone who wants to discuss. Up to this point, I thought the second season had been better than the first, picking a more memorable cast—including Eddie, the worst [...]

The election issue of Time is out, with my column this week reviewing the networks’ gadget-happy election night:  Anderson Cooper ended an interview with singer and Obama supporter Will.i.am, “Appreciate you being with us tonight by hologram.” It was as if CNN had been bought by Lucasfilm. The mind reels at how news organizations might [...]

Fox has a new trailer out for Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, coming out in January: I’m way eager to see an episode. And, I’ll be honest, a little nervous. Not because of the reported production problems, reshoots and stops and starts, but because of the concept. A show about a heroine who has been stripped of [...]

Law & Order returns to NBC tonight. Given the zillions of times per day some version of it is in reruns, you would be forgiven for not noticing that it had been gone. But as I have said recently, I have made a resolution not to judge people for their comfort-TV-viewing habits. (We’ll see how [...]