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TV Tonight: Grissom Bugs Out

I like to kid CBS and its half-million crime procedurals, but tonight CSI turns in a strong installment as William Petersen hands off the reins to Laurence Fishburne and Grissom departs to pursue his love of entomology elsewhere. The episode, in which the two pair up against a serial killer preying on couples, is more [...]

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The Best Medicine

All ten episodes of Rob Corddry’s web series Children’s Hospital are now online at TheWB.com. Other than a lack of songs by The Weepies on the soundtrack, it’s an even better parody of Grey’s Anatomy than Grey’s Anatomy is these days, right down to the soulful monologues over montages of beautifully heartbroken doctors. (“What is [...]

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Now Housewivier, More Desperate

In shows-I-basically-stopped-following-long-ago news, creator Marc Cherry of Desperate Housewives has announced plans to extend the show’s run to nine years from a planned seven. He and ABC chief Steve McPherson argue that its leap forward in time has reinvigorated interest in the show. It didn’t reinvigorate mine (and I have to wonder whether the failure [...]

The Big Ten

It’s the end of the year. Time for ten best-ness, meaning Time‘s great end of the year tradition — I think this is the second year I’ve done it — of naming the ten best American museum shows of 2008. But first some explanation about how I arrived at the Big Ten. The most obvious [...]

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Will the Last Person to Watch a Broadcast Network Please Turn Off the Set?

Why, you wonder, is NBC turning over a third of its weeknight programming to Jay Leno? There are specific reasons having to do with the in-the-toiletness of NBC at present, but there are also, as they say, systemic causes. Namely, no one is watching broadcast-network TV.  Well, not no one. But a new study has [...]

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Golden Globe Noms: The World Is Watching

The TV Golden Globe nominations came out this morning. They’re never quite the high stakes game the movie Globes are, because they’re not a harbinger of the Emmys the way the movie Globes can be for the Oscars. Unlike the Emmys, they cover the calendar year, not the TV season, and the distinguishing thing about [...]