What’s good, bad and happening, from pop culture to high culture | Page 4

Vacation Robo-Post: I Love the '00s Week, Best Comedy

It’s I Love the ’00s Week (see Monday’s post for the rules, or lack thereof). Today’s question: What was the best TV comedy of the last decade? Have at it. This is no laughing matter!

+Uncategorized | 1019 days ago

The Morning After: Robo-Edition

By James Poniewozik

This is Robo-James. The Morning After is a daily post in which humans can discuss the previous night’s television transmissions, as perceived with your limited senses through the gelatinous orbs you call eyeballs.

+Uncategorized | 1020 days ago

Vacation Robo-Post: I Love the '00s Week, Best Drama

By James Poniewozik

Before I left on vacation, I received a request to contribute to a critics’ poll on the best TV of the soon-to-be-ended decade. I’m making my picks, but I’ve never met a poll that I couldn’t repurpose into a vacation-filler poll for Tuned In. So I’m going to dedicate this week to The Best TV [...]

+Uncategorized | 1020 days ago

The Morning After: Robo-Edition

By James Poniewozik

+Uncategorized | 1023 days ago

Programming Note

By James Poniewozik

It’s Easter weekend, and as a special present to you, I have decided to take a week’s vacation. (I wasn’t sure if you liked chocolate.) In my stead, Robo-James, who has taken up quilting (left) on his therapist’s advice to deal with his anger issues, will be putting up daily posts next week. [...]

+Movies | 1023 days ago

Top 10 Jesus Films

By Richard Corliss

As secular as Hollywood is, the entertainment industry recognizes the dramatic impact, and box office lure, of Jesus’ tale. TIME scanned a century of Messiah movies.

+Uncategorized | 1023 days ago

Office Watch: The Liquor of the Fool

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s Office coming up after the jump:

+Uncategorized | 1023 days ago

The Morning After: Training Day

By James Poniewozik

A lot of new TV last night, and I’m not sure when or if I’ll get around to blogging it, so let’s make this a true Morning After post: feel free to weigh in on the debuts of Southland, Parks and Recreation or Harper’s Island (which I dropped after one episode when I realized [...]

+News Media | 1023 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: The Fears of a Clown

By James Poniewozik

My Tuned In column this week peers into the hour of extra-strength apocalyptic demagogue-a-tainment that is Fox News’ Glenn Beck show: On March 23, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled the Obama Administration’s toxic-bank-assets plan. The stock markets cheered the news, sending the Dow up 497 points. This meant one thing: it was time for Glenn Beck [...]

+News Media | 1024 days ago

Don't Stop the Presses Over Bogus LA Times Ad Controversy

By James Poniewozik

The buzz of newspaper-critic circles this morning—and, oooh, what exciting buzz that field generates!—is a front page ad in the LA Times for the new NBC cop drama Southland. (You can see it here, in a PDF that I assume will change with tomorrow’s edition of the paper.) I wrote a column for Salon almost [...]

+Uncategorized | 1024 days ago

Parks and Recreation: Shovel Ready

By James Poniewozik

Tonight, NBC debuts the much-awaited Office-spinoff-but-it’s-not-but-it-kind-of-is-except-it’s-not Parks and Recreation, starring Amy Poehler. If you’ve been reading the advance buzz, you may have heard that it’s slavishly imitative of The Office and comes off as an inferior copy. I say that that’s not true—well, not entirely true—that I enjoyed the pilot more than I expected, [...]

+Uncategorized | 1024 days ago

Idol Watch: The Search Is Over

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s American Idol coming up after the jump:

+Uncategorized | 1024 days ago

Lostwatch: Smokey Gets In Your Eyes

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, unclog that nasty drain in your bathroom and watch last night’s episode of Lost.

+1025 days ago

Corporate Press Release Theater: Goode News

By James Poniewozik

ABC announced its summer programming today, which means a pile of reality/game shows and one series I’ve actually been awaiting, Mike Judge’s The Goode Family. I have not seen the series, so I’m anticipating it based only on Judge’s reputation, and the summer launch date is not exactly a ringing endorsement. (Has there been [...]

+Uncategorized | 1025 days ago

TV Tonight (and Tomorrow): Arrested Development

By James Poniewozik

ABC is debuting a new cop drama, The Unusuals (above left), tonight; NBC is debuting a new cop drama, Southland, tomorrow. This has given many TV critics the idea to review both at once. My brief take: although the two shows are very different, they each leave me wishing I could somehow smoosh them together. [...]

+1025 days ago

Happy Lost Day: Dayenu, Already!

By James Poniewozik

When you think about it, Lost is a pretty Jewish show, particularly given all the Passover resonances. There are, of course, all the Old Testament references. There is an exodus from a land of exile. There’s even a plague, though this one goes beyond affecting the firstborn to all Island babies and their mothers. All [...]

+Uncategorized | 1025 days ago

The Morning After: Feral Itself

By James Poniewozik

Fringe returned last night after an absence of several weeks, with a decent but not great episode about a feral child, discovered living underground, who bonds emotionally with Olivia. Fringe had gone to hiatus on a fairly high point, and I’d expected its return to continue more directly with the Pattern storyline it had embraced [...]

+Uncategorized | 1025 days ago

Idol Predix Thread

By James Poniewozik

I probably should start working my predictions in to the main American Idol review post, but since that’s already up, I will say: * Kris, Lil and Scott in the bottom three, Scott goes home. Though the fact that I liked Kris for the first time this week does not bode well for him. * [...]