Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 973 days ago

Leno to America: Goodbye! I'm Not Going Anywhere!

By James Poniewozik

“We’re not really leaving,” Jay Leno told the studio audience on his last Tonight Show. And he was right. So how do you throw yourself a goodbye when you’re not going anywhere? TV has a history of lugubrious farewells for longtime personalities, and while Jay Leno may not have stuck around as long as Johnny [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Movies | 974 days ago

Will Ferrell Promotes Movie, Fails to Die of Frostbite

By James Poniewozik

For obvious reasons, I usually pass up the chance to promote special guest appearances by people flogging their new movies, albums or other projects. But this is just too weird. Will Ferrell is promoting the upcoming Land of the Lost movie by doing an upcoming Very Special Episode of… Man vs. Wild:  I can’t wait [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+974 days ago

TV Tonight: See You Later, Jay. Or Actually, Sooner

By James Poniewozik

  Tonight, Jay Leno hosts his last Tonight Show. Last night, Prince and Billy Crystal saluted Jay, while he remembered some of his classic comedy bits. Question: does he really want to remind us of The Dancing Itos? In fact, watching the retrospective, I couldn’t help but think that a lot of that comedy would [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 974 days ago

The Morning After: I'll Be Laodicean You

By James Poniewozik

Last night, ABC aired the finals of the Scripps national spelling bee, in which—spoiler alert—13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar won the title by spelling “Laodicean,” meaning, so Webster tells me, “lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics.” As someone with the surname “Poniewozik,” I can only guess that a young life of spelling her name for strangers [...]

+Television | 974 days ago

Top 10 Jay Leno Moments

By TIME Staff
Top 10 Jay Leno Moments

Never fear — Jay Leno isn’t going anywhere. But as he leaves The Tonight Show to start in a new, earlier slot, here’s a look back at 10 of the most memorable moments from his show.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 975 days ago

Is Kids' TV Sexist?

By James Poniewozik

  Is iCarly a good role model for girls? Is JONAS a weapon of male oppression? Will Handy Manny ever learn that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house?  These questions and more are addressed by the organization TrueChild, which has posted a set of report cards analyzing how the two genders are represented in [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 975 days ago

American Idol's Voting Scandal (Or Not)

By James Poniewozik

If you’re like me, you stopped caring about the results of American Idol about 24 hours or so after they were announced. But a fair amount of fans are abuzz over a report that AT&T let Kris Allen fans at a viewing party use free demo phones, thus possibly upping his vote total.  Did AT&T [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 975 days ago

The Morning After: Goode or Badde?

By James Poniewozik

  Though I was disappointed with The Goode Family from the episodes I’d previewed, there was enough in it that I liked that I set up a season pass for it anyway. I ended up watching the pilot again last night, and I have to say: it still made me laugh. All the flaws were [...]

+Movies | 976 days ago

The Voices of Pixar

By TIME Staff
The Voices of Pixar

Pixar’s Toy Story 3 hits theaters June 18, the latest project from the studio to arrive stocked with unusual vocal talent. TIME surveys Pixar’s 11 feature films, and the peculiar voices that have helped these unforgettable stories take flight

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 976 days ago

Breaking Bad Watch: Father, Husband & Teacher

By James Poniewozik

Brief spoilers for Sunday’s Breaking Bad coming up after the jump:

Tuned In
Tuned In+976 days ago

Lost Discussion Group: "They're Coming."

By James Poniewozik

It’s the first Wednesday after Memorial Day, and that means time to revive Lost Discussion Group for the summer. There seemed to be enough questions raised by this season’s Jacob-centric finale to sustain LDG for a season, at least, and I’ll kick it off with a simple one:  Who?  That is, who is Jacob referring [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 976 days ago

The Morning After: Sent a Mental

By James Poniewozik

  Did anyone watch the premiere of Fox summer drama Mental last night? I could barely get through the House-in-a-psych-hospital pilot, but if you saw something in it that I didn’t by all means state your case. Am I nuts?  That, or weigh in on Rescue Me, which has moved (mostly) past the zany indulgences [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+TV Ratings | 977 days ago

Jon & Kate Plus 9.8 Million

By James Poniewozik

That’s how many of us enablers viewers tuned to the season 5 premiere of reality show / marital implosion Jon & Kate Plus 8 last night, per the New York Times’ Brian Stelter. Making it the most watched show on TV—including broadcast networks—and more than doubling the 4.6 million who watched the season 4 finale in [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+977 days ago

Build More Cities, America, Bravo Is Running Out

By James Poniewozik

Speaking of attempts to make TV shows for the Obama era, Bravo this morning announced that The Real Housewives of D.C. is in development. I’d mock—OK, I guess I already did—but in fairness, I thought doing a New Jersey series was stretching the franchise too far, and now it’s the only one of the four [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 977 days ago

Mike Judge's Goode Family: Sadly, Not So Much

By James Poniewozik

  I’ve made no secret of my admiration of Mike Judge. His satiric masterpieces Office Space and Idiocracy, all but disowned by their studios, are prime examples of the idiocy of movie executives. Beavis and Butt-Head combined hilarious toilet humor with a gimlet eye for American mall culture and the vapidity of MTV—and did it, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 977 days ago

The Morning After: It's Summertime Edition

By James Poniewozik

  Memorial Day weekend ushered in a lot of new, albeit cheap, television: The Bachelorette, for instance. But having committed to watch the season premiere of Jon & Kate last night, I decided that was enough soul-killing for one evening. Discuss them here, if you dare, or the History Channel special on the 45-million-year-old primate [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 977 days ago

Jon & Kate Plus 8: This Would Be the "For Worse" Part

By James Poniewozik

Octomom’s looking more and more functional every day, isn’t she? Jon & Kate Plus 8 returned last night for an oversized season 5 opener, and the first show in the series since charges about the couple’s marriage exploded in the tabloids: first, that Jon Gosselin had strayed with a teacher (after earlier partying with coed [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+981 days ago

Dead Electron Alert: Summer Begins… Now.

By James Poniewozik

Elsewhere at time.com, our editors have posted our summer arts preview, the (shorter) print version of which ran earlier in TIME, the magazine object. Caveat emptor: the TV entries are about new shows I’m looking forward to or curious about—not shows that I have actually seen, so it’s more a “what could be good” list [...]