+Uncategorized | 649 days ago

Breaking Bad Watch: The Divorce Papers Are in the Crib

By Steven James Snyder

“A man provides.” It is the diabolical wording – brainwashing really – used by one drug kingpin in luring a supplier back into the fray, fishing for any weaknesses in Walt’s decision to leave the business. Walt tells Gus he pursued a temporary career of cooking meth to provide for his children, and Gus uses [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+649 days ago

Programming Note

By James Poniewozik

I’m going to be away, and largely away from blog access, through Wednesday-ish. Keep checking Tuned In, though, as I’ll have a couple robo-posts set up, and Techland’s Steve Snyder has again volunteered to do some guest-posting as his schedule permits. Other than the temporary increase in quality, you’ll hardly notice a thing while I’m [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 652 days ago

The Morning After: Tiptoe Through the Tulips

By James Poniewozik

No time for a full review of last night’s Fringe, “White Tulip,” but after having done some earlier grousing about how the show balances mythology and standalone episodes, this one did a much better job reconciling the two. I don’t need Fringe to become a Lost-like serial (whatever my personal preferences). But I found this [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 652 days ago

Survivor Watch: Eat Your Heart Out

By James Poniewozik

Brief spoilers for last night’s Survivor coming up after the jump:

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | 652 days ago

Limits, Even at Fox News, to Promoting Tea Parties

By James Poniewozik

Yesterday was April 15, which is to say Tax Day, which is to say Tea Party Day, and needless to say that meant plenty of coverage on Fox News in particular of the anti-big-government protests held yesterday. One could get all J-school and tsk-tsk-y about how closely the news channel and especially its opinion hosts [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 653 days ago

South Park's Bicentennial

By James Poniewozik

How much you loved the 200th episode of South Park last night probably depended largely on how much you love one of the biggest subgenres of that show: Episodes That Make Fun of Celebrities. That’s personally not one of my favorite brands of South Park episode, so the show’s celebration of its own transgressiveness, the [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 653 days ago

JPTV Jr.: Educating the Next Generation of Reality Contestants

By James Poniewozik

As any parent today will tell you, it is important for children to begin early acquiring the technological skills they will need in our demanding world. For instance, how can we use the Internet and distance-learning technology to teach children the vital skills they will need in order to successfully compete in the reality-TV marketplace [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 653 days ago

Modern Family Watch: Trash Talk and Cash Talk

By James Poniewozik

After the travesty that was the iPad episode (which mercifully aired while I was on vacation), Modern Family was back with an episode that hit on pretty much every subplot, explored some new combinations of characters while offering fresh takes on old ones and proved the maxim: if you have a revolving driveway in the [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 653 days ago

Idol Watch: Show Us the Votes!

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for last night’s double elimination on American Idol—after the break!

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 654 days ago

The Morning After: All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues

By James Poniewozik

No time for an elaborate writeup of last night’s Justified, but I was glad to see the show move away from the self-contained stories (albeit very good ones) of the last few weeks to get at some of the reasons that coming home to Harlan County was such an unwelcome idea to Raylan. To wit: [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 654 days ago

Lostwatch: The Cluckiest Man Alive

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, get your self a big bowl of homemade tortilla chips and watch last night’s Lost.

+Uncategorized | 654 days ago

American Idol: The Final Nine, Part II

By Krista Mahr

It was a night dedicated to the music of an American giant, a swaggering, pompadoured rule-breaker whose sexualized performances shocked a nation. Also, it was Elvis night. But the big name on stage was Adam—as in Lambert—last year’s Idol phenom and runner-up. Did Glambert teach this year’s sleepy finalists that it’s American Idol, not American [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 655 days ago

Treme Gets an Encore

By James Poniewozik

I haven’t yet seen ratings figures for the premiere of Treme, but HBO must have seen something it liked—creatively, commercially or both—because two days after airing the pilot it’s picked up David Simon’s New Orleans drama for a second season. [Update: 1.4 million viewers Sunday, it turns out, so that would be "creatively."] From the [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+655 days ago

TV Tonight: Glee Returns—Too Much of a Good Sing?

By James Poniewozik

Because you probably haven’t seen any ads for it or anything, I should remind you that Fox’s Glee returns tonight, after American Idol, at I-kid-you-not 9:28 p.m. E.T. Get out your scientific calculator and set your DVR. Glee ended its fall ’09 run on a strong note, so to speak, not just with the finale [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 655 days ago

Conan Hits the Road

By James Poniewozik

[Update: An enterprising YouTuber posted the above footage of the Masturbating Bear's curtain call at Conan's Eugene show. For more clips—spoilers!—see Variety's On the Air blog.] With a freshly-inked cable-TV deal in hand, Conan O’Brien kicked off what could now be renamed the Massive Blast of Free Publicity for TBS Tour last night in Eugene, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 655 days ago

HIMYM Watch: Gun-reliable Narrator

By James Poniewozik

The premise of How I Met Your Mother focused on a central problem and pleasure of the show: the multiple layers of narration, all of varying degrees of trustworthiness. We know that Future Ted is telling this story to his kids and that he’s been known to change or embellish details. We know that he, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+656 days ago

Today in Fictional-Language News: HBO Speaks Dothraki

By James Poniewozik

I don’t usually do blog posts about production details in TV series that don’t air for another year. But most TV shows do not entail inventing an entire freaking language. HBO’s dark fantasy saga Game of Thrones, on the other hand, does. Today the network announced that’s it’s going where James Cameron did with Na’vi, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 656 days ago

Conan Back to Late-Night—on TBS?

By James Poniewozik

In a surprise move—as in, I actually mentally checked that it was not April 1—Conan O’Brien announced today that he will launch a new talk show in the fall, not on Fox but on TBS. Yes, that TBS, the basic-cable channel. The new show will be at 11 p.m. E.T., likely starting in November, four [...]