+Television | 485 days ago

The Top 10 Cartoon Theme Songs

By TIME Staff
Everett

Long after you’ve become too old to enjoy after school cartoons, their theme songs continue to bounce around your brain. TIME chooses the most memorable animated tunes.

Tuned In
Tuned In+485 days ago

The Flintstones Hit 50

By James Poniewozik

As you may already know from having visited Google, it’s The Flintstones’ 50th anniversary. I watched Flintstones reruns—and various later spinoffs—as a kid, but I hadn’t revisited Bedrock until a couple of years ago, when the Tuned In Jrs. went through a brief Flintstones phase. I can’t say it holds up as well for me [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 485 days ago

Paging Archie Bunker: Can Scripted TV Still Move the Culture?

By James Poniewozik

My post on Modern Family’s Big Gay Kiss Episode this morning reminded me of a discussion Jaime Weinman of MacLean’s and I had at his blog yesterday, in a post of his partly inspired by a post of mine on the death of Lone Star. Essentially, he makes the argument that big mainstream broadcast hits [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 485 days ago

The Morning After: West Coast Chung-Chung

By James Poniewozik

There is something in me that is just constitutionally unable to appreciate yet another cop procedural, even or especially when it’s another Law & Order. (I can appreciate why people loved the original, for instance—I just can’t feel it and am not interested in faking it.) So you won’t be surprised that I didn’t love [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 485 days ago

Modern Family Watch: Lips Service

By James Poniewozik

Although I knew it was coming, I actually missed the kiss between Mitchell and Cameron the first time I watched last night’s Modern Family. (I’m considering that a non-spoiler, seeing as how widely the smooch was reported and discussed in advance.) I looked down for a second, probably typing down some quote, and it was [...]

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Tuned In+Remembrance | 485 days ago

Greg Giraldo Dies at 44

By James Poniewozik

Greg Giraldo, whose sharp and searing standup was familiar to fans of Comedy Central and Last Comic Standing, died Wednesday from the effects of a prescription drug overdose. Giraldo, a former lawyer, brought an intelligent and combative style to Comedy Central’s roasts as well as the panel of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn and other [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 486 days ago

The Morning After: Wife and Sons

By James Poniewozik

Great news everybody! I had a really productive work day! Bad news, everybody! That work day did not include getting around in time to last night’s Sons of Anarchy or The Good Wife. Or to posting today’s The Morning After discussion post in the, um, morning. But so as not to make this a total [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 486 days ago

Glee Watch: Oops! They Did It

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s Britney Spears-themed Glee coming up: After last season’s polarizing Madonna episode of Glee—I was firmly on the “couldn’t stand it” pole—I’ll admit I was looking ahead to the Britney Spears episode with dread. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. If “Britney/Brittany” wasn’t the best episode of Glee—it was still [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 486 days ago

What Lone Star's Alamo Means for TV

By James Poniewozik

And the 2010-11 broadcast season claims its first victim: Lone Star, which had the (coincidental? not so much?) distinction of also being the best-reviewed new broadcast show of the fall. I liked Lone Star’s pilot a lot, and thought the second episode was promising. I also think, though, that its critical reputation has been a [...]

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Tuned In+487 days ago

TV Tonight (And Tomorrow): The Tenth Inning

By James Poniewozik

Tonight and Wednesday, PBS debuts Ken Burns’ The Tenth Inning, his four-hour sequel to Baseball. TIME’s Sean Gregory, who unlike me actually knows something about the sport, interviewed Burns and partner Lynn Novick about the doc: TIME: The film deals with controversial figures like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, yet we don’t hear from many [...]

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Tuned In+487 days ago

TV Tonight: No Ordinary Family

By James Poniewozik

Plane crashes are the new getting hit by lightning. That’s my takeaway from tonight’s debut of ABC’s No Ordinary Family, a light drama about a family of four who gain superpowers after their plane ditches into glowing water in the Amazon. My impressions of the show haven’t changed a lot since I Test Piloted it [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 487 days ago

David Simon's Genius Now Officially Certified

By James Poniewozik

Today the MacArthur Foundation announced its list of “geniuses” in the arts and sciences who will receive a no-strings grant of $500,000 each to pursue their work. Among them, David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, who in addition to the half-mil can now put “GENIUS” on his business cards, just like Wile E. [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 487 days ago

The Morning After: Uneventful

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s episode of The Event coming up: The problem with The Event, and broadcast-network mystery serials in general, comes down to a question: what was the lesson of Lost? I would argue that the lesson—which few if any attempts to make “the next Lost” seem to get—is that if you start with [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 487 days ago

HIMYM Watch: I Was Born a Poor Black Child…

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s How I Met Your Mother coming up: The character of Barney is a gift an a challenge for How I Met Your Mother. On the one hand, he’s hilarious, Neil Patrick Harris plays him brilliantly and he has largely put the show on the larger pop-cultural map. On the other hand, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 488 days ago

The Morning After: The Single Guy

By James Poniewozik

Because there’s already a pileup of TV on Sunday nights, because there’s only so much time in the day and because there are only so many fingers on my hands, I’m not doing a regular Dexter Watch this season. (To be fair, I haven’t done a regular Dexter Watch any other season either; while I’d [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 488 days ago

Mad Men Watch: Yesterday, All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, pop in your earplugs, put on an old Beatles movie—maybe you should invite your dad and your girlfriend!—then catch last night’s episode of Mad Men. It is not  a revelation to say that Mad Men is a show about secrets. But it has never been as much about [...]

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Tuned In+TV Recap Boardwalk Empire: Season 1, Episode 2 | 488 days ago

Boardwalk Empire Watch: Everybody Needs a Hand

By James Poniewozik
HBO

Spoilers for last night’s episode of Boardwalk Empire coming up: The impressive thing, and in a way the problem, of the pilot of Boardwalk Empire was that it was so movie-like. (An inevitable impression since it had Martin Scorsese behind the camera.) With the second episode, the show takes on the challenge of becoming a [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 488 days ago

Rubicon Watch: The Ex-Marriage Ref

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s Rubicon coming up: It’s a cliché of storytelling that you can make a story more frightening by showing less what everyone is afraid of: the monster, the killer, the enemy, what have you. But it’s only started to dawn on me what a job Rubicon does of this, especially regarding its [...]