Tuned In
Tuned In+500 days ago

TV Tonight: Top Chef: Just Desserts

By James Poniewozik

One reason that Mrs. Tuned In and I have a lasting marriage is division of labor. I am the cook; she is the baker. I blister dried chilis in cast-iron pans and bring weird meats back from the store; she produces meltingly buttery cookies and a chocolate-frosted malt cake that I would kill or die [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Remembrance | 500 days ago

Edwin Newman, Longtime NBC News Broadcaster, Dies at 91

By James Poniewozik

Edwin Newman, whose TV news career spanned much of the early decades of NBC TV and most of its news programs, has died at age 91. Over the years, Newman had roles as various as foreign bureau chief, political correspondent, Today Show personality and Meet the Press moderator and panelist. From the early ’50s through [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 500 days ago

Ask Conan O'Brien Anything

By James Poniewozik

Speaking of Conan O’Brien, having conquered Twitter, he’s now putting his attention toward the other social media. (I hear he has his eye on this TV thing as well.) On his Team Coco Facebook page, he’s asking fans to submit questions for him to answer, like a scrawnier, pastier version of the Old Spice guy. [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+500 days ago

TV Tonight: Outlaw

By James Poniewozik

Outlaw, starring Jimmy Smits, is not a comedy, though it’s from Conan O’Brien’s production company. (Irony alert: the series is on NBC.) In fact, the series—renegade, rule-breaking judge quits the bench and becomes renegade, rule-breaking lawyer—sounds like it could be a show O’Brien would make as a parody. It’s not that either, though it comes [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 500 days ago

Sons of Anarchy Watch: "I'm Helping Him Through It"

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for last night’s Sons of Anarchy coming up: The end of season two of Sons of Anarchy took a sharp—if not unforeshadowed— turn with the abduction of Jax’s son, Abel, suddenly making the IRA the foregrounded Big Bad on the series. The second episode of season three, “Oiled,” continued to expand this new [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | 501 days ago

Paper to Readers: Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human

By James Poniewozik

First, it was offensive and insensitive to build an Islamic center two blocks away from Ground Zero. Now it’s offensive and insensitive to publish photos of American Muslims peacefully praying, on or around 9/11. The Portland Press Herald has apologized to its readers for publishing images of Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan, which this [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 501 days ago

The Morning After: Comment Ca Va?

By James Poniewozik

The official beginning of the 2010-11 TV season comes next week, and with it, a deluge of season and series premieres that I’m not going to come close to having time to cover single-handed. So I’ll be making liberal use of The Morning After posts, inviting you to share your, well, morning-after thoughts with the [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 501 days ago

HBO Sneak-Peeks Game of Thrones

By James Poniewozik

Before Sunday night’s season finale of True Blood, HBO aired previews of several upcoming shows, including footage from next year’s fantasy saga Game of Thrones: Cannot. Wait. (Sidebar: Did we see that raven in the Six Feet Under credits, or is that a relative?) I won’t bother parsing the bits of footage frame-by-frame (Winter Is [...]

+Television | 502 days ago

Top 10 Unforgettable TV Sounds

By Kayla Webley
01_Top10UnforgettableTVSounds

In addition to spawning multiple spin-offs, the crime drama Law & Order is also known for its immediately recognizable “doink doink.” TIME takes a look at other unmistakable television sounds.

Tuned In
Tuned In+502 days ago

Honey, It's Our Anniversary!

By James Poniewozik

Back in 2005, my editors agreed to the idea of a temporary, daily blog reviewing the new fall shows that season over the course of a few weeks. The first post, five years ago today, was about the new daytime talk show from newly minted parolee Martha Stewart. The fall 2005 season came and went—farewell, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 502 days ago

Entourage Watch: Bad Bromance

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for the season finale of Entourage coming up as soon as I get over my amazement that I am actually blogging about a season finale of Entourage. From the season that Entourage began, its creator, Doug Ellin, was clear on what he did not want the show to be: a black-humored or satirical [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 502 days ago

NY AG Candidate Lands Crucial Roger Sterling Endorsement

By James Poniewozik

It’s a close attorney general race in tomorrow’s Democratic primary in New York, and candidate Kathleen Rice has brought out a big gun: college classmate John Slattery, or, as her ad identifies him, “Mad Men’s ‘Roger Sterling.’” I’d make a joke about the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement, but hey, they did get me to embed [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 502 days ago

Mad Men Watch: Everybody Back in the Pool

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, crack open a Budweiser, open up a can of delicious Dinty Moore beef stew—or just go to the vending machine—and watch last night’s Mad Men. Last night’s episode of Mad Men, “The Summer Man,” opened with Don Draper doing laps in a swimming pool at the New York [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 502 days ago

Rubicon Watch: You Gotta Have Doubt

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, fire up the teleconferencing software and watch last night’s Rubicon. Whereas most spy/espionage dramas create drama and excitement by showing us how intelligence is collected and acted upon, Rubicon to this point has created many of its chilling effects the opposite way. We see the analysis that goes [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 502 days ago

True Blood Watch: Fractured Fairy Tales

By James Poniewozik

A little heads-up for the morning and the rest of the day: There was a hell of a lot of TV Sunday night—the VMAs, Rubicon, Mad Men, the season finales of HBO’s Hung, True Blood and Entourage—and I’ll have to get to what I can, when I can, especially since I need to get up [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 505 days ago

Swag Photography: But Is It Lupus?

By James Poniewozik

Received: One full-sized, wooden House M.D. walking cane (to accompany oversized tennis ball sent a previous season). Thank you, Fox! Finally, something to shake threateningly at the young people!

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 505 days ago

From the Archives: Why Nobody Knows What Will Be a Hit

By James Poniewozik

After I posted a link to my Fall TV Preview post, a reader on Twitter asked me to predict what the highest-rated new shows of the fall would be. My answer: This is something that I do not do, on account of sucking at it. But fine, I finally decided to play along: I think [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 505 days ago

Thumbs Up! Roger Ebert and At the Movies Returning to TV

By James Poniewozik

Film critic Roger Ebert lost his voice to cancer, and the classic movie-review program he made famous with Gene Siskel, At the Movies, went off the air this year after attempting to continue with other hosts. Now both Ebert and the show will be returning to TV, as Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies is [...]