Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 254 days ago

The Good Wife Watch: If the Glove Fits…

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for the season finale of The Good Wife coming up: In a couple of recent Good Wife reviews, I expressed some misgivings over the show’s introducing Peter’s affair with Kalinda as a storyline. It’s not that it’s implausible, but the show has become much stronger and more complex than its original concept—i.e., political wife [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 254 days ago

Upfronts 2011: CBS Keeps It Simple

By James Poniewozik

Every spring, the daffodils bloom in April, kids start playing baseball again, and I get to type the sentence: “Emphasizing the stability of its lineup, CBS announced a fall schedule with just a handful of changes.” CBS is strong, and it is stable; it’s arguably the only TV network left able to put together a [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 254 days ago

Glee Watch: The Grown Ups

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s Glee below: It has become my unofficial theory that episodes of Glee are good to the extent that they do not involve the adults in the cast. “Funeral,” however, upended this expectation, with an episode that saw the return of Actual Sympathetic Human Sue Sylvester, while all but putting the New [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 255 days ago

Upfronts 2011: ABC Embraces the Fantasy

By James Poniewozik

When I interviewed Sopranos creator David Chase back in 2002—before the show’s first season since 9/11—he went on a tear about the theory, then popular among TV executives, that the terror attacks meant that people would want “comfort food” programming. “People are going to want less complexity, people are going to want more simpleminded, escapist [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 255 days ago

HIMYM Watch: Going Down to the Cross Streets

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s How I Met Your Mother below: Part of me is inclined to look at last night’s episode as the Arcadian Hotel—blown up, history, time to move on. There have been some strong moments in the past season of How I Met Your Mother—Marshall’s father’s death and Barney’s discovery of his own [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 255 days ago

Upfronts 2011: ABC's New Schedule

By James Poniewozik

In recent years, ABC has been the announc-iest of the networks in upfronts weeks, unveiling copious amounts of new shows in good years and bad. (This is partly because it’s had schedule holes to fill but partly because it has a habit of announcing all its midseason shows, while other networks sometimes keep some of [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 255 days ago

Upfronts 2011: Fox Revives Dinosaurs, Flintstones, Simon Cowell [VIDEO]

By James Poniewozik

Fox may not look it, but it’s getting old; the network is celebrating its 25th anniversary next season. While it continues to do well with American Idol, that show is a venerable hit, now in its 10th edition. Like a lot of people getting older, Fox likes to tell itself it still thinks young—that it’s [...]

+Movies | 256 days ago

Top 10 Reasons Top Gun Is Still Awesome

By TIME Staff
Top 10 Reasons Top Gun Is Still Awesome

TIME celebrates the 25th anniversary of Top Gun’s release by listing everything we love about the Tom Cruise flick

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 256 days ago

Upfronts 2011: NBC Hopes for Turnaround, Trump Not Running for President (UPDATED with Video)

By James Poniewozik

The headline first: At NBC’s upfront schdule presentation to advertisers today in New York, Donald Trump announced that he is not running for President. (As I told you in February.) The announcement, which may have stunned political reporters who forgot that Trump did the same thing in 1988 and 2000, was brief: “as much as [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 256 days ago

Upfronts 2011: J. J. Abrams, Kiefer Sutherland Return On Fox's Schedule

By James Poniewozik

Fox, which previews its new series for advertisers this afternoon in Manhattan, released its 2011–12 schedule today, including four new comedies, three dramas and a new unscripted series. Among the highlights: Alcatraz, the much buzzed-about prison enigma from J. J. Abrams; The X-Factor, from Simon Cowell; the return of Kiefer Sutherland in a new drama [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 257 days ago

Game of Thrones Watch: A Little More Conversation, A Little More Action

By James Poniewozik

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, retire to your deck—overlooking a terrifying thousand-foot drop—and watch last night’s Game of Thrones. The first few episodes of Game of Thrones, because they had such a vast world to establish, involved a lot of talking: characters talking about history, about dragons, about who hates whom for killing [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 257 days ago

Upfronts 2011: A Dozen for NBC

By James Poniewozik

NBC announced its 2011–12 schedule today, the first of the big networks to show its hand for Upfronts Week. (Click here for clips of all the upcoming shows.) I’ll have some thoughts on the previews we see after the upfronts presentation tomorrow, but here are some highlights, followed by the schedule: * NBC launches six [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 258 days ago

Programming Note: Upfronts, Here We Come

By James Poniewozik

Monday through Thursday is “upfronts” week, when the major broadcast networks (plus some party-crashers like the Turner cable networks) present their schedules for next year to advertisers. (Cable has been holding its own upfronts piecemeal for the past couple of months.) From the business end of TV, it’s the beginning of a ritual designed to [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 259 days ago

Friday Night Lights Watch: Are We There Yet?

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for last night’s Friday Night Lights below: I had planned, this week, to return to my regular schedule of reviewing Friday Night Lights for its NBC run, which I’ve dropped the ball on, so to speak, for the last couple weeks. You know what God does when you make plans: He dumps a [...]

+Movies | 78 days ago

Top 10 Movie Wedding Scenes

By Claire Suddath
Christian Geisnaes / Magnolia Pictures

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia has one of the longest movie wedding scenes we can recall. TIME looks at cinema history’s most memorable matrimonial moments.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 259 days ago

Community Watch: You're Already Accepted

By James Poniewozik

“For a Few Paintballs More,” the conclusion to Community‘s epic two-part finale/sequel to its vaunted first-season paintball extravaganza, wasn’t quite the tour de force of last week’s “A Fistful of Paintballs”; but since I was on the road and couldn’t weigh in on that one, this is a good time to give credit where due, [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 259 days ago

Reports: Two and a Half Men Minus Sheen, Plus Kutcher

By James Poniewozik

Myriad reports out this morning say that CBS will retool its hit Two and a Half Men by replacing ousted cautionary tale Charlie Sheen with Ashton Kutcher. (Kutcher teased toward a confirmation on his Twitter feed.) One almost wonders whether the network simply decided to twist the knife in Sheen by picking someone, anyone, with [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Tuned In | 260 days ago

Prime, Chuck: NBC's Pickup News for Next Year

By James Poniewozik

It wasn’t quite the dramatic blitz of announcements that Fox had for us the other day, but NBC‘s 2011–12 schedule is starting to take shape. Among the new series ordered for next season are Smash, a musical described as a kind of grown-up Glee (we’ll see if that’s a contradiction in terms) and the remake [...]