James Poniewozik

James Poniewozik writes TIME magazine's Tuned In column, about pop culture and society. Tuned In, the blog version, is about the stuff we used to call "TV," whether it's in your living room, on your computer or - once the networks figure out the technology and line up the advertisers - in your dreams themselves.

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Tuned In
Tuned In+Review | 2 days ago

The Morning After: 30 Rock at 60 Minutes

By James Poniewozik
Ali Goldstein/NBC

“Hey Baby, What’s Wrong?” had that padding-it-out feeling, as if the writers were students trying to meet a ten-page term paper requirement by fiddling with the margins and the font size.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 2 days ago

The Morning After: How the Mighty Have Fallen

By James Poniewozik
Michael Becker / FOX

I mentioned earlier on this blog that I’ve decided to save hours and sanity by skipping the American Idol auditions this season. I make an exception, at least partially, for the Hollywood round, which is one of my favorite parts of Idol even if Idol’s TV audience doesn’t seem to share that opinion. But last [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+TV Ratings | 2 days ago

House Pulls the Plug. Too Soon or Too Late?

By James Poniewozik
Warwick Saint/FOX

The patient had been diagnosed some time ago by TV-biz observers, but Wednesday Fox called House M.D.‘s time of death for the end of this season, after eight years on air. Fox cited “the decision” that Hugh Laurie and the producers made, but it seems fairly mutual: Fox reportedly wanted to cut the show’s budget [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 3 days ago

JC Penney and Ellen, Lowe’s and All-American Muslim: A Tale of Two Bigotries

By James Poniewozik

The contrast between how Ellen and All-American Muslim were treated shows that, once viewers make friends with another group on TV, bigotry becomes bad business.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 3 days ago

Twimmolation Alert: Roland Martin Gets His Ascot in Hot Water at CNN

By James Poniewozik
Haraz N. Ghanbari / AP

Martin may or may not have meant his tweets about David Beckham and wearing pink as homophobic, but they’re obnoxious regardless.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 3 days ago

Sorkin’s Newsroom Plans Premiere, Adds to Vast History of Fake TV Networks

By James Poniewozik
http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/NBS_News

The fictional cable network in The Newsroom will reportedly now be ACN, for Atlantis Cable News, joining a digital-cable-tier’s worth of fake-network names from TV’s past.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 4 days ago

The Morning After: Hey, Dollface!

By James Poniewozik
ABC/FRANCISCO ROMAN

One fun thing about seeing episodes of shows in advance is going on Twitter and watching people’s reactions blow up at a certain scene you know will freak them out. In the case of the two-hour premiere of The River, that would be: the dolls. (Spoiler alert: I just mentioned the dolls.) The feed of [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 4 days ago

The Morning After: NBC, Finally Something to Sing About?

By James Poniewozik
Lewis Jacobs/NBC

After a post-Super Bowl promo, NBC got a huge number of new fans to tune in for the second season of The Voice. To my surprise, I’m one of them.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Review | 5 days ago

TV Tonight: The River

By James Poniewozik
ABC/BOB D'AMICO

ABC’s mockumentary/shockumentary trip from hell (or rather, into hell) on the Amazon shows that, even when it comes to fiction, there’s nothing scarier than reality TV.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Advertising | 6 days ago

Madonna, Clint and the Rest of Super Bowl XLVI Halftime

By James Poniewozik
Paul Drinkwater/NBC

I went into last night’s Madonna Super Bowl halftime show expecting to hate it: yet another performer whose appeal can charitably be described as “nostalgic” (see The Rolling Stones, The Who, etc.) blasting out a set of oldies while trying to hit that big squishy target of something-for-everyone. (“Dad, what’s Lady Gaga’s mom doing at [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 8 days ago

Election Watch: Romney Wins, Loses Trump Primary

By James Poniewozik

Mitt Romney gets the reality star’s endorsement. But can he gain bona fides with The Donald’s supporters without picking up his political baggage?

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 9 days ago

Stars in Need of TV Shows to Be Stars In

By James Poniewozik
SHOWTIME

The other day here at Tuned in, while remarking on Lizzy Caplan‘s guest turn in New Girl, I said that someone needed to give her her own TV show to star in, stat. Yesterday, Showtime announced that Caplan has been cast as the female lead in the pilot for Masters of Sex, a potential new [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Review | 9 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Smash: Broadway’s West Wing, or Its Studio 60?

By James Poniewozik

NBC’s musical-about-a-musical has already collected a lot of bouquets. My review is in this week’s TIME, and while there was a lot I liked in the first four episodes of Smash, let’s call it a dissenting opinion.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 10 days ago

The Morning After: Portlandia

By James Poniewozik
FOX

I have not, if you are a regular reader of this blog and have been wondering, given up on American Idol, not yet. But I’ve sworn off watching the audition rounds, because of, um, my religion. (Got-other-things-to-do-ism.) Essentially, Idol is two different reality shows, and I’ve pretty much decided to skip the people-singing-badly one that [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 10 days ago

Love, Peace and Soul: RIP Don Cornelius

By James Poniewozik

Soul Train host and TV-music pioneer Don Cornelius has been found dead in his Encino, Calif., home of a suicide, according to police. My colleague Madison Gray has more of the details, and it’s a sad ending to the life of someone who brought us one of the purest expressions of joy ever to take [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Review | 11 days ago

New Girl Watch: The New New Girl

By James Poniewozik
FOX

“Jess and Julia” used Lizzy Caplan’s character and her contrast with Jess to address one of the show’s issues head-on: the Zooey Deschanel cute overload factor.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Review | 11 days ago

TV Tonight: Key and Peele

By James Poniewozik

In Comedy Central’s sharp new sketch show, two biracial comics have fun with the idea of leading a choose-your-own-identity life.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 12 days ago

X’ed Out! Can Simon Cowell’s House Cleaning Save The X Factor?

By James Poniewozik

Reports Monday say Cowell fired Paula Abdul, Nicole Scherzinger and Steve Jones. But can The X Factor’s problems be fixed with a personnel change?

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 13 days ago

The Good Wife Watch: Whose Side Are You On?

By James Poniewozik
CBS

A fantastic episode of The Good Wife exemplified one more reason to love this show: no other drama on network TV right now gives its viewers credit for as much intelligence.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Television | 13 days ago

Video: Game of Thrones Reloads for Season 2

By James Poniewozik

Before last night’s debut (or re-debut after the December preview airing) of Luck, HBO shared another trailer for Game of Thrones, returning April 1. As usual, it’s full of tantalizing but brief snippets—glimpses of King Robert’s brother Stannis and his priestess/consigliere Melisandre, and Sansa in an uncomfortable situation with Joffrey—that are hard to infer much [...]