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	<title>Entertainment &#187; James Poniewozik &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Entertainment &#187; James Poniewozik &#124; TIME.com</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com</link>
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		<title>The Office Watch: That&#8217;s What She Said</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/17/the-office-watch-thats-what-she-said/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/17/the-office-watch-thats-what-she-said/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 13:18:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3540732</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Spoilers for the series finale of The Office follow: When Ricky Gervais&#8217; UK version of The Office ended with a movie-sized episode, it had significant plot business to take care of: David Brent&#8217;s post-firing spiral into the worst kind of fame-chasing, Tim and Dawn&#8217;s relationship status, the effect that the airing of the Wernham-Hogg documentary had on the characters. It resolved storylines, and ended a bitterly, darkly funny show on a note of redemption and hope. The oversized finale of the American The Office was also focused on the aftermath of the documentary, but it captured the differences between the two incarnations of this series. The wasn&#8217;t much plot business hanging over the finale (with the exception of Pam and Jim&#8217;s story, which I&#8217;ll get to). It put a period on a lot of journeys (Erin finding her birth parents, e.g.), but it wasn&#8217;t really crucial to the story: we saw Dwight and Angela&#8217;s wedding, for instance, but we already knew they would end up together. This Office, after all, had nine years to wrap up its business; its central character, Michael Scott, found his dream and made his exit two years ago. Mostly, the work of &#8220;Finale&#8221; was emotional: to hit the warm, big-hearted notes that distinguished this series from its parent, and to remind us why we fell in love with the characters individually, and why they came to love each other collectively over the course of a &#8220;stupid, wonderful, boring, amazing job.&#8221; It used every device in the emotional-comedy playbook to do it: a wedding, reunions, flashback footage, a romantic gesture, a goodbye song. It was touching, sweet, funny, messy, a little manipulative. And in the end, it worked. I suspect that, if I go back and re-watch this finale a year or two from now, I&#8217;ll find it worked more as a farewell to the previous nine seasons than as an episode in and of itself. The stuff that was like latter-seasons Office (the Andy-centricity, the Dwight zaniness) was all right; the stuff that recalled the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3540732&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nup_155435_0666.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">The Office Finale</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Upfronts Watch: At CBS, These Are the Good Old Days</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/16/upfronts-watch-at-cbs-these-are-the-good-old-days/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/16/upfronts-watch-at-cbs-these-are-the-good-old-days/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 11:26:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3540502</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In one of the later episodes of 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy unveiled a strategy to reverse NBC&#8216;s ratings troubles: &#8220;Make it 1997 again, by science or magic.&#8221; In a way, CBS has managed to do that. Other than the addition of some reality shows, it pretty much programs its network and runs its business as if it were still the 1990s: a time when Americans watch sitcoms in big numbers, turn out for crime dramas in droves, and stay loyal to their favorite programs for years and years. And it works&#8211;it works pretty much only for CBS anymore, and it doesn&#8217;t work perfectly even for them, but it works. While the other major broadcasters are struggling with technological and cultural change, trying to compete with cable at its game, and adjusting to an era of diminished expectations, CBS draws large audiences (not as big as they once were, but still) to watch old-fashioned shows on old-fashioned TV. So in the world of CBS, it&#8217;s still the &#8217;90s, in the best business sense. This season, CBS is winning the 18 to 49 advertising demographic for the first time in 22 years. You might argue that is partly a function of other networks dropping (see: American Idol) as much as it is CBS rising—but so what? In TV today, not falling is the new rising, and first place is first place. And the other networks know it, as Jimmy Kimmel put it during a standup routine at ABC&#8217;s upfront Tuesday: &#8220;CBS. Those smug m&#8212;&#8211;f&#8212;&#8212;s.&#8221; CBS isn&#8217;t entirely immune to change, but it&#8217;s incremental: next fall, it will add one new drama and four sitcoms, as it expands its comedy night on Thursday. (A sign it knows its hit sitcoms aren&#8217;t getting any younger.) A couple of its new comedies will be single-camera (i.e., shot in the movie-like style of The Office) rather than in the multi-camera, studio-audience style of most of CBS&#8217;s current sitcoms. Still, three of the new fall comedies (We Are Men, Mom, and The Millers) are typically broad. (If<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3540502&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/103291_d04015b.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Mom</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Six Ways The Office Mattered</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/16/six-ways-the-office-mattered/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/16/six-ways-the-office-mattered/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 09:45:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3540389</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If any TV show is lucky enough, it will last to the point when it will seem tired, repetitive, business as usual. The Office, which ends its last season after nine years tonight, may arguably have reached that point; however well it ends, it will have been punching the clock for a long time. But it&#8217;s worth remembering, however much we&#8217;re used to the show&#8217;s style and comedy now, that network-TV sitcoms were a different breed when the American version of the show came on the air in 2005. Tomorrow, we can talk about how good or bad its finale was. Today, let&#8217;s remember some of the ways it influenced the sitcoms that came after it: It Adapted Scripted TV to the Reality-TV Era. The Office&#8217;s mockumentary format had been used before it in movies, like Christopher Guest&#8217;s comedies. But to NBC&#8217;s primetime audience, its signifiers&#8211;the confessional interviews, the cameras rushing to keep up with the action&#8211;were more immediately familiar from reality TV, which in 2005 people were talking about replacing sitcoms altogether. Instead, The Office&#8211;and then shows that followed it, like Modern Family&#8211;used these tropes as a new language for telling stories and explaining characters. Like many of the accomplishments of The Office (USA), this one was preceded by The Office (UK). And Arrested Development had a quasi-documentary format in 2003. But maybe one of the reasons it didn&#8217;t last longer was that audiences weren&#8217;t used to the format yet. Whether or not The Office did it better, it at least had better timing. It Brought Back the Single-Camera Sitcom. For non-TV-geeks: What&#8217;s a single-camera sitcom? A show that&#8217;s shot, like a TV drama, with one camera at a time, allowing it to use various locations and settings and to look more &#8220;movie-like.&#8221; (A multi-camera comedy trains multiple cameras on a stage set, usually with a live audience; think Friends or The Big Bang Theory.) You&#8217;d think that single-cameras would offer more creative options, but since the heyday of M*A*S*H they were superseded by multi-cams, which looked like theater<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3540389&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nup_155312_23351.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">The Office - Season 9</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Upfronts Watch: ABC Seeks More Fantasies and Fairytales (But No Happy Endings)</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/15/upfronts-watch-abc-seeks-more-fantasies-and-fairytales-but-no-happy-endings/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/15/upfronts-watch-abc-seeks-more-fantasies-and-fairytales-but-no-happy-endings/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 09:45:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3540314</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ABC has had the benefit, over the past couple of seasons, of not having failures that are as spectacular as NBC&#8217;s. As Buzzfeed&#8217;s Kate Aurthur pointed out in March, while ABC has been battling NBC for last place among the four big networks, it&#8217;s NBC that has gotten most of the bad press. Part of it is the farther-to-fall effect: NBC has the narrative of descending from its glories of the &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s. NBC&#8217;s bombs have arguably been more calamitous (Do No Harm), or, if not that, more hotly hyped before collapsing (Smash). And that&#8217;s to say nothing of NBC&#8217;s bad press outside primetime&#8211;the self-immolation of the Today show, the fumbling of the Tonight Show a few years back. So ABC has had to deal with less bad news (fittingly, Disney-ABC TV president Anne Sweeney began the upfront boasting about Jimmy Kimmel and Good Morning America&#8217;s ratings success). But you can&#8217;t pay the bills with not-bad-news. Its fall schedule announcement, then, is trying to make up for the network&#8217;s lack of new hits by returning to what&#8217;s worked for them in the recent past—escapist fantasies and heightened drama serials—and trying again to develop more comedy hits to match Modern Family. The latter new shows come at the expense of Happy Endings, the rippingly funny ensemble show that never caught on beyond a cult audience. In a conference call today, ABC president Paul Lee said that that show, though loved by critics and a passionate fanbase, was just &#8220;too narrow&#8221; for a broadcast network to justify keeping. The brand identity that has worked for ABC lately is family comedy on the one hand, and fantasy and emotion on the other&#8211;which applies not just to Once Upon a Time or Scandal but also to reality shows like The Bachelor. Which is also to say that ABC is the major network that above all knows that women watch the bulk of primetime network TV. (You know you are at ABC&#8217;s upfront and not NBC&#8217;s, Fox&#8217;s, or CBS&#8217;s because, when they play the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3540314&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/131252_group_final_01_ful.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MARVEL&#039;S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Dr. Joyce Brothers, TV&#8217;s Beautiful Mind, Dies at 85</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/14/dr-joyce-brothers-tvs-beautiful-mind-dies-at-85/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/14/dr-joyce-brothers-tvs-beautiful-mind-dies-at-85/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 13:28:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Remembrance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3540102</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dr. Joyce Brothers, who died Monday at age 85, was one of the first examples of a public figure who had a career of, by, and through TV. Before it was commonplace for psychologists, advice-givers, and sundry gurus to have syndicated shows and accompanying media empires, Brothers used an improbable career in the electronic age to brand herself as a pop-culture counselor and people&#8217;s academic: an approachably brilliant woman who knew more than you did about anything and everything, including your own mind. Brothers&#8217; media career began with the 1950s&#8217; equivalent of reality-TV stardom: in 1955, to earn raise extra money, she went on the quiz show The $64,000 Question as an expert on boxing&#8211;a field she knew little of anything about until she decided to make herself an expert for the sake of the game show. (Unlike the scandal-tainted appearances of some later contestants, Brothers&#8217; knowledge and winnings were genuine.) She later did a stint as a boxing color commentator, proving herself a natural broadcaster and a double curiosity: not just a lady who knew sports (in the men&#8217;s world of 1950s TV) but an academic who wasn&#8217;t above popular media. Her surprising fame, combined with her PhD training in psychology, led her to a string of TV advice shows and print columns through the &#8217;50s and &#8217;60s. It was the time in Cold War American culture when therapy and psychology were breaking into popular consciousness, in everything from the comedy of Bob Newhart to the panels of Peanuts, and the country was ready for a chipper counselor to the masses. I was born after Brothers&#8217; heyday as a TV advice host; like other children of the &#8217;70s, my first memory of her is as a near-ubiquitous guest on every kind of TV show imaginable—Happy Days, The Tonight Show, Mama&#8217;s Family, What&#8217;s My Line?, and (see the video above to believe it) Sha Na Na, to name a few. In a way Brothers&#8217; TV ambassadorship for psychology may have been as influential as the advice she dispensed: with a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3540102&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Remembrance</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/miscellany/remembrance/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/jb.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Dr. Joyce Brothers</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>HIMYM Watch: Mother&#8217;s Day</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/14/himym-watch-mothers-day/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/14/himym-watch-mothers-day/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 12:31:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3540063</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Over the years, I had developed all manner of theories as to how How I Met Your Mother would somehow get around ever introducing the title character (or, maybe, get Ted together with Robin without contradicting its founding conundrum). The &#8220;kids&#8221; would, somehow, actually not be Ted&#8217;s biological children. Future Ted would keel over from a heart attack in the finale, just before the reveal. The entire framing device would be the fantasy of an elderly Ted Mosby, dying unloved and alone. Instead, after eight seasons&#8211;and pending some further twist I haven&#8217;t anticipated—last night&#8217;s season finale delivered: one Future Mother, in the doe-eyed person of theater actress Cristin Milioti. Kudos to the producers for somehow pulling this off, in this day and age, without the casting news getting leaked to the high heavens. Now this sets up the show&#8217;s endgame: namely, with a big question answered, will the final season be worth watching? After watching every episode religiously for the first six seasons (and blogging many of them), I&#8217;ve drifted away from the show the past two years; this season, I was lucky if I caught one episode a month to keep up. There&#8217;s no point in re-rehearsing the reasons in detail—the show got too caught up in Barney&#8217;s wackiness, the narrative tricks that were exciting in the show&#8217;s first few seasons didn&#8217;t feel as fresh anymore. That said, one thing that didn&#8217;t bother me over the last few seasons was whether or when the Mother would be revealed—to me, it was just an intriguing side game that only became a problem when the mechanics of it got in the way of the central stories. But now that Mom is cast and on stage, I&#8217;m hoping that the change will revitalize the show for its next and final season. I was always going to watch the series finale anyway: there are some shows where, even if you&#8217;ve lost interest, you&#8217;re invested enough that you have to come home in the end. That&#8217;s what, say, The O.C. and Dawson&#8217;s Creek were<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3540063&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/somethingnew_b.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Something New</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/ff52ed68b9a6630bf8c9e9f8bd32ce0b?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Upfronts Watch: Fox Cuts Jack Bauer In Half</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/14/upfronts-watch-fox-cuts-jack-bauer-in-half/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/14/upfronts-watch-fox-cuts-jack-bauer-in-half/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 09:45:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3540017</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When Fox previewed its new drama, 24, at its upfront announcements for advertisers a dozen years ago on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, it was as new a thing as had been seen in prime-time TV in a good while. It had a radical format (a story told in real time), unusual visuals (different events unfolding on multiscreens, like the open windows on a computer desktop), and the novel (then, for TV) approach of telling a story about terrorism with the scale of a feature movie. Fox&#8217;s biggest announcement at its upfront Monday was, on the surface, pretty old news, because&#8211;well, it was 24. The show, which went off the air after nearly a decade&#8217;s run at the height of the war on terror era, is coming back next summer, as an &#8220;event series&#8221;: one story told over 12 hours (despite the show&#8217;s title), as 24: Live Another Day. I don&#8217;t feel strongly about 24 coming back. It was a great thriller for a while, and then it got ludicrous, but even it it&#8217;s late years it showed that it could, now and again, be gripping and emotionally compelling. By the time it went off the air, it was tired, sure, but it&#8217;s had some rest, and I could see Kiefer Sutherland and company pulling this off every few years, say, not unlike an American answer to the James Bond franchise. The revival will be good, or it won&#8217;t. What&#8217;s more interesting, and long-term exciting, is how Fox is bringing the show back: as part of a long-term strategy to make one-shot series, with several others in the pipeline. Fox also announced the 10-episode Wayward Pines from M. Night Shyamalan and starring Matt Dillon, which will run next year. In the works: a Billy the Kid Western from Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, a Civil War series, a series about the OJ Simpson trial, and a remake of Shogun. That last example suggests that &#8220;event series&#8221; is really Fox putting a trendy title on a very old thing,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3540017&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/k_wall_51_dtvg.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">24 LIVE ANOTHER DAY</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Upfronts Watch: NBC Tries to Turn Around Its Turnaround</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/13/upfronts-watch-nbc-tries-to-turn-around-its-turnaround/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/13/upfronts-watch-nbc-tries-to-turn-around-its-turnaround/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2013 18:04:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539874</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last season was to be turnaround year for NBC. Struggling in the primetime ratings, the network was going to move away from niche sitcoms like Community and Parks and Recreation and aim for &#8220;broader&#8221; comedies with more mass appeal. It would use the promotional power of shows like The Voice to launch new big hits like genre drama Revolution. And new chief Robert Greenblatt was now fully in charge to work his programming magic on the network, taking gambles on shows like his pet project, Smash. Now, for 2013–14, NBC is trying to turn around its turnaround. Smash is canceled. So are most of NBC&#8217;s sitcoms—except Community (returning midseason) and Parks and Recreation. The Voice is a huge hit; the shows that have followed The Voice, meh. And at its upfront presentation to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall in New York, Greenblatt introduced a new schedule of broad-aiming sitcoms and genre dramas. There&#8217;s no reason it can&#8217;t work. But there&#8217;s no denying that NBC is, at best, pretty much where it was when it started the season. Its problems are much the same. With few existing hits&#8211;basically, The Voice and football&#8211;many of NBC&#8217;s new shows will need to be self-starters. Last year, they didn&#8217;t self-start. Now, for instance, the network will try to relaunch most of Thursday, with the once must-see night bookended by Parks and Parenthood&#8211;two fine shows, neither a mass ratings hit. NBC is trying to compensate, partly, with familiar names: there will be a sitcom with Michael J. Fox and one with Sean Hayes, a remake of Ironside with Blair Underwood, and an espionage drama with James Spader. It is also, as it does biennially, promising that the Olympics will be a great launch platform to promote its midseason shows. Let us be blunt. NBC has been saying this for over a decade. The only show that the Olympics are a great, tested promotional platform for is the next Olympics. NBC&#8217;s new crop of shows may succeed, but it will have to be on their own<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539874&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nup_154886_1860.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">The Michael J. Fox Show</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Game of Thrones Watch: Dragons and Eagles and Bears, Oh, My!</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/13/game-of-thrones-watch-dragons-and-eagles-and-bears-oh-my/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/13/game-of-thrones-watch-dragons-and-eagles-and-bears-oh-my/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2013 09:45:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539698</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Spoilers for Game of Thrones, &#8220;The Bear and the Maiden Fair,&#8221; below: &#8220;That they&#8217;ll work together when it suits them, that they&#8217;re loyal when it suits them, love each other when it suits them, and they kill each other when it suits them.&#8221; Everyone on Game of Thrones is an animal. Usually it&#8217;s figurative: our major characters are mostly nobles, their houses represented by wolves, lions, kraken, stags, and whatnot. This is a quasi-medieval society, still close enough to its primitive roots to carry over the animistic idea that people can ally with animals and, thereby, take on their strength. Sometimes it&#8217;s more than figurative: Danaerys is not only a &#8220;dragon,&#8221; figuratively, she has dragons and is in all but strict biology their mother. And then there are the characters who, at least when they choose to be, literally are animals. Our enigmatic friend Jojen has told Bran that he is a warg&#8211;a mystic able to enter the minds of animals&#8211;and, complicating matters, that the three-eyed crow in Bran&#8217;s dreams is Bran himself. Adding to our bestiary, &#8220;crow&#8221; is a term for members of the Night&#8217;s Watch, and our favorite one, Jon Snow, has recently gotten a glimpse of a warg in action: Orell, who performs wildling reconnaissance by bonding with an eagle. The eagle, it seems, does not care for the crow: implicit in Orell&#8217;s speech, about what wisdom he has learned from the birds, is that Orell understands the wild, close-to-nature ways of his people (and thus Ygritte) in a way that Jon never will. &#8220;The Bear and the Maiden Fair&#8221; opens literally from the vantage point of that eagle, whose cry is the first thing we hear. And this eagle-eyed perspective is a fitting one for the episode, which takes a wide, sweeping view of the wide swath of Game of Thrones&#8217; stories, and&#8211;as ably directed by Michelle MacLaren&#8211;looks fantastic doing it. It&#8217;s interesting that this is the one episode of season three written by George R. R. Martin, author of the Song of Ice and Fire<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539698&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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			<media:title type="html">&#34;The Bear and the Maiden Fair&#34;</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Your New, Very Slightly Different Host of Late Night, Seth Meyers</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/12/your-new-very-slightly-different-host-of-late-night-seth-meyers/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/12/your-new-very-slightly-different-host-of-late-night-seth-meyers/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 12 May 2013 19:07:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539768</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Surprising approximately no one, NBC announced today—the day before their upfronts schedule presentation to advertisers—that Seth Meyers will take over for Jimmy Fallon as host of Late Night in 2014. It&#8217;s been so expected for such a long time that I wrote a column about it a month ago, and my sentiments are, like NBC&#8217;s 12:35 programming choices, essentially unchanged: [NBC has decided that] Fallon is the guy to lead Tonight into the future&#8211;that is, into the time when people don&#8217;t so much watch Tonight tonight. So it&#8217;s puzzling that for Fallon&#8217;s replacement at 12:35, NBC may go the most predictable route. Reports give the inside track to Seth Meyers, who like Fallon hosted Saturday Night Live&#8217;s Weekend Update and whose Late Night, along with Fallon&#8217;s Tonight, would be produced by SNL&#8217;s Lorne Michaels. Really? Really? Nothing against Meyers, who very likely could be excellent in the job. I like him on SNL. He&#8217;s funny, smart, good with topical comedy. He&#8217;s as well qualified to host Late Night as Fallon was when he took over. But there&#8217;s the thing: he&#8217;s practically exactly where and what Fallon was when he took over. Leaving aside the whole dominance of late night by white men, it&#8217;s unfortunate that NBC is taking a format already saturated with guys behind desks and making as little change to it as possible—at least as far as personnel are concerned. In fact, sadly, the fact that Meyers&#8217; appointment promises little change is itself a change for the 12:35 time slot. When David Letterman began entertaining night owls after Johnny Carson, it was a change of tone and style, a shift in what late-night was, from calming, genial humor to surreal, unbalancing comic experimentation. When NBC handed the show off to Conan O&#8217;Brien, that too was an experiment, taking a chance on a young Simpsons writer with almost no experience as a public performer. Now it&#8217;s been hosted by one guy who made his bones on the Weekend Update desk, and it will be taken over by another guy who made<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539768&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nup_156387_0001.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Seth Meyers</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>TV Weekend: Family Tree</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/10/tv-weekend-family-tree/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/10/tv-weekend-family-tree/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 14:02:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539664</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Christopher Guest&#8217;s most familiar movies—This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind—are about groups of people with a shared passion, or obsession. His new series for HBO, Family Tree (debuting Sunday), focuses on one man, not particularly passionate, who comes across an obsession (researching his genealogy) by accident. Where those movies are parodic or sharp-edged in their humor, Family Tree is more gently funny, even wistful&#8211;but it also says that understanding where you come from can be the oddest pursuit of all. Family Tree centers on Tom Chadwick (Chris O&#8217;Dowd), a young Irish-British man who comes into a batch of old family heirlooms while he&#8217;s in a funk over losing a job and a serious girlfriend. Almost lackadaisically at first, Tom begins to wonder who the tchotchkes belong to. Soon, with the aid of cheerfully dim school chum Pete (Tom Bennett), Tom has something his aimless life needs—a quest. That quest provides the loose shape to the narrative; each artifact Tom looks into or comes across on his travels&#8211;a photograph, an old costume&#8211;leads to another station on his family&#8217;s journey, along with some false leads and comically disappointing answers. And this provides some space for more traditionally Guestian eccentricities, as the search takes Tom to a family farm and into the world of early-20th-century fringe theater. But what gives Family Tree its warm, rumpled, Anglo-Irish soul are the hints at why Tom might want to forge some family connections, even with relatives who are long-dead. Tom&#8217;s family isn&#8217;t dysfunctional, but it&#8217;s also only loosely functional; his father (Michael McKean) his an amiable but unemotive guy whose idea of bonding is watching terrible &#8217;70s English sitcoms. (Another place where Guest and co-writer Jim Piddock get to take satiric license.) Tom&#8217;s parents divorced when he was nine; he went to Ireland with his mother, while his sister stayed in London with their dad. As he says sheepishly to the mockumentary camera, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know why that decision was made, or…&#8221; That trailing off &#8220;or…&#8221; says it all, about<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539664&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/familytree06.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">FAMILY TREE</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Dead Tree Alert: It&#8217;s Not TV. On the Set of the New Arrested Development</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/09/dead-tree-alert-its-not-tv-on-the-set-of-the-new-arrested-development/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/09/dead-tree-alert-its-not-tv-on-the-set-of-the-new-arrested-development/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 09 May 2013 11:17:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539500</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When there started to be talk of reviving Arrested Development&#8211;even before it went off the air in 2006&#8211;I was, to put it mildly, skeptical. The rumors never ended: Showtime was interested! There was going to be a movie! There was a script already! And my response was always the same: I&#8217;d believe it when I saw a deal. When I saw the opening titles appear on a screen in front of me. When I actually stood on a set and saw Jason Bateman and Michael Cera shooting a scene. Last October, I went out to the studios in Culver City and I saw exactly that: There is no aspect of Arrested Development so perfect that creator Mitch Hurwitz does not think he can improve it, including the way Jason Bateman demonstrates his love to Michael Cera. Hurwitz is going over a red-penciled script, revised on the fly, for a scene in which Michael Bluth (Bateman) is on the verge of a confession to his son, George-Michael (Cera). “I think what would be great here is a hug,” Hurwitz says, putting his hands on Cera’s shoulders, pulling him in and giving him a gentle peck on the cheek. Then Hurwitz heads back to his director’s chair. “Let’s make some streaming media, people!” he declares. “Let’s make something for some people’s phones!” That&#8217;s the opening of my longread feature in the new print issue of TIME on the long-awaited, much-doubted revival of Arrested Development for a fourth (and quite possibly final) season on Netflix. It&#8217;s paywalled, sadly. But I had a lot of fun both reporting and writing it, and I&#8217;d love it if you bought a copy&#8211;or at least loitered overlong at a newsstand to read it&#8211;if nothing else for the awesome full-cast, double-page photo. The article is about AD, of course, but also about what it means that the show is being revived in this way: through paid online-video streaming rather than a TV network, all 15 episodes going live at once. Creatively, it means a very different-looking season of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539500&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/adev_pds_005_h.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Arrested Development</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>The Office Will End Big. It Will End Too Late. But It Can Still End Well.</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/08/the-office-will-end-big-it-will-end-too-late-but-it-can-still-end-well/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/08/the-office-will-end-big-it-will-end-too-late-but-it-can-still-end-well/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 11:25:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539423</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Office lasted longer than you might have thought it would. It had a well-executed, moving &#8220;ending&#8221; as Steve Carell left after seven seasons, and then the show stuck around for two years more. On May 16, The Office will finally air its last episode, and that too, fittingly, will last longer than you might have thought it would. The hourlong finale, NBC has announced, will run another 15 minutes, until 10:15 p.m. ET. Set your DVRs accordingly. That The Office ran too long is hard to argue against by now, and also moot. It&#8217;s not as if there haven&#8217;t been good episodes and good arcs. Some of the Robert California era was truly excruciating, James Spader&#8217;s enigmatically creepy performance notwithstanding, and the decision to turn Andy Bernard into another Michael Scott did neither character a service. But some latter episodes have worked as series of set pieces, taking advantage of the ensemble cast (for instance, last season&#8217;s Tallahassee arc, which gave us the cherished memory of Florida Stanley). But The Office at its best is not just a funny show. It&#8217;s a half-drama about the compromises and adjusted expectations that come with adult life, both at work and in relationships. It was about realizing a temporary gig had become a career, or that your onetime avocation was now just a hobby, or that to make one dream come true (or some version of it), you sometimes have to borrow from another dream. The final season of The Office, though hardly its best, has proven that it can still be that show when it wants to be. Making the documentary an overt part of the series wasn&#8217;t just attention-getting, it&#8217;s been a catalyst. It&#8217;s made several characters face that time is passing and ask if they&#8217;re really where they want to be. It&#8217;s even, amazingly, redeemed the treatment of Andy&#8217;s character, who last week made the possibly foolish but nonetheless ballsy choice to leave Dunder-Mifflin and change his life. This season&#8217;s Pam-and-Jim storyline, in particular, has focused on an aspect<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539423&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nup_155436_1035.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">The Office - Season 9</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Mad Men Character Study: Meet the Old Don. Same As the New Don?</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/07/mad-men-character-study-meet-the-old-don-same-as-the-new-don/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/07/mad-men-character-study-meet-the-old-don-same-as-the-new-don/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 09:45:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539321</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Spoilers for Sunday&#8217;s Mad Men episode, &#8220;For Immediate Release,&#8221; below: I&#8217;m going to agree with most of the reviews and online comments I&#8217;ve seen so far that &#8220;For Immediate Release&#8221; was the best Mad Men episode so far this season. But I would argue that the coolest part of the episode was not the best part. (Well, in truth both the coolest and best part was Pete Campbell falling on his ass down the stairs in a rage, but that&#8217;s hardly a fair competition.) The coolest part of the episode&#8211;reminiscent of the Ocean&#8217;s Eleven caper that closed Mad Men&#8217;s third season&#8211;was the surprise merger of SCDP and CGC to land the Chevrolet account, enabled by a combo of Don&#8217;s barstool improvisation and Roger&#8217;s airline espionage. It was brisk, confident, funny. As our protagonists walked past GM&#8217;s shiny &#8217;68 models and ordered up the press release announcing the merger, it was as if Mad Men itself had gotten a fresh buff, polish and coat of wax. The episode underscored an old truth of storytelling: that characters who want something and take action are more compelling than characters who don&#8217;t. TV viewers, like anyone else in life, respond to confidence and enthusiasm. The knock on Mad Men season six to date is that it was rambling and overly morose. (I don&#8217;t entirely share that, by the way. I like those melancholy, slow Mad Men episodes, and they&#8217;re necessary to the flashier ones.) Don Draper had become a moody, contemptible asshole, contemplating death and having an affair that seemed only to depress him and the married woman he was sleeping with. The break with Jaguar, and the chance to pitch Chevy, seemed to snap Don out of his funk, and with him, the show—it was as if the clouds parted over the second half of the episode. I don&#8217;t think that anyone who thought Don Draper an asshole before (correctly, in most respects) suddenly thinks he&#8217;s not. But we* were again seeing the confident, assured asshole we once knew, and that&#8217;s the more<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539321&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Television</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/mm_606_my_0116_1407.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">MAD MEN</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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		<title>Reliable Sources Answers: Who Shall Critique the Media Critic?</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/06/reliable-sources-answers-who-shall-critique-the-media-critic/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/06/reliable-sources-answers-who-shall-critique-the-media-critic/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 17:21:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>James Poniewozik</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tuned In]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539314</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I spent a good five minutes last week trying to explain to a friend, someone who follows news and the media fairly closely, why the controversy around Howard Kurtz was news. I confess I didn&#8217;t do a fairly good job. Individually, the elements of the scandal, involving perhaps the highest-profile media critic in the country (depending if you count Jon Stewart), are, while embarrassing for Kurtz, not stunning for the media profession. First, you had a well-known journalist making a boneheaded mistake. Kurtz wrote a column and recorded a video rather snidely criticizing NBA player Jason Collins, who had publicly come out as gay, for supposedly not revealing that he had been engaged to a woman, and criticizing the media for ignoring this part of the story. For starters, Kurtz was just wrong: Collins had discussed the engagement, as even cursory attention to his story would have shown. Second, Kurtz&#8217;s argument would have been ridiculous even if his facts were right. Collins had been engaged, which proved… what, exactly? That he was straight and faking gayness because of its obvious benefits in professional sports? That he had gone beyond the pale by living a lie? Has Kurtz ever known anyone who came out of the closet, or hell, even read about it? But again, pundit giving embarrassingly clueless opinion: not exactly a rarity. Nor was the apparent explanation: that Kurtz, who hosts Reliable Sources for CNN and wrote for Newsweek/The Daily Beast and freelanced videos for the fledgling online startup The Daily Download, was overextended and thus making sloppy mistakes. Kurtz and The Daily Beast parted ways last week—depending who you ask, he was either fired flat-out, or his already-planned departure was accelerated by the embarrassment. (The amount of time Kurtz was devoting to The Daily Download was an unusual twist&#8211;he promoted the site heavily on Twitter and had its founder on Reliable Sources frequently, though he said he had no stake in the company. Still, even within the limited circle of extreme media-watchers, The Daily Download is obscure; I&#8217;d<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539314&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>News Media</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/television/news-media/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">jponiewozik</media:title>
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