I don’t have a piece in this week’s TIME magazine, but this issue, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, is a sweeping enough undertaking that I wanted to point it out. Rather than fill out the issue with stories and essays by bloviators like me, the issue focuses on the first-person stories of people who were in the …
Breaking News! HBO Picks Up Sorkin’s Cable-News Series
While this may not count as the most stunning development in TV, HBO has made it official: it’s greenlighted a season of Aaron Sorkin‘s yet untitled drama set at a cable news network, starring Jeff Daniels as a talented but difficult high-profile anchor.
With little to go on but the premise and Sorkin’s history, I’m excited, and I’m nervous.
Rescue Me Watch: Taking the Cake
Spoilers for the series finale of Rescue Me below:
The easy shorthand for Rescue Me has always been that it was a show about the aftermath of 9/11. It was and it wasn’t. In a way, the question for the guys of 62 Truck is a …
The Morning After: Perry Shoots from the Hip, Wears Bullseye at His First GOP Debate
The positioning of the candidates at last night’s NBC News / Politico debate at the Reagan library told you all you needed to know: squarely in the center were Mitt Romney, the longtime varsity letterman in the GOP primary race, and Rick Perry, the hotshot new quarterback just transferred to the school who suddenly has his pick of …
The Morning After: Whatcha Going to Do When You Get Out of Jail?
Yesterday I posted some advance thoughts about Sons of Anarchy‘s season four debut and about the path it’s taken in the three years leading up to it. No time for a long writeup of the premiere, “Out,” but here are a few things …
Oscar Wants to Party All the Time: Eddie Murphy to Host Academy Awards
In one of the most stunning news flashes since the shooting of Buckwheat, Eddie Murphy has been announced as the host of the next Academy Awards broadcast, next Feb. 26 on ABC.
Murphy was apparently recruited as Oscar host by awards co-producer Brett Ratner, who directed him in the forthcoming movie Tower Heist. Murphy will join past …
TV Tonight: Sons of Anarchy Goes Back to Cali
The third season of Sons of Anarchy was, shall we say, divisive. The chief issue that divided fan from fan, critic from critic, and creator Kurt Sutter from people who criticized creator Kurt Sutter was the season’s long sojourn …
Breaking Bad Watch: Chickenman! He’s Everywhere! He’s Everywhere!
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, ask your elderly criminal uncle if he would change the channel so you can watch last night’s Breaking Bad.
This month at the Emmys, Breaking Bad is going to step aside and make some …
JPTV Jr.: 104 Days of Summer
One of the most popular kids’ shows in this country today begins by giving its audience a cruel musical taunt. “There’s 104 days of summer vacation,” opens the lyric of Phineas and Ferb, Disney’s cartoon about the outlandish adventures of two stepbrothers, their family, their friends and their platypus, Perry, who unbeknownst to them is …
Dead Tree Alert: Time of the Season
For Labor Day weekend, this week’s TIME magazine includes our summer fall Arts preview. (Usual caveat: you need to subscribe to read the whole thing.) Because television must share space in it with the lesser arts, such as film, visual art and books, the TV section gets only a page in the magazine, and includes just a quick selection of …
What’s Next for AMC: Reality, Kevin Smith, 30 More Minutes of Zombies
If you missed it the other day, New York magazine’s Joe Adalian had an excellent analysis of what’s behind the recent business and p.r. problems at AMC. It’s worth reading in full, but one major point in brief: all those times you wondered how in the world they could afford to produce HBO-type shows on a basic-cable budget? Turns out …
TVGuide.com Says You’re Excited About These Shows. Is It Right?
TVGuide.com has put out its list of the most anticipated new fall TV shows of 2011, according to a survey of its users. The first three are unsurprising, unsurprising and—yeah, I guess a little surprising. At #1: Terra Nova, of …
The Blu-Ray Menace; or, Who Really Owns Star Wars?
You may recently have noticed a disturbance in the Force, as if billions of voices suddenly got royally pissed off and cried out in Internet discussion threads. The impetus: a report, later confirmed by the New York Times’ Dave …