Tuned In

While I Was Out: A Little Luck, Colbert's PAC, The Final Chord

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I’m back from vacation! Related: I was on vacation! Before we get back to business as usual (i.e., superficial blog posts, grudgingly written and read with a feeling of vague dissatisfaction) a quick rundown of a few things that happened in TV while I was away:

* HBO released a new …

Tricky D—: On Halperin's D-Bomb

I’m sure this happens to you all the time: you go on vacation for a few lousy days, and next thing you know, one of your coworkers calls the President a dick on live TV.

For those of you who haven’t followed the story, TIME’s Mark Halperin went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday morning and made that characterization of President Obama’s

Building a Better Tuned In: What Would You Like to See Here?

I’m still on vacation (this is a robo-post, so I am writing on the assumption that an asteroid has not struck the Earth in the interim). But I thought the long holiday weekend would be a good time to crowdsource some ideas from you, the readers, for a Tuned In redesign that will hopefully happen later in the year. I don’t know all the …

Test Pilot: Up All Night

Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next season’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But premature opinions are why God invented the Internet, so

Test Pilot: Ringer

Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next season’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But premature opinions are why God invented the Internet, so

Test Pilot: 2 Broke Girls

Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next season’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But premature opinions are why God invented the Internet, so

Programming Note

I’m going to be on vacation for the next week, traversing the wilds of southeast Michigan and, with any luck, having at least one sandwich at Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor. Keep checking this space, though: there may be a guest post or two, and I’ve set up Robo-James—taking a break from his burgeoning career in the world of robot …

ABC Announces Its Fall Premiere Dates

Following Fox and The CW, ABC today announced its rollout schedule for its new and returning fall shows. While the networks have experimented in recent years with staggered fall schedules to avoid shows getting lost in a pileup of premieres, most of ABC’s new shows will debut traditionally, in late September—the exceptions being the …

End of a Cop Show Era? Goodbye to Law & Order: Criminal Intent

I’m not a fan of phony eulogies, and so I will confess up front that I was not a huge fan of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which just ended its run on USA. It’s partly that I could never sign on to its central selling point, the performance of Vincent D’Onofrio as Goren, who had his curtain call this last season; what some fans saw as …

The Morning After: Faerie Tale

HBO’s True Blood returned last night with a season four premiere that expanded further on the show’s sexy-magic Southern gothic world: a little witchcraft, a little more vampire politics and a visit with Sookie to a Faerie world/prison that looked a bit like the world’s cheesiest gallery opening party. True Blood lost me after its …

Peter Falk Dies at 83

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Actor Peter Falk reportedly died last night at age 83, at his home in Beverly Hills. According to his daughter, reports USA Today, Falk had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

As an actor, Falk was a performer who was more than he at first seemed: he had a famously …

Louie Watch: Pregnant Pause

Spoilers for last night’s Louie below:

Since I’m stepping back from weekly Watches on the blog, I don’t expect to be writing about Louie every week, though I’ll certainly be watching. But because I visited the set for the shooting of “Pregnant,” because it gives some suggestions as to the direction of the second season, and Louis CK …

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