It was Freak Out About Your Teenagers Night in America yesterday. Bravo debuted NYC Prep, which sought to convince the Real Housewives audience that wealthy kids were out violating each other and their parents’ bank accounts with all the vigor of those on Gossip Girl. Meanwhile, ABC began its “limited” newsmag series, Primetime: …
Last Talk with Maya Lin
Let’s finish up that conversation with Maya Lin about her new earthwork project, Storm King Wavefield.
LACAYO: The Wavefield is a succession of enormous grassy mounds. It’s made of planted earth, it’s outdoors and exposed to the elements. So do you expect that this piece will eventually decay?
LIN: It’ll erode, it’ll soften. …
Now You, Too, Can Take a Break from Jon and Kate
The LA Times’ Showtracker blog is reporting that after next week’s clip special, Jon & Kate Plus 8 will go on hiatus until Aug. 3. The network ordered the break, says the LA Times.
I suppose we can begin taking bets on whether the show, now about a divorcing, scandal-plagued couple and their eight young children, will actually come …
The Morning After: Stepping Up
I’m attending Tuned In Jr. Jr.’s pre-K stepping-up ceremony this morning—only partly out of Jon-and-Kate-induced parental guilt!—so expect light blogging today. In the meantime, feel free to visit any of the fine establishments in the blogroll at right, or tell us about what you watched last night if you were not professionally …
Ed McMahon, TV's First Second Banana, Dies
Ed McMahon, best known as the longtime sidekick to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, died overnight at age 86. I was a kid for most of McMahon’s heyday, so my personal memories of him are as much from his American Family Publishers career as from Tonight. But I have to appreciate what McMahon did for TV by so wholly coming to own the …
Jon & Kate Plus 8, Divided By Two
“And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
Not anymore. Not all at the same time, anyway. On the much-awaited Big Announcement episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8, Jon Gosselin broke the news: “Kate and I have decided to separate.” News that, a title card revealed at the end, was already dated, as the pair filed to end their …
Bravo to Debut TV Show About Bravo TV Shows
Because watching Real Housewives series is not enough, and because watching reunion specials where Real Housewives talk about the Real Housewives series is not enough, soon Bravo fans will have a weekly show where guests will talk about the reunion specials talking about the Real Housewives series—among other things.
On Watch What …
O'Reilly's Ambush Interviewer Ambushed
You may not know Jesse Watters, but you likely know his work. He produces the ambush-interview segments for The O’Reilly Factor, in which he stalks some bête noire of Papa Bear, then rushes them asking hostile questions, in a theatrical effort to “get some answers” out of supposedly-stonewalling people who, in fact, weren’t invited to …
The Morning After: Twilight of the Kings
When I think back on the shows I’ve followed as a TV critic, the ones that really linger with me are often not the unqualified successes but the fascinating failures: Swingtown, John from Cincinnati, Tell Me You Love Me. Maybe it’s just me, but a show that goes down trying to do something remarkable, maybe even impossible, sticks in my …
More Talk with Maya Lin
Let’s continue that conversation with Maya Lin about Storm King Wavefield, the large earthwork she just unveiled at a sculpture park in upstate New York.
LACAYO: For a long time people have understood that your Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial is in some ways a Minimalist work or post-Minimalist work. What the Wavefield makes you realize …
Persepolis: Eye (of the Tiger) on Iran's Women
A few weeks ago, I finally got around to seeing Persepolis, the animated adaption of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel memoirs of growing up in Iran, which I’d read years ago. I love the books in their own right, but this is a rare translation to screen that not only retells the story, but uses the medium’s own language to enhance it, …
Test Pilot: The Cleveland Show
Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next fall’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing; I may see more episodes before the shows premiere; and what eventually gets on the air can prove much better or worse. But, premature …
Dead Tree Alert: Apparently I Wrote Something About The Simpsons
One of the wonderful things about working in the magazine business is that every now and then you work on a “long-lead” project; which is to say, something that you do well in advance, and then forget that you have ever written, until, as happened this morning, it gets published.
For a Time International package looking back at …