…we’ve got answers. Sort of. At least to one question, about Lost. In yesterday’s thread about Lost’s return date, several commenters asked how long the season would be—since, if the show airs weekly, a 16-episode season would end before the TV season did.

Before the fourth season of Lost, the producers and ABC reached an agreement …

It’s not that Sarah Palin didn’t want to make herself more available for mainstream media interviews. It was just that, when you’re in the middle of running for vice president, who has time for that kind of thing?

Now that that bit of business is over, however, Palin has become a regular camera hound. Last night, Fox News aired an …

You didn’t have to be Jewish to watch Sarah Silverman’s The Great Schlep video, but it helped. As you know if you’re one of the millions of people who watched it, in the spot, Silverman made a tongue-in-cheek-but-also-serious argument for Jewish grandkids to visit bubbe and zayde in Florida and convince them to set aside the …

I don’t ask a lot of Entourage. I know that it will never be deep or groundbreaking or one of my favorite shows on television. I just expect it to amuse me and give me a break: to be a funny, reasonably Hollywood-savvy diversion. So call this faint praise if you want, but I’m glad to report that season 5 is meeting this modest goal …

Since Heroes is a show about synchronicities and loosely-connected global events, here’s a few related links this morning:

* The New York Times weighs in on the show’s ratings and creative troubles, which have led to firings and shakeups, and have caused agita at the network’s highest levels. (One good point the piece makes: it’s hard …

ABC has announced the return date for Lost, which will have a two-hour premiere (preceded by an hourlong clip show) in its new timeslot at 9 p.m. E.T., Wednesday, January 21. Which also happens to be Mrs. Tuned In’s birthday. It’s going to be hard to top that gift.

Friday night, Animal Planet debuted its new series Whale Wars. Inexcusably, it does not involve a tournament of mortal battles between orcas and spermaceti. The reality series follows the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a group of militant environmentalists who set sail to confront and stop Japanese whaling ships, sometimes under …

What did drama teachers ever do to the entertainment world? The job has become a shorthand for vain, deluded, imperious, frustrated hack—look at High School Musical, Hamlet 2 and (at the community-theater level) Waiting for Guffman. Or they’re vampiric, insulting predators, like Frank Langella’s acting coach in HBO’s Unscripted a …

I watched last night’s 30 Rock weeks ago, but my new motto of life remains, There are only two things I love: Everybody, and television. This was simply one of those episodes where everything clicked: Kenneth’s moral dilemma and Jack’s determination to tempt him; the Olympics parody (“octuples tennis”); the Black. White. racial …

Before you read this post, turn on the world’s smallest bluetooth television and watch The Office. 

The other day I posted the new trailer for Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, saying that I was anxious about the premise, but that I held out hope anyway. I may have been wrong about the “hope” part. Not because of the show itself, but because Fox just put out its midseason schedule, and it’s banished Dollhouse to Friday. (Starting Feb. 13, not …