Tuned InTelevision
One thing you learn a lot about as a TV critic is people’s relationships to their childhoods. Especially when writing obituaries–there’s a kind of intimate connection that people form, as kids, with TV that it’s hard for other entertainment genres to match. There’s so much of it, for one thing: just look at the number of notable, …
Tuned InTuned In
It makes sense that TV, something we spend so many childhood afternoons and sick days with, is such a nostalgia trigger–see the reaction when any beloved sitcom character dies. But it’s funny how sentimentally attached people–especially, maybe, Gen-Xers of my vintage–are to commercials, usually the most-bemoaned part of the TV …
Recent reunions — by everyone from Afghan Whigs and The Stone Roses to The Beach Boys and Megadeth — prove bands don’t go away. They just hibernate
Tuned InUncategorized
Robo-James’ Time Machine has been indulging in my nostalgia all this week, but the delightful thing about America is that nostalgia is no longer merely for the old. In July, Nickelodeon began running a block of ’90s kids’ shows in late night, for not-that-alter-kockers (call them alternakockers?) who want to remember the hits of their …
Tuned InUncategorized
God bless our friends at the Shout! Factory company, the TV archivists who have been bringing back some of TV’s most obscure creations of the past on DVD. This week, they’ve put on the market—and thus, presumably, subjected some of their employees to watching—season one of what may be the single most unintentionally creepy sitcom …
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A reader on Twitter last week tweeted me with a suggestion: would it be a good idea for Cougar Town (which has been struggling in the ratings, though picked up for a second season) to change its stupid name in order to attract more viewers? My gut reaction is that Cougar Town needs to change more than its name—though, to its credit, …
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When I heard the new theme song for Big Love this season, it was like a punch in the gut. In general, I’m not much of a fan of repurposing already-written songs as themes (with exceptions; it worked for The Wire). But I cannot possibly see what Earthly good one can expect it to do to change a show’s theme in its fourth season, …
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I am writing this post at a point in the past, at which I do not yet know if I managed to write a review of HBO’s new How to Make It in America before I went on vacation. If I did, however, I might have noted that this was another HBO series that makes excellent use of its opening title sequence. In this case it goes beyond simply …
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What’s the next generation of network TV dramas? At least some executives think that it’s the last generation of TV dramas, or the one before that. Among the pilots ordered up lately at the broadcast networks have been remakes of Prime Suspect, Hawaii 5-0 and, at NBC, one of that network’s classics, The Rockford Files. Great show. And …
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Happy New Year! And welcome to the Tens, or the Teens, or the Teenies, or whatever the hell we’re going to call them! More important, congratulations on making it through the last decade, which some newsmagazine termed The Decade from Hell.
As you’ll recall, the previous decade began with the dire prediction that a computer bug would …
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As the New York Times told us yesterday, only the olds use Twitter. Readers of Tuned In are uniformly young and beautiful, and so you have no idea that, over on Twitter, some of us elderly TV critics—breathing the stench of the grave with every tweet—have been debating how the new CW remake stands up to the original that aired on …
Tuned InRemembrance
Oscar Mayer, the purveyor of meats who shared a name with the company he chaired, died Monday at age 95. It’s a little odd to feel nostalgia for the passing of a man who, I would guess, most of us did not know except for the name attached to his products. But Mayer’s company, and his name (actually his family name; he joined the family …
