+Uncategorized | 497 days ago

Caprica Lives: Harnessing Immortality, Fighting For Survival

By Steven James Snyder

A rather thorough, spoiler-filled breakdown of Caprica below:

When you’re the prequel to a show called Battlestar Galactica, when you’re given the kind of major league promotions that accompany a Star Wars sequel, it’s hard to satisfy expectations. And that’s what has cursed Caprica since its first episode aired last winter. The ratings failed to wow, Syfy decided to divide up the first season, and only a couple weeks ago the network announced that the show would be returning three months earlier than previously reported – on a different night of the week. To say that there’s a lot hinging on Caprica Season 1.5 would be an understatement; the show was supposed to herald the next great drama for the network. Now it’s hanging by a thread.

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 839 days ago

FNL Gets the Ball Back

By James Poniewozik

Friday Night Lights returns to DirecTV tonight, and my review (which was held for a week in the print magazine) just posted at time.com. So far, season 4 is not just characteristically excellent, but it’s reinvigorated by the device of sending Coach Taylor to start over at the down-and-out East Dillon High. I don’t have [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 876 days ago

HIMYM Watch: The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother coming up after the jump:

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 876 days ago

TV Tonight: House of Pain

By James Poniewozik

By Nielsen’s calendar it’s the first official night of the 2009–10 season (oh, typing that “10″ makes me feel old). Which means a deluge of season and series premieres and no more freebies for Jay Leno. Among tonight’s highlights—or, well, at least lights, high or otherwise: * I enjoy House but never developed a regular [...]

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Tuned In+Television | 879 days ago

TV Weekend: Private Eye-rony; Also, Curb’s Return

By James Poniewozik

It’s a tricky Sunday coming up for fans of finer television everywhere. The Emmys (hosted by the suddenly ubiquitous Neil Patrick Harris) are on that night. Mad Men, refusing to take a breather even for its likely slew of awards, airs an original episode. And HBO debuts a strong new comedy—Bored to Death—while Curb Your [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 881 days ago

Always Sunny Live: The Gang Puts On a Show

By James Poniewozik

It’s hard to describe The Nightman Cometh to somebody who hasn’t seen It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. When you do attempt to describe it, it’s just as hard to explain why you would want to make a special trip to see it on stage. But here goes: it’s a musical episode of a sitcom in [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 888 days ago

TV Tonight: Happy Glee-turn

By James Poniewozik

Between the May sneak-premiere and the incessant advertising, it probably seems like Glee is entering its fifth season on TV. In fact the snarky-with-heart high school show choir comedy returns tonight with its second episode. And while it’s not as knock-your-socks-off as the pilot (while retaining some of the same problems), it continues to show [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 889 days ago

The Morning After: We're Gonna Have a TV Party Tonight

By James Poniewozik

When Sons of Anarchy debuted on FX this time last year, I appreciated it but couldn’t really get myself to like it; it was (like The Shield, creator Kurt Sutter’s alma mater) relentlessly brutal, but (unlike The Shield) without characters I could get attached to or interested in. Toward the end of the season, I [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 904 days ago

Clone Wars Returns, With a Bounty of Hunters

By James Poniewozik

It’s a big news day, at least for the Tuned In Jrs.: Cartoon Network has announced an Oct. 2 return date for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, its animated series. The new series actually has its own subtitle, Rise of the Bounty Hunters, and will focus on—well, you can figure it out. Folks like the [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 908 days ago

Project Runway Watch: Tim Gunn's Back in Style

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s Project Runway season premiere coming up after the jump:

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 977 days ago

TV Weekend: Another Bite for True Blood

By James Poniewozik

  I have to say this for HBO’s True Blood, which returns Sunday for its second season: It begins and ends better than possibly any show on TV. By beginning, I mean the theme song (Jace Everett’s “Bad Things”) and the amazing title sequence. By ending, I mean the way nearly every episode ends on [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 981 days ago

TV Tonight: Fire Another One Up

By James Poniewozik

  While I and most other critics have been focusing on tonight’s Showtime debut of Nurse Jackie, the network also premieres season 5 of Weeds, something I usually look forward to every summer. And not just because it means another cheesecake publicity photo of Mary-Louise Parker every year. That said, I’ll admit that season 4′s [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 998 days ago

TV Long Weekend: Jon Plus or Minus Kate

By James Poniewozik

Posting will be light around here over Memorial Day weekend, but I would be remiss in my duty if I did not tell you about the Monday return of Jon & Kate Plus 8, for the first time since the dueling-affair charges started hitting the tabloids and celeb magazines. Or maybe I’m being remiss in [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1048 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: In Treatment Returns

By James Poniewozik

In this week’s print TIME, I review season 2 of In Treatment, which returns this Sunday and which (having seen four weeks so far) I like better than the first:    By the time Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) sits down for a session with his own therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest), he has had a long [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1308 days ago

TV Tonight: Project Runway Retur—Hey, Look at This Shiny Object!

By James Poniewozik

A dandified Austin Scarlett and Tim Gunn launch (shhh!) PR’s fifth season. / Bravo Photo: Barbara Nitke Tonight, Project Runway fans welcome back the fashion reality show despite the underwhelming publicity efforts of Bravo, which no one can prove had anything to do with the fact that next season, the series will belong to Lifetime. [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1351 days ago

TV Tonight: 30 Days a Week

By James Poniewozik

I don’t have time to full-on review it, as I really need to start doing some things that are not this blog, but a quick reminder that Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days returns tonight to FX. (Nutshell premise: every week, a subject spends a month living the life of someone else whose lifestyle is very different, [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1352 days ago

The Morning After: Digging Back In

By James Poniewozik

Not a single Baldwin among them, ABC’s mole-hunters return. / ABC/ADAM LARKEY After it debuted in 2001, but before it was remade as a VH1-like celebreality show for D-listers, The Mole developed a cult following as “the smartest reality competition on TV,” which I guess is a little like being the best cross-country skiier in [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1399 days ago

TV Tonight: Fishing, Forty or Fightin' in Philly?

By James Poniewozik

Battling for control of your immortal soul tonight: the season debut of Deadliest Catch;* yet another Democratic debate, this time on ABC; and the premiere of TV Land’s The Big 4-0, in which subjects come to terms with the emotional baggage of turning 40. Chief among which is realizing that the only channel that wants [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1422 days ago

TV Tonight: Paris, Je, Like, T'aime

By James Poniewozik

Britney, Shmitney: the real stars of MTV are returning to your TV tonight, as The Hills comes back, and we discover that Lauren’s voyage to Paris is not all baguettes and pamplemousse: The best part of that clip, as in most Hills episodes, is not the action (Lauren hearing that Brody is catting around) but [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1428 days ago

TV Tonight: The Riches

By James Poniewozik

Driver and Izzard con again. / FX One of my favorite shows of 2007, The Riches, returns to FX tonight. (Nutshell for nonviewers: family of Irish-traveler con artists comes upon a man killed in a car wreck on the way to his new house, assumes the identity of him and his “family” and moves to [...]