When you create a new sitcom, and it is not very good, and the title begins, “I Hate…,” you can pretty much expect every TV …
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Starz’s Politics Drama Boss: Powerful But Messy, Just Like Its Subject
The dramatic grimness comes quick and often in Starz’s new show starring Kelsey Grammer as a Chicago Mayor
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ABC’s Revenge: Are You Ready for Some Class Warfare?
Earlier this week, President Obama put forward a deficit-reduction plan that, pointedly, involved raising taxes and closing loopholes for the wealthiest Americans. Republicans, as they often have when facing a proposal that picks …
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TV Tonight: 2 Broke Girls, Playboy Club
Tonight brings the debuts of two network premieres, CBS’s 2 Broke Girls and NBC’s The Playboy Club, which I covered in my roundup in this week’s TIME of series focusing on female characters. It’s a busy season, and neither pilot …
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TV Tonight: Up All Night, Free Agents
Reviewing a new TV series can be part detective work and part psychic reading. You try to not only judge the finished pilot you’re looking at, but get a sense of where it’s come from (the history of its talent or influences, any …
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TV Tonight: Ringer
When I previewed the pilot of The CW’s twin-noir thriller Ringer earlier this summer, I wanted to be charitable. Partly because, like many of you, I suspect, I loved Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But also …
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TV Weekend: Teen Wolf
Say what you will about what MTV: it is a channel that has always known what it is, even if “what it is” changes every three years or so. In its early years, there was a distinct idea of what an MTV video looked like. There was, with Beavis and Butt-Head and Daria and experiments like Liquid Television, an idea of “MTV animation.” And …
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See It Now: The Big C
When I began watching the first three episodes Showtime sent of The Big C, debuting August 16, I was struck by how thoroughly that network has defined what “a Showtime comedy” is. For starters it’s around 50% drama. There’s a blend of mordant humor, sex, a well-known female lead, a glossy, often suburban setting that serves as a medium …
David is Now Goliath: Entourage's Urgent Quest to Remain Relevant
Entourage returned Sunday night – a fact that, in previous years, would have been cause for jubilation around my house. But over the last few seasons, what used to be a witty, cutting, edgy observational drama about four young friends navigating the halls of Hollywood power has instead become a sort of male-oriented Sex and the City …
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TV Tonight: Hank and The Middle
Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton both starred in long-lasting hit comedies in the 1990s (Frasier and Everybody Loves Raymond). On Fox’s short-lived Back to You, they teamed up as news anchors, forming a kind of sitcom-star supergroup. Now they’re debuting back-to-back sitcoms on ABC, a symmetry that demands comparison. When two …
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TV Tonight: Trauma
The first few minutes of Trauma, the paramedic drama that debuts tonight on NBC, seems determined to show where the network put some of that money it’s saving with The Jay Leno Show. Depicting a crisis/rescue/disaster on a rooftop high above San Francisco, it starts with a guy getting fried in an electrical accident and ends with a …
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TV Tonight: Can FlashForward Get Lost?
When I pot post my Test Pilot first impressions of new shows over the summer, I make the point of stressing that they’re not reviews, because the pilots can be reworked before they’ve aired. That’s not a lie, but in the case of ABC’s FlashForward, the for-air pilot hasn’t changed from what I saw in June enough to change my initial …
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TV Tonight: Cougar Town
Tonight ABC debuts Cougar Town, a comedy based on the media trend of older women hooking up with younger men. Building a show around the concept of “cougars” is a bold, farsighted move that guarantees the show will remain timely and relevant for years. I hereby predict that Cougar Town will have the staying power of such …
