I generally steer clear of controversies about TV and its health effects–purported or otherwise–on kids. To paraphrase Bones McCoy, I’m a critic, not a doctor, and I can vouchsafe the healthiness or danger of the shows I review no more than a restaurant reviewer can tell you what foie gras will do to your arteries. I can only say

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OK, it would be unseemly of me to keep picking on Studio 60 week after week. But this time I’m not just picking on Studio 60, I swear.

NBC has taken pains to swear up and down that, even though they are on the same network, Studio 60 and the other NBC inside-late-night-comedy show 30 Rock are really, really different shows. How

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We’re all about service here at Tuned In, so we continue to help you avoid the scourge of magazine-subscription blow-in cards by referring you to the online versions of Tuned In’s work in the print version of TIME. This week, an essay on why Americans are suddenly so interested in the end of the world and what comes after. I particular,

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SPOILER ALERT: Do not read this edition of Lostwatch until you’ve seen the 2004 World Series.

So apparently this is what Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof meant by "the context of time."  Part of me wished there was a more complicated, twisty answer to the question of what "the present time" meant in connection with the show–since we

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It is the actors or the script? It’s the eternal question that comes up when deciding whom to credit or blame for a TV series, play or movie, and while each is obviously a collaborative medium, it’s an interesting game to determine whether a bad script can defeat good actors, or vice versa, or vice versa both ways in reverse.

For the

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Charles Gibson was not exactly the most revolutionary choice as ABC’s evening news anchor. But he has a revolutionary idea to draw more young viewers to the 6:30 broadcast: Put on more ads for things young people buy.

""I’d rather have car ads," he tells Gail Shister of the Philadelphia Inquirer. "When you put on ads mostly for

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In the newsstand edition of TIME this week, a few thoughts on how the Foley scandal has turned one of the GOP’s greatest pop cultural assets–TV shows that terrify people about their kids’ security–into a liability for the traditional law-and-order party.

The one point I didn’t have room to discuss in the essay is what an

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Saturday night, Elton John and Bernie Taupin once told us, is all right for fighting. Unless you’re a TV show; moving to Saturday means it’s time to give up the fight. This is the fate of Kidnapped. Shortly after NBC announced that the much-touted, little-watched new serial would end after a run of 13 episodes, the network today said the

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SPOILER ALERT: The following post contains what could well be spoilers, if I were able to make any sense of the plot points.

In the first seconds of season 3 of Lost, we learned the most important fact yet about the Others: They have CDs. In a flashback scene reminiscent of the season 2 opener, newcomer Other Juliet pops a CD into her

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As a professional snobby, elitist critic, I am not in the habit of saying that the masses are right. But I make an exception when they agree with me, and they seem to have come around to my side on the massively overrated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the new self-aggrandizement vehicle from The West Wing’s masterwriter, Aaron Sorkin. …

Tonight on NBC, Friday Night Lights, one of the best dramas of the fall, with the potential to be the best, period. See my review in the Sept. 25 print version of Time, or without risk of paper cuts here.

I won’t elaborate much on my review except to emphasize that, although the show is about a West Texas high school football team (a

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There’s always a TV angle. On Friday, Florida congressman Mark Foley shocked the political world when he announced his resignation, after reports emerged that he had sent sexually suggestive e-mails to teenage pages. On Friday night, NBC once again won the 18 to 49-year-old demographic ratings race in the 9 p.m. slot with its successful

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