The final twelve contestants took the Big Stage last night, but the dramatic vocal performance of the night was a duet by Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell, as they continued their ongoing tango of homophobia, or -philia, I’m not quite sure which. During a sidebar on, of all things, Melinda Doolittle’s shoes, Ryan sniped at Simon: “Stay out …

I haven’t had time to do a proper review of Comedy Central’s Halfway Home, which debuts tonight, and my deadlines being what they are, it doesn’t look like that’s likely to change soon, so: watch it. That review enough for you?

OK, a little more elaboration: this largely improv comedy–set at, yes, a halfway house–is a little like Reno …

The leading website of indie TV criticism just got a little less indie. Television Without Pity, home of endless fan discussions and nearly endless, snarky TV-show recaps, is being purchased by Bravo cable network.

As Tim Gunn is wont to say, this worries me. After all, Bravo is home to some of TWoP’s richest targets, including Top …

My post this morning about MTV reality shows yielded some comments on the age-old theme: remember when MTV used to play videos? The short answer, of course, is that if you can answer yes to that question, you are really too old to be watching MTV.

The longer answer to that question is that MTV does still play videos. (And no, I’m not …

Is MTV having a crisis of conscience? I’ve become hooked, lately, on two of MTV’s latest reality shows, Juvies and Engaged & Underage. (MTV shows are ideal for storing up on Tivo, because the channel has one of the highest commercial-to-program ratios on cable.) The former show, shot in raw documentary style, looks at the wrenching …

SCI FI Channel Photo: Carole Segal

Not nearly as much to comment on in this week’s Galactica, though, after all, you can’t expect them to kill off (or pseudo-kill off) a major character every week. While I was glad they got back to the fascinating character of Baltar, I was less interested in the legal machinations, especially the …

Great TV is often con artistry: a show takes an outlandish premise and gets you to buy it, not so much by making you believe that it’s plausible as by making you want to imagine a world in which it is. That’s the case with The Riches, FX’s mordant con-artist drama, which debuts tonight. It’s far-fetched. It’s outlandish. You will think …

Entourage. Because I can. Because I have the first five episodes. And yes, I am doing a little taunting dance as I write this. Makes it kinda hard to type.

Actually, I’m excited and a little trepidatious. I thought season 3 was a comedown from the stellar season 2, partly because it swung too far in the direction of being The Ari Gold …

On the CW series Veronica Mars, the sharp-tongued eponymous college detective manages to get the best of–among other people–the pretty young airheads who get in her way.

That’s how you can tell it’s a TV show. In the real, meta-world of TV ratings, things don’t always work out so nicely. This week, Mars went on hiatus to make room for …

In the analog version of Time magazine this week, my Culture Complex column looks at new Comedy Central programs featuring Middle-Eastern-American comedians–including the Axis of Evil comedy special this weekend–and asks: if this ethnic group amounts to “the new blacks,” as the pundits say, are they ready for their own Richard Pryor? …

A couple commenters have reminded me of something I thought of during last night’s Lost but didn’t get into in my Lostwatch: What was the deal with that cat? Or rather, Keith asks:

So, was the cat at the farm the same cat at the restaurant or just similar looking? My boss thinks it is the same cat. I wasn’t sure.

This was a point of …