Tuned InNews Media
My Tuned In column this week peers into the hour of extra-strength apocalyptic demagogue-a-tainment that is Fox News’ Glenn Beck show:
On March 23, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled the Obama Administration’s toxic-bank-assets plan. The stock markets cheered the news, sending the Dow up 497 points.
This meant one thing:
…
Tuned InNews Media
The buzz of newspaper-critic circles this morning—and, oooh, what exciting buzz that field generates!—is a front page ad in the LA Times for the new NBC cop drama Southland. (You can see it here, in a PDF that I assume will change with tomorrow’s edition of the paper.)
I wrote a column for Salon almost a decade ago when there was a …
Tuned InUncategorized
Tonight, NBC debuts the much-awaited Office-spinoff-but-it’s-not-but-it-kind-of-is-except-it’s-not Parks and Recreation, starring Amy Poehler. If you’ve been reading the advance buzz, you may have heard that it’s slavishly imitative of The Office and comes off as an inferior copy. I say that that’s not true—well, not entirely …
Tuned InUncategorized
Spoilers for last night’s American Idol coming up after the jump:
Tuned InUncategorized
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, unclog that nasty drain in your bathroom and watch last night’s episode of Lost.
Tuned In
ABC announced its summer programming today, which means a pile of reality/game shows and one series I’ve actually been awaiting, Mike Judge’s The Goode Family. I have not seen the series, so I’m anticipating it based only on Judge’s reputation, and the summer launch date is not exactly a ringing endorsement. (Has there been a hit …
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ABC is debuting a new cop drama, The Unusuals (above left), tonight; NBC is debuting a new cop drama, Southland, tomorrow. This has given many TV critics the idea to review both at once. My brief take: although the two shows are very different, they each leave me wishing I could somehow smoosh them together.
Britain’s Prince Charles, the sworn enemy of modern architecture, has gone on the offensive again. Earlier this week he attacked a plan for a large but mostly low-rise apartment development project. Designed by Richard Rogers’ firm, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, it would be built on a site in west London across from Christopher …
Tuned In
When you think about it, Lost is a pretty Jewish show, particularly given all the Passover resonances. There are, of course, all the Old Testament references. There is an exodus from a land of exile. There’s even a plague, though this one goes beyond affecting the firstborn to all Island babies and their mothers.
All of which is to …
Tuned InUncategorized
Fringe returned last night after an absence of several weeks, with a decent but not great episode about a feral child, discovered living underground, who bonds emotionally with Olivia. Fringe had gone to hiatus on a fairly high point, and I’d expected its return to continue more directly with the Pattern storyline it had embraced …
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I probably should start working my predictions in to the main American Idol review post, but since that’s already up, I will say:
* Kris, Lil and Scott in the bottom three, Scott goes home. Though the fact that I liked Kris for the first time this week does not bode well for him.
* Incidentally, at this point we’re all just waiting to …
Tuned InUncategorized
Before we get to the reviews of American Idol‘s Songs from the ‘Year You Were Born’ Night, I want to issue an apology to America on behalf of the 1980s. I was a teenager at the time, but I feel partly responsible for the decade’s popular music catalog. We all made choices we weren’t proud of. Just be thankful you were spared Paula …
Tuned In
At the last minute last week, I shifted gears from doing a writeup for season 5 of Rescue Me in favor of reviewing In Treatment for the print TIME. Then other things came up, so I never got through my full batch of screeners of the Denis Leary show, which returns tonight on FX. But a quick recommendation: even if you got tired of it …
