Spoiler alert: Before you read this post, call down to room service, order anything you like, then watch last night’s Mad Men.
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PopulistTelevision
Top 10 Twilight Zone Episodes
“There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man.” Those words kicked off one of the most storied TV shows of all time, The Twilight Zone. TIME takes a look at some of its most memorable episodes
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Something Completely Different: Reviewing Starbucks' Instant Brew
You may be unaware that I have a double life as the coffee critic of Time.com. You are probably unaware of this because my credentials consist of one review of Starbucks’ Pike Place blend. Well, today, I have doubled my professional output, with a review of Starbucks’ new instant coffee, Via, which was surprisingly un-bad, even if I …
Picturing Americans at War in Afghanistan
We did something a little different with this week’s issue of Time. We devoted the cover package almost entirely to a photo essay, pictures of a single U.S. infantry company operating in a place called the Tangi Valley in Afghanistan. The photographer is Adam Ferguson, who has been to Afghanistan repeatedly as part of a project to …
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The Morning After: Second Flash
Still working my way through my Thursday-night TV backlog, with a thing or two else on my plate, so I’ll open the floor to your thoughts on the second FlashForward and/or the second Fringe of the season. As I mentioned last week, FlashForward intrigued me, but I didn’t actually like its writing or characters enough to move it to the …
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Office Watch: Double Your Displeasure
Spoilers for last night’s Office (and, briefly, Parks and Recreation and Community) after the jump:
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And the #1 Reason Not to Sleep With Your Employees Is…
A major celebrity sleeps with women who works for him, is caught, is hit up for extortion money, goes to the cops and ends up having to make a public confession on national TV—sounds like great material for Letterman! Unfortunately for David Letterman, it was, as the talk-show host turned the story of a bizarre legal episode into an …
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Dead Tree Alert: Comedy Comes Back
Sunday night, the Seinfeld-reunion arc starts on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and to greet it, I have an essay in the print TIME about the state of TV comedy 11 years later—which surprisingly, for once in a long while, is pretty good. For once in a long time, most of the best new series this year have been comedies. Part of the reason …
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P.I.s and TKOs for FX
With Jay Leno on five nights a week, somebody has to make dramas at 10 p.m., and increasingly that somebody is FX. Having already ordered the promising-looking Lawman for next year, the network adds to is stable of largely testosteron-ey dramas with two more drama orders for 2010. Terriers stars Donal Logue (pictured) as an unlicensed …
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TLC, Jon's Breakup Getting Uglier
Shortly after TLC announced that it was writing him out of the title of what is now Kate Plus 8, Jon Gosselin is striking back against the network. First he announced that he want to put the brakes on his divorce from wife Kate; though it may not be conducive to a reconciliation that, according to Radar Online, he never told her about …
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Glee Watch: Drop Dead (Drunk) Diva
SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers for last night’s Glee coming up after the jump:
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Sesame Street Does Mad Men
Yesterday we examined how Sesame Street, gearing up for its 40th anniversary, is preparing to conscript your children into Michelle Obama’s Khmer-Rouge-like farming collectives. Today, the show attempts to introduce children to Cheeveresque drama of white-collar angst, through its version of …
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The Morning After: Family Bonding
After a series comes out with a very funny pilot, the test of the subsequent episodes is not only whether they can be as funny as the first, but whether the show has another gear: whether the characters are one-joke specials or if they have more dimensions to them. So far, with its second episode, Modern Family is meeting that test just fine.