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It was reality TV’s most painful breakup ever, as LeBron James told the city of Cleveland: it’s not you, it’s my desire for a championship ring. In a dramatic, drawn-out special that would have done ABC proud—it seemed as if James should have been interviewed by Chris Harrison, not Jim Gray—the free agent announced his decision to …
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You shall have to go elsewhere for your LeBron James analysis; my awareness of pro baskbetball ended right around the time of one of Michael Jordan’s retirements. But this is a TV blog, and so it it my duty to inform you that ESPN will be carrying James’ decision—whether to spare the human race or crush us with the robot army currently …
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First of all, yes, I know these “Morning After” posts are increasingly coming after noon. I have a lot of things going on. Thus, I have decreed that the morning now lasts until 3:30 p.m. At which time, Cocktail Hour immediately begins. There is no longer an afternoon.
Now for last night’s TV. I was suspicious of Bravo’s Work of Art …
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It takes 20 years to build a job, 140 characters to end it. On Tuesday, CNN senior editor for Middle Eastern Affairs Octavia Nasr posted this comment on Twitter: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot. #Lebanon.” By yesterday, with CNN under fire for Nasr’s having …
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Joel McHale and Sofia Vergara revealed the nominations for the 2010 primetime Emmy Awards this morning. And while TV critics’ complaining about award nominations is as tired a ritual as sweeps stuntcasting, this time out the list was… well, surprisingly defensible.
On the comedy side, it was a big year for new series Modern Family …
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Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next fall’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But, premature opinions are why God invented the Internet, so …
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The women of The Daily Show‘s staff yesterday took the unusual step of issuing an open letter in response to a lengthy Jezebel blog post from last month that charged the show had a “problem” with women—specifically, with hiring too few women writers and on-camera talent.
To rehash quickly, blogger Irin Carmon talked to female comics …
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My initial interest in ABC’s summer series Downfall fell when I learned that it was not a spinoff of the online Hitler parody videos. Last night, I finally checked in on the game show, whereupon my interest fell even further. As did the contestants, the prizes and pretty much everything on the show.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmCpmEQD0L4]
This also falls under While I Was Out, but I thought it deserved a post of its own: IFC is airing (actually, started airing Friday) reruns of Freaks and Geeks and, this fall, will also air Judd Apatow’s follow-up college comedy, Undeclared. (Apatow produced Freaks, which was created …
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So yeah, I’m back. Though fair warning: over my vacation, my niece in Michigan taught me how to make marshmallows from scratch, so it’s pretty much a matter of time until I bag the whole TV-criticism day-job thing and make my fortune in the lucrative and trendy small-batch-marshmallow business. But until then, a quick rehash of a few …
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Last night on a very special edition of The Bachelorette, the current reigning Bachelor, Jake Pavelka, and the object of his rose-bestowal, Vienna Girardi, returned to explain to Chris Harrison the very public tabloid breakup of their made-on-TV relationship. The charge, as Vienna brought it: that a month after they declared their love …
Take note of these 10 films to see you through until the next World Cup tournament begins in 2014.
During long holiday weekends like this, I invariably find myself scanning through my DVR archive, catching up on all the shows I’ve taped and then forgotten about. There are four programs I basically record en masse: Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares (the British version), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (still catching up with early …
