Tuned InMedia
Barack Obama has a reputation as a brilliant speaker, but not, on his own behalf, an effective talker. He has delivered passages of soaring rhetoric and inspired crowds, but as President, he has faltered at simply talking to citizens: laying out, convincingly, plainly, point by point, why and how he believes his policies will work and …
Tuned InTelevision
The ratings for the first night of the Democratic National Convention are in, and they’re not tremendously more impressive than those for the first night of the RNC: about 22 million viewers in the 10 pm hour, compared with about 20.5 million.*
*Update: The above figures are for the three broadcast and three cable networks (ABC, CBS, …
Tuned InNews Media
Last Thursday at the Republican National Convention, Clint Eastwood attacked an invisible opponent in a chair with rambling sarcasm. Last night, at the Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama attacked an invisible opponent without using a prop or a name, without even, in so many words attacking. Her opening-night speech, …
Tuned InTelevision
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, make sure you take any necessary bathroom breaks, then watch Sunday night’s 2012 finale of Breaking Bad.
Breaking Bad began its final season with enough shoes-waiting-to-drop to fill …
Tuned InTelevision
One thing you learn a lot about as a TV critic is people’s relationships to their childhoods. Especially when writing obituaries–there’s a kind of intimate connection that people form, as kids, with TV that it’s hard for other entertainment genres to match. There’s so much of it, for one thing: just look at the number of notable, …
Tuned InTuned In
I’m not sure what precisely is the amount of time that can elapse before a TV show is anointed a classic, but I’m going to go ahead and say that Arrested Development qualifies. Which is why it is all the more unusual and amazing that, over six years after the last original episode aired, the revival of the show next year on Netflix, with …
Tuned InTuned In
It makes sense that TV, something we spend so many childhood afternoons and sick days with, is such a nostalgia trigger–see the reaction when any beloved sitcom character dies. But it’s funny how sentimentally attached people–especially, maybe, Gen-Xers of my vintage–are to commercials, usually the most-bemoaned part of the TV …
Tuned InTelevision
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, pick up some green beans from the deli counter and watch last night’s Breaking Bad.
Tuned InTelevision
For the next two weeks, lucky people, you will be getting a vacation from me.
Tuned InTelevision
It would be hard to describe a TV series I would be more predisposed to like than BBC America’s Copper, debuting Sunday. Grimy, unromanticized historical fiction? Check. Story with a familiar period (the Civil War) and a familiar …
Tuned InTelevision
Sometimes a quickie is better. In its first season, Husbands–a web comedy about gay newlyweds–had barely as much time to tell its story as the pilot episode of a typical network sitcom. Yet in that space, it managed to tell a much more complex and interesting story about changing mores and the conflict between individuals and social …
Tuned InTelevision
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t yet watched Friday Night Lights and don’t want to learn any plot points, don’t read this post. Also, for the love of God, watch Friday Night Lights already.
Tuned InTelevision
Before it even debuted last night, NBC’s Stars Earn Stripes was granted that highest of honors for a reality TV show: a protest. The competition, in which celebrities are paired with soldiers to carry out special-forces-type …
