James Poniewozik

Here at Tuned In, we tend to focus on midseason ratings more than midterm returns, but tonight, for you our dear friends, something different: at the Time Midterm Blog (bookmark it now!), I’ll be liveblogging the midterm coverage and election returns with columnist Joe Klein and Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox. That’s right: one

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You feel as if your life is being influenced, unbeknownst to you, by the actions of strangers thousands of miles away. Are you: (a) paranoid, (b) a typical anxious citizen of the globalization era, or (c) a character in a watercooler-buzzed movie or TV series? In this week’s print edition of TIME, the latest installment of my Culture …

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read this post before watching last night’s Lost, or you’ll learn that… that… sniff… excuse me…

Almost since Lost began, fans have whined and complained that the deaths on the series have been convenient and wussified–targeting less-popular, peripheral characters (Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, Libby) or

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After a career of giving away cars and appliances and making the dogs and cats of America cross their legs uncomfortably at the end of every Showcase Showdown, The Price Is Right host and spaying-and-neutering advocate Bob Barker, 82, is hanging up his microphone as of June.

Genial, laid-back and just corny enough on camera, Barker is

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There’s a little less truthiness and a bit fewer moments of Zen on YouTube today, as Comedy Central has aggressively leaned on the viral-video-sharing site to take down segments of its shows, including The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. Interesting move, that: a cable channel whose existence depends on getting the attention of

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In the cuneiform-engraved, buy-it-and-hold-it-in-your-hands print version of Time magazine this week, an edition of my "Culture Complex" column, expanding on my post last week about the Michael J. Fox affair. While episodes like the Sen. George Allen "macaca" incident have spread hype about "The YouTube election," the Fox ad — which

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Tonight at 10 p.m. E.T., NBC gives what may turn out to be one last, best chance for the best new drama of the season, one that viewers have ignored despite its intelligence, heart and emotional resonance. No, I haven’t changed my mind about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, nor have I been drinking. For one night only, NBC is turning over

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You would have thought that Alex P. Keaton and conservative radio god Rush Limbaugh would be pretty simpatico. But you would have thought wrong. After actor Michael J. Fox shot a TV ad for Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, criticizing her Republican opponent Jim Talent for opposing expanding stem-cell research, Limbaugh accused

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I’m going to dispense with the usual Spoiler Alert on this post, because damned if I can think of any information in last night’s Lost that would qualify.

We learned that, if you screw with people’s heads–Benry Gale conning Sawyer, Jack exploiting Juliet’s resentment of Benry–you gain power over them. Very meta, that. That’s pretty

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When Madonna went on Oprah Winfrey today to "set the record straight" about her controversial adoption of a Malawian child, the subject of most immediate interest was not her new baby. It was her new accent. The singer’s speaking style had long ago morphed into a strange, inexplicable Britmericanese. But there was something different

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In the print edition of Time this week–and now just a tantalyzing click away–Five TV Food Shows to Sink Your Teeth Into. Because TV and food go together like sedentary lifestyles and morbid obesity.

And yes, I have already seen this week’s Top Chef. Mwahahahahaha!

The drawback with not watching sports, I’ve written before, is that, if you’re a TiVo-using ad-skipper like me, you never find out what commercials are on the air now. So it was not until I watched the World Series that I discovered that, in American culture, we are now apparently cool with using disaster and mass murder to sell trucks. …

This fall has proved that the big three networks have two big problems. As NBC admitted in announcing massive cuts yesterday, their primetime schedules are losing viewers while the cost of dramas and sitcoms is greater than ever. Meanwhile, amid the fizzled hype around Katie Couric, their evening newscasts keep sliding into irrelevance,

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