Tuned InUncategorized
As the 2011-12 TV season begins its third week, it has claimed its first victim: NBC’s The Playboy Club, whose ratings plunged as low as its necklines, has been cancelled.
Playboy was one of the most hyped new fall shows this year, though the attention was hardly all positive; Gloria Steinem, some local affiliates and groups like the …
Tuned InUncategorized
As I like to say, there’s one thing you have to give TV credit for: there’s a lot of TV on it. Too much for me to review, or even acknowledge, as one man with one blog. But if you have not noticed, my colleagues at Time.com’s NewsFeed have been beefing up their weekly TV coverage lately, today’s example being Melissa Locker’s recap of …
Tuned InNews Media
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eF6vCv13bw]
As country singer and Monday Night Football jinglemaster Hank Williams Jr. learned yesterday, Godwin’s Law is real, and there are penalties for violating it. Appearing on Fox News’ Fox and Friends to talk politics, the conservative Williams, in a rambling interview, criticized Speaker …
Tuned InUncategorized
Busy, busy, busy! As I mentioned in my Homeland post the other day, Sunday is quite the crowded viewing/blogging night for me right now, what with Breaking Bad wrapping up, Boardwalk Empire back in the regular rotation, and The Good Wife, Homeland and The Amazing Race, among other shows, competing for DVR space and time. In the …
Tuned InTelevision
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, put down that copy of Tom Sawyer—or David Copperfield, or whatever—and watch last night’s Boardwalk Empire.
Two men begin this episode of Boardwalk Empire, “Ourselves Alone,” in …
Tuned InTelevision
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, gather up the family and some of your closest armed guards and watch last night’s Breaking Bad.
When I take notes on any show I’m reviewing, I like to include little side …
Tuned InUncategorized
As surely as there is always money in the banana stand, there is always eternal optimism—encouraged by remarks by Arrested Development principals every half year or so—that the cast members of the show will reunite again and make the much-rumored Arrested Development movie. Sunday at the New Yorker Festival in New York City, …
Tuned InTelevision
There may be nothing more gratifying and unifying for people than coming together in disdain for a past idea, now universally agreed on to be stupid. One of the greatest of these in American history is alcohol prohibition, not merely the impetus for the criminal events of Boardwalk Empire, but the case study for the idea that the best …
Tuned InTelevision
This week in the print edition of TIME, I review what was pretty easily my favorite new series of the fall, Showtime’s Homeland, starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis and debuting Sunday night. It’s subscription-required, as …
Tuned InTelevision
There is a case to be made that most sitcoms should have only enough of a premise to get put on the air by a network. Then the show can ditch whatever it was ostensibly “about” at the pitch meeting and simply be about: Here is a …
Tuned InTuned In
There are a lot of things that critics look when reviewing pilots: premise, plot, dialogue, chemistry between actors, directing and so on. To me the most important is an intangible that’s hard to put a finger on, but without …
Tuned InTuned In
Having gotten all cranky yesterday over the second episode of 2 Broke Girls, let me offer a little balance here: the second episode of New Girl, “Kryptonite,” was really, encouragingly funny.
There’s been an industrial tank …
Tuned InNews Media
Don’t you hate when a fixture of the past several decades of your life comes to an end, reminding you of your own inexorable process of aging? That will happen this Sunday, when 60 Minutes’ Andy Rooney, the proud original H8R, will announce that he is ending his regular commentaries at the end of 60 Minutes.
Rooney, who began doing “A …
