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, …
Breaking Bad Watch: Flush of Recognition
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 …
Robo-James’ Time Machine: The Electronic Nurse
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, …
Robo-James’ Time Machine: Arrested Re-Development
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 …
Robo-James’ Time-Machine: The Unbearable Sadness of Levi’s
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 …
Breaking Bad Watch: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, pick up some green beans from the deli counter and watch last night’s Breaking Bad.
Programming Note
For the next two weeks, lucky people, you will be getting a vacation from me.
TV Weekend: Copper
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 …
Husbands: Do You Take These Men? We Do!
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 …
Return to the Scene of the Crime: FNL Season 2, Reconsidered
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.
The Morning After: Unfriendly Fire
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 …
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Reality Television
I’m not sure I have ever watched two reality shows, the subjects of which I wish could meet one another as much as I wish it for Gallery Girls and Get to Work, both of which debuted last night.
Breaking Bad Watch: Train in Vain
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, put off watching that DVD of Heat you just picked up and watch last night’s Breaking Bad.
“Swear on your children’s lives.” –Lydia
He does it for the kids. Whatever sins Walter …