SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, make your way home past your jeering subjects, and watch last night’s Game of Thrones.
“How can I call myself king if I can’t hold my own castle?” —Robb Stark
The first episode …
TV Weekend: The Return of Sherlock
How is it possible that a show based on a set of stories that began in the 19th century could be the freshest detective show on television? Sherlock, the British rethinking of Sherlock Holmes, managed that in 2010 with crisp …
The Morning After: American Idol Vs. The Voice
This is the first year in a while I haven’t been doing weekly writeups of the American Idol performance shows, pretty opportune timing for me because the show has reached a level of padding I thought impossible even for it, the …
Mad Men Character Study: The Education of Sally Draper
Is it possible that Sally Draper is the secret protagonist of Mad Men?
Watching TV Without Cable? Fine. But You May Have to Pay for Cable Anyway
The cord-cutting era may be getting cut back itself. According to a report in the New York Post, the online video outlet Hulu (a joint venture of NBC, Fox and ABC) is considering requiring that its users prove they have a cable …
The Morning After: You Can’t Go Home Again
Quick thoughts on the season finale of The Good Wife below:
One concern I’d had as season 3 of The Good Wife went on was that the show might be attempting to hit the reset button, returning to the circumstances of the series’ …
Girls Watch: Ready for Their Close Up
With “All Adventurous Women Do,” you’ve now seen as many episodes of Girls as I’d seen before I reviewed it. Rather than recap the episode line by line, let me unpack two scenes from it that helped confirm I was sold on this …
Game of Thrones Watch: Three Wishes
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, broil a chunk of raw meat and watch last night’s Game of Thrones.
“They say he can’t be killed.” “And do you believe them?” “No, my Lord. Anyone can be killed.”
Arya Stark is a …
30 Rock Watch: Live-TV Love Letter
Looking back at my review of the first live 30 Rock in October 2010, I thought it was a fun experiment but not a great episode of the show. The jarring thing about the transition was not the live performance per se but the live …
Best of Both Worlds: Fringe Gets One More (Final) Season
One mark of the way TV has matured as a storytelling form is that you can now be equally happy to hear that a show you love is getting renewed and that it’s going off the air. As dramas in particular tell more ambitious …
Dead Tree Alert: The Year of the Nontroversy
Who’s nicer to dogs? Whose idiot supporters said more obnoxious things than the other guy’s idiot supporters? Who didn’t eat a cookie that it would have been more advisable for him to eat? These are some of the burning issues that have faced America as the general election of 2012 has gotten under way. And in my column in the print TIME …
TV Tonight: The Costco Craze
Like most shoppers, I believe I am smarter than most shoppers. I shop at Costco, for instance—so I tell myself—because I’m savvy about the quality of the products I buy, about knowing what I want and finding it without assistance and about the savings of buying in volume.
But in truth, I also shop at Costco because, oh holy God, …
TV Tonight: What Are Parks and Rec’s Politics?
The Pawnee City Council race heats up in tonight’s Parks and Recreation with an episode written and directed by star Amy Poehler, in which Leslie Knope has a high-stakes TV debate with her main opponent, Bobby Newport (Paul …