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Jeff Conaway, star of Taxi and Grease and of an unfortunate tabloid/reality-TV saga, has died at age 60, after being taken off life support following a reported overdose of painkillers. It is sad news, and news that most of us would be lying to say we were shocked by. As chronicled on …
Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next season’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But premature opinions are why God invented the Internet, so …
Even though TV is a more year-round phenomenon than ever, the end of the regular TV season—with the crush of upfronts news and all the season finales to watch/cover—still feels like finishing a race for me. So Memorial Day is a good time to do what I would do after running a marathon: catch my breath, set my next goals and get …
My column in this week’s print TIME magazine reports from the upfronts on a trend I noted more briefly here after the fall-schedule announcements: the peculiar and specious trend of sitcoms about the “emasculated” modern man. It’s most blatant in new comedies like Last Man Standing, Work It, Man Up and How to Be a Gentleman, though …
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Spoilers for last night’s Modern Family season finale below:
I wrote last week that the previous episode of Modern Family, “See You Next Fall,” played like it was intended as a season finale, ending with a valedictorian speech, bringing the family together for a life transition and putting a …
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Having recently parted ways with Keith Olbermann, whose controversies and run-ins with management proved too much for the channel, MSNBC now has an Ed Schultz problem. The cable network suspended the evening host for a week after he called conservative commentator Laura Ingraham a …
Spoilers for last night’s American Idol Season 10 finale below:
I’ll just spoil it for you before the jump: this year’s American Idol is—a country singer!
Oh, which one? The choice boiled down, as in years past, to what you think the voting criteria should be: the finale performance or the season over all? Is Idol the Super Bowl, …
“I’m talking about the same [god] you talk about. I’m talking about the Alpha and Omega. The omniscient, the omnipresent, the ultimate consciousness, the source, the force, the all of everything there is, the one and only G-O-D.”
Just to be clear, Oprah Winfrey was actually talking there about the One God of monotheistic religion, not …
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CNBC just issued the sudden and sad news that Mark Haines, founding anchor of the channel’s signature program Squawk Box, died last night. The channel has launched a lot of business-news stars in its time, but Haines was as close as anyone to being its defining face and voice. Like a …
Spoilers for the season 2 finale of Glee below:
Seen one way, New Directions blew their visit to New York by wasting a lot of time. They spent their visit mooning around Broadway stages, running around the fountain in Lincoln Center and getting into pillow fights, while spending apparently all of five minutes slapping together two …
And then there were two: Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina dueled it out in the season 10 finale of American Idol Tuesday night. It was the boy next door vs. the girl, um, next door to him! It almost wasn’t, however, as Lauren strained her voice, as explained on Idol‘s stage by the world’s most informally dressed doctor. Who got a clean …
The United Center sendoff for Oprah Winfrey has been the most moving celebration of good works and selflessness since the star-studded two-part televised special that Gandhi threw for himself. And if the first day of the special was celebritastic, then the second was positively celeborgasmic. Will Smith! Jamie Foxx! Rosie O’Donnell! …
The History channel, as we all know, puts a premium on the veracity and historical truth of its projects. That was the ostensible reason, for instance, that the channel rejected the miniseries The Kennedys, saying that the political story did not meet its standards of accuracy.
Now History has a new project: Survivor producer Mark …
