The first day of Oprah Winfrey’s three-day send-off began about as low-key as you would have suspected, with copious tears, A-list celebrities and cheering crowds holding up video placards like something straight out of a Super Bowl halftime show. The program of events, a voiceover intoned as the titles rolled, was “One of the …
Happy Lost Day! One Year After
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A year ago today, Lost came to an end, the Island castaways (or many of them) met in the afterlife, and the Internet exploded. I reviewed the finale the night the show ended; I reconsidered it a few days later; and I returned to rewatch the finale at the end of last summer.
I had planned, at …
MSNBC Hires Non-Puppet Michael Steele; Roger Ailes Wants to Be GOP Puppetmaster
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Fox News’ Republican-professional commentator ranks have been thinning lately, with contributors Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum leaving to explore Presidential runs. So you’d think that Fox might be a promising perch for former GOP party chief Michael Steele. You would be wrong: …
Game of Thrones Watch: Talk to the Hand
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, fix yourself a nice juicy horse snack and watch last night’s Game of Thrones.
“A Golden Crown” was the final episode of Game of Thrones I saw in advance before I reviewed the series. In that review, I quoted a couple of scenes that, for me, captured the essence of Thrones’ attitude toward …
Upfronts 2011: What We Learned
The major broadcast schedule presentations, or “upfronts,” ended yesterday. I’ve given some impressions of the 2011–12 shows we saw previewed this week, but it’s worth repeating that those are nothing more than impressions, based on trailers, which can give nothing more than a thumbnail idea of a show and often a misleading one. Over …
Office Watch: You're Not the Boss of Me
Spoilers for last night’s season finale of The Office below:
There are three ways to look at “Search Committee”: (1) as an episode in itself, (2) as a way of judging the overall success of season seven of The Office and (3) as a table-setter for the extended life of Dunder-Mifflin without Michael Scott. I want to have something more …
Parks and Recreation Watch: A Little Horse With Grief
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Spoilers for the season finale of Parks and Recreation, below:
Earlier this season, Parks and Recreation followed up the splendid “Harvest Festival” episode with “Camping,” in which Leslie Knope dealt with an unexpected complication of the festival’s success: what was she going to do for a …
Upfronts 2011: Sarah Michelle Gellar Is Back, and Other Familiar Sights from The CW
The CW is TV’s newest major (if you want to call it that) broadcast network, even if you count the predecessors it was formed from—The WB and UPN—which date back to the mid-’90s. But it’s old enough by now to have a history, and the new shows it announced today, rounding out the broadcast upfronts for the year, recall that history …
Modern Family Watch: The Graduate
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Spoilers for last night’s Modern Family below:
Little time for a big writeup because of (1) upfronts and (2) everything else upfronts have kept me from doing. But let’s take a moment to give credit to a nicely themed and executed Modern Family, which embodied some of the series’ best …
Upfronts 2011: CBS Unveils New Shows, Erases Sheen and Couric
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The TV upfronts are a big fast car with no rear-view mirror. The shining vista of the future is extolled. The good times of the present are celebrated. And the flaming car wrecks of the past, littering the highway behind? Never happened! Moving forward!
CBS, to be fair, is doing well …
Judging American Idol: The Final 3
It was final three night on American Idol, which meant that the show packed a whole nine songs into a mere two hours. In their penultimate performance, the trio were mentored by Beyonce. Who was irreplaceable? Who proved not to be ready for this jelly? Click the pix for my reviews:
The Good Wife Watch: If the Glove Fits…
Spoilers for the season finale of The Good Wife coming up:
In a couple of recent Good Wife reviews, I expressed some misgivings over the show’s introducing Peter’s affair with Kalinda as a storyline. It’s not that it’s implausible, but the show has become much stronger and more complex than its original concept—i.e., political wife …
Upfronts 2011: CBS Keeps It Simple
Every spring, the daffodils bloom in April, kids start playing baseball again, and I get to type the sentence: “Emphasizing the stability of its lineup, CBS announced a fall schedule with just a handful of changes.” CBS is strong, and it is stable; it’s arguably the only TV network left able to put together a lineup like the Big Three …