I arrived at the Beverly Hilton for TCA press tour in the middle of the afternoon, so I missed the first half of NBC’s day of presentations, in which we learned that The Playboy Club is actually about the empowerment of women and that new programming chief Robert Greenblatt would like to bring a little bit of the spirit of his old …
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TCA Roundup: Is AMC the New HBO? Is HBO the New AMC?
The TCA TV critics’ press tour (which I will be joining next week) continued with its cable round yesterday, as critics and reporters heard from AMC, a critics’ darling that has recently taken some dings in its Teflon armor over the season finale of The Killing, ugly negotiations over Mad Men and a shakeup at hit zombie drama The …
Louie Watch: Tunnel of Love
No time for a lengthy writeup of last night’s excellent Louie, “Subway/Pamela,” but a few quick, bulleted thoughts:
* There are a lot of great things that Louie does, but it deserves more credit for bringing back the art of the silent film, as in the (mostly) wordless subway sequence that opened the episode.
TCA Roundup: That's PROFESSOR Boston Rob to You
The TCA TV critics’ press tour continued yesterday with the first full day of panels, from various cable channels. What did we learn?
* That America, God help it, is going to be learning history from Survivor’s “Boston Rob” Mariano. Or at least “history,” as brought to you by the History channel, which means Around the World in 80 Ways, …
Video: The Daily Show Catches Fox's Religious Conversion (Over Terrorism)
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Sometimes a Daily Show comedy segment involves an elaborate, reported-in-the-field setup. Sometimes it’s a lengthy, constructed satirical riff. And sometimes it just involves finding somebody doing something colossally hypocritical, collecting a whole lot of videotape, and …
TCA Roundup: Walking Dead Loses Its Head
Yesterday was a set-visit day for the writers at the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles; today begins the first full day of sessions from cable networks. (I expect full reports from that Weather Channel panel, folks!) But there’s already some news emerging out of the TV-meets-journalism confab at the Beverly …
The Path to the White House Runs Through AMC Mob Week
AMC announced that it’s scheduling its first-ever Mob Week next month, to be hosted by none other than former federal prosecutor, former NYC mayor, former TIME Person of the Year, former Presidential frontrunner, former Presidential primary washout and current, well, AMC movie-week host, Rudolph Giuliani.
As with Sarah Palin’s TLC …
TCA 2011: Achieving Critical Mass
With Comic-Con having just wrapped up, the reporting-about-TV business shifts immediately to LA, where the Television Critics Association summer press tour begins today. I’ll be going back this year, but only for part of it—I admire and weep for my colleagues who do the entire two-week stint, plus Comic-Con. I’ll be in LA next week, …
Operators Are Standing By*: Obama, Boehner Duel in Primetime
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Speaking on primetime TV from the I Killed Osama Bin Laden Memorial Hallway, President Barack Obama attempted to swing people power to his side in the debt-ceiling debate, using the trappings of the office and an appeal to America’s sense of compromise. Assuming it still has …
The Morning After: Curb Your Antagonism
Last night’s episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, “The Palestinian Chicken,” examined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of chicken (if one ignores that a chicken lens would be opaque unless sliced very thin). I wouldn’t say it was as polarizing as the Mideast situation itself, but it at least has generated some hot …
Comic-Con Roundup: The Final Not-Final Answers to Lost
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As Comic-Con wraps up in San Diego (at which point, I believe, people start getting on line for the panels at next year’s Comic-Con in San Diego), a few more items of TV news:
* Entering the panel discussion wearing a stormtrooper outfit and a Dharma jumpsuit respectively, Carlton …
Louie Watch: Your Beloved Racist Aunt
Every week I say that I’m not going to write about Louie every week, and yet again here comes another episode so weird and strangely affecting that I can’t not say a little something about it. So here goes again.
“Country Drive” was another of those Louie episodes that it’s hard to imagine working in a sitcom with a more conventional …
Comic-Con Roundup: Cornholio Returns, Alcatraz Debuts, Thrones Takes a Bow
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Braver souls than I are in San Diego now, surfing the massive throngs of fandom and covering the panels at Comic-Con. A few reports from the first day’s sessions:
* Entertainment Weekly asked Con-sters what they thought of a screening of J. J. Abrams’ Alcatraz. (The implicit question seems to …