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 …
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Test Pilot: Ringer
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
…
Test Pilot: 2 Broke Girls
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 …
Programming Note
I’m going to be on vacation for the next week, traversing the wilds of southeast Michigan and, with any luck, having at least one sandwich at Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor. Keep checking this space, though: there may be a guest post or two, and I’ve set up Robo-James—taking a break from his burgeoning career in the world of robot …
ABC Announces Its Fall Premiere Dates
Following Fox and The CW, ABC today announced its rollout schedule for its new and returning fall shows. While the networks have experimented in recent years with staggered fall schedules to avoid shows getting lost in a pileup of premieres, most of ABC’s new shows will debut traditionally, in late September—the exceptions being the …
End of a Cop Show Era? Goodbye to Law & Order: Criminal Intent
I’m not a fan of phony eulogies, and so I will confess up front that I was not a huge fan of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which just ended its run on USA. It’s partly that I could never sign on to its central selling point, the performance of Vincent D’Onofrio as Goren, who had his curtain call this last season; what some fans saw as …
The Morning After: Faerie Tale
HBO’s True Blood returned last night with a season four premiere that expanded further on the show’s sexy-magic Southern gothic world: a little witchcraft, a little more vampire politics and a visit with Sookie to a Faerie world/prison that looked a bit like the world’s cheesiest gallery opening party. True Blood lost me after its …
Peter Falk Dies at 83
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Actor Peter Falk reportedly died last night at age 83, at his home in Beverly Hills. According to his daughter, reports USA Today, Falk had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
As an actor, Falk was a performer who was more than he at first seemed: he had a famously …
Louie Watch: Pregnant Pause
Spoilers for last night’s Louie below:
Since I’m stepping back from weekly Watches on the blog, I don’t expect to be writing about Louie every week, though I’ll certainly be watching. But because I visited the set for the shooting of “Pregnant,” because it gives some suggestions as to the direction of the second season, and Louis CK …
Dead Tree Alert: From Oprah to Olbermann
My column in the dead-tree issue of TIME out today looks at the return of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, not so much from a review perspective but looking at Olbermann as the latest example of a media star leveraging his or her brand. Oprah launched the OWN channel, Glenn Beck is turning his show into an online subscription network, …
Fox Announces Fall Premiere Dates
This morning Fox network announced its fall schedule, which will bring two high-expectations series, The X Factor and Terra Nova, to air in September along with the sitcom New Girl. Animated comedy Allen Gregory and live-humans comedy I Hate My Teenage Daughter will be along later in the fall; the rest of Fox’s new shows (such as …
Louis CK Interview, Part 2: Money and Mortality
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FX’s Louie, the dark-comic vision of Louis CK, returns for a second season tonight. (Also, the season-one DVD just came out; see above for a probably-NSFW deleted scene.) My feature on the comedian and the new season is in this week’s TIME magazine, and part one of the (lightly …
Louis CK Interview, Part 1: Fatherhood and Fear
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FX’s Louie, the dark-comic vision of Louis CK, returns for a second season tomorrow. My feature on the comedian and the new season is in this week’s TIME magazine. For that article, last month I sat down with Louis CK in an apartment in Upper Manhattan that was doubling as the show’s set and …