Yesterday was the first day of summer, the longest, lightest day of the year, which made it the astronomically perfect day for ABC to premiere its companion piece to Wipeout, 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show.
The premise was simple: the host asked a group of contestants challenging, multiple-choice questions about—I don’t know, facts …
The brand-spanking-new Broadcast Television Journalists Association has announced the winners of its brand-spanking-new Critics’ Choice Television Awards. The winners (list follows the jump) include some usual-suspects shows like Mad Men, but also underrecognized series like Fringe, whose John Noble (best supporting actor) deserves …
Spoilers for last night’s season finale of The Killing below:
It’s a familiar story that, when a cable network debuts a deliberate, slow-to-unfold serial like The Killing, viewers start to worry that it’s not going to pay off. And TV critics like me, or other viewers who are enthralled with the promise of the series, counsel patience: …
One of the hoariest sci-fi tropes is the invading alien race that wants our women (or occasionally, to mix it up, our men). It never held up much to logical scrutiny; rare is the viewer who has, in turn, looked at a scary reptilian space creature and thought “mmm, I’d like to get me some of that.” (That it was able to put a human in …
As you know if you read this blog, I have love for Glee, but it’s a tough love and sometimes hard to justify. The show fascinates me and, especially in this past season, frustrates me. It can be transcendent and self-indulgent, emotionally true and utterly ridiculous, inventive and repetitive. Often within the same scene!
There are …
In this week’s TIME, I have a feature on Louis CK, whose amazing, idiosyncratic comedy Louie returns to FX next Thursday. The piece looks at the unusual financial and creative deal that he has for the show, and how that allows him to make a show that’s a more individual vision than just about anything on TV outside, say, South …
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The Anthony Weiner twimmolation saga ended today with all the dignity began with: a heckler (Benjy Bronk from The Howard Stern Show) shouting his resignation speech down, cable-news anchors saying the word “sexting” repeatedly and Weiner saying he would step down “most importantly, so …
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It is almost too easy to be horrified and sanctimonious toward TLC’s Toddlers and Tiaras, which had its season 6 debut last night. But you know, sometimes the easy thing is the right thing.
The first new episode of the network’s highly successful child-pageant horrorshow was …
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 …
It’s summertime, when the regular TV season ends, the off-season reality shows get rolled out and TV critics start writing manifestoes. Well, two of them, anyway. The last couple of weeks have seen big TV think pieces by Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter and Todd VanDerWerff of The AV Club, staking out very different positions 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 …
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Last night in New Hampshire, CNN held its first debate of the Republican presidential primary. Among the headlines: Michele Bachmann announced that she had filed papers for a Presidential run, an indication of her seriousness about entering the race that was evidently not sufficiently conveyed …
Critics spend much of the rest of the year griping about the awards choices of other organizations, so it’s only fair that once a year we allow you to do the same to us. The Television Critics Association (of which I’m a member) today announced its nominations for the 2011 TCA Awards. (The group is no relation to the Broadcast …
