Spoilers for last night’s Glee below:
It has become my unofficial theory that episodes of Glee are good to the extent that they do not involve the adults in the cast. “Funeral,” however, upended this expectation, with an episode that saw the return of Actual Sympathetic Human Sue Sylvester, while all but putting the New Directions …
When I interviewed Sopranos creator David Chase back in 2002—before the show’s first season since 9/11—he went on a tear about the theory, then popular among TV executives, that the terror attacks meant that people would want “comfort food” programming. “People are going to want less complexity, people are going to want more …
Spoilers for last night’s How I Met Your Mother below:
Part of me is inclined to look at last night’s episode as the Arcadian Hotel—blown up, history, time to move on. There have been some strong moments in the past season of How I Met Your Mother—Marshall’s father’s death and Barney’s discovery of his own dad—but the series as …
In recent years, ABC has been the announc-iest of the networks in upfronts weeks, unveiling copious amounts of new shows in good years and bad. (This is partly because it’s had schedule holes to fill but partly because it has a habit of announcing all its midseason shows, while other networks sometimes keep some of their midseason …
Fox may not look it, but it’s getting old; the network is celebrating its 25th anniversary next season. While it continues to do well with American Idol, that show is a venerable hit, now in its 10th edition. Like a lot of people getting older, Fox likes to tell itself it still thinks young—that it’s the network of attitude and …
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The headline first: At NBC’s upfront schdule presentation to advertisers today in New York, Donald Trump announced that he is not running for President. (As I told you in February.) The announcement, which may have stunned political reporters who forgot that Trump did the same thing in 1988 and …
Fox, which previews its new series for advertisers this afternoon in Manhattan, released its 2011–12 schedule today, including four new comedies, three dramas and a new unscripted series. Among the highlights: Alcatraz, the much buzzed-about prison enigma from J. J. Abrams; The X-Factor, from Simon Cowell; the return of Kiefer …
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, retire to your deck—overlooking a terrifying thousand-foot drop—and watch last night’s Game of Thrones.
The first few episodes of Game of Thrones, because they had such a vast world to establish, involved a lot of talking: characters talking about history, about dragons, about who …
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NBC announced its 2011–12 schedule today, the first of the big networks to show its hand for Upfronts Week. (Click here for clips of all the upcoming shows.) I’ll have some thoughts on the previews we see after the upfronts presentation tomorrow, but here are some highlights, followed by the …
Monday through Thursday is “upfronts” week, when the major broadcast networks (plus some party-crashers like the Turner cable networks) present their schedules for next year to advertisers. (Cable has been holding its own upfronts piecemeal for the past couple of months.)
From the business end of TV, it’s the beginning of a ritual …
Quick spoilers for last night’s Friday Night Lights below:
I had planned, this week, to return to my regular schedule of reviewing Friday Night Lights for its NBC run, which I’ve dropped the ball on, so to speak, for the last couple weeks. You know what God does when you make plans: He dumps a bunch of other assignments on you, gives …
“For a Few Paintballs More,” the conclusion to Community‘s epic two-part finale/sequel to its vaunted first-season paintball extravaganza, wasn’t quite the tour de force of last week’s “A Fistful of Paintballs”; but since I was on the road and couldn’t weigh in on that one, this is a good time to give credit where due, and look back on …
Myriad reports out this morning say that CBS will retool its hit Two and a Half Men by replacing ousted cautionary tale Charlie Sheen with Ashton Kutcher. (Kutcher teased toward a confirmation on his Twitter feed.) One almost wonders whether the network simply decided to twist the knife in Sheen by picking someone, anyone, with more …
