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Some critics love to have their blurbs quoted in ads. Some dread it. (When Fox highlighted an especially overheated quote from my review of Dark Angel–“We have seen the Woman of the Future, and she kicks butt”–I wanted to go into hiding for a week.) Either way, they don’t generally show up themselves to do the blurbing. But ABC, and …

So a few weeks ago, my iPod–my ancient, pre-video iPod–broke. Stared making clicky sounds and showed that picture of an iPod with cartoon X’s for eyes that is the most adorable way imaginable of telling you that you need to buy a new piece of electronic equipment.

I decided to hold off buying a new one, because the iPhone had come …

Is there a less appetizing phrase than nonalcoholic flavor strip? Except for “CBS rum-family saga,” no.

(Thanks to tvtattle for the link.)

Jim Lehrer, prepare to Frei! Sean McCormick / BBC Worldwide

In 2006, the anchor of the moment was Katie Couric. By early 2007, it was Charles Gibson. But this fall, it’s time to make room for… Matt Frei!

Who? The BBC’s Frei is the newly announced presenter–sorry, anchor–of BBC World News America, BBC America’s newly planned …

Monty Brinton/ CBS

Yesterday was Tuned In Jr.’s first day of school. He came home with a nasty skinned knee and a bandage on his finger from an accident with scissors. Foolishly, perhaps, we are not getting the lawyers involved. Because, you know, kids get hurt, right? Not exactly shocking.

It might have seemed different, though, if he …

HBO photo: Nicole Rivelli

I actually do manage to stay fairly unplugged while on vacation, so I had a lot of late-August TV waiting for me when the family got back to the Borough of Kings. I don’t have the diligence–nor, I bet, do you have the patience–for a full-scale roundup of what I missed, but:

Big Love. The finale was a decent …

Apparently I wrote a column while I was on vacation. It’s in the current Time magazine and online right here. Who knew? That work-while-you-sleep chip they implanted in my brain must have kicked in!

Actually, it’s a column on the networks’ summer-karaoke shows, bumped for space reasons a while back, which my editors apparently decided …

OK suckers, funtime’s over. Flesh-James has returned from vacation.

The Tuned In family went to California, where, it being California, we rented a Toyota Prius. My two favorite features of the car: (1) You turn it on by pressing a power button, which makes it like driving a Macintosh; (2) There’s a dashboard monitor displaying, in real …

For the last Robo-Post before my return from vacation, a simple question.

You are reading a blog about TV.

You are reading it using the Internet.

If you could use only one of the two–forever–which would you pick?

No cheating.

*Apologies to our Windows-using friends for the partisan Mac reference.

On Sept. 16, The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences honors the achievements of Boston Legal, and, you know, probably a few other shows, at the Emmy Awards. Here’s the list of nominees, but we don’t need no stinking lists! Who would you honor at the Emmys if it were up to you? In fact, what categories would you make up?

Hurricane Katrina hit two years ago today, while I was on vacation, and for that reason it was one of the weirdest vacations I’ve ever had. I was on an island in Maine, with no Internet access, no cable, no TV reception, little radio reception and hardly any cell phone service. I was vaguely aware that a big storm was brewing in the …

It’s late summer, which means that the studios are releasing their full-season DVDs so you can catch up before September premieres. (Heroes and Friday Night Lights, for instance, should just have hit the shelves.) But lately, I’ve also been getting more and more releases of TV CDs–compilations of music that appeared on TV soundtracks. …

I’m on the road and probably lacking in HBO access, so I’m turning over this post for your postmortems of Big Love, which I will do my best not to read.