Spoilers for Friday’s Fringe follow:
When Fringe debuted, there was the by-now-usual speculation as to whether it might become (whatever this means) the next Lost. (This is the typical rite of passage now for any network sci-fi-inflected drama, but especially one that comes from J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot.) At first it wasn’t and that …
When they were first announced, James Franco and Anne Hathaway seemed like a strange pair to host the Oscars, movie stars stepping into a role most often filled by comedians or TV hosts. But as the Academy Awards began last night, it looked like the unusual move had paid off. For about three minutes. Franco and Hathaway opened the show …
After cooling down from the nonstop thrills of the Oscar broadcast, watch last night’s very special episode of Big Love and join us at the reception.
The vast majority of people on TV—whether on a dramatic series or sitcom, a reality show or a political talk show—are encouraged, indeed obliged to express themselves in the starkest, …
We’ve finished Hollywood Week on American Idol and, by the time you read this, Vegas Week. This means we’re approaching the live performances, when the contestants start getting winnowed down but, more important, we begin to see how the new judging panel interacts with the contestants, and each other, live and off the cuff.
I’ve said …
I’ve said before that I think it would probably be best if this season of The Office were its last; the show may not be called The Boss, but it is Michael Scott’s story above all, and I’d hope that the show might get a liberating creative burst from not just sending off Steve Carell but going out in a blaze of glory.
I’ve also said …
“Blame It on the Alcohol,” last night’s breezy, sharply written episode of Glee, takes an Afterschool Special topic and spikes it with wry. Cued by Principal Higgins’s insistence that the Glee Club should commemorate Alcohol Awareness Week with an appropriate number performed at a general assembly, the kids choose “Tick Tock” by Ke$ha …
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Last week, I posted here about my anxiousness, and excitement, but mostly anxiousness, about David E. Kelley remaking Wonder Woman for NBC. If there’s one thing from the 1970s original I don’t expect to survive, sadly, it’s the extra-length theme song (above), and credits combining …
Astute Tuned Inlanders may have noticed that last week, I finally began updating my favorite-links blogroll, at left, and pruning or correcting some of the broken links. I plan on expanding the list with some new favorites too, but, you know, baby steps.
Along those lines, this seemed like a perfect time to poll the Tuned In readership: …
I’m away this week, but Tuned Inland shall not be abandoned in my absence. TIME’s prolific movie critic Richard Corliss will be contributing some guest Big Love and Glee posts in my absence (and the week of Oscars, yet!), sometime Tuned Inlander Steve Snyder will be stopping in, and I’ve also programmed Robo-James with some discussion …
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Objectively, as a critic, I probably wasn’t supposed to like “Threat Level: Midnight,” in which Michael Scott’s long-gestating movie finally came to fruition. It probably wasn’t plausible that the entire office would participate, and the episode was essentially like a giant, well-produced …
Spoilers for last night’s Community coming up:
A typical episode of Community—there aren’t any typical episodes, but humor me—can really be reviewed on a few levels: the basic sitcom level (how funny was it), the format level (how well did its parody or formal experiment work, on its own and with the storyline) and the story-arc …
Spoilers for last night’s Parks and Recreation coming up:
We could talk endlessly here about the cast of characters on Parks and Recreation, but one of my favorite things about the show is how Pawnee itself has become a character. Episode by episode, it’s developed into one of the richest fictional towns since Springfield, Wherever, …
I promise to give up the meta-discussion of TV criticism after this week—I think—but there was one important issue that Josh Levin failed to address when critiquing the pitfalls of weekly TV-episode reviewing in Slate: It hurts your damn fingers. That is particularly the case on such a TV-heavy night as last night: we had the …
