Tuned InUncategorized
Quick spoilers for last nights How I Met Your Mother coming up:
After Marshall’s father died, he returned home to Minnesota, as he described it, to help his mother out. As last night’s episode, “Desperation Day,” showed, there was much more to it than that: he was really going back home, in the end, to help himself out. His mother, …
Tuned InUncategorized
Jeopardy spoilers—and boy, is that one phrase I never thought I’d type here—coming up next:
The IBM computer Watson began its brave effort to supersede humanity and thus elevate the level of sentience on Earth last night,* taking on Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in the first night of a three-night Jeopardy competition. And I have to …
Tuned In
Tonight on Jeopardy, Watson, a computer programmed by IBM, will challenge the program’s two biggest human champions to see whether man or machine can dominate the field of recalling arcane facts about Potent Potables. Here’s an overview of how Watson and the competition will work; to understand the larger implications of artificial …
Tuned InUncategorized
Over at Slate, Josh Levin writes a piece (in which I’m quoted) about HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall, and how his style of TV blogging—reviewing weekly episodes of dozens of shows—has changed TV criticism, and readers’ expectations of it:
At its best, new-school TV writing is brainy and inquisitive, thoughtful commentary borne out of a
…
Tuned InUncategorized
Cee Lo Green could be a great performer if he would just stop taking himself so damn seriously, couldn’t he? Cee Lo, pictured here, performed with his Glee stand-in, Gwyneth Paltrow, in a Grammy Awards that featured several defining themes:
* Songs that have been featured in the past season of Glee
* Rihanna duetting with someone
* …
Tuned InUncategorized
Before you read this post, run back to the car to get the pliers, then watch last night’s Big Love.
“I’m having a hard time reconciling my beliefs with my feelings.” —Ben
You and everybody else, Ben. In “The Special Relationship,” various characters in and around the Henrickson family struggled to deal with the dissonance between …
TIME picks the perfect tunes for those nights of love-induced misery. Wallow away
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.5552894&w=425&h=350&fv=]
I watched the opening arc of this season of Parks and Recreation several weeks ago, so my memory is a bit shaky, but “Ron and Tammy II” was for my taste a little broader and wackier than P&R at its absolute best. (Whereas Ben’s subplot as “Calzone Boy” was an excellent example of how well the …
Tuned InUncategorized
Spoilers for last night’s Community follow:
Consider this not so much a review of last night’s Community as a decision to defer judgment. As for the chief running storylines, they were… fine. For the first time in a while, Britta carried a strong comic story, with her comedy-of-PC-errors “lesbian” date at the Valentine’s dance. Troy …
Tuned InUncategorized
[vodpod id=Video.5542907&w=425&h=350&fv=]
Donald Trump is perhaps the most successful Presidential noncandidate our political system has ever produced. You may recall when he illustriously didn’t run for President in 1988 after fanning much media speculation that he would. He followed that up by dramatically not running for President …
Tuned InUncategorized
Spoilers for last night’s episode of The Office coming up:
If you’ve been following The Office this season, the one in which Steve Carell is leaving the show and thus Michael Scott is leaving the Scranton branch, you may have been wondering by now when exactly the show would get around to the business of Michael actually leaving. …
The derivative, gag-filled take on Romeo and Juliet set among warring gnomes in neighboring backyards fails to bloom
What could have been another crude Adam Sandler comedy is redeemed by the former Friend’s best work in years
