Tuned InUncategorized
TLC has released more preview video from Sarah Palin’s Alaska. In today’s installment, the Palin family goes on a fishing trip, and encounters—this is too perfect—a mama grizzly. (OK, I’m not a zoologist and cannot ascertain if the species is in fact grizzly, but I’m sticking with it for now.) “I love these mama bears,” Sarah …
Tuned InTelevision
Brief spoilers for Sunday’s Boardwalk Empire up next:
Between AMC’s Sunday finales and a large-ish print-magazine piece that I’ve been on deadline for, I didn’t get around to reviewing the very strong Boardwalk Empire …
Tuned InTelevision
If you were wondering if The Event would be around long enough for you to commit to, good news—NBC picked the sci-fi serial up yesterday for a full season, along with Outsourced and Law & Order: Los Angeles. The Event has slumped seriously in the ratings since it debuted, but maybe NBC has decided it has room to grow—and, maybe …
Tuned In
President Obama and Discovery Channel announced today that the chief executive will appear on the Dec. 8 episode of Mythbusters. And surprisingly, the myth being busted has nothing to do with either Islam or Kenyan birth certificates.
On the episode, Obama will ask Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman to test whether it was possible for the …
Tuned InTuned In
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, get out of the pool, turn on the TV in your hotel room and watch last night’s season finale of Mad Men.
We should not be surprised, in retrospect, to find Don Draper’s work and home …
Tuned InUncategorized
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, pop in an old Meet Me in St. Louis DVD and watch last night’s season finale of Rubicon.
“Do it. Do it.”
With those words, not so much encouraging as defiant, Rubicon ended its first season bringing Will face-to-face with the conspiracy behind the clover messages and the terror attack on …
Tuned InRemembrance
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is8jEXY1WjI]
Barbara Billingsley, best known as Cleaver family matriarch June in Leave It to Beaver, has died at age 94. Through June Cleaver, Billngsley created one of that handful of TV characters who we’ve come to know not just as people but as symbols of the ideas and social threads of an …
Tuned InUncategorized
It’s been heavily foreshadowed for a while to anyone watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but sure enough, on last night’s TDS we learned that Stephen Colbert didn’t get a permit (or “didn’t get a permit”) for his March to Keep Fear Alive counterpoint to Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity. So last night, overseen by the …
Tuned InUncategorized
I’ve been writing a lot in this space lately about the disappointing fall broadcast lineup, and how the networks have all but given up launching challenging shows (particularly dramas), turning that job over to cable. (It’s worth noting, by the way, that however badly Lone Star flamed out, even the most successful of the network’s …
Tuned InUncategorized
Spoilers for 30 Rock’s live episode coming up. I am typing this post LIVE, with no edits or backspacing to correct typos! You can’t prove that I didn’t!
30 Rock may be about a lot of things—work, politics, gender and race, snack foods—but at its most enjoyable it’s a TV show having fun with the idea of being a TV show. So “Live …
Tuned InNews Media
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly was a guest on The View today, and brought up the subject of, as he referred to it, “the mosque down here on 9/11.” As you might have guessed, he, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar had a reasonable and good-natured discussion about sensitivity and civil liberties an angry, bleeped-out shouting match that resulted in …
Tuned InUncategorized
There’s often less to say about a decently successful episode of a sitcom than a bad one, which is about where I stand on Modern Family’s “Strangers on a Treadmill.” Three of the four storylines hit (the miss being Jay’s quinceanara foul-up, which was pretty much one underdeveloped joke), and maybe the most noteworthy accomplishment of …
Tuned InTV Ratings
It’s a common and understandable myth that TV shows stay on the air by getting as many viewers as possible. They don’t. In commercial television, shows stay on the air by making money, something that relates to, but does not correlate directly to, getting as many viewers as possible. If you’re a network that airs commercials, you …
