Tuned InUncategorized
Last week, the Television Critics’ Association, of which I am a member (though I often don’t attend press tour), released its nominees for its 2010 awards, which will be given out this summer at press tour. I’ve already voted from among the nominees—I didn’t want to seem as though I were taking a poll before casting my own …
Tuned InUncategorized
Quick spoilers for last night’s Treme follow:
Mardi Gras, the event that Treme built toward—much as the New Orleans calendar builds toward it—came to the series last night. “All on a Mardi Gras Day” began with a kind of montage, showing various characters eating king cake and prepping for the holiday. And then the entire episode …
Tuned InUncategorized
I may not be entirely qualified to comment on last night’s MTV Movie Awards, seeing as how I am old—old enough never to even have fantasized making out with a vampire. Also, between a choppy cable connection and the constant (yet inconsistently applied) language beeps, the event was often more like watching a slideshow than a …
Tuned InTuned In
Spoilers for Breaking Bad coming up:
One of the most fascinating dynamics on The Wire was the juxtaposition in season 3 of Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale and their approaches to running the drug business. Avon was old-school …
Tuned InUncategorized
I’m not sure how much appetite there is for a Friday Night Lights Watch here at Tuned In—devout fans may have already watched it on DirecTV, and the NBC run of season 3 elicited relatively few comments on those occasions I covered it last year. But season 4, with Coach Taylor taking over the struggling East Dillon football program, …
Tuned InUncategorized
If this week marked the return of the broadcast-network summer reality season, it’s also the launch of the basic-cable summer drama season. One of the past summers’ highlights, USA’s Burn Notice, returned last night. I’m behind on it–the show usually has DVR-and-catch-up status for me–but I know it has fans here, so let us know what …
Tuned In
This week’s column in the print TIME looks at Twitter as a literary art form. No, seriously. With the emergence of satirical accounts like @BPGlobalPR, which has mercilessly flogged BP over the Gulf oil spill, the fake-Twitter account has come into its own as Twitter’s indigenous genre of fiction. What is Twitter lit good for? What are …
Tuned InRemembrance
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Zjt4WwM3A]
Actress Rue McClanahan died this morning, reportedly of a stroke, at age 76. McClanahan had a wide and varied career on stage, in film and on television, but she’s most widely remembered for playing the vivacious and bodaciously lusty senior Blanche Devereaux in the sitcom The Golden …
Tuned InNews Media
The initial bids came in yesterday in the first round of the Washington Post company’s sale of Newsweek. I’ve held off saying much of anything about the magazine’s sale, because (1) I don’t want it to seem like Schadenfreude (as a working-today-but-tomorrow-who-knows journalist, I feel none) and (2) the last matter on which anyone is …
Tuned InUncategorized
Halfway into the opening monologue of his stage show at Radio City Music Hall last night, Conan O’Brien stopped to address a woman in the front row, getting to her seat late with a drink from the bar. “That drink better have been worth it,” he mock-scolded, then asked her for a sip. “You can’t just walk into my show late, holding a …
Tuned InUncategorized
Quick spoilers for last night’s Justified coming up after the jump:
A big ongoing issue in TV today is serial vs. episodic drama: that is, dramas that tell stories that unfold over an entire season or season as opposed to ones that tell stories wrapped up in a single episode. An extreme example of the former would be The Wire or Six …
Tuned InUncategorized
It’s after Memorial Day weekend, and that means it’s time for summer reality programming on the broadcast networks. Last night, NBC debuted Losing It with Jillian, a truly repellent spinoff of The Biggest Loser that alternated between weight-loss coach Jillian Michaels verbally abusing an overweight family and mawkish moments of …
Tuned InUncategorized
Spoilers for last night’s Glee coming up:
Last night, we learned that New Directions were in a funk because they had been intimidated by Vocal Adrenaline. And Rachel was in a funk over her breakup. And Quinn was in a funk over her pregnancy. And Will was in a funk over the glee club’s prospects. And he put Sue into a funk over her …
