Brief spoilers for Sunday’s Breaking Bad coming up after the jump:
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Lost Discussion Group: "They're Coming."
It’s the first Wednesday after Memorial Day, and that means time to revive Lost Discussion Group for the summer. There seemed to be enough questions raised by this season’s Jacob-centric finale to sustain LDG for a season, at least, and I’ll kick it off with a simple one:
Who?
That is, who is Jacob referring to when he says, “They’re …
A Talk With Renzo Piano
When I was in Chicago to check out the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute I sat down for a talk with Renzo Piano, who designed it — and half the other new museums in the U.S., or at least it feels that way.
LACAYO: Renzo, it seems like every few months you premiere a new project somewhere.
PIANO: If you compare what we do …
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The Morning After: Sent a Mental
Did anyone watch the premiere of Fox summer drama Mental last night? I could barely get through the House-in-a-psych-hospital pilot, but if you saw something in it that I didn’t by all means state your case. Am I nuts?
That, or weigh in on Rescue Me, which has moved (mostly) past the zany indulgences of the past couple seasons and …
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Jon & Kate Plus 9.8 Million
That’s how many of us enablers viewers tuned to the season 5 premiere of reality show / marital implosion Jon & Kate Plus 8 last night, per the New York Times’ Brian Stelter. Making it the most watched show on TV—including broadcast networks—and more than doubling the 4.6 million who watched the season 4 finale in March.
I had …
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Build More Cities, America, Bravo Is Running Out
Speaking of attempts to make TV shows for the Obama era, Bravo this morning announced that The Real Housewives of D.C. is in development. I’d mock—OK, I guess I already did—but in fairness, I thought doing a New Jersey series was stretching the franchise too far, and now it’s the only one of the four I’d care to watch.
The …
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Mike Judge's Goode Family: Sadly, Not So Much
I’ve made no secret of my admiration of Mike Judge. His satiric masterpieces Office Space and Idiocracy, all but disowned by their studios, are prime examples of the idiocy of movie executives. Beavis and Butt-Head combined hilarious toilet humor with a gimlet eye for American mall culture and the vapidity of MTV—and did it, in …
Art Goes to the Obama White House
I was fascinated by a story in the Wall Street Journal last week about the art that the Obamas have been choosing for the White House. As the Journal points out, First Families are free to choose whatever works they like for the White House residence and offices, including the Oval Office. As for the public areas, the president and …
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The Morning After: It's Summertime Edition
Memorial Day weekend ushered in a lot of new, albeit cheap, television: The Bachelorette, for instance. But having committed to watch the season premiere of Jon & Kate last night, I decided that was enough soul-killing for one evening. Discuss them here, if you dare, or the History Channel special on the 45-million-year-old primate …
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Jon & Kate Plus 8: This Would Be the "For Worse" Part
Octomom’s looking more and more functional every day, isn’t she?
Jon & Kate Plus 8 returned last night for an oversized season 5 opener, and the first show in the series since charges about the couple’s marriage exploded in the tabloids: first, that Jon Gosselin had strayed with a teacher (after earlier partying with coed “friends”), …
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Dead Electron Alert: Summer Begins… Now.
Elsewhere at time.com, our editors have posted our summer arts preview, the (shorter) print version of which ran earlier in TIME, the magazine object. Caveat emptor: the TV entries are about new shows I’m looking forward to or curious about—not shows that I have actually seen, so it’s more a “what could be good” list than a “what’s …
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TV Long Weekend: Jon Plus or Minus Kate
Posting will be light around here over Memorial Day weekend, but I would be remiss in my duty if I did not tell you about the Monday return of Jon & Kate Plus 8, for the first time since the dueling-affair charges started hitting the tabloids and celeb magazines. Or maybe I’m being remiss in my duty by telling you about it.
(If you need …
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Dead Tree Alert: Recession TV, and Other Trends from the Upfronts
My column in this week’s TIME, which went to press in the middle of the upfronts, looks at how TV, both broadcast and cable, is adapting its programming to the recession and otherwise fumbling towards a grip on the zeitgeist this year:
If you’ve been watching HGTV in the past few years, you may have become seduced by its lavish
…