So what does a TV critic do when his TiVo dies and takes the television with it? Well, as mentioned, I went on an iPhone app shopping spree. The simplest and most addictive program I picked up is Smule’s Ocarina, which turns the iPhone into a wind instrument.

By blowing into the microphone and opening and closing four “holes” on the …

My Series 3 TiVo passed away the day after Thanksgiving. This is becoming something of a regular occurrence at the Tuned In household. Since I first bought the machine less than two years ago, we’ve had recurrent hardware malfunctions, resulting in numerous, marathon customer-service ordeals and (so far) two replacement units being sent …

8-O

I’m not very good with emoticons. Does that symbol above appear to convey, “Eyes wide open in stunned perplexity”? Because that’s what I was going for. That’s the image that would best convey my response to the disturbing, unfunny, bizarre-but-not-in-an-entertaining-way spectacle that was Rosie Live.

Much as with Knight Rider, …

My native state, Michigan, has a number of grand traditions: deer hunting season, year-round Christmas in Frankenmuth, Mackinac Island fudge and auto-industry bailouts. But the grandest of all is the tradition of the Detroit Lions losing. Yesterday, the Lions did not disappoint. I was fortunately too busy in the kitchen to watch, but did …

In an earlier comments thread, anon76 writes:

I’ll second P-Luk on the awesomeness of Colbert’s special. Will we be getting a current thread to discuss it? JP might have blown his nutmeg by posting on Friday, before the rest of us had a chance to see it.

Works for me. Between print deadline work and holiday prep (I’m cooking for 18 …

NBC has announced its first midseason schedule, for January. As part of the Great TV Resurrection of 2009, you will finally be able to watch Friday Night Lights without putting a thing on your roof. (I got the sense there are not a lot of DirecTV subscribers in the Tuned In audience.) The Panthers return Friday, January 16.

In other …

Spoilers for the series finale of The Shield coming up after the jump:

A New York Times feature today looks at tomorrow’s Rosie O’Donnell variety special on NBC, widely considered to be a sort of test pilot for a possible variety series. As the piece notes, the Return of the Variety Show has been bruited about in network TV for a little while now—Fox is at work for one starring the Osbournes, for …