Dear Mark Burnett,

We like our summer reality TV at the Tuned In household. We have fond memories of sultry nights watching Big Brother, Project Runway, the first season of American Idol–hell, even American Juniors. So Tuned In was quite the receptive audience for On the Lot, your filmmaking competition. I told people I had faith that …

No, I’m not working today! Why, I’m so lazy, I barely have the energy to not work today!

But it’s the unofficial beginning of summer, and with the change of season comes the end of many of our regular and semiregular franchises at Tuned In: Lost, American Idol, Heroes, The Office and soon The Sopranos. That means I’ll soon have some …

Two days after her split-screen throwdown with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, TMZ.com and the AP are reporting that Rosie O’Donnell will not be returning to The View, ending her run on that show three weeks early. TMZ quotes an ABC statement saying, “We had hoped that Rosie would be with us until the end of her contract three weeks from now, but …

In HBO’s lamented Western Deadwood, we rarely saw or heard from Native Americans, except as severed heads and as a cynically-invoked threat that rationalized brutality and power grabs. HBO’s movie Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, debuting Sunday, begins just before Deadwood did–with the massacre at Little Big Horn–but has a distinctly …

Cliff Lipson/CBS

Everybody’s praising Bob Barker as he gets ready to retire, but in my Culture Complex column this week, I take a minute to give the love to that most American of game shows itself, The Price Is Right:

[U]ltimately, what wins Price are the skills that matter. Remembering facts (and I say this as a ruthless Trivial

…

Well, it’s the first night of the TV summer. Reruns and whatnot. Perhaps I shall take up an instrument, or read an improving book!

Just kidding. I’ll be watching On the Lot. Because I’m a sucker.

Recommended, although I’ve already watched the screener, is Sundance’s Aussie-import docuseries John Safran Vs. God. It’s an …

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s Lost yet, come back at a point in the future when you have.

ABC/Mario Perez

So I am enough of a dork that I watched the prequel clip-show, “Lost: The Answers.” And irony of ironies, it turned out the show actually had an answer in it, though I didn’t realize it at the time. At one …

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s American Idol yet, don’t read this. Or listen to the radio, open the paper, talk to your family or go to work.

I’ll confess that I didn’t catch Jordin Sparks’ coronation last night: I was watching Lost (in re which: OMG!, and yes, you’ll get your freaking Lostwatch in the morning, keep …

Not much suspense as to what I’m watching tonight, on Ragnarok, the last day of the 2006-07 TV season, the night of coronations and cliffhangers. There’s Lost, of course; and I’ll also be watching American Idol for the blog, because (1) it is a Truly Important Cultural Event That Defines Us As a Nation and (2) you could sneeze on a …

HBO has put the entire first episode of its new comedy series, Flight of the Conchords, online at MySpace. [Update: it’s also at hbo.com, but oddly, with fewer bells and whistles.] The premise: “New Zealand’s fourth most-popular folk parody duo” seek success and cheap dates on New York’s Lower East Side. Give it a half-hour of your time …