In the newsstand edition of TIME this week, a few thoughts on how the Foley scandal has turned one of the GOP’s greatest pop cultural assets–TV shows that terrify people about their kids’ security–into a liability for the traditional law-and-order party.

The one point I didn’t have room to discuss in the essay is what an

…

Saturday night, Elton John and Bernie Taupin once told us, is all right for fighting. Unless you’re a TV show; moving to Saturday means it’s time to give up the fight. This is the fate of Kidnapped. Shortly after NBC announced that the much-touted, little-watched new serial would end after a run of 13 episodes, the network today said the

…

SPOILER ALERT: The following post contains what could well be spoilers, if I were able to make any sense of the plot points.

In the first seconds of season 3 of Lost, we learned the most important fact yet about the Others: They have CDs. In a flashback scene reminiscent of the season 2 opener, newcomer Other Juliet pops a CD into her

…

As a professional snobby, elitist critic, I am not in the habit of saying that the masses are right. But I make an exception when they agree with me, and they seem to have come around to my side on the massively overrated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the new self-aggrandizement vehicle from The West Wing’s masterwriter, Aaron Sorkin. …

Tonight on NBC, Friday Night Lights, one of the best dramas of the fall, with the potential to be the best, period. See my review in the Sept. 25 print version of Time, or without risk of paper cuts here.

I won’t elaborate much on my review except to emphasize that, although the show is about a West Texas high school football team (a

…

There’s always a TV angle. On Friday, Florida congressman Mark Foley shocked the political world when he announced his resignation, after reports emerged that he had sent sexually suggestive e-mails to teenage pages. On Friday night, NBC once again won the 18 to 49-year-old demographic ratings race in the 9 p.m. slot with its successful

…

If you watch only one police procedural on TV–and you probably should watch only one police procedural on TV–make it Dexter (Showtime, debuts Sunday), in which Michael C. Hall of Six Feet Under plays a serial killer who channels his impulses into finding and murdering other murderers. Hall is creepily appealing. The show’s meditations

…

SPOILER ALERT: There are no spoilers in the following post about Lost, because the new season doesn’t start until next Wednesday. Although who knows? Maybe I’m lying! Maybe there are spoilers! Maybe you should read anyway to find out! You’re so totally going to, aren’t you?

Last night I watched the pre-season clips episode of Lost,

…

OK, let’s get it out of the way: No, she isn’t ugly. In Ugly Betty (Thursdays, 8 p.m.), ABC’s charming, peculiar comic telenovela, fashon-magazine assistant Betty Suarez (America Ferrera) is only TV ugly, which is to say, she has dark hair and doesn’t disappear when she turns sideways. But that’s the point: playing a smart, optimistic,

…

Last night NBC aired the second episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, in which a fictional broadcast network made the principled decision to air a skit–titled "Crazy Christians"–despite boycott threats from religious groups. In what is either a great irony or a brilliant marketing coup, the network is in the middle of not one but

…

Although I realize that every single person who reads this website assiduously reads the print version of TIME magazine, and vice versa–are you listening, Wall Street?–I’m starting an occasional service for those of you who can’t get enough of my tedious yammering valuable insight at Tuned In by pointing you to my articles in the

…

TiVo owners: we’re discerning, we’re loyal, we’re annoying as crap. Get trapped next to one of us at a party, and we’ll soon be jawing your ears off about how our digital video recorders have changed our lives, freed us from slavery to the network schedules and to the lousy knockoff DVRs foisted on us by cable and satellite companies.

…

My problem with Brothers and Sisters (ABC, Sundays, 10 p.m.) is not that it is not a good show. It’s not a good show, true. This is the family soap that marks the return of Calista Flockhart to TV, as a right-wing radio host who moves back to California to be closer to her liberal family, which is going through a crisis. Suffice it to

…