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In this week’s print TIME, I review season 2 of In Treatment, which returns this Sunday and which (having seen four weeks so far) I like better than the first:
By the time Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) sits down for a session with his own therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest), he has had a long week. He’s been served with a subpoena in a
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I’ve got two pieces in the magazine this week, but I wanted to link them in the same post because they are, in a weird way, about the same thing. The first is Here’s to the Death of Broadcast, and if you’re a regular reader you’ll know it’s basically a polished-up version of an argument I’ve made on this blog: that the very …
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A proclamation! We have reviewed Kings! Heralds—sound the royal fanfare!
Is it better for a TV show to be consistent or surprising? Is it worse for it to be ridiculous or boring? NBC’s unorthodox new drama Kings (Sunday, 8 p.m. E.T.) comes down solidly on the latter side of those questions. Some viewers will say it’s
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My CNBC column is posted at time.com. (The Huffington Post knew it was up before I did.) I only wish it had come out a week earlier, but those are the perils of a biweekly column, and Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer have done me the courtesy of keeping the network in the headlines for me.
I’ve been reiterating several of the points in my …
Tuned In
Speaking of February ratings, here’s who else had a good February: Bravo, which just reported its highest ratings yet on the month, including all time ratings highs for Top Chef and multiple Real Housewives series. In my column in the print TIME this week, I look at how Bravo is riding high in the middle of the recession—by making …
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I’ve been on vacation the past couple weeks, but Time ran a Tuned In column of mine in my absence. A robo-column, if you will. The topic: the general implosion of the media business…
When the economy sneezes, the media business catches pneumonia. The problem for the media business in 2008 was that the economy caught pneumonia. When the
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One of many weird things about this fall is that the traditional “premiere week” begins next Monday, and yet you could argue that the biggest new fall debuts have already happened: 90210, Fringe, True Blood. What we have left is a few very minor pleasures (like CBS sitcom Worst Week), some …
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My column in this week’s Time is about the McCain/Palin strategy of running against the media:
Palin, who majored in journalism but has since seen the error of her ways, not only out-celebritied Obama but also showed him how real celebrities handle the press.
Real celebrities don’t make themselves available to every Tom, Dick and
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In this week’s issue of Time, I have written the only column of mine that Tuned In Jr. and Tuned In Jr. Jr. will probably ever want to read, because it has an illustration of Po from Kung Fu Panda on it. The paradox of the title? With the Olympic a week away, Hollywood is fascinated …
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Mad Men‘s second season debuts Sunday, and my review is in the print TIME this week. It begins:
“Nostalgia. It’s delicate. But potent.” It’s November 1960, and ad writer Don Draper (Jon Hamm), in the first-season finale of Mad Men, is pitching a room of Kodak executives on a campaign for their new slide projector.
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This Tuesday, I deep-sixed the TIME column I had already written to write a new one about the politics of humor(lessness). If you’re a regular, much of it incorporates some of what I already posted on the New Yorker Obama cover hoo-hah earlier this week. (I know, I know; but the shamans whom we pay to analyze such things tell us there’s …
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Michelle Obama, that is. Also in the current print edition of TIME, Tim Gunn escapes the suspicious Bravo fortress of silence surrounding Project Runway to take 10 Questions from the readers of the magazine. None of which have to do with Project Runway itself. (I’m told, though I haven’t listened, that at least some Runway questions made …
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In this week’s Time, I review HBO’s Iraq War miniseries Generation Kill, which debuts Sunday night. From what I’ve read so far elsewhere, is looks like the praise for the series will be effusive, and that praise will be justified:
Kill’s strength comes from focusing not on why we fight or how, but on who fights for
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