Tuned In
Tolstoy, were he alive today, might have said this: Happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way; and all quirky-but-loving TV families—well, they vary, but within a defined range.
So it should probably not be surprising that you see many of the same conflicts and dynamics on NBC’s new dramedy Parenthood …
Tuned In
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OK, guys, enough with the comedy on Thursday nights. I’m serious. It’s getting ridiculous.
First NBC nailed down its comedy block with the additions of Parks and Recreation and stronger-every-episode Community. Then FX added animated spy comedy Archer. Now Comedy Central has scheduled the third …
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If you have both BBC America and a taste for raunchy, smart, good-hearted teen comedy, do not miss the debut of The Inbetweeners tonight (9 p.m. E.T.). Several reviews out already have made the obvious comparison to the movies of Judd Apatow, or said that the show is sort of like an R-rated version of Freaks and Geeks. All true, but I …
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Tonight sees the debuts of two series eagerly anticipated by various fanboys and -girls: SyFy’s BSG prequel Caprica and Starz’s gladiator saga Spartacus: Blood and Sand. I hoped to review both at length, but that dream has become another victim of my time crunch. But I’ll toss out a couple quick opinions on each: namely, Spartacus …
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Though I’ve fallen behind on The Venture Brothers, I tend to watch more Adult Swim than I blog about here. Partly because so many of the late-night toons are difficult to describe to the uninitiated, partly because people who love them already really love them, and people who don’t, or wouldn’t, tend to tune out when I evangelize for …
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If you’re interested, you need no reminder, but Top Chef: No-Longer-in-Las-Vegas-But-Napa has its finale tonight. Facing off are the seeming frontrunners the entire season: Kevin, of the burly beard, and the eerily dispassionate Voltaggio brothers (known affectionately in the Tuned In household as Good Robot and Bad Robot). Though I …
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I took some ribbing from some female associates when I reviewed The Good Wife earlier this season and said the show turned out to be much, much better than I thought it would be. My low expectations were as much about the fact that it was a courtroom procedural as about its chick-centricity, but fair enough.
In the interest of equal …
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We live in the age of paranoia: Presidential birth certificates, Vice-Presidential-candidates’ grandkids, terrorist attacks, flu vaccines—there is nothing that cannot become the stuff of conspiracy theory. So it is prescient thinking, if not spectacular TV, that TruTV enlisted wrestler-turned-governor-now-turned-TV-star Jesse “The …
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Tonight at 9 p.m., something with the name Scrubs will air on ABC. Bill Lawrence, creator of the sitcom that debuted back in 2001 on NBC, gave the show a send-off of sorts last spring, before it was saved from certain death again. Lawrence says he considers the returned Scrubs—which focuses on a crop of med students—a “new …
Tuned In
Not only is Glee taking the night of tonight, but even Bravo’s Top Chef: Las Vegas is on vacation. In its place, however, Bravo is offering us a special one-off of the show, or what we refer to in the Tuned In household as “a ripoff episode.”
Unlike the clip jobs that Survivor like to insert in midseason, though, tonight’s Top Chef All …
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As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m having some housework done that’s taken our living-room TV out of the picture. The Tuned In Jrs. have had to make do for their daily fix of shows with DVDs on a seven-inch portable player. It’s always the children who suffer most.
One thing that’s gotten them through the week has been my review copy of …
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It’s Election Day in America. One election day ago, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and TV is marking the anniversary with two earnest documentaries—and an alien invasion.
I exaggerate, but only a little. ABC’s V, which debuts tonight, may not be intended as an Obama allegory, but it has enough parallels with …
Tuned In
The League might have been a lot better if there were a lot less of it.
Watching the first two episodes of this raunchy FX sitcom, about 30-something guys in a fantasy-football league, I got to thinking that the premise would have made a perfect webisode series. Online series have not been around long enough to have a list of defining …
