Image Credit: Lou Rocco/ABC
President Obama ambled onto the set of The View this morning and said, “I like hangin’ out with women.” He fielded questions about the economy, gay marriage, and Fifty Shades of Grey. Everyone was “pussycat nice,” in the squirmy phrase of Barbara Walters. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Mark Seliger/NBC
Howard Stern joined America’s Got Talent on Monday night, as you know from the publicity blitz he’s been doing on every NBC outlet except for Betty White’s Off Their Rockers. I think he’s recycled the line about how “these executives at NBC are out of their minds taking a risk on me” during every appearance including this America’s Got Talent. He says this, even as, in the next breath, he tells interviewers he “knows how to behave” on prime-time television. A man as intelligent as Stern must have known that this was a losing strategy: Why would he defuse any promise of surprise, or the blunt humor that’s made him so entertaining? READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Douglas C. Pizac/AP
Tonight’s edition of PBS American Masters, titled Johnny Carson: King of Late Night, offers a well-edited description of why Johnny Carson is held in such high esteem as late night’s most influential host, even as it carefully avoids any hard questions about Carson’s talent or originality. READ FULL STORY »
Smash concludes its first season tonight, and we’ll see who gets to take center-stage, Megan Hilty’s Ivy or Katharine McPhee’s Karen, to portray Marilyn Monroe in the show’s Broadway-show-within-a-TV-show, the don’t-call-it-a-bomb Bombshell, previewing in Boston. READ FULL STORY »
So much TV on Sunday night; inaugurating a new occasional feature: A round-up of mini-reviews. (All rights reserved to expand upon these thoughts later in the week.)
• Mad Men: “I got a million of ‘em,” said Michael Ginsberg, quoting Jimmy Durante and referring to ideas he has for ad campaigns. He’ll need ‘em, since this week’s theme was “every man for himself.” I know — when isn’t that a Mad Men theme? This night READ FULL STORY »
Fringe closed out its season with an hour that wrapped up some of this season’s loose ends, settled some timeline hash, quoted some William Butler Yeats, answered a few nagging Observer observations, and rang William Bell to a fare-thee-well. READ FULL STORY »
President Obama’s Wednesday declaration that “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married” was uttered on television (to ABC News) and was provoked at least in part by Vice President’s Joe Biden’s TV remarks last Sunday, on NBC’s Meet The Press, that initially raised the subject to a Presidential level.
The New York Times reports today that, according to several sources, Biden’s words accelerated the President’s announcement, which he’d planned to make… also on television: On The View next Monday. (We’ll see what the View gals have to say about that, later this morning.) READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Sonja Flemming/CBS
Gotta hand it to CSI: The show went big for its 12th-season finale on Wednesday night. One big resignation (“I out!”), a triple homicide, a double kidnapping, a wife revealed — the linchpin of the CSI franchise proved it’s still the best of ‘em. READ FULL STORY »
On last night’s Mad Men, the ad agency sought to please a client by doing what was described as a “Hard Day’s Night campaign” — that is, a youth-oriented pitch that would leech off some of the Beatlemania energy that was in the 1966 air. Don Draper and colleagues faced a mop-topped fop of a client who wanted some cool music in the ad, and after he left, Don said to Megan, “When did music become so important?” READ FULL STORY »
Sherlock returned for a second season Sunday night on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery!, and offered its take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” by giving you a chance to match wits with the Master in… cracking the password to Irene Adler’s smartphone. READ FULL STORY »
