I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Curb Your Enthusiasm until Larry David greeted a Girl Scout who asked if he wanted to buy some cookies with a genial, “I find them abhorrent but come on in!” It was as though he was beckoning us to join him as well. Back for another season of intentional insults and carefully constructed accidents that result in Larry’s agony, Curb began its eighth season with a few superb mix-ups and at least one classic moment. READ FULL STORY »
President Obama is meeting with House Speaker (a.k.a., Head Of Household) John Boehner tonight, at roughly the same time a new episode of Big Brother airs on CBS, to try and negotiate a deal about some revised form of a deficit reduction package and raising the debt ceiling. The details of how this mismatched couple will resolve this are roughly as complicated as trying to figure out the new Big Brother rules about playing in teams of two, not as individuals, and which team to nominate for eviction. READ FULL STORY »
Torchwood: Miracle Day, the 10-episode series that premiered Friday night, is a sometimes witty, frequently successful attempt to introduce American settings to the hit British series. The premise is that one day, world-wide, nobody dies anymore – no matter how sick or injured. Oh, except for the immortal Jack Harkness (star John Barrowman) – he can suddenly be hurt and, perhaps, expire. The title’s “miracle” is quickly recognized as a curse: If no one dies, and the population increases, soon there’ll not be enough food for the planet, the sick will remain ill, the suffering will suffer… The Torchwood investigative team – now primarily down to Harkness and Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) – to the rescue! READ FULL STORY »
We’ve already arrived at Friday Night Lights‘ penultimate episode. Titled “Texas Whatever” and directed by Kyle Chandler, it was a great episode that saw the return of Adrianne Palicki as Tyra, Zach Gilford as Matt, and some big, fundamental changes in life in Dillon, Tex. READ FULL STORY »
Men of a Certain Age wrapped up its season on Wednesday night with a wonderful episode that paid off on each of the three guys’ subplots, while sustaining its best trait: Offering a convincing comic dramatization of the idea that in life, things rarely pay off the way they do in TV shows. READ FULL STORY »
Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera got into a shouting match, and Nancy Grace presided over a lynch mob of lawyers eager to top each other in venting their rage over the Casey Anthony trial verdict on Monday night. The networks tried to act as though they were above it all, while every one of them featured the verdict prominently. Scott Pelley led off the CBS Evening News by saying the case “became a sensation on cable television,” but that was just spin, in order for Pelley’s broadcast to exploit the Anthony case for its own purposes. Later, CBS preempted the legal fiction The Good Wife to present a legal reality: a “special edition” of 48 Hours Mystery about Casey Anthony. READ FULL STORY »
ABC News added a graphic to yesterday’s current-events show This Week when host Christiane Amanpour used the word “perspicacious” to describe Benjamin Franklin’s wisdom. Check out READ FULL STORY »
The return of Tim Riggins — freed from jail last week, with not a little help from Coach Eric Taylor’s character-witness testimony before a parole board — set this week’s Friday Night Lights into emotional motion. What was striking was that, as superb as Taylor Kitsch has always been in this role, FNL has raised a supporting cast during his absence that has risen to the challenge of this terrific series. READ FULL STORY »
