When Law & Order: Criminal Intent brings the gavel down one final time tonight, an era will have ended: the entire Law & Order franchise will essentially be finished. Oh, sure, Special Victims Unit will come back this fall, but without Christopher Meloni and only a limited number of Mariska Hargitay appearances. The creepiest of the L&O spin-offs (all those pervs; all those children and women in jeopardy plots!), SVU exists primarily as manipulative Emmy-bait and tarnishes the Law & Order legacy. No, it’s Criminal Intent‘s departure on Sunday night that signals a singular TV institution’s end. READ FULL STORY »
The soap-opera version of House continues relentlessly. In the series’ 150th episode on Monday night, a maudlin medical case was matched with the return of Olivia Wilde, wilder than Hugh Laurie’s House might have dreamed, since she’s now a slinky ex-con. READ FULL STORY »
First, I hope Meredith Vieira doesn’t leave the Today show — she’s intelligent and funny and can handle every sort of segment, a tricky skill. Still, if the reports are true about her exit when her contract is up in September, her replacement will be crucial to the Today show’s ratings, as well as the chemistry with her coanchor Matt Lauer. With that in mind, let’s pick some possibilities: READ FULL STORY »
Last week, Sarah Palin shot a caribou; this week, Sarah Palin might have, at the very least, used a taser gun on Kate Gosselin and I doubt that even Aaron Sorkin would lodge so much as a complaint.
The idea was a TLC match made in heaven, or hell: Put its two biggest stars, Palin and Gosselin, in one episode of Sarah Palin’s Alaska. In theory, it made sense. Gosselin is READ FULL STORY »
Any wistful Mad Men fan who turned on AMC Sunday night thinking, perhaps, that there might be an MM rerun, or perhaps an hour of Halloween outtakes in which Sally Draper takes a hatchet to her Mommy Dearest, may have been startled to come upon the opening scene of The Walking Dead: In an effort to communicate the kind of show you’re in for, Walking Dead had its hero, Sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) shoot a little-girl zombie in the head. If you didn’t get drawn in by that splatter-shock, this was clearly not the show for you.
The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman’s comic books, takes the standard modern zombie trope—urban survivors of a zombie invasion —and faces down the problem with turning that notion into a weekly series. The challenge was to make running away from zombies (called “walkers” here) engrossing every week. Under READ FULL STORY »
