Some sitcoms have to rely on laugh-laugh-laughs to keep you hooked; they’re joke machines. Up All Night is more of a character sitcom: If you like the people in it, chances are, you’ll like the show. Which is one way of saying that, while I didn’t always laugh my tail off at this new show, I liked the characters a lot, and want to see how they develop. Which in turn could lead to a richer, more satisfying sitcom experience over the long haul. READ FULL STORY »
Free Agents — a.k.a., The Hank Azaria and His Amazing Pectorals Show — is an odd failure of a sitcom. The thing should work (it’s got the talent, for sure — Todd Holland directed the pilot; Party Down‘s John Enborn is co-creator) but the debut episode on Wednesday night was flat and sometimes just plain embarrassing. READ FULL STORY »
Starting to feel as though you can’t wait much longer for some of your favorite shows to return with fresh episodes? Join the club. (I’m coining a new term for the desire to see more new stuff now: Fringe-ing.) Here are my picks for some of the returning shows I’m most looking forward to, and why: READ FULL STORY »
Entourage wrapped up its run on HBO Sunday night with a final episode that saw big changes, and none at all. By which I mean, right to the very post-credits moment, the series remained what it was from the start: a fantasy of wealth, success, love, and arrested development. READ FULL STORY »
The second season of Louie had a number of moments that didn’t just amuse me; they made my heart swell with joy and, sometimes, sadness. As if to acknowledge these reactions in his viewers, Louis C.K. crafted a season finale on Thursday night that found his character hitting new highs… and lows. READ FULL STORY »
Welcome to Pilot Light, a periodic preview/analysis of new fall TV shows. These are not full-fledged reviews (those will come later), but rather pieces that will explore common themes popping up this year, as well as noting the strengths and weaknesses of various show concepts, performances, and time-period scheduling. First up: girls, girls, girls! READ FULL STORY »
Networks like to build identities for themselves — it helps signal to viewers what kind of programming they’re going to get. Thus, Lifetime was created to serve as a place for women’s programming (well, for weepy TV-movies about female humans under duress, at least) and FX has a pretty manly image (Justified, Sons of Anarchy). Broadcast networks, because they want to reach a broad mass of people, don’t brand themselves as firmly. But new-ish ABC Entertainment president Paul Lee has set out a passel of new shows that are consciously going for a theme that’s a bit daring. Boiled down, it amounts to: Women smart and strong, men dumb and weak. READ FULL STORY »
Jon Hamm was named best actor in a drama and Modern Family’s Ty Burrell and Parks and Recreation‘s Nick Offerman tied for best actor in a comedy in the annual Television Critics Association awards ceremony held on Saturday night.
The full list is: READ FULL STORY »
Rescue Me producer/co-creator Peter Tolan decided to wake up the jaded gathering of the Television Critics Association by dropping his pants mid-way through a press session on Saturday morning. READ FULL STORY »
Last night’s episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm found Larry David in moods that are least like him (at least on TV): cheerful and open-minded. Enthused about the chicken served at the Palestinian-owned Al Abbas Chicken restaurant, Larry is busy converting his mostly-Jewish chums to the establishment. One joke among these jokesters is that the restaurant would be an ideal place to conduct an affair, since so few Jews patronize the place. READ FULL STORY »
