As we enter into the new Fall television season in the next few weeks (NBC will be rolling their lineup out sooner than the others to capitalize on the Olympic’s coverage) it’s time to say goodbye (and judge) all the shows I’ve been using as filler for the last couple months. Dallas…Against all possible odds,…
Category: TV Reviews
TV Review: Breaking Bad’s Final Season Premiere
The best show on Television (right now) is back and all is right with the world. Some fans (and non-fans) may have seen the season 5 posters of TV’s most complicated lead character ever, Walter White, sitting in a lab with mountains of cash and meth around him, and the tagline “All hail the king.”…
TV Review: “Anger Management” and “Brand X” Are Another Step in the Wrong Direction For FX
So last night was the premiere of FX’s new comedy block, complete with new seasons of Louie (wildly regarded as the best comedy on TV, but I think is a little too inconsistent for that label), and Wilfred (widely regarded as one of the worst, and very consistent in that label), and the series premieres…
TV Reviews: Falling Skies, Futurama, and, of course, Dallas
So the Summer TV season is in full swing, and that means it’s the dominant season of cable, who have original shows more or less all to themselves while the broadcast nets show Big Brother ripoffs like ABC’s “Glass House.” So if you don’t like reality shows (and I sure as hell don’t) but want…
“TV” Review: Yahoo’s New Web Series “Burning Love,” A Star-Packed Skewering of The Bachelor
I won’t make this review very long, because, well, each episode of Burning Love is about eight minutes. Since it’s not as long as a traditional television show—-and has a clear ending in sight even from the beginning—-it doesn’t have time to waste, and the result is an expedient, righteously dead-on parody of The Bachelor….
What Happened on the Season Finale of The Killing and Why AMC Should Cancel It
So last night was the second season finale (and hopefully, please God the SERIES finale) of AMC’s The Killing, inarguably the worst show they’ve ever produced unless you truly hate zombies. I’d like to quickly lay out what happened, thus solving the long overdue and extremely convoluted mystery of “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” (me, I’m…
TV Review: Girls and Veep, Continuing HBO’s Dominance of Comedy
Back in the now-distant seeming decade known as the 00’s or aughties or the Bush II years or whatever the hell history chooses to remember it as (but it probably won’t want to remember it at all) the one truly remarkable thing happening wasn’t in the gradually worsening economy or gloomy foreign policy outlook or…
TV Review: Why AMC’s “The Pitch” Excites AND Frustrates
So in addition to Mad Men and every other AMC drama, I also watch AMC’s latest (but not last) foray into reality programming called “The Pitch.” The Pitch is part of a troubling trend in AMC programming towards cheap and easy reality shows (like Kevin Smith’s deathly boring Comic Book Men and the upcoming Small…
TV Review: Mad Men’s Season Finale Recap and Review
Note: I do spoil what happened in last night’s season 5 finale, so don’t read further if you haven’t watched it yet. Or perhaps skip down to the review portion… What Happened: The episode begins with Don in terrible pain from a toothache and Megan’s mother (the alternately seductive and bitter Juliette Binoche) visiting them…
Reviewing The Season Finales of “Touch,” “House,” “Awake,” “Revenge,” “Parks and Recreation,” and more
So pretty much all season finales are done (except for excellent cable shows like Mad Men or HBO’s Girls/Veep), and since most of them were done weeks ago, I can review without fear of spoilers… Revenge…What Happened: Emily “finally” came face to face with a white-haired man who apparently killed her father. She beat him…
TV Review: What’s It Like to Watch TV in China?
Kicking off our China week on the site after a two week trip to Shanghai (and weekend in Hong Kong) begins with a twist on our usual media Mondays. Later on today I’ll be talking about Chinese “cinema,” but first let’s talk about one of the last things anyone would notice before they visited China…
TV Review: I Recap the “Desperate Housewives” Series Finale, So You Don’t Have to Watch It
Dear Readers, there is a shameful period of my past that I’m none too happy about. No, I don’t mean any incidents in college or high school that may or may not involve elaborate pranks and debauchery, I mean the 2004-2005 television season when I, like just about anyone at the time who was watching…
Why “Mad Men,” Gets the Difference Between the 60’s Fantasies of the Past and Realities of the Future
By now so many shows have been set in the 50’s and 60’s that they’re practically a sub genre of their own (albeit not usually a successful one). The “60’s set shows” often showcase intact nuclear families being as wholesome and perfect as the time allows while grappling through a series of “world changing events”…