Friday, January 14 2011
Gotta Be ‘In Treatment’
Loss is a necessary part of life, sure, but must it be a necessary part of TV?
Friday, November 5 2010
Take Your Daughter to Work Day: A Father Reflects on Years of Force-feeding Pop Culture to His Child
How will my daughter feel when her friends greet her in 2030 with an enthusiastic shout-out to Hannah Montana or SpongeBob SquarePants and she can only remember Bebop, Rocksteady, the Gentleman Ghost and Gyro Gearloose?
Friday, October 22 2010
Prime-Time Nuclear Destruction: ‘Medic’, ‘A Flash of Darkness’
When it comes to prime-time half-hour visions of nuclear destruction, there's none better than Medic episode, 'A Flash of Darkness' from Valentine's Day 1955, a surprisingly bleak eruption of nuclear despair.
Friday, October 15 2010
Their Mics Still Sound Nice: BET Puts Ladies First
Do women rappers have to shake it in our faces in order to get us to listen? As this doc. notes some, like Salt 'N' Pepa do it with sassiness and sex appeal "...you know, if I was a book, I would sell / 'cause every curve on my body got a story to tell".
Wednesday, September 22 2010
Three Days Was the Mourning: Three Scenes That Define ‘Six Feet Under’’s Nate Fisher
Nate was always searching desperately for deeper meaning, and so it was not surprising that he would see his dead wife’s soul peering at him from the eyes of a dog.
Thursday, September 16 2010
You’ll Never Get Rich—Bwa! Ha! Ha!: Sgt. Bilko: The Phil Silvers Show
Is there always something subversive about comedy? Only when it's funny.
Wednesday, September 15 2010
This Is a (Wo)Man’s World—Prime Suspect: The Complete Collection
The best thing about Prime Suspect is the density of it all, how we get beneath Tennison's skin to experience her desperation, her despair, and her desires.
Thursday, September 9 2010
Jay Mariotti and the Moral Role
In a world of 24-hour programming, Jay Mariotti's Around the Horn does for ESPN what Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly does for Fox News: fill in large gulfs of empty space between actual news or events by making a fetish of opinion.
Tuesday, August 31 2010
‘The Mothers-In-Law’: Just for Good Measure, We’ll Give Everyone the Intelligence of a Radish
The '60s were the most surreal decade on TV, and this show has scenes as bizarre as any sitcom, even without castaways or martians or robots or talking animals or reincarnated automobiles.
Tuesday, August 24 2010
‘The Boondocks’: Carrying On the Tradition of Subversive Black Comedy
Some may be offended by the self-loathing ruminations of The Boondocks’ “Uncle Ruckus” or the Chappelle's Show,’s “blind black Klansman”, but those comedic depicitions have deep roots in America's long tradition of black humor.
Tuesday, August 10 2010
‘Leave It to Beaver’ Is Probably Closer to Real Life for People Today Than Many Would Admit
Leave It to Beaver's problem is not that it no longer fits modern social concerns, but that it does so too blatantly. God forbid a modern hipster should let loose a chuckle and thus irrefutably acknowledge dull suburban ambitions!
Wednesday, August 4 2010
Feeding an Addiction
Call me a romantic, but after watching so much of that wet and messy business, I crave a less-is-more, simpler, sexier rendition of food porn. Instead, of grotesque, I prefer burlesque and have found that the good stuff isn’t on reality TV.
Monday, August 2 2010
House of the Rising Sun Lamp: Jersey Shore UNCENSORED: Season One
The youth whom I was concerned for regarding this program are not the network’s audience, as I thought, but its stars. Most seem aware that there is a direct relationship between outrageous behavior and screen time.
Friday, July 30 2010
A Shark May Not Teach You Lessons About Goodness Like Santa Clause Does, But It Might Eat Your Head
Christmas in July is a superficial, commercial non-event, so why not celebrate a new Shark Week holiday, a holy season you can really sink your teeth into?
Friday, July 16 2010
It Was Only Yesterday L.A. Went Up in Flames
Langston Hughes’ proverbial California raisin in the sun exploded to a funky beat. I stared blankly past the familiar storefronts, into a world I could barely grasp. How civil a society was it that my daughter was about to join?
Monday, July 12 2010
How Does One Beat the Heat? Try Descending Into Icy Madness
To cope with the heat wave, advisories suggest visiting 'cooling centers' or public pools. To achieve a truly chilled-out state of mind, however, why not open the door to your mind and let the iceman cometh inside?
Friday, July 9 2010
Brava, Bravo!
Those Bravo executives are tricksters, fooling me into believing familiarity breeds contentment, not contempt. I'm totally hooked.
Friday, June 25 2010
Peyton Place: When Discretion Was Partly a Genteel Quality, Partly a Requirement of the Censor
A world where nothing is right or reassuring, and little will ever be resolved happily, not in 30-minutes or 30 years – TV as depression, an endless picturesque grind. Rather like life.
Thursday, June 24 2010
Vampires vs. Werewolves: An Immortal Pop Rivalry
Pop culture thrives on rivalries, but few are as epic as the one between werewolves and vampires -- a rivalry which predates Twilight by, oh, some 60 years.
Friday, May 28 2010
Perry Mason Knows: Anyone May Be Guilty, Evil Lurks Just Beneath the Mask of Respectability
Perry (Raymond Burr) remains a heroic cypher, cool and professional, sometimes jovial but with a cut and thrust when confronting witnesses.
