Primetimely

Because I’m theoretically on vacation, let’s just speed through this! Here are my picks for the ten best programs on the boob tube for the year of 2009. (Hint: AMC takes the cake!)

1. Breaking Bad
2. Mad Men
3. Lost
4. Battlestar Galactica
5. 30 Rock
6. True Blood
7. Modern Family
8. Fringe
9. Glee
10. Dollhouse

Aloha, dear TV junkies.  I may be on vacation, but thanks to some coffeshop wi-fi, I’m still able to update this here blog with cinnamon-bun-sticky fingers.  Surely you didn’t think I’d forgotten about honoring the best small-screen moments of 2009!  Listed below are my favorite episodes across the airwaves from all of last year.  Is the list comprehensive?  Maybe not.  Does the order tend to be arbitrary?  Perhaps.  But still, I believe this to be a [...]

Because it’s the end of the year (and of the decade), every TV critic is releasing best-of lists. And I am no exception, though small-potatoes I may be. Ergo I announce the First Annual Primie Awards! And the first category honors the 15 characters whom I appreciate most, in descending order of awesomeness. Frankly, the shows below would just be suckier without them!

1. Sue Sylvester (Glee) When Sue swaggers onscreen in one of her splashy tracksuits, you know that she’s say something both wildly [...]

Note: The following post first appeared as an article by the same name in The Climax, Hampshire College’s newspaper. Also, some of these micro-reviews may exceed 140 characters—my bad!

I am a student of television. Writing television scripts is my Division III [a senior project, in Hampshire speak]. So I have no shame in the fact that I watch all of the shows below religiously. I study the craft, folks. That’s a lie—I am ashamed of some of [...]

Lately I’ve really gotten into The Amazing Race. Add it to the elite list of reality shows I find respectable. I have to say, I’m seduced by the globe-hopping adventure aspect. (Maybe it speaks to my love for Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?) I mean, who wouldn’t want an all-expenses-paid whirlwind tour around the globe? Sure, participants don’t exactly get a chance to sight-see. But what is sacrificed in the quality of their tour stops is compensated [...]

“Firefly is about nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things.”

That’s apparently how Joss Whedon—creator of Buffy, Angel, and Dollhouse—pitched the show to Fox back at the beginning of the decade. Now, as we approach the end of the decade, I’ve finally watched it on DVD. And while I didn’t love it as arduously as others, I do understand the appeal.

That pitch above is apt, because the main characters—the crew and passengers of the [...]

What if Lost were presented like 24, replete with a ticking timecode and split-screen? YouTube user pyram1dhead gives us the answer, and it is done incredibly adeptly—so much so that you almost wish you could watch the whole series this way. Culling footage from (by my count) six episodes and one webisode, this video represents a comprehensive timeline of the crash of Oceanic 815 and what happens on the [...]

Rarely do shows get to end on the creators’ own terms, especially those that are cancelled. And even though Bryan Fuller surely would have preferred a more robust ending to his much-beloved fantasy noir Pushing Daisies, the show didn’t exit on a cliffhanger or, worse, with the whimper of a total non-ending, as some do.

No, he was able to whip together an epilogue to tack on to the cliffhanger ending of “Kerplunk,” the [...]

Note: The following review first appeared as an article entitled “True Blood: HBO’s newest (and most misunderstood) hit” in The Climax, Hampshire College’s newspaper.

Enough vampires, you say. And you’re entitled: pop culture is oversaturated with blood-sucking stories these days. True Blood might have been white noise amongst other fang-bearing works. But Twilight it ain’t. Part pulpy horror flick, part gothic love story, and with pervasive [...]

Now that I’ve finally watched the last hour of the 61st Annual Emmy Awards, I can confidently say that this year’s broadcast was one of the best in recent history. And here are my favorite aspects of the big show:

• Neil Patrick Harris. Coming off of last year’s terrible hosting job by otherwise talented reality-TV hosts, Neil Patrick Harris did a hell of a job as emcee. I haven’t seen much of [...]