Category: Featured
-
Surveillance Summer Watch: Cheers, “Coach Returns to Action,” “Endless Slumper” and “One for the Book”
This is the newest post in 2011′s Surveillance Summer Watch series featuring Cheers and Hill Street Blues. For the next couple of months, I’ll be writing weekly reviews of episodes from each series’ first seasons, with Cheerson Tuesdays and Hill Street Blues on Thursdays. For more information, see this post and for all the SSW pieces,visit this page. People like to talk about…
-
From Route 666 to The Apocalypse: Ranking the episodes of Supernatural, Episodes 73-59
Throughout its six years on the air, Supernatural has had a substantial amount of good-to-great episodes, which made this list difficult to compile. However, like any long-running series, Supernatural has aired its fair share of missteps, problem children and downright horrible episodes. These things happen. Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing all the…
-
From Route 666 to The Apocalypse: Ranking the episodes of Supernatural, Episodes 84-74
Throughout its six years on the air, Supernatural has had a substantial amount of good-to-great episodes, which made this list difficult to compile. However, like any long-running series, Supernatural has aired its fair share of missteps, problem children and downright horrible episodes. These things happen. Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing all the series’…
-
Season Premiere — True Blood, “She’s Not There”
As begins its fourth season, True Blood is a series I no longer give the benefit of the doubt. After two severely flawed, but wonderfully entertaining seasons, last year’s offering of episodes failed to provide the same kind of enjoyable thrills to balance out the laughably large number of problems. Early last season, the series…
-
Season Premiere — Burn Notice, “Company Man”
Season four of Burn Notice was not up to snuff but the last two episodes were very, very good. More importantly, after four years of moving the chains and delaying any resolution, the series finally pulled the trigger on bringing Michael in from the cold. Because of this (as I tweeted today), I’m very optimistic…
-
Surveillance Summer Watch: Hill Street Blues, “Can WWIII Be An Attitude?” and “Double Jeopardy”
This is the newest post in 2011′s Surveillance Summer Watch series featuring Cheers and Hill Street Blues. For the next couple of months, I’ll be writing weekly reviews of episodes from each series’ first seasons, with Cheerson Tuesdays and Hill Street Blues on Thursdays. For more information, see this post and for all the SSW pieces, visit this page. Much like I did in…
-
Test Pilot: File #17, The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Test Pilot #17: The Mary Tyler Moore Show Debut date: September 17, 1970 Series legacy: One of the most well-regarded comedies of all-time. I have to apologize, sort of. I took a few extra weeks to figure out where I wanted to go with the next set of Test Pilot files. I thought about doing…
-
Brand transition? — On what’s at stake for USA Network this summer
I am entirely enthralled by television network/channel branding. You might know this about me. You might also know that I’m writing my MA thesis on the topic, specifically USA Network’s branding. USA is such an interesting case because they are just so damn successful, even though up until now, their programming has been generally formulaic.…
-
Surveillance Summer Watch: Cheers, “Any Friend of Diane’s,” “Friends, Romans and Accountants” and “Truce or Consequences”
This is the newest post in 2011′s Surveillance Summer Watch series featuring Cheers and Hill Street Blues. For the next couple of months, I’ll be writing weekly reviews of episodes from each series’ first seasons, with Cheerson Tuesdays and Hill Street Blues on Thursdays. For more information, see this post and for all the SSW pieces,visit this page. I don’t know what my…
-
Season Finale — The Killing, “Orpheus Descending”
This is going to be a slightly different kind of review, mostly because it’s going to talk just as much about the reaction to the episode as it does the episode itself. If you’ve been on the site over the last week, you probably came across my frustrated rant about The Killing, pre-finale. After watching…
-
2011 Dream Emmy Ballot: Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series
It’s that time again, folks. The Emmy nominations will be announced on July 14, which means I have almost an entire month to flood this space with hopes, dreams and predictions about what could happen come nomination time. To kick things off, I’ll be bringing back the Dream Emmy Ballot. It’s something I did last…
-
From Route 666 to The Apocalypse: Ranking the episodes of Supernatural, Episodes 106-100
Throughout its six years on the air, Supernatural has had a substantial amount of good-to-great episodes, which made this list difficult to compile. However, like any long-running series, Supernatural has aired its fair share of missteps, problem children and downright horrible episodes. These things happen. Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing all the series’…
-
Kingdom of disconnect: On ambivalence with Game of Thrones
As you may or may not know, I have not read one single word of the book that HBO’s Game of Thrones is based on. As such, I was sufficiently excited for the television adaptation, as I would be for all new HBO drama series. Despite all the annoying hype and the assertions that the…
-
#TVFail Entry 5: 24, “Day 6: 9:00 a.m. — 10:00 a.m.”
The accused: 24, “Day 6: 9:00 a.m. — 10:00 a.m.” The crime: Showing us what happens when good episodes mean bad things Television’s failures are supposed to be obvious. From the overhyped non-starters that flop from the very beginning (hello, FlashForward, Lone Star) to the much-discussed clumsy conclusions of series we were convinced had it all planned…
-
From Route 666 to The Apocalypse: Ranking the episodes of Supernatural, Episodes 116-107
Throughout its six years on the air, Supernatural has had a substantial amount of good-to-great episodes, which made this list difficult to compile. However, like any long-running series, Supernatural has aired its fair share of missteps, problem children and downright horrible episodes. These things happen. Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be…
CB, PhD 