Category: Featured
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Test Pilot: File #14, Playmakers
Test Pilot #14: Playmakers Debut date: August 26, 2003 Series legacy: Controversial, “gritty” series that was unceremoniously canceled by ESPN — with help from the NFL After a short hiatus, Test Pilot is back! Time for more historical pilot analysis – I know, contain your excitement. In case you have forgotten or are new to…
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PCA/ACA 2011: SamGirls and DeanGirls: Anti-fan fans in Supernatural
This is the working draft of my presentation at this year’s PCA/ACA 2011 conference on Supernatural fans. A few notes: If you recall, I asked for responses from fans, critics, whomever related to Supernatural and its fandom sometime in March. Of course, I quickly realized that adding in a lot of quotes and context from…
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Friday Night Lights, “On The Outside Looking In”
Again, this is my review from the DirecTV run of FNL that I’m reposting here for those of you watching on NBC’s schedule. Enjoy. After my reaction to last week’s premiere episode that succeeded mostly when focusing on the departure of old favorites, I was particularly interested in watching “On The Outside Looking In” to…
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Waiting for Superman, week two: The best comic book character guest stars
With only five more weeks of Smallville, there are mixed emotions in the TVS headquarters. To work out those conflicting feelings, I’ll be writing a pre-episode piece every week from here on out until the final episode on May 13. You can see last week’s piece here if you missed it. Last week, I promised…
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Community, “Paradigms of Human Memory”
Note: I’m at a conference and running on a bit of wonky sleep schedule, so I’m going to cut this one a bit short. I could just write, “IT’S AMAZINGLY FUNNY.” and move on, but I’m a professional. I mean amateur. You get it. I spend a lot of time in my Community reviews talking…
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#TVFail Entry 1: Lost, “Stranger in a Strange Land”
The accused: Lost, “Stranger in a Strange Land” (Season 3, Episode 9) The crime: Proving that the Lost creative team had no “real plan” to tell their story. 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…
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Cougar Town, “Walls”
Our long national nightmare is over folks, Cougar Town is back! ABC took the series off the air to try to jump-start Matthew Perry’s career (which I don’t think worked), but for all our waiting, the network has done the nice thing and given the series a twofer week, starting with last night’s “Walls” and…
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Series Premiere — Game of Thrones, “Winter is Coming”
Over the past few weeks, I’ve said a few times that I wasn’t going to review Game of Thrones, at least not the first few episodes. And for the most part, that’s still true. This post on the first episode, “Winter is Coming,” will probably be the only one on the series for a bit…
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Supernatural, “My Heart Will Go On”
A few days ago, I wrote about how Supernatural should probably be canceled. This doesn’t mean that I hate this season or even strongly dislike this season. But if the whole season was full of episodes like “My Heart Will Go On,” I probably wouldn’t have written that piece to begin with. This is a…
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Smallville, “Kent”
When I wrote this piece yesterday, I mentioned that the Smallville writers should do their best to focus on Clark and try not to detour into too many gimmicky episodes or characters not in the main cast. “Kent” is sort of a cheat, because it does both. Bring back Clark Luthor and shooting CK over…
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Season premiere — Friday Night Lights, “Expectations”
Ed note: I wrote this review during the DirecTV run of Friday Night Light’s final season, but am moving it to the front page to coincide with the premiere on NBC tonight. I hope you enjoy the season, it is tremendous. Pardon the pun, but coming into Friday Night Lights‘ fifth and final season, we as an audience…
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Waiting for Superman, week one: How Smallville can stick the landing
With only five more weeks of Smallville, there are mixed emotions in the TVS headquarters. To work out those conflicting feelings, I’ll be writing a pre-episode piece every week from here on out until the final episode on May 13. This is the first one, obviously. Smallville‘s tenth and final season has been a bit…
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The Vampire Diaries, “The Last Dance”
With Klaus ready to make his move, everyone on Team Elena has their own opinion on not only how to kill him, but the best way to protect Elena in the interim. Different perspectives and plans of course brings conflict, and that’s really what this whole episode is about. All season has been about protecting…
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Community, “Competitive Wine Tasting”
I’ll just go ahead and put this out there: “Competitive Wine Tasting” is probably my least favorite episode of Community‘s second season and quite possibly my least favorite episode OF ALL TIME. Of course, it’s still better than a lot of television out there and if I were giving it a grade, it would still…
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Justified, “Debts and Accounts”
Note: I don’t have a lot of time, but I wanted to get some ramblings down about last night’s episode. After last week’s epic episode of Justified “Debts and Accounts” is one of those episodes where the dust is settling and characters are trying to position themselves perfectly for when it’s actually all cleared. In…
CB, PhD 