Tag: Ian Brennan
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2011-2012 season wrap: Ranking the episodes of Glee’s third season
The 2011-2012 television season has been over for almost a couple of weeks now, which means a sufficient amount of time has passed and we are primed to reflect. Over the next handful of days, I will be producing some pieces and lists looking back on the season that was. I missed out on a […]
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Review: Glee, “Heart”
By now, you know that my schedule/workload/life changes keep me from writing as much as I would like here at TV Surveillance. Of all series I miss writing about, Glee someone still tops the list (well, since Community is still trapped out there in the ether). I don’t even understand how that’s really true, but […]
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Showrunner Series: Ryan Murphy = Matthew Weiner (Except, you know, awful)
I received the book Prime Time, Prime Movers for Christmas and have been plowing through it over the last week or so. As these things go, reading a book about the big individual creative forces in television history has me thinking about contemporary writer/producers. Therefore, today, I debut a new occasional feature where I will discuss […]
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TV Surveillance Podcast Episode 9 — Will Schuester is a horrible person
In the latest edition of the TV Surveillance Podcast, I’m joined by my buddy Austin Morris for a discussion of all things Glee. Remember, you can subscribe to the TVS Podcast on iTunes, if you like.
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Review: Glee, “Asian F”
In my review of the Glee season three premiere a few weeks ago, I spent some time talking about how formulaic the series’ has tended to be. For some reason, instead of trying new things with the characters, the production staff loves to have them repeat similar or near-exact stories that worked (and worked better) […]
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Review: Glee, “I Am Unicorn”
If Will Schuester runs for public office against Sue Sylvester I will burn down Fox Television Studios, never watch television again and quit Twitter. Glee has had some terrible ideas in its first two-plus years on the air, but the political campaign portion of season three is already at the top of the list. Having […]
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Season Premiere review — Glee, “The Purple Piano Project”
Glee is a formulaic series. For all its insanity, uneven character work and ridiculous logic, we pretty much know exactly what to expect from the series on a weekly basis. Ryan Murphy and company have pin-pointed a few things that they think the audience enjoys and they just keep hammering away with them. This isn’t […]
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Fall Television “Preview”: Four series with problems to solve
With September upon us, the fall television season is just around the corner. At random times over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting some preview-like pieces about what is to come over the next few months. Just like last year, I haven’t seen any of the season’s new series – no pilots or anything. […]
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Musings on The Glee Project from someone who just started watching The Glee Project
I watched the first few minutes of the initial episode of The Glee Project and then realized I didn’t really care that much. Fast forward a handful of weeks later, throw in the accessibility of multiple episodes OnDemand and a girlfriend who didn’t want to watch some of the scripted series I’d hoped she would […]
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The show about nothing — The problem with Glee’s second season
A few of the series I regularly cover here at TVS are on hiatus this week. In lieu of writing reviews of new episodes, I thought this would be a good time to take stock of where we’ve been this season and where we’re headed in the final string of episodes. In these posts I’ll […]
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Glee, “The Sue Sylvester Shuffle”
Although so much of the discourse has focused on how Glee and the Super Bowl seem like such an insane and difficult pairing, I tend to believe the opposite is actually true. The Super Bowl is most certainly the greatest spectacle in America. It’s all about the grandiose, the loud, the bright, etc. For better or […]
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TV Surveillance’s Best of 2010: Top 60 Episodes, 20-11
2010 has been a fantastic year for television. This year brought us a slew of great new programs and if we include the second halves of all the series that debuted in the fall of 2009 (which I am for these features), we have probably just experienced the best run of newbies since 2004. While […]
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Glee, “Duets”
Character consistency is an important concept to any television series, particularly dramas. We want the people on-screen to be themselves each week, even if that includes slight variations and ultimately development, along the way. But for most of its run, Glee hasn’t been concerned with such concepts. The series has traded in character consistency and […]
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Season Premiere — Glee, “Audition”
Like many critics and faux-critics, I had a number of issues with the back-nine of Glee‘s first season. And the events of the summer — additional cast members, more theme episodes and Ryan Murphy’s hyperbole about dialing it back — there wasn’t a lot to suggest things were going to improve. If there is any […]
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TV Surveillance Last Minute Emmy Nomination Picks
The title to this post is somewhat misleading because I’ve actually had my “official” Emmy picks finished for a few days, aside from a few of the minor categories I wrapped up yesterday. However, thanks to my summer excursion into manual labor, this is the first time I’ve had a real good chunk of time […]
CB, PhD 