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2011: A Very Good Year
My very personal list of top twelve shows of 2011 (one for each day of Christmas). Be careful; spoilers included… 12) The Killing (AMC): OK, so I'm a contrarian: maybe I'm just touting this show...
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Note from David Bushman: Intern Ali Glatt, a senior at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts for Film and Television, is a woman of impeccable taste in TV, as she demonstrates in this guest post about series...
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Northwest Noir
The Paley Center's January 21 Portlandia panel was a hoot, thanks to panelists Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein and moderator Julie Klausner. But what particularly strikes me about the show is its...
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Ethics 101, "Walking Dead" Style
I'm fully aware that zombies are hideous and obtuse, and I get why some people persist in belittling them in comparison with the charisma-drenched vampire, but if you are allowing this anti-zombie...
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Rogues' Gallery
This is Heroes & Villains Week over at Jen's Book Thoughts, wherein bloggers are invited to write about their favorite good guys and bad guys. Guess which one I chose. Herein I identify eight of...
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Where Have You Gone, Mr. Slattery? (Part One)
Guest blogger Dr. Joseph Harder is an adjunct professor of political science at Macomb Community College and other institutions in Michigan.The annals of American television are full of "brilliant but...
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Where Have You Gone, Mr. Slattery? (Part Two)
In part two, guest blogger Dr. Joseph Harder continues his look at the 1960s CBS political drama Slattery's People. (Read part one) In late December 1964, newspapers began running stories that CBS was...
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"Battleground" and "Veep": Living in a Political World
One of my favorite things to poke fun at (good-naturedly, of course) is what I like to call the Lou Pascal Syndrome, after the Burt Lancaster character in the 1980 film Atlantic City, an aging...
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Through the Darkness of Futures Past
In a recent blog post, Television Worth Watching's David Bianculli solicited nominees for favorite "spider web" movies—films that ensnare you time after time, no matter how often you've seen them - and...
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Book 'Em!
A couple of interesting TV-themed books came across my desk recently:Fans of fifties sci-fi B-movies—and really, who isn't?—will want to acquaint themselves with Science Fiction Theatre, a largely...
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100 Great Episodes: Doctor Who
When I was program director at TV Land we collaborated with TV Guide on a special issue titled "100 Greatest Episodes of All Time," published in June 1997. Being the rigid literalist that I am, the...
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Don't Cry for Me, Sam Hunter
Now that Homeland has jumped the shark (as if I needed another reason to ignore the Golden Globes), I proffer an alternative for fans of espionage dramas: Hunted.Never heard of it, right? Sigh. Hunted...
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Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine
Series finales are odd, right? On the one hand, if you like the show enough to stick around until the end, you're probably bummed that it's over. On the other, who doesn't eagerly anticipate the...
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No Penguins on the North Pole
I'm probably way too pumped to learn that Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are crafting a Zombieland pilot for Amazon, which is scheduled to "air" in mid-April and could then go to series. Not that I...
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Game of Thrones: The North Remembers
Note from David Bushman: Mother of Mercy, intern Craig Solomon says goodbye to season three of "Game of Thrones" ..."Here comes the King in the North!" "Here comes the King in the North!" These...
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Every Demon Wants His Pound of Flesh
I'd watch anything with Lena Headey (in her company, sure, but what I mean is anything in which she appears), which explains what I was doing at a midtown Manhattan movie theater at 3 pm on Saturday,...
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"Difficult" Quiz
With a nod to my colleague Arthur Smith, here are fourteen things I learned from reading Brett Martin's Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad...
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twentysomething (Part I)
September is a melancholic time here because most of our summer interns head back to college (sad for us, at least). This year I asked my interns to leave something behind—their thoughts and opinions...
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twentysomething (Part II)
Continued from PART 1.Recent Paley Center interns continue their meditation on the state of media. Once again, the players are:Ilana Berman, senior, Boston University, studying history and...
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"The Americans" and Me
I started thinking about my Russian history class from junior year of high school recently, remembering endless days of Doctor Zhivago, a movie that took up over a month's worth of class time. In the...
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