High Definition: Watching Soccer From Across the Pond
I’ll be the first to recognize that I have a bit of an obsessive personality. So, since I decided this summer that I’d adopt the football club of my hosts at the Manchester International Festival, I shouldn’t be surprised by how quickly my soccer mania has developed. But what has caught me completely off-guard has been my ability to watch nearly every one of the club’s 19 matches so far this season.... read more
High Definition: AfterSCRUBS
When it came on the air back in 2001, Scrubs pulled off the seemingly impossible—it was a hospital-based show that felt completely original. With J.D.‘s absurdist fantasies, a sharp cast and a unique sense of humor, Bill Lawrence had created one of the funniest network sitcoms of the decade. As the characters developed over the course of its seven-season run on NBC from interns to full-fledged doctors, the accumulation of running gags and inside jokes flowed naturally: the unnamed Janitor’s (Neil Flynn) schemes to torture J.D. (Zach Braff), Dr. Cox’s (John C. McGinley) verbal abuse of J.D., J.D. and Turk’s... read more
James Cameron to Develop "Sci-Fi Adventure" for Fox
According to a tweet by Production Weekly, Avatar director James Cameron will have more work coming his way, this time for television. The post reads: “James Cameron is developing a Shane Salerno-scripted sci-fi action script for Fox, described as an event film set in the future.”... read more
Mike Judge's The Goode Family Moves to Comedy Central
Mike Judge The Goode Family endured a rocky first season with ABC, thanks at least in part to the show’s controversial premise, which chronicles the life of a hyper-liberal family that failed to resonate with television viewers.... read more
Dexter Showrunner Jumps Ship
After the jaw-dropping revelation in the final minutes of Dexter’s fourth season (no spoilers here), showrunner Clyde Phillips has announced that he will leave the series to spend more time with his family.... read more
High Definition: Joss Whedon's Dollhouse Finally Hits Its Stride—Just In Time For Cancellation
If Fox had canceled Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse halfway through the show’s first season, I wouldn’t have shed a tear. It looked like the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog had finally created a dud. The concept was intriguing, but the episodic adventures of a gorgeous body that could be filled with whatever personality her handlers created for her were a little silly and a lot creepy. The main Doll, Echo (Eliza Dushku), would go on engagements as a hostage negotiator, a bodyguard or, most often, a lover, and it felt a lot like... read more
Ricky Gervais Plans to Channel Rat Pack as Host of Golden Globes
Ricky Gervais was tapped in October to host the 67th Annual Golden Globes awards show—the first host the show has had since 1995. Gervais himself was a Golden Globe winner in 2004 for BBC’s The Office.... read more
Is Flight of the Conchords Finished? Yes, Affirmative.
The “fourth-most-popular folk duo in New Zealand” is hanging up its spurs at HBO. They just announced on their website that they will not be returning for a third season of their critically acclaimed, Emmy-nominated show on the cable network.... read more
30 Rock Review: "Secret Santa" (episode 4.8)
You know, I like Christmas episodes. They're cheap and easy, they tend towards heavy-handed moralizing and more often than not they end up sickeningly saccharine in a way that makes me wish the holiday would just go away. But when done right, they just kind of hit that special sweet spot that manages to be both heart-warming and funny. Think of the original Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas as the rarity in pulling things off and Jim Carrey's nightmare-inducing demonic crap-o-rama from a few years back as the other 90% of things out there. For whatever reason, regardless... read more
Community Review: "Comparative Religion" (Episode 1.12)
Arrested Development was the best sitcom of the past decade. If you've paid attention to either our list or one of the various other ones out there, this is starting to look like less an opinion than a certain level of fact at this point, so generally agreed upon that it's not that controversial. That being said, while the show is certainly a situational comedy in the literal sense, part of its greatness was to transcend and, frequently, ignore typical sitcom tropes. Single camera, laugh track free, contuity based—these are all small parts of how the show broke away from... read more
Does the World Need an Entourage Movie?
As one of HBO’s flagship series, Entourage has a complex reputation. It hit a self-reflexive high in its second season (the Aquaman years), but since then it’s been an on-and-off source of grumbling and eye rolls among fans. It can seem like an eternity before anything actually happens, and the series is often curiously out of touch. The most recent season, for example, began with an episode where the characters talk about nothing but Knocked Up, a movie that was a hot cultural item…two summers ago.... read more
FlashForward Goes On Hiatus Until March
Another ABC series will join V in ducking out of January and February’s ratings race as the Winter Olympics looms ahead. New mystery thriller FlashForward won’t return to primetime until March 4, where it will finish its remaining 13 episodes uninterrupted.... read more
Paul F. Tompkins Says Goodbye to Best Week Ever, Gets Ready for Christmas Show
Paul F. Tompkins has officially finished his stints as participant and, briefly, host of Best Week Ever. Although VH1 has been promising to bring the show back in 2010, Tompkins recently told Paste, “I was asked by my manager, through the executive producer of Best Week Ever, that if the show were to come back in the old format, would I be interested in participating? And I let it be known that that is not something that interests me.”... read more
Catching Up With... Top Chef’s Kevin Gillespie
Gillespie, 27, is executive chef and partner at acclaimed Atlanta restaurant Woodfire Grill... read more
Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire to Tap into Seedy, 1920s Atlantic City
Martin Scorsese is moving forward with his new series for HBO. The network has bought 12 episodes of Boardwalk Empire including the pilot, and Scorsese and his crew were seen filming recently in Brooklyn.... read more
Patton Oswalt Announces Post-Christmas Show in Chicago
If you happen to be in Chicago the day after Christmas, and you’re looking for a funny way to pass the time, might we suggest taking in a show from the guy we happen to think is the #3 comedian of the decade? We might indeed. Patton Oswalt will be performing at the Lakeshore Theater in the Windy City on Dec. 26.... read more
Morgan Spurlock to Host The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special - In 3-D! On Ice!
Wait, what? read more
30 Rock Review: "Dealbreakers Talk Show #0001" (Episode 4.7)
The two big surprises for 30 Rock this week were that a. it looks like Dealbreakers is done and b. a whole episode based around Dealbreakers ended up being pretty good after all. Admittedly, the later is a bigger surprise, but I’m happy that the show dispatched things with such grace when almost everything else having to do with the whole Dealbreakers plotline tended to be cliché, unfunny, or at the very least filler. ... read more
The Office Review: "Scott's Tots" (Episode 6.12)
This season’s eleventh episode keeps the dual-storyline alive, one being rather flimsy and the other ending up too atrocious to watch. Jim tries to conduct one normal day at the office while Michael is out making an ass of himself somewhere. Yeah, the formula is becoming bland, but this doesn’t fit in my final verdict of the episode. It’s hard to say whether this week’s “Scott’s Tots” was commendably funny, or if it was as humorous as a child realizing that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.... read more
Community Review: "The Politics of Human Sexuality" (Episode 1.11)
One of the early concerns for Community was whether it would wear itself out quickly. As good as the pilot was, and it was damn good, the next few episodes were in large part repetition. Meet the cast, meet a class, and get a few jokes about how bad community colleges are. Rinse, show Abed being weird in some sort of autistic or foreign way, repeat. ... read more
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