Pages tagged “television”

After a three-week hiatus, Pushing Daisies returned with a buoyant new episode that further developed three of the four over-arching second-season plotlines. (Emerson's missing daughter has yet to be fleshed out.) "Oh Oh Oh... It's Magic" also guest starred Fred Willard, and for anyone who has seen his performance in this, you'd know that is a very good thing indeed. Now, onto those story lines:

While last week’s episode focused on the legacy of exes in our characters’ romantic lives, this week’s Starter Wife throws the viewer abruptly back into the present. Unfortunately, Joan (everyone’s favorite curmudgeonly but kinda sexy recovering-alcoholic best friend) really has gone on a cruise with her estranged husband. So we’re left with Molly’s new writer boyfriend, Rodney’s action-hero flame, and the crumbling of Liz’s marriage.

There he is! After last week's random omission of Samantha’s new boyfriend Owen (he was hot stuff one week, completely missing the next), episode six starts off with Sam trying to decide how she’ll tell her new beau that she still lives with Todd, her ex. Considering it's Sam, we can’t expect it to go over smoothly. But while Owen takes the news well, his reasons for being so understanding shake Sam: He gets it because he is himself best friends with his ex, Willow. In his mind, their two circumstances are similar but to Sam, the news is horrifying.

Check out Paste's top 10 television shows of 2008...

TV heaven got a bit more cramped last week as NBC announced the cancellation of two of its prime-time dramas: My Own Worst Enemy, starring Christian Slater as a double-life-leading former CIA agent, and Lipstick Jungle, starring Brooke Shields, Kim Raver and Lindsay Price as rich white women making bad choices in the Big Apple.

Having never seen an episode of My Own Worst Enemy, I can only attest to the quality of Lipstick Jungle (and read on, I will), but by now we should all know that even the best showssnagged enough viewers to stave off the executioners blow are no match for the bad ratings. And both of these shows had 'em, so the cancellations should come as no real shock. Instead, the surprise of the week was which show had, indeed, snagged enough viewers to stave off the executioner's blow: Kath & Kim.

HBO has finally figured out a way to tackle the recession: make fun of it. The network has paired with author Andy Bellin to produce The Review, a comedy series set in 1987 at a literary magazine at the height of that era’s Wall Street meltdown.

Stan Lee’s influence has come to tower over the contemporary surge in comic-book adaptations, but even his expansive oeuvre has some underdeveloped patches. The 85-year-old touchstone has teamed with Showtime to develop a series, Hero, centered on the emergence of a gay superhero icon.

Maybe it was the fact that Tiny Fey as Sarah Palin gave Saturday Night Live one of its most-discussed skits since "Dick In A Box," but the ever-changing sketch-comedy program is choosing to reestablish a respectable X-to-Y chromosome ratio. Last week it was announced that comedians Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott will join the show to fill the gap left by new mother Amy Poehler and 30 Rock-helming Fey. Despite news that they were to debut in this weekend's episode (hosted by Paul Rudd), it seems they will appear later this month.

Apparently we're living in the Year of the Vampire. In the upcoming Twilight film and HBO's series True Blood, vampires live among us. But in the universe of Sci-Fi's Sanctuary, we find out in Episode 7 ("The Five") that they were all killed out before the Middle Ages. Vampires were the race of the Pharaohs and the Caesars, intelligent and powerful, enslaving humans until they were killed off by they church. But they also play a large part in how Dr. Helen Mangus (Amanda Tapping) has lived to be 157 years old. She injected a syrum from preserved vampire blood, along with four others, including her former lover-turned-sociopath John Druitt and Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla.

If a TV show wants to win me over as a fan, they could do no better than to sing the praises of Tom Waits for its viewers. In Life on Mars, during one of Episode 6's most memorable scenes, as Sam (Jason O'Mara) and Annie (Gretchen Mol) are held hostage in a mental ward, Annie tells Sam to think about his happiest moment to keep from going crazy. Sam sets the scene for Annie, saying that Tom Waits was playing on the jukebox and asks her if he's famous yet in 1973. She says he's never heard of him and he replies, "He's soon to become the patron saint of the sad and downtrodden New Yorker." Sam just got a lot cooler by association in my eyes—partially redeeming his attempts last week to rap lines from Vanilla Ice or this week to moonwalk.

The cancellations for the Fall TV season are slowly rolling in, and now NBC is getting in on the action. The Hollywood Reporter has revealed the network has axed two of its dramas, sophomore Lipstick Jungle and freshman series My Own Worst Enemy.

Entertainment Weekly reports that the fifth season of ABC's sensational drama Lost has secured a premiere date and, of course, it is not your average, one-hour opener. The Emmy-nominated series will storm back into your living room on Jan. 21 with a three-hour premiere event from 8-11 p.m. EST.

The shame of every episode of The Office is that it's only 22-minutes long. Here the best of what we've been missing—scenes that didn't make the cut but maybe should have...

Rumors began circling yesterday that Fox's MADtv was about to get canned following its 14th season. And according to Defamer, the rumors are spot on.

In our haste to dig into this season’s often listless narrative arcs, we’ve ignored some well-drawn work that has edged its way in. Margo Martindale (pictured) makes what will likely be her final appearance on the show this week as Camilla, the file clerk and old family friend who helped Dexter delve into his past in the first season. We learned she was terminal last week, and even if Dexter’s quest to find her the perfect key-lime pie was a pretty transparent ruse, her final hours (and Dexter’s unlikely part in them) were an ingenious way to explore mortality without the winking black humor that has become the show’s signature. Dexter’s final moments with her at the end of the episode are some of the season’s best.

On last night's Samantha Who? we saw Sam drive for the first time. And then we saw Sam get pulled over for running a red light after freaking out that the cop next to her “knows.” Not sure what he knew, but what we found out is that Sam has a bit of a record in her past, and was swiftly ordered 100 hours of community service.

It's the season of villains and episode 42 ("Villains") looks back at how they came to be through the whitened eyes of Hiro during his spirit journey. Mohinder's narration during the intro talks about how some people choose the path of darkness. But almost all those crossroads have been manipulated by a single man, either directly or through his work at "The Company."

Recently, Entertainment Weekly reported that NBC announced plans to pick up its new series Kath & Kim for a full first season. This means nine more episodes for the lukewarm-rated series, which draws six million viewers weekly.

Last week, the birth of Molly's love affair with Zach prompted questions about the narrative direction of the new series: Would the 2008 version (a continuation of the mini-series) carry on the banner of emotional complexity? We were hoping that the onset of the relationship would see the kind of dilemmas we relished during Molly's post-divorce period: the insecurity of the fresh tryst, muddled second chances, pride issues, multiple lovers, etc. But this week's installment took the focus of The Starter Wife from the new to the old.

I have a theory that the weakest character on a television show is always the namesake. I call this the “Dawson Leery Hypothesis.” The title character is almost always presented as weak when compared to his/her strong supporting cast. The character grows increasingly annoying as the series continues. Meredith Grey of Grey’s Anatomy is the best current example of this hypothesis. She’s a passive central character surrounded by strong people. She’s a black hole sucking all of the fun out of the show.

30 Rock's second episode of the new season, "Believe in the Stars," was a perfect example of why it's one of the best shows on TV. If the premiere was a bit awkward and tentative, its follow-up was anything but. Its madcap humor tirelessly delivered one joke after another at a lightning fast speed, adding up to one of the funniest episodes in the series.

M.I.A.'s latest music video, a low-budget collaboration with Blaqstarr, begins with the Genesis-inspired lyrics of Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole." The first shot, all in black and white, is a close-up of Blaqstarr's face. He sings, "When you walk through the garden / you gotta watch your back / ...If you walk with Jesus / he's gonna save your soul / but you gotta keep the devil / way down in the hole." The image monopolizes the screen until a crack of thunder shifts the focus to M.I.A. (her femininity emphasized in repeated, simultaneous close-ups of her lips--pictured above).

Lawrence O'Donnell of The West Wing has signed on to write and executive produce a new FX cop drama, Staten Island. Production of the pilot is currently underway; should the project be signed for a full season, the series will replace The Shield (the critically acclaimed drama's seven-year run culminates Nov. 25).

It looks as if King of the Hill might have even more endurance than we thought. As we reported previously, Fox decided to cancel the long-running series after next season, but according to Variety, ABC might pick up the show to package it with another animated comedy by Mike Judge, The Goode Family, set to debut next year.

We’re halfway through Dexter’s third season, and if this week’s episode felt a little inorganic, it served to clean up a series of plot points that had been unfocused over the last five episodes. Miguel’s brother is ostensibly out of the picture after Deb begins to share our suspicion about his connection to the Skinner murders (it isn’t him, alas), and Miguel is officially Dexter’s after-dark partner, albeit an apparently troubled one. Now we can get to the point, assuming there is one.

Fresh off last week's first good episode of the season, hopes were high for this week’s installment. And praise be the comedy gods, it delivered.

First off, it must be said how great it is to have 30 Rock back. Fall TV has been on the air for weeks now, but NBC decided to wait until the end of October to air the premiere of the best sitcom on television (sorry, Office fans, but it's true). The show's first installment of season three, "Do-Over," was sort of like the first day of school after summer vacation: sort of awkward at times, but fast and buoyant and warmly familiar all the same.

You'd be forgiven if you missed the latest episode of Pushing Daisies, seeing how Barack Obama bought airtime on every major network besides ABC (although, inexplicably, the show's ratings increased by 14%, further proof people are t-i-r-e-d of this election.) Regardless, it was an especially enjoyable episode, one that ended on an interesting cliff-hanger involving what has proven to be the over-arching story for the season: Ned's father.

After a recent pact with video game consoles to make its Watch Instantly service available away from computers, and another with Starz to expand the library of titles it offers, Netflix has announced it closed a long-gestating deal with TiVo to provide mutual subscribers with 12,000 movies and TV shows available on demand.

Wilco has a busy snow season ahead. Today, they kick off the cold-weather festivities with a one-song performance on The Colbert Report.

Although the critics were pretty nice to The Ex List (an impressive feat in itself for a rom-com type show), the Friday night CBS series couldn't get the ratings it needed. After only four episodes, the network has pulled the plug. For now.

20 Best TV Characters of the Past 20 Years

Today, we present the next four characters (#8-#5). Click here for #20-#17, here for #16-#13 and here for #12-#9.

Tonight, Senator Barack Obama will make his fourth guest appearance on The Daily Show. The Democratic Presidential nominee will join the program's host, Jon Stewart, via satellite from Florida, where his campaign continues with less than a week until Election Day.