“Reality-television fans have high standards for artifice”
Reality-television fans have high standards for artifice, which needs to seem both believable and...
Category Archives: Television
“…long before the age of quarantine, kids under the age of six spent a crazy amount of time indoors, watching television, a bleary-eyed average of fifty-four hours a week”
Half a century ago, before “Sesame Street,” and long before the age of quarantine,...
“The sessions are extraordinary for the rare glimpses they provide of unscripted conversations at the White House on critical issues”
The chief executive sits at a long wooden table, putting his invited guests on...
“The ’90s was the decade…in which conspiracism…became a form of kitschy entertainment”
The ’90s was the decade of Oliver Stone’s “J.F.K.,” “The X-Files” and late-night Roswell...
“The tone-setting awkward sex scene has become a staple of the modern television series opener”
Perhaps you’ve seen the new TV series whose pilot episode begins this way: A...
“Superhero team-building is a venerable comic-book practice, one that flourished in the ’60s and ’70s…more or less contemporaneously with the first voyages of the Starship Enterprise”
Nothing in popular culture, or in consumer capitalism, is ever really new. Superhero team-building...
“There’s room for both kinds of shows, but as ‘Cosby’ recedes from reruns, ‘Roc’ seems especially worthy of reconsideration”
…looking back at “Roc,” I find it interesting to consider that before his acting...
“As a reality TV professional, I would be lucky to strike gold like Donald Trump once or twice in a career”
I’ve been working in reality television for 10 years, and I can tell you...
“Donald Trump is the presidential candidate that reality TV made”
Donald Trump is the presidential candidate that reality TV made. An electorate trained in...
“The humor and pathos of “Louie” come not only from the occasional funny feelings that he has about his privileges…but also, more profoundly, from his knowledge that the conceptual and imaginative foundations of those privileges have crumbled beneath him”
The humor and pathos of “Louie” come not only from the occasional funny feelings...