Nothing on TV

I haven’t had a television for more than fifty years, and though some people tell me that I have missed much of value thereby, which I do not doubt because it would hardly be possible to produce so many tens of thousands (or is it millions?) of hours of television without producing at least something of value, I do not feel that my life has been very ...


Dr. Phil McGraw

Dr. Phil’s Drunken Sex Escapade

I"€™ll admit it: I"€™m unfashionably fond of Dr. Phil. At least early on"€”before he got caught up in shady stuff such as trying to brand his family as the Osmonds of advice"€”his folksy football-coach routine was a welcome ...

How the Love Boat Ruined My Life

A relic of a long-gone era of “happy endings” and “family viewing,” the real-life Love Boat’s final voyage was marred by a perfectly po-mo, Irony Age tragedy. Last week, two scrapyard workers were ...

Jay Leno and Johnny Carson

Leno’s Last Laugh

Yes, there really is a Burbank. As a kid, I assumed that the smallish California city with the “beautiful downtown” was just a cheesy Tonight Show punch line, not a real place. Today, all is not well in the “Media ...

Robert De Niro

Robert De Niro’s Imaginary Neo-Nazi Gangs of Boston

What's the female equivalent of "€œI"€™ll never get an erection again"€? That happened to me when I found out actor Alan Rickman"€”upon whose lap I’d often fantasized sitting while he read aloud from the Manhattan ...

Amish Mafia

Too Much Reality

I get called a “racist” a lot, but one offhand remark I made during Obama’s 2008 campaign drew more flak than usual. I had simply wondered why the candidate’s admirers held up his parentage"€”a (ditzy) white ...

Here Comes Honey Jigaboo Boo

Cable TV's Oxygen channel was founded in part by Oprah Winfrey, but it appears to have finally jumped the shvartze with a proposed program called All My Babies"€™ Mamas. Originally slated to appear in the spring, the one-hour special ...

Let Them Watch Crap

It’s happening again. Once more I begin to like a new TV show and it is canceled in a single season. My affliction goes back to the mid-70s, when Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Ellery Queen bit the dust in rapid succession. This ...

Mob Wives

Keepin’ it Real (Cheap)

When MTV’s The Real World debuted in 1992, people saw it for what it was: a silly bit of voyeurism for a bunch of stupid kids. Twenty years later, the genre it hatched is dominating prime time, and the audiences are a helluva lot ...


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