Columns

Government ‘Office’

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 4/29/2009

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

It’s often been referred to as an Office spin-off, but NBC’s new half-hour sitcom Parks and Recreation is really more of a self-inflicted style-bite. Creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur don’t transplant an already established character to a new location, Frasier style, but instead transfer Ricky...[MORE]

More like ‘Kröd Mändon’t’

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 4/8/2009

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

The problem with Comedy Central’s new sword-and-sorcery spoof Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire starts at the umlauts. A look at all that unnecessary dottage in the title will tell you most of what you need to know about the series’ introductory episode (debuting 9 p.m. Thursday, April 9). ...[MORE]

Genocide, the rematch

By Jeremy Martin

Published: 4/1/2009

Types: Screens & Tech

The question answered by the first episode of Spike TV’s new pseudo-educational program Deadliest Warrior (premiering Tuesday, April 7, at 9 p.m.), is pretty simple: “Who would win in a fight between a Roman gladiator and an Apache warrior?” The questions not answered, however, are infinitely more w...[MORE]

House of god: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 12/31/2008

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

A long time ago — way before anyone began to worry about the digital-TV switchover — gods fiddled in the affairs of man. They had powers mortals could only dream of, but their failings were equally renowned. They were drunks and lechers, envious and wrathful. They impregnated human women, sent men o...[MORE]

Call me asshole: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 12/10/2008

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

“We live in a media culture,” says Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson in episode two, turned slightly away from the video camera that records him, then looking back over his right shoulder as he pontificates so that the camera catches him at the perfect angle. “Things don’t happen unless you see it on...[MORE]

Sunday bloody Sunday: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 11/19/2008

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

True Blood (HBO, Sundays, 8pm) “Don’t you dare get morally superior with me,” says Amy Burley (Lizzy Caplan doing a fair-to-middling Zooey Deschanel impression) to a fat, gay, TV-addicted vampire she holds prisoner. “I am an organic vegan, and my carbon footprint is miniscule.” Later, s...[MORE]

That ’70s show

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 11/5/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

TV land is well acquainted with time travel. You got your Quantum Leap, your Do Over, your Futurama, your Journeyman, your Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. You got that increasingly inscrutable ancient-Japan subplot in Heroes ... The list goes on. And, with three of those examples debu...[MORE]

The XXX-files: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 10/22/2008

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

“Oh, gaaawwd,” I thought, watching my favorite FBI agent engage in a sloppy three-way with some blonde and Charlotte’s turtle-headed husband from Sex and the City, “Mulder’s a freak.” Worse, I thought, “he’s totally killing his chances of marrying not-Scully.” Perception is a strange th...[MORE]

High-school rivalry: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 10/8/2008

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

It’s easy to lump Gossip Girl, last year’s hot-as-hell teen drama, in with 90210, this year’s (and also 1990’s) hot-as-hell teen drama. They both portray the highest of high society, chronicling hopelessly rich prep-school kids and their mostly horrid parents. Having never had to deal with mundane s...[MORE]

Badfellas

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 9/24/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

“X is the new Y.” It’s a joke and a cliché. A cliché used with such willful abandon that it’s dangerously close to becoming this generation’s “Have a Nice Day.” In a media age so suffused and preoccupied with branding and cross-branding and brand-extension, it has become a part of speech. It’s...[MORE]

‘Kill’ joy

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 9/10/2008

Types: Cover Story, Section Cover

Generation Kill (HBO, rebroadcast times and dates vary, check hbo.com for schedule) As Generation Kill opens, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the men of First Reconnaissance — an elite Marine detachment that completes much of the same training as the Navy Seals and the Army Rangers and ope...[MORE]

Cleaned out: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 8/27/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

Benjamin Bratt made his name in the mid-’90s as Detective Rey Curtis on Law & Order. He was stoic, workmanlike, and good-looking, so he was granted a turn in film, where he remained good- looking and turned in a number of similarly stoic, workmanlike rolls. His most notable came as the drug king...[MORE]

Just ‘Plain’ bad: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 8/13/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

Damn, those are big lips, Mary McCormack! Seriously. They weren’t always that big, were they? Certainly not back in your Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star salad days. What gives? Oh, wait, I get it … maybe. Are they for your hot new character? The one who looks like a girl, but walks, talks, fights ...[MORE]

Remote possibilities

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 7/23/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

30 Days (FX, Seasons 1 & 2 on DVD; Season 3 readily downloadable via iTunes and less legal means) The timing of this is bad. I’ve spent the last month and a half beating my head at the keep of Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days, an infuriatingly uneven documentary series. Wham, wham, wham goe...[MORE]

Go Team Venture!: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 6/25/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

The Venture Brothers (Adult Swim, Sundays, 11:30 pm) Last week on Venture Brothers, Dr. Rusty Venture found himself in an Egyptian temple, beset on all sides by mummies. As is often the case. Unable to move, Dr. Venture — father of the titular leads Dean and Hank Venture, son of the legendary ...[MORE]

Charlie Gibson’s war

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 6/11/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

News that former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan had dropped dimes on both the Bush Administration and the media for their respective mishandling of the Iraq War was a bombshell that created more bloody rubble than any rational person could ever sift through. As this is neither a p...[MORE]

YouTube’s mild kingdom

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 5/28/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

Battle at Kruger (National Geographic Channel, originally aired Sunday May 11 at 9 pm) The majority of television, like the majority of everything else, is crap. It’s commercialized. It panders. It candy-coats. For the longest time, though, one kind of TV managed to be exciting as hell without ...[MORE]

Headbanging (the wall)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 5/14/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

Metalocalypse (Cartoon Network, Mondays, Midnight) Confession time: I’d never watched Metalocalypse until April 30. I probably would have never watched it if the oddest thing hadn’t happened. Upon arriving at work two days prior, characteristically late and generally unkempt, I found the offic...[MORE]

‘Battlestar’ goes for the god: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 4/9/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, Fridays, 10 pm) Three years ago, the Cylons, a race of androids, completely destroyed the 12 colonies of Kobol and most of the human race that resided there. The survivors formed a ragtag caravan looking for the mythical Earth. The Battlestar Galactica is their on...[MORE]

No more B-More: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 3/12/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

Early in The Wire’s fifth and final season, after years of drug abuse, sometime informant and perpetual junkie Bubbles takes his last best shot at staying clean. At an AA meeting he attends, we hear from a stringy young woman who talks about the impossibly hard task of living with her inner addict. ...[MORE]

Let us cast the first ‘Stone’: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 2/20/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

Eli Stone (ABC, Thursdays, 10 pm) Eli Stone’s a good lawyer and a good guy. He’s a winner, one of his massive firm’s rising stars, content to be handed high-profile cases and then win them — looking damn fly while doing so. Then, one day, Eli finds pop star George Michael in his apartment sing...[MORE]

How the mighty have fallen: Remotely Interesting (telly navigation)

By Luke Baumgarten

Published: 1/23/2008

Types: Screens & Tech

American Gladiators (NBC, Mondays, 8 pm) Though it gets its name from a Roman blood sport, American Gladiators takes most of its cues from Greek mythology. A game-show-format test of physical prowess, rudimentary problem-solving (“How do I not get pile-driven by this slab of man?”), and not mu...[MORE]