Archive for the Uncategorized Category

June and July 2020

Posted in American TV (General), American TV Shows, Behind-The-Scenes, Internet TV, Reality TV, Reviews, TV Acting, TV advertising, TV channels, TV History, TV News, TV Sports, Uncategorized, Watching TV with tags , , , , , , , , , on September 4, 2020 by Tom Steward

New Blog 12.1

The Plot Against America makes The Man in The High Castle look like a Saturday Morning Kids’ Cartoon.

90 Day Fiance is the only TV show with fidget spin-offs.

I watched The Twilight Zone episode Replay on the same day George Floyd was killed because statistics.

Episodes of TV shows that uncomfortably highlighted and critiqued racism are being removed from circulation along with the racist.

Walking Dead series must be binge-watched.

When the only pleasure in a season of television is its reference to other media, it’s time to stop.

If I’ve learned anything from the recent cull of TV’s racist past, it’s that the turn of the Millennium was basically the 1920s.

I hope that whoever went on set and re-filmed the finale of Top Chef so that a person of color won instead of the blonde white lady again did so safely and at distance.

It’s nice to be ahead of the algorithm. I have zero interest in Hamilton.

I’m definitely in the “adding introductions” camp of TV history reappraisals.

There are no two words I have ever expected to close a teaser trailer less than “Perry Mason.”

Fireman Sam: Norman Price is missing in the mountains!

Me: Just leave him there.

I can’t see anything but an unhinged actor when I watch Winona Ryder on screen.

When Niles Crane is the sanest character on television, you know the social contract has changed.

HBO’s podcast dependency problem requires immediate intervention.

New Blog 12.2

With its near-constant barrage of flashbacks, promos, and station IDs, watching Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story live on USA Network is a harrowing experience.

HBO Max gives me more choice except the one to have it or not.

You might have missed the mark but you’ve never Olive Garden Pandemic Commercial missed the mark.

When HBO puts a warning top of show, you know this is another level.

Breaking News: Papa John’s changes name to Uncle Tom’s.

Based on the commercial, every Snackeez should come with a free ticket to the end of civilization.

Married At First Sight: Australia plays like a parody of the original.

Stolen from G: “The Real Housewives interviews in 2020 look like Real Housewives from 2010.” My own contribution: The interviews look like they’re being filmed through their keyholes.

Seriously, what is John Lithgow paying off and when’s the final instalment?

Wayfair needs to remove any commercials that feature trunk-like furniture.

When it comes to MTV’s Catfish, it’s hard to imagine the solution is better than the problem.

Reviving 30 Rock as an infomercial means the suits won, right?

As long as there’s still an unwatched Star Trek: The Next Generation “Picard learning the Space Piccolo” episode, I’m never going to run out of television.

Arby’s shouldn’t have made those cartoon burrito villains look so appetizing if they wanted you to ever consider their Market Fresh Wraps.

The saddest episode of television in 2020 was a re-run.

New Blog 12.3

How many HBO shows will I want to watch before I find out J. J. Abrams is involved somehow?

Patton Oswalt’s new reality show got dark fast.

Apartments.com commercials are now recommending bodily augmentation in the search for real estate.

B watched an episode of Disney Junior’s Bluey about a sleep-deprived toddler with a solemnity more fitting of an AIDS documentary.

If you want to track the decline of movie stardom, bear in mind that Kevin James and Ray Romano are now considered “Big Screen” talent by TV Land.

Just watched the pilot of Star Trek: Voyager which features a conversation about personal pronouns. So single white men, don’t tell me you’re too old to understand the concept.

The question isn’t who’s going to miss the virtual Emmys. The question is how bad will the wi-fi be of those who attend.

B has me watching 90s and present-day Avengers cartoons back-to-back. I guess blonde hair isn’t the sign of heroism it once was.

I don’t know what’s going on at Ellen but I never liked the way she ran that bookstore.

It’s been thirty years of Lifetime Original Movies … misjudging the tone of every scene.

Well done, baseball. You’re now officially a weirder spectator sport than Blernsball in Futurama.

Regis Philbin was one of talk television’s great serial monogamists.

Rhea Seehorn was not Emmy-nominated for Better Call Saul. Read that again.

You don’t need to see all of The Man in The High Castle to get a sense of America’s fear about becoming a Japanese colony; just watch a Hollywood movie from around 1990.

May 2020

Posted in American TV (General), American TV Shows, Americans watching British TV, Behind-The-Scenes, Internet TV, Reality TV, Reviews, TV Acting, TV advertising, TV channels, TV Criticism, TV Culture, TV History, TV News, Uncategorized, Watching TV with tags , , , , , , , , , on July 4, 2020 by Tom Steward

Outlander Season 5 2020

Outlander is now re-purposing Little House on The Prairie episodes.

Because the first thing you want to see when you turn on The Disney Family Singalong is Ryan Seacrest’s kitchen.

The Homeland Series Finale took full advantage of The Americans being off the air.

I had to break it to my son B that conglomerate capitalism was the driving force behind the absence of Mickey from Mickey Mouse Mixed-Up Adventures.

Ryan Murphy specializes in making television about fascinating subjects with nothing new to say about them.

Someone is close captioning Outlander phonetically.

A game to play while watching the American Experience on George W. Bush; drink every time someone says “He set the bar so low … “

90 Day Fiance: Before The 90 Days should offer de-programming to all its participants.

I wish commercials would go back to selling stuff.

The Good Fight’s writing of production limitations into its visual style will make it an interesting archeological document in future years, if nothing else.

Outlander trumped The Lord Of The Ring’s record with a full hour of goodbyes.

The problems encountered by the cast of 90 Day Fiance have now become global norms.

The Lego versions of recent blockbuster movies are embarrassingly better than their live-action originals.

The 90s animated Spiderman series that B has me watching may have just done the origin story of Tiger King.

There’s a lot to love about the CBS All Access Star Trek series but a lack of self-censorship is not among them.

New Blog 11.2

Is there a character left in Outlander that hasn’t been raped?

This is not a good time for TNT to advertise Snowpiercer by making it look like the TV signal died.

When the quality of streaming dips during CBS All Access shows, they start to look like 90s movies and it’s adorable.

The veteran cast of Vanderpump Rules are growing their replacements from loose skin on their elbows.

Are there any Netflix shows not about money-laundering husbands?

Outlander is in the half-episode dream sequence stage of its existence.

Old episodes of The Simpsons in the original 4:3 ratio is my idea of new TV content during lockdown.

Late-night talk show hosts are now all essentially Rupert Pupkin from The King of Comedy.

While its viewers are quarantined with only three episodes of TOTS on a loop to show to our kids at lunchtime, Disney Junior tried slipped an Australian dog parenting satire under our wet noses.

Top Chef just did an episode where the prize was a trip to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. It should be taken out of syndication like the New York episode of The Simpsons or Seinfeld’s The Puerto Rican Day.

If Barbara Cartland novelized Highlander, you would get Outlander.

Netflix was found to be streaming a censored version of Back To The Future 2 that somehow still left all the white supremacy and incest intact.

I don’t know who in the Netflix Fyre Festival documentary I hate more. I just know that I hate more.

Discovery is more a reboot of Futurama than Star Trek.

I thought Jimmy Fallon’s absolute ineptitude as an interviewer and/or his free propaganda for Donald Trump would have put an end to his late-night talk show career but I’ll take Blackface.

The Outlander series finale had no titles so technically it was an hour-long cold open.

The Original Series characters in Discovery seem to have wandered in from the USS Mad Men.

New Blog 11.3

Breaking Good News: John Krasinski criticized for selling news to the news.

Amy Schumer Learns To Cook is nothing of the sort.

With its closing image of Jeffrey Epstein’s penis suspended in a tank, no wonder the producers of The Good Fight were anxious about ending their season at Episode 7.

Outlander has all the nuance you might expect from Doctor Who slash fiction.

I wonder if television composers ever get mad when their themes are randomly replaced by pop songs.

I want Charlie Brooker’s Antiviral Wipe to go viral.

The trajectory for most contemporary TV series seems to be “2 seasons and a spin-off.”

There’s too much focus on the half-wives in The Real Housewives franchise.

I’m not going to say anything derogatory about Sam Heughan because there are women on the internet who would literally kill me for it.

CBS All Access announces a new Star Trek series set between the Pilot and Episode 1 in TV’s first ever Prebootsequelpinoff.

Ducktales is this month’s “The Sopranos of [insert genre here]”

Every day is a Jerry Stiller marathon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 2020

Posted in American TV (General), American TV Shows, Americans watching British TV, Behind-The-Scenes, BiogTV, British Shows on American TV, hiatus, Internet TV, Reality TV, Reviews, Touring TV, TV Acting, TV advertising, TV channels, TV Criticism, TV Culture, TV Dreams, TV History, Uncategorized, Watching TV on April 2, 2020 by Tom Steward

New Blog 9.1

I’m escaping quarantine by watching lovers separated by walls, animals in cages, people trapped on a cruise liner, and the after-effects of a deadly global virus.

Maybe U-Verse should re-consider using the word “cowering” when talking about the characters in Day of The Dead given the current state of things.

McMillions raises the question of how weather ever makes the news.

The quarantine edition of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was effectively a crossover episode with Black Mirror.

Avenue 5 confirms that Armando Iannucci only makes accidentally prophetic television.

If I’ve learned anything new about Trump from his televised Coronavirus press conferences, it’s that he says “contagion” like Kevin James’ Doug in The King of Queens.

Curb Your Enthusiasm may be the handiest guide to social distancing in the whole of media.

With an ABC sitcom, Disney cartoon and Bravo reality show on the way, this is Indian-Americans’ TV year. Let’s hope networks don’t pull it away from them as fast as they did with Mexicans and South-East Asians.

Homeland is trying to break 24’s record of Presidential turnover before it ends.

Netflix doesn’t need to add a button to remind you that you’re alone.

My Samsung TV is recommending movies for me to watch while I’m working at home. Either it knows I’m a critic or thinks we’re a nation of liars.

Inside No. 9 just El Camino’d Psychoville. If you don’t get those references now, you will after months of quarantine.

New Blog 9.2

Isn’t now a good time to reboot those CNN election coverage holograms? I don’t think I can take another home news report on an iphone.

We’re all now basically the BBC News interviewee whose children burst into the office during broadcast.

Whomever was responsible for closed captioning of Top Chef Allstars LA did well to add a question mark to Padma Lakshmi’s opening assertion that Los Angeles was “one of the best food cities in the world?”

Vanderpump Rules needs to omit the skits and cartoons. Anyone watching already knows the show is cheap, nasty and artless and doesn’t mind a bit.

Breaking News: The Walking Dead reboots as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

With its stolen memoir and culinary school plots, the finale of Fresh Off The Boat was an apology letter to its estranged subject.

If you want to know what TV is going to look like for the next few months, check out a 90-Day Fiance Tell-All.

There’s been a staggering number of new series about people facing global crises in the past few months. It seems that Coronavirus was in our art before it found its way into our lungs.

HBO missed a golden opportunity to re-launch its 1970s science-fiction remake as Westworld in The City.

There’s never a good time to do an entire episode about penicillin, but if there was Outlander nailed it.

Korean animators must be working 24/7 to get those Disney Channel and Nick Jr. Coronavirus PSAS out.

One wonders if Game of Thrones could have salvaged its reputation by crossing over into the Westworld universe before it ended.

New Blog 9.3

Picard is like a version of Star Trek where your parents and schoolteachers make out in front of you.

G literally prayed for a Netflix show like Tiger King to come along. Be careful what you wish for.

Jeff Goldblum’s commercials for Apartments.com are bringing out the lighter side of illegal data mining.

I’m starting to think I should have paid more attention to those episodes of The Sopranos where Uncle Junior was under House Arrest.

TV networks are giving away more content for free than a theatre major with an iphone.

I’m sure the female guests on Talking Dead feel safer now that they don’t have to share a room with Chris Hardwick.

The Real Housewives of New Jersey filled a time capsule entirely with items that future archeologists would need to know their 2019 activities in order to understand.

I generally prefer that documentary directors be fly-on-the-wall observers but I wouldn’t have been averse to Eric Goode or Rebecca Chaiklin opening the cages at any point during the filming of Tiger King.

The person who accidentally broadcast a MyPillow.com infomercial during a televised White House Coronavirus briefing must be in serious trouble.

Love is Blind is proof of what dating shows can achieve when they don’t have to remind viewers of the concept every twenty seconds.

Better Call Saul is The Sopranos of legal dramas.

Mickey Mouse’s guide to the Internet is no Mickey Mouse operation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January and February 2020

Posted in American TV (General), American TV Shows, Americans watching British TV, Behind-The-Scenes, BiogTV, British Shows on American TV, Internet TV, Reality TV, Reviews, TV Acting, TV advertising, TV channels, TV History, TV News, TV Sports, Uncategorized, Unsung Heroes, Watching TV on March 2, 2020 by Tom Steward

New Blog 8.1

I seriously doubt there’s anything in No Time to Die that can compete with Graham’s laser shoe from Spyfall.

Seen through the prism of a constantly buffering HBO Go app, the final season of Silicon Valley was an unintentionally interactive viewing experience for me.

qubo specializes in cartoons from yesteryear that look like they’re being watched from another room.

Have the rights to Ted Bundy recently gone into the public domain?

The Magic Motor Inn episode of Fresh Off the Boat proves that G’s back-door spinoff-dar is military grade.

Netflix’s Cheer is not to be confused with the first screen outing of Ted Danson’s Sam Malone.

Time jump finales in HBO Original Series are now contractually binding.

The advertising for the BBC’s Seven Worlds, One Planet makes it seems like Earth is a TV show leaving a streaming service in 2020.

I don’t know if I’m more amazed that a musical act on The Bachelor once dated a contestant or that a contestant had prior knowledge of a musical act on The Bachelor.

American quality television is having its own papal war.

HBO’s McMillions recalls Ben Affleck’s comment on Argo that “even the feeblest execution” of such a compelling real-life story would still make for great entertainment.

G was expecting Shrill to be like a live-action Nature Cat, demonstrating that as parents of a toddler we are no longer able to distinguish between adult and children’s television.

New Blog 8.2

The MSNBC reporter’s racist outburst in reporting of the death of Kobe Bryant and the subsequent resurrection of Mr. Peanut in his honor suggests that TV’s priorities on grief may need re-evaluating.

The best media satire I see on network television is in Geico and Progressive Commercials.

Larry David may be Bernie Sanders’ best impersonator but, judging by this season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, he could also be Trump’s most effective speechwriter.

Avenue 5 is a worthy addition to the British science-fiction sub-genre of Shoddy Space.

When Adam Driver hosts Saturday Night Live, it feels like improvised jazz rather than a hit-and-miss sketch show.

Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez made me wonder why there isn’t a rolling news channel devoted to this story.

I urge you to watch reality shows with closed captioning as they put inverted commas around words that don’t exist and they come thick and “fastly.”

The Oscars 2020 really made the case for the continuing importance of commercial cinema with an opening musical number recreating an iconic moment of public television.

U-Verse On-Demand needs to accept that I am not going to rent A Simple Favor.

Season Three is the new Season Two. We need to be talking about Junior Slumps.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is the best argument for only reporting the news when it’s not happening.

If parents are confused as to which version of The Adventures of Paddington Bear is the newest one, just remember it’s not the Canadian one with a bloated expositional theme tune that even The Simpsons couldn’t credibly parody.

New Blog 8.3

Unexpected bonus of AMC’s uncensored airing of The Godfather films Part 1 – 8am boobs.

Unexpected bonus of AMC’s uncensored airing of The Godfather films Part 2 – The Godfather Part II now gives two fucks.

Unexpected bonus of AMC’s uncensored airing of The Godfather films Part 3 – Doesn’t apply to The Godfather Part III so you have an excuse to skip it.

What is anyone on Married at First Sight talking about? They all sound like malfunctioning self-help robots.

The world television premiere of El Camino was somewhat undermined by the fact that millions of viewers had already seen the movie on television.

Haven’t we done enough damage to Pizza Hut crusts without making them their own appetizer?

Bad News Breaking – Breaking Bad Now The Sequel To Better Call Saul.

In terms of romanticizing of the Taliban, the final season of Homeland picks up where Rambo III and The Living Daylights left off.

The commercial for the “Battle for the 2020 White House” commemorative chess set is the best piece of television to play parody chicken with.

I bet the voice actors on Superwings: Mission Teams increasingly regret having ticked the Accents and Dialects box on their online submission for the casting call.

Made my national television commercial debut and now worried about being typecast as “Man in Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirt that doesn’t fit him ignoring Phil Mickelson.”

Apparently, Saturday Night Live having a host and musical guest I’m equally excited to see only happens every four years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July and August

Posted in Uncategorized on August 29, 2019 by Tom Steward

New Blog 6.3.jpg

Netflix’s Tales of the City is the first adaptation not based on any of the books and I don’t know what to do with that. It’s not as if you televise Bleak House and then come up with entirely new storylines.

#BH90210 takes a show whose strength was its sincerity and makes it a collection of in-jokes.

Having seen the extended Hateful Eight on Netflix and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the movies, I can say with certainty that Tarantino’s future lies in series television.

The tone of GLOW is what TV dramedies have been striving for since Hill Street Blues but seldom achieved.

If their commercials are to be believed, Olive Garden have created a savory Cinnabon, complete with jizz sauce.

Viewers who use the “Skip Intro” button on Netflix should immediately have their subscriptions cancelled.

I have no interest in Brodie Jenner but if you put a Rottweiler fetching a ball for a man in a bath on my TV screen, I’m going to watch it.

Bachelor in Paradise should be renamed The Chris Harrison Bodily Assault Seminar Hour.

Andy Cohen reproaching Titus Burgess for working with Eddie Murphy is a little rich for someone who makes his money off some of the most homophobic women on television.

Kumail Nanjiani’s no-show on Conan within months of retooling is a sharp reminder why the late-night talk format has remained so static since the fifties.

Marrying Millions is 90-Day Fiance minus money problems, which is to say nothing.

New Blog 6.4.jpg

Martin Scorsese is just going to have to accept that he made a miniseries.

It’s hard to imagine a world where both Star Trek and Star Wars are exclusively television properties.

Whomever is writing those DVR show descriptions for U-Verse really dislikes late 80s action movies.

I would not be surprised if The Family Chantel was revealed to be a reality reboot of 3rd Rock from the Sun.

What if El Camino was a prequel to Gran Torino and ends with Jesse hiding out in a Korean community?

In July, I performed in an immersive theatre version of Carnival Row, which doesn’t premiere until August 30. I can now say on my resume that I was in the original cast of an Amazon Prime Series.

This season of Married at First Sight answers the burning question of what happens when a man marries himself in drag.

I have no idea how Dora the Explorer holds up as a feature film as my 2-year-old son only stayed in the theater for the length of one episode.

The final seasons of Elementary and Game of Thrones were both sorely lacking Natalie Dormer.

The second One Day at a Time returns to broadcast television just in time for the second Nixon’s impeachment proceedings.

Leo the Inquisitive Truck on Amazon Prime Video looks and sounds like it was cobbled together by the PTA of a struggling school.

New Blog 6.5

With Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead heading to theaters, it seems there’s no longer such a thing as a TV movie.

Marc Maron taking to Conan to question the host’s impact on podcasting sort of undermines his point.

Someone should make Damon Herriman Charles Manson for life.

Good Morning America ballet-shaming Prince George is a waste of good Royal-bashing.

90 Day Fiance: The Other Way is basically a nature documentary about stray animals.

The Real Housewives of Orange County has reached that point in the franchise where it feels like its own spin-off.

Today’s HBO doesn’t let a show go beyond three seasons unless it is truly terrible.

The news that Transparent will end with a musical should reassure those viewers who were worried the show would go off the rails after losing Jeffrey Tambor.

Pennyworth is the latest in a long line of Batman fare to explore the origins of characters whose origins have already been explored.

It’s too much to hope that Grand Hotel will be an adaptation of the 1932 classic based on the acclaimed 1930 play. If I don’t watch it, then it will remain so in my imagination.

By the time you read this post, we’ll be on the other side of the Fantasy Streaming Wars of August 30. I for one welcome our puppet/faery (delete as appropriate) overlords!

Reelz is the fake search engine page of broadcast television.

Kurt Sutter announced he’s standing aside as Mayans M.C. showrunner so a white man doesn’t dictate a story about people of color. Your move, Jenji Kohan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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