Oh, Jenna Elfman. When the premise of your sitcom revolves around the fact that your character Billie, a 37-year-old film critic, is impregnated by a one-night stand with a younger man, the time may have come to stop acting like a girlish twenty-something.

This post has additional content, click on the permalink to read more.

Read more

As a fan of both Raymond Chandler detective novels and Paul Auster’s neo-noir books, I should be the target audience for HBO’s Bored to Death. But there’s something about the show, created by  Jonathan Ames about a novelist named Jonathan Ames who moonlights as a private investigator, that I just can’t fully embrace.

This post has additional content, click on the permalink to read more.

Read more

When did Christian Slater turn into everyone’s ornery dad? After dabbling in ambitious television work with last year’s NBC flop My Own Worst Enemy, he’s playing it safe this season as a former cop with a dark past on ABC’s aptly named The Forgotten. Or as ABC calls it: the forgotten. Lower-case must better convey just how sad not being remembered is.

This post has additional content, click on the permalink to read more.

Read more

After a two week wait, My Antonio returned to VH1 yesterday and wasted no time. We pick up immediately after that last disastrous dinner, when Jennifer stormed off and Antonio was so shocked and upset that he and Yvonne ditched the girls, leaving behind a drunk and fuming Christi.

Back at the Hilton, Christi is still drunk, and Miranda can’t figure out how to work the oven. Christi fires up the oven (even drunk she has more life skills than Miranda), then confronts her for having the audacity to say, “Compose yourself!” Miranda calmly explains that she was trying to help Christi not embarrass herself on TV (er, too late?). Christi claims she’s not drunk. If Christi put her bare feet on the dinner table sober, then she has bigger problems than appearing drunk on a VH1 reality show. Miranda, appalled at such blatant lying, snaps, “You’re a sloppy drunk! You are drunk!”

Christi doesn’t care for this.

This post has additional content, click on the permalink to read more.

Read more

The problem in creating a vampire show post-True Blood is that vampires having to live their lives in secret is such a bore now. The vamps in Alan Ball’s series are out and proud; the vampire brothers on The CW’s The Vampire Diaries, adapted by Kevin Williamson from the young adult series by L.J. Smith, have to take precautions so that they won’t be found out. At least they have magic rings that allow them to appear in the daytime.

This post has additional content, click on the permalink to read more.

Read more

Who knew that NBC could still make genuinely funny comedies? Unless I’m forgetting something, their sole two entries last season in the sitcom category were the execrable Kath and Kim and the uneven Parks and Recreation. And while Parks has shown signs of improving greatly with its first sophomore season episode, Community doesn’t need any time to jell. The funny is already there, in the very first episode.

This post has additional content, click on the permalink to read more.

Read more

Fans of fashion-related television and good acting alike can rejoice: The Beautiful Life: TBL is not all about troubled actress Mischa Barton. Her top model character Sonja, who has the hollow, unwieldy voice of a chainsmoker recovering from a hangover, is not the show’s focus. In fact, Barton’s appearances in the pilot are so infrequent that, despite her outlandish behavior, every time she reappears on screen comes as a surprise.

Far more interesting is the blonde and charming Sara Paxton, as recently anointed It Girl Raina. Of course, this being a CW show, Raina has her share of problems that not even being stunning gorgeous can solve. Most notably, she has a mysterious father about to be released from jail and a bossy brother who clearly lost out in the family’s looks lottery.

This post has additional content, click on the permalink to read more.

Read more

I sat through the Bea Arthur memorial service at The Majestic Theater today so you didn’t have to. Hosted by Angela Lansbury (who seems convinced that Arthur’s best work was her four minute guest spot on Malcolm in the Middle), the afternoon dragged along, highlighted only occasionally with the flashes of humor that one has long associated with the woman who brought Maude and Dorothy Zbornak to life.

Since none of the speakers compared notes, we were treated to endless comments about Arthur’s way with a pause, a silence, and a stare. Adrienne Barbeau tearfully confided to the packed house (save some empty seats in the press section) that Arthur taught her how to hold for a laugh and how to eat a hardboiled egg. Zoe Caldwell told funny stories about their friendship with a misplaced gravity. Rosie O’Donnell sang the Maude theme song. Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller did a silly routine that glanced at Arthur as they cracked jokes about themselves. Dan Matthews, of PETA, had a funny, dirty story involving Arthur and Alec Baldwin.

The big draw, of course, was Rue McClanahan, who once sniffed to me in an interview that Bea Arthur wanted The Golden Girls to be Maude all over again, with her three co-stars “supporting her.” After telling a seemingly endless story about Bea’s generosity after McClanahan’s mother died—a story she had already told soon after Arthur passed away last April—McClanahan started on another story about a post-opening party for Arthur’s 2002 one-woman Broadway show. After telling the audience that Arthur liked her booze (another recurring theme of the afternoon), and passive-aggressively adding that she thought Arthur might have been allergic to it, McClanahan went on to tell how her husband went up to Arthur at the party, thanking her effusively for inviting them, and explaining that he was McClanahan’s husband. “Oh, I love Rue!” McClanahan told the audience she gushed. Then Arthur added, “Betty’s a cunt.”

After that, a montage of scenes from The Golden Girls that included clips of Arthur hitting Betty White over the head with a newspaper or slamming her into a closet just wasn’t the same.


Read more

Tully doesn’t waste any time in this episode of My Antonio: her crazy picks up right where it left off last week, when she dazzled Antonio with the word “love.” Hanging out at the Hilton, she starts sucking on Antonio’s hand in front of all the other girls. First of all, ew. Second of all, everyone in this scene seems drunk. Did they ever get the dinner Antonio made them skip so he could dramatically give the least dramatic girl her just desserts? It sure doesn’t seem like it when Jennifer pulls him out to the balcony and gets in his face about Tully’s grossness and her own impatience at just being one of the girls in the group for Antonio.

This post has additional content, click on the permalink to read more.

Read more

Okay, maybe I was naive to expect more from a former underwear model. But I had no idea that Antonio Sabato, Jr. would be as hand-to-the-forehead, jaw-dropping dumb as he was in this week’s My Antonio.

This post has additional content, click on the permalink to read more.

Read more