"Down in the Old Belt: Voices from the Tobacco South"Tuesday 9pm, WHTJ This locally produced documentary tells the stories of Virginia tobacco farmers. Tobacco obviously has a long, complicated history in the Old Dominion, since it played a big part in the colony’s initial economic success but also was heavily tied to slavery and, later, […]
“Law & Order: Criminal Intent”Thursday 10pm, USA NBC’s new season is suspiciously light in its “Law & Order” shows, as the once-flourishing procedural fran-chise has been reduced to only one series (“Special Victims Unit”) currently on the air. Original recipe “L&O” is set to return midseason, but this third spin-off has been quietly shuffled off […]
“Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”Tuesday 9pm, Bravo Let’s go back to the summer of 2003, a simpler time when five gay guys on a manscaping mission captivated a pop culture nation. Four years later, the “Queer Eye” journey comes to a close with 10 new episodes starting tonight. The Fab Five have had a […]
“Criminal Minds”Wednesday 9pm, CBS CBS had to do some quick thinking to salvage this show, one of its schedule-defining procedurals. Over the summer, star Mandy “Battleship” Patinkin apparently decided he was kind of over it all and didn’t bother reporting to work when shooting started on this new season. After a brief work shutdown, word […]
So. "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." Who saw that one coming?
Aaron "West Wing" Sorkin's series about the behind-the-scenes drama at a late-night sketch show was one of the most-hyped shows of the 2006-07 TV season—and its biggest flop.
"The Biggest Loser"Tuesday 9pm, NBC NBC’s feel-good weight loss competition is shaping itself up for the new season, jettisoning dead weight host Caroline Rhea and replacing her with Alison Sweeney, best known as bad girl Sammy Brady from "Days of Our Lives." As a "Days" fan from back in the day, this excites me very […]
comics DC scored critically and commercially with last year’s weekly comic, "52." It only makes sense that the comic company would follow it up with another weekly book, this one called "Countdown" and ticking down from issue 52 to zero. But while "52" featured a cabal of DC’s best writers turning second- and third-tier characters […]
"Passions"Weekdays 2pm, NBC Wacky shit goes down all the time on daytime TV, but none of it comes close to the insanity on "Passions." I caught an episode in which a tsunami crashed into the show’s New England town and unearthed corpses from a graveyard, one of which ended up in a house and then […]
"Big Brother"Tuesday, Thursday & Sunday 8pm, CBS I am deeply embarrassed to admit this, but I have become a "Big Brother" addict. Shame! "BB" is easily the worst reality that TV has to offer; even the production values are low rent. However! This season has entranced me for the following reasons: 1. Evel Dick, a […]
"Scarred"Tuesday 10:30pm, MTV I guess you could look at "Scarred" as the logical successor of "Jackass." Instead of following professional idiots around with cameras, capturing their various body-mutilating stunts, MTV has now turned to amateur dumbasses for footage of their grisly wrecks. Each episode of "Scarred" features several stunts gone horribly awry, as skateboarders, extreme […]