Posts with tag alan sepinwall
Posted Sep 14th 2007 12:01PM by Liz Finn-Arnold
Filed under: OpEd, NYTVF
I sometimes look around the internet and am amazed by the sheer volume of content. People can write about almost anything -- especially when they're obsessed with a specific topic. And a lot of people seem to be specifically obsessed with television.
Not that I can judge. I'm TV addict who writes for
TV Squad. But I sometimes wonder if it all really matters. Is anyone listening to any of us? And more importantly, do we have any influence on the television world at large with our opinions and criticisms?
As a devoted TV addict, I headed out last week to cover the
New York Television Festival (NYTVF) and listened in on a panel discussion which looked at the explosion of blogs and TV fan sites and questioned their impact (if any) on the industry.
Continue reading NYTVF: TV Criticism on the Web
Posted Jul 13th 2007 3:42PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Programming, Video, Psych
This article by TV critic Alan Sepinwall, where he talks about really disliking USA's Psych but loving the theme song, got me thinking: what bad TV shows have really great theme songs?
This is really hard, actually. I'm sure there are more examples of the opposite, great shows that have bad theme songs (or no theme song at all), but trying to come up with a list of bad TV shows that have great theme songs...that's pretty hard. The first one that comes to mind is John From Cincinnati, a show that has really disappointed me but has a great theme song ("Johnny Appleseed," performed by Joe Strummer) and great opening credits (old surfing footage). But other shows that I come up with - Gilligan's Island, for example - don't exactly have "great" theme songs, they're more fun in a nostalgic sort of way (and I'm not even sure I would call Gilligan's Island a "bad" show, because it goes beyond that to simple entertainment in that nostalgic way).
So what about you, readers? What TV shows can you think of that are bad but just happen to have a really cool theme song? (Edit: The Psych theme embeded after the jump)
Continue reading Great theme song, bad show - VIDEO
Posted Jun 12th 2007 3:01PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Celebrities, The Sopranos
Give David Chase some credit. He promised Alan Sepinwall of the Newark
Star-Ledger an interview right after the finale of
The Sopranos aired. Sure enough, even though he's on a sabbatical in France and is denying all interview requests, he kept his promise
and spoke to Sepinwall yesterday, despite the controversy surrounding how his series closed out its run.
Did he reveal what happened in final scene, where Tony Soprano eyes some shady figures while waiting for his family to arrive for dinner, after it cut to black? Of course not. But he did try to allay fan's assertions that he pulled the rug out from under them.
Continue reading David Chase talks about The Sopranos finale
Posted Apr 23rd 2007 1:03PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Watercooler Talk, How I Met Your Mother
I usually don't highlight repeats, but this is a special case:
Tonight, CBS will rerun what I thought was the funniest half-hour of TV in 2006:
the "Slap Bet" episode of How I Met Your Mother. I'm not the only one who thought the episode was a high point of the 2006-07 television season, though:
The Boston Globe thought it was the
2nd best episode of any show that aired in 2006. And Alan Sepinwall of the Newark
Star-Ledger felt at the time that
HIMYM made what he called "The Leap" after that episode, meaning that the ep had propelled the show to a higher quality level (though, like me,
he later realized that it was more of a "high-water mark." And, also like me, he fell into the trap of comparing subsequent episodes to it).
What made the episode so great?
Continue reading CBS reruns HIMYM's Slap Bet episode tonight
Posted Feb 26th 2007 8:43PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, NBC, Industry, OpEd, Battlestar Galactica, Video, Web, The Office, Friday Night Lights
Sunday's edition of the Newark
Star-Ledger had
a good article about the relatively new phenomenon of online-viewable deleted scenes, and how show-runners have been utilizing them. Alan Sepinwall, the paper's TV critic, spoke to Greg Daniels of
The Office, Jason Katims of
Friday Night Lights, and Ronald D. Moore of
Battlestar Galactica, about how they've been able to throw in little plot or character details in the deleted scenes, knowing that the fanatical viewers of each show will see them on the web.
Continue reading Exploring the new world of online deleted scenes
Posted Dec 4th 2006 4:14PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, CBS, Industry, OpEd, Watercooler Talk, Criminal Minds
The Newark
Star-Ledger's TV critic, Alan Sepinwall,
is reporting on his personal blog that CBS has decided to hand the coveted post-Super Bowl timeslot to an episode of
Criminal Minds.
There was some speculation -- maybe it was more wishful thinking than anything else -- that the network would follow their broadcast of Supe XLI with an episode of their emerging comedy
How I Met Your Mother. But CBS decided to go with one of their tried-and-true procedurals instead.
Continue reading CBS hands post-Super Bowl slot to Criminal Minds
Posted Nov 19th 2006 7:01PM by Richard Keller
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Veronica Mars, The CW, Pickups and Renewals
Fans of Veronica Mars can now rejoice, sort of. According to Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger, executive producer Rob Thomas has confirmed that the back seven episodes of the series have been picked up. This would make 20 episodes for this season. Traditionally, networks pickup the back nine episodes of a series to make it a 22-episode run.
Since this information is so brand new, Thomas says it will take some time to figure out how the last two story arcs will play out. However, he does confirm to the last arc will comprise of four-episodes. The second story-arc is currently being worked on.
Does this mean that Veronica Mars is in danger of not being renewed? Who knows this early in the season. Sepinwall thinks that the shortened order run may be due to penny pinching by the network, whose first year on the air has not been as stellar as they thought it would be.
Posted Oct 24th 2006 9:28AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Comedy Shows, ABC, Programming, OpEd, Watercooler Talk, Ugly Betty
In
my review of the last episode of
Ugly Betty, I asked our lovely and intelligent readership if they noticed that a couple of key scenes in the "Previously on" teaser were not actually in previous episodes. Not only did they notice it, they also let me know that the episode that showed last Thursday, "Fey's Sleigh Ride", was the sixth episode produced, even though it was the fourth one that aired.
Indeed, to make sure, I posed the question to one of my favorite TV critics, Alan Sepinwall, on his
personal blog, figuring he had some inside info that I didn't. He directed me to TV.com's
episode listing (duh... why didn't I think of doing that?), which indeed shows that this was the sixth episode made. The fifth will air this week, and the fourth, called "Swag", will air during November sweeps. So the order is: 6, 5, 7, 8, 4, 10.
Continue reading Why the hell is Ugly Betty airing out of order?
Posted Aug 7th 2006 9:02AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, HBO, Premium Cable, TV on DVD, The Wire
I've never seen the show, but everything I've heard about the show - from people whose opinion I trust in these matters - rave about it. Every single review of the show uses the words "brilliant" and "great writing" and "great cast," and the writiers and directors on the show (including David Simon, who also worked on Homicide, and crime novelists George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane) are an interesting bunch. So why doesn't the show get the same massive buzz that The Sopranos and Deadwood do?
The Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall has a long essay about what makes The Wire so great. It makes me want to watch the show (I guess it did its job), and that's a good thing, since it looks like a final, fifth season will depend on how many viewers tune in to the long-delayed fourth season, which starts September 10.
Posted Jul 26th 2006 11:41AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Talent, Industry, Programming, Web, Celebrities
Posted Jun 21st 2006 10:17AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, FOX, House
I didn't see the season finale of FOX's
House (I started watching the first season then stopped - I'll catch the rerun this summer), but everyone tells me it was really great. However, I'm wondering if everything that happened in the episode was completely understood by fans.
Star-Ledger columinsts Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz ask David Shore, who wrote and directed the episode, exactly what was real and what was a dream in the season finale.
According to Shore, the only two scenes that were real were the beginning where House tries to treat a patient with a tongue problem and gets shot, and the very end where he gets taken to the emergency room and asks for that experimental drug. Everything else was a dream.
FOX is showing two episodes of
House every Tuesday night during the summer.
Posted Jan 5th 2006 3:58PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, NBC, Talent, Industry, West Wing
One of my favorite TV critics is Alan Sepinwall, from the Newark
Star-Ledger, which is for all intents and purposes my hometown paper. He and his "All TV" partner, Matt Zoller Seitz, put out an excellent
joint column just about every day in the Ledger, examining not only particular shows but trends in TV, bad
behavior by the networks, and how TV affects society at large. Kind of what we do here, but in a bit longer form. And
with less jokes.
What I didn't know about Sepinwall, though is that he also has a blog. And in his blog, he gets to speculate on things going on in the TV biz
that he doesn't get to write about in the paper. It's fairly private; NJ.com doesn't link to the page, and it doesn't
show up in many searches for Sepinwall's work. An entry, though, has caught people's attention: Aaron Sorkin and
Thomas Schlamme, the original brains behind The West Wing, are on the list of panelists representing the show
on the upcoming critic's press tour. Sepinwall speculates that Sorkin and Schlamme will come back to write and direct
either a farewell episode for Leo, played by the late John Spencer, or do the same for the final episode. Hm.
Verrrrryyy IN-teresting.
[via Pop Candy]
Ken Levine has an interesting post about 
The Cheers episode Ken Levine's still writing in his head
Giveaway Tuesday: Fastlane - The Complete Series
Giveaway Monday: The X-Files: Revelations on DVD
