TV
4.7.20 Christopher Meloni talks ‘Law & Order: SVU’, Part 3: Emmy competition, unstable Stabler
Big news for Law & Order: SVU fans: Det. Elliot Stabler is coming back! OK, not to SVU, but to his own series! Back in 2008 I was writing The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion with Susan Green, and spending a lot of time at the studios watching how the sausage got made. The…
Read More4.2.20 Christopher Meloni talks ‘Law & Order: SVU’, Part 1: Auditions and 22-hour workdays
The big news for Law & Order: SVU fans hit on the last day of March: Det. Elliot Stabler is coming back! OK, not to SVU, but to his own series! It’s been a long, dry spell for Stabler fans. Christopher Meloni originated the role of Stabler in 1999, when SVU became the first spin-off…
Read More1.08.19 Arisia 2019 Schedule
Come find me at Arisia in Boston from Jan. 18-21! I’ll be paneling, partying, reading and selling. Here’s my schedule: Saturday, Jan. 19, 8:30pm – 9:45am (St. James)It Was Nineteen-Eighty-Something The twenty-year nostalgia cycle took longer this time, but the Reagan era is back. 2018’s Ready Player One hid its plot in a fire hose…
Read More8.28.2018 How ‘Sharp Objects’ ultimately lost its teeth and cheated viewers in the process
Warning: Spoilers. Oh, so many spoilers about the full season of Sharp Objects below. Sharp Objects, the adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s (Gone Girl) first novel just wrapped up its one and only season on Sunday. Having missed most of its original run, I blazed through it in just a couple of days, and let’s just…
Read More8.20.18 ‘Your misfortune is my good fortune’: How Ed Sherin made ‘Law & Order’ TV’s best damn show, for a time
If you loved Law & Order, you had to love Ed Sherin. Even if you didn’t know what he did on the show (directed dozens of episodes and produced over 160 episodes of both the original and SVU) you certainly saw his name up there in the opening show credits. Directors and producers of TV…
Read More6.29.18 ‘Westworld,’ ‘Humans’ forget to ask the big question: What does a robot want?
(Warning: Somewhat spoilery.) What does a robot want? In this time of real-world troubles among flesh-and-blood humans, I suppose it’s easier to think about robot needs and wishes, of androids dreaming of electric sheep. To consider where Westworld thinks its going, and about the hole Humans appears to have fallen into. And so …. As…
Read More04.03.18 Farewell Steven Bochco, who knew TV audiences wanted to be ‘transported’
He was the man behind Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, L.A. Law and Cop Rock. OK, nobody’s perfect. But Steven Bochco, who died of a rare form of leukemia on April 1 at age 74, bridged classic old TV procedurals with a new, edgy way of storytelling that was also hugely commercial. As I grew…
Read More6.29.17 Just where does ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ think it’s going?
The Handmaid’s Tale is over on Hulu, at least for this season, and I have questions. Allow me to preface by saying I thoroughly enjoyed this rendition, which makes up for the rushed and too-surfacy 1989 film take on Margaret Atwood’s seminal 1985 book about what happens when a nation collectively loses its mind after…
Read More05.26.17 Aziz Ansari, burritos, and why everything is no longer all about you
As babies, we are the center of the universe. We have to be, in some aspects: we can’t do a whole lot for ourselves, and thankfully most of us have at least one parent around to assure us that yes, all life revolves around our wants and needs. And then we grow up. I remember…
Read More03.24.17 Terrorism in the era of ‘Black Mirror’: ‘It’s like we’re all living in a movie’
For your perspective consideration, please. I interviewed Charlie Brooker, the creator of “Black Mirror,” the anthology series about the dark forces in ourselves and our technology (catch it on Netflix), Thursday afternoon for an article I’m working on about technophobia in TV series. Needless to say, I was delighted: I’m a big fan of what…
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