DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2014
Oct
2
 
 
With four games played thus far this season, tonight’s two teams have averaged a positively average record: Both the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers are 2-2 as they face each other tonight. Packers QB Aaron Rodgers has Lambeau Field as his not-so-secret weapon, while the Vikings still are playing without running back Adrian Peterson, who’s on the exempt list for tonight’s game as he awaits his fate at the hands of a grand jury on charges of severe corporal punishment. D
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Oct
2
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Anyone close enough to receive New York’s WNET-Ch. 13 on cable or broadcast TV is in for a treat starting tonight, because THIRTEEEN is launching a new series that takes full advantage of one of the city’s biggest calling cards: the theater. In this case, Theater Close-Up looks not at the bigger Broadway houses and productions, but the plays and musicals performed in Off-Broadway, and even Off-Off-Broadway, venues. (One more Off-, and they’d be performing in my
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Oct
2
 
 
This season, Project Runway has kept things lively by forcing its contestants to look for inspiration in the oddest places. Tonight, those places are behind closed doors – as Tim Gunn takes them to a series of storage lockers, pitting the fashion designers in their own version of Storage Wars, as they have to use what they find to produce their runway garments.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Oct
2
 
 
Last week’s season premiere slipped in an unsettling, unexpected shocker: family patriarch Zeek (Craig T. Nelson), while playing cards at a Las Vegas casino with daughter Sarah (Lauren Graham) to celebrate his birthday, suddenly stood up from the gambling table and collapsed. He survived past the commercial break, refused hospital treatment and headed back home to his own doctor – but since this is the final season for Parenthood, and the producers already have hinted at the death of
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Oct
1
 
 
Last night, the 2014 baseball postseason began with a one-game American League wild-card playoff game between the Oakland Athletics and the less playoff-experienced Kansas City Royals. The As jumped to a 2-0 lead in the first inning, and built to a 7-3 lead in the sixth, but the Royals kept scrapping and fighting, bunting and sacrificing, and getting just enough hits to push the game to extra innings. And, one run down in inning 12 and about to go home until spring, Kansas City found a way to wi
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Oct
1
 
 
On ABC this evening, the opening hour is overrun with thespians, as characters on both sitcoms conspire to put on plays. First up, on The Middle, is Sue Heck (Eden Sher), who teams with Brad (Brock Ciarlelli) to not only co-direct and co-write, but co-star in, a senior high school play they’re calling “The Loneliest Locker.” The question is, will it be a dramatic triumph – or a combination destined for embarrassment?
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Oct
1
 
 
Ana Gasteyer, from Saturday Night Live and Suburgatory, guest stars as a junior high drama teacher who stokes the competitive juices of Adam (Sean Glambrone) by denying him the lead role in a school production of Jesus Christ Superstar. His mom counters, in this period sitcom, by getting him cast in a rival musical production: a version of that Eighties-nightmare roller-skating debacle, Starlight Express.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Oct
1
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Warning, warning, danger, danger! This is not a recommendation – it’s a big fat warning. Scream creator Kevin Williamson pushed the bounds of both logic and taste when plotting and producing The Following, Fox’s mean-spirited drama about a serial killer. That show appeared to get more delight in sadistically disposing of characters, and from the point of view of the psychotic killers – and Stalker, in its very first repugnant scene, ups that ante in a dis
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Oct
1
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: South Park is back, and with an episode that has me laughing already, just from the title: “Gluten Free Ebola.” If the question is, have the South Park creators softened with age, the answer is, as always, kind of obvious.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Oct
1
 
 
Tonight’s guest, as part of her already attention-demanding book tour: Girls creator and star Lena Dunham.