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

 
 
2015
Jan
30
 
 
One of this comedy duo’s funniest and most famous sketches is the East-West Bowl lineup of college football players – a seemingly endless roster of increasingly ridiculously named players. The first sketch went on forever, which was part of its comic genius, and momentum carried on easily to a second installment. Now, as part of this one-hour special, we get Part 3 – and the more college bowls you watched this year, the funnier you’ll find this particular sketch. But watc
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jan
30
 
 
There’s another strong lineup on this week’s show, including Laura Poitras, whose documentary about Edward Snowden, CitizenFour, has been nominated for an Oscar. But the biggest draw is someone who’s already won an Oscar – and at least one Tony, Grammy and Emmy as well. It’s Mel Brooks – showing up to publicize his HBO special, Mel Brooks at the Geffen, which premieres tomorrow night.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jan
29
 
 
In tonight’s episode, Wolowitz (Simon Helberg, pictured) invents a new game for the gang to play. Trouble is, it’s a game making fun of Raj (Kunal Nayyar), which goes over with predictable discomfort.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jan
29
 
 
This series is back with a new episode after its hiatus, and its previous-episode reveal of exactly who killed whom. So now that that mystery is solved, will we continue to see flashbacks to the murder? My guess: Yes. But it’s only a guess… and, for ABC, how to get away with more of a successful gimmick.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jan
29
 
 
SERIES FINALE: One of the best surprises of this excellent show’s final seasons has been the ever-evolving, always impressive dramatic acting by Ray Romano as Hank. In last week’s episode, Sarah (Lauren Graham) accepted Hank’s marriage proposal, then asked that the wedding take place within a week so that her ailing father (Craig T. Nelson) could walk her down the aisle. Tonight, as the final episode of one of television’s all-time best family dramas, that wedding takes p
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jan
29
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: The playbook, by now, is a familiar one. A new or unnoticed cable network or streaming service tries to get attention by presenting an ambitious new series, with star power and an unusual setting or premise. The latest network to try that trick is Pivot, with tonight’s premiere of a 12-part mystery series called Fortitude, set in the Arctic and starring Stanley Tucci. If you‘re saying to yourself, what and where is Pivot? – well, that’s the whole point. A
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jan
29
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This is a warning, not a recommendation. Here we go again. In 2007, the Fox network persuaded a CBS affiliate in Tyler, TX to hire a new anchor for the local news, while Fox’s camera crews filmed the hire and subsequent events for a new reality series called Anchorwoman. The gimmick was that the new anchor, Lauren Jones, was a former beauty queen and World Wrestling diva with no journalistic experience. The good news, quite literally, was that Anchorwoman was cancelled alm
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jan
29
 
 
As the New England Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick tried to illustrate, all this kerfuffle over underinflated footballs can be explained through simple science: the weather made them do it...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jan
28
 
 
Last year, the little-viewed, seldom-visited FXX network got millions of viewers to sample it for the first time by scheduling an enticing – in fact, a positively brilliant – programming gimmick. It presented every episode of The Simpsons in a massive mega-marathon that covered 25 years of TV history and included many hundreds of animated half-hour shows. What could be bigger? Potentially, this: Beginning tonight at 7 p.m. ET, VH1 Classic – another cable network sorely in need
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jan
28
 
 
Tonight’s guest star is Dylan Baker, who’s played such a great, creepy villain on multiple episodes of The Good Wife that you almost know that his bad-guy character in tonight’s Mentalist will be a guy you’ll love to hate.