I contributed three write-ups to PopMatters's list of the best television shows of the year.

The Best Television Shows of 2011

No. 33: Beavis and Butt-Head

You might guess that Beavis and Butt-Head, with their slacker attitudes and penchant for music-video-viewing, were wholly a product of their time. It turns out that the same dim-wittedness (and, in some cases, animation) work in any era. Sure, they’re now plopped in front of Jersey Shore and Teen Mom—shows that are basically their own self-satire, so you’d think there’d be nothing else to say about them. But writer/voice actor Mike Judge knows just what to say—something so profoundly stupid, it’s stupidly profound—to wring out the most laughs out of any situation, including The Situation.

No. 32: New Girl

New Girl begins with a very typical fish-out-of-water premise: When Jess (Zooey Deschanel) breaks up with her long-time boyfriend, she needs to find a new living situation and winds up taking a room in an apartment with three dudes. The charm comes from how goofy all four roommates are. Sometimes the boys rightfully tease Jess for her quirky social blind spots, and sometimes they’re just as clueless as she is. And it’s always a good time watching Deschanel indulge her ultimate inner dork.

No. 23: Up All Night

NBC has best comedies on television because the network broadcasts shows about people, not premises. Up All Night is proof: There are no wacky reasons these characters are together (sorry, 2 Broke Girls) and no contrivances keeping them there. Instead, the show—about a couple raising a newborn, simple as that—draws humor from its characters not through their circumstances, but by being who they are. And, with the comedic chops of Christina Applegate, Will Arnett, and Maya Rudolph behind them, who they are is very funny indeed.

Click through to read the rest of the list at PopMatters.

 

'Allen Gregory': A Little Egghead With a Temper

 

Similarly, the show leans on angry-Allen too much. Yes, it’s funny to see the little egghead blow his lid and be downright rude to people. The problem is, he’s belligerent to too many people, especially within his family structure. It’s realistic that a kid would be hostile to either his father’s partner or a new adopted sibling, and Allen Gregory has both. But scenes at the De Longpre home devolve into across-the-board shouting. The writers need to differentiate how Allen Gregory relates to Jeremy from how he relates to Julie. If the show had Allen Gregory treat Jeremy and Julie differently, there’d be more opportunity for a wider variety of jokes, including some that don’t involve yelling. 

 

At least Allen Gregory doesn’t try to emulate Family Guy‘s ugly aesthetic. Allen Gregory looks much nicer. Character designs come from Andy Bialk and James McDermott, whose combined credits include King of the Hill, The Ricky Gervais Show, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack. As on those shows, the characters of Allen Gregory look flat and the backgrounds are mostly static. But rather than the ultra-spare designs of those shows, the artwork feels full and sophisticated, with a muted color palette. Maybe the humor can become as refined.

 

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

"Terra Nova Offers a World of Possibilities

 

In recent years—certainly since Lost, if not earlier—new dramas have announced their arrivals with splashy, cinematic pilots. Terra Nova‘s premiere certainly delivers on spectacle. The shots swoop and zoom, whooshing their way across CGIed planets, through dystopian cities, and over unspoiled hills. And, yes, there are dinosaurs. There’s the majestic brachiosaurus that looks like a graceful precursor to the giraffe, and there’s the gnashing, barbed-tail acceraptor, also known as “the Slasher.” The dinosaurs look great; the most stunning image in the premiere occurs when a child tries to feed a brachiosaurus a tree branch, only to be lifted up by the beast when she doesn’t let go. It’s a fun, playful moment that doesn’t make you look for the seams in the special effects.

Yet, for all of its visual flourishes and two-hour running time (with commercials), the Terra Nova premiere doesn’t feel like it belongs on the big screen at the multiplex, like the best drama pilots do. It doesn’t feel like a movie; it feels like a really, really long TV pilot. There’s a lot of clunky setup, a lot of piece-moving to send the main characters back to Terra Nova, and a lot of explaining of rules once they get there."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

'Whitney' Feels Like a Step Backwards for Women in TV

"Cummings’ background notwithstanding, ideally, Whitney might be a step forward for women in television, both on-screen and behind the scenes. It would follow in the tradition of other NBC shows Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock, comedies that are produced by women and focused on fully realized female characters living life on their own terms in a world that resembles the real one. Instead, with its stilted scenes, canned laughter, and handwringing about marriage, Whitney feels more like a step backward."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

 

Fall Arts Preview: Fall TV

"Terra Nova

This series is executive produced by Steven Spielberg and bears more than a passing resemblance to one of his biggest hits: Jurassic Park. In it, a futuristic society, having depleted the Earth of all resources, decides to go back to a prehistoric era to try the whole civilization thing again. Except this time, there are dinosaurs.

 

2 Broke Girls

It’s like The Odd Couple, if the genders were flipped and the whole thing took place in a Hollywoodized version of the hipster-infested Williamsburg. Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs play the titular broke girls, one a streetwise chick and the other a deposed trust-funder, and they form an unlikely alliance with a goal of saving up enough tips to open up—what else?—a cupcake bakery."

 

Click through to read the rest of the article, or download the PDF above.

For the "Insider's Guide," a round-up of films and TV shows filming in New York City.

Movie and TV productions filming in NYC

"Boardwalk Empire
Films through: August 31
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Kelly Macdonald, Michael Pitt, Michael Shannon
Spotted in: Greenpoint
Look for: New Jersey. The production team built a 300-foot-long replica of the Prohibition-era Atlantic City boardwalk for the HBO series. The set is roughly 80 percent to scale, is made of approximately 150 tons of steel and is probably the largest freestanding outdoor set in New York."

Click through to read the rest of the article at Time Out New York.

Westchester: Off-Off-Off Broadway?

How Westchester is becoming a destination for emerging theater: No doubt, playwrights, directors, and producers benefit from trying out their new material on an audience of regular theater-goers. 'When artists do these kinds of readings in the city, industry professionals, critics, and bloggers show up,' says Anna Becker, curator and founder of the Insights & Revelations Performance Series, which has brought new works to the county since 2005. 'That’s exactly the kind of pressure that you don’t want when figuring things out. In Westchester, the audience is intelligent and savvy, but they’re not as critical as industry insiders. It’s the perfect place to try something out.'”

First Kisses—Remembered

One artist's Valentine's Day performance work: "What happens when you think about your first kiss? Do you smile sheepishly? Blush? Cringe? Marcy B. Freedman, an artist and art historian from Croton-on-Hudson, wants to know. She’s collecting these stories for a work of performance art titled First Kiss Remembered, which she will perform on February 12 from noon to 3 pm at the Peekskill Coffee House—right across the street from her art studio. We caught up with her to talk about the state of kissing in the county."

Pet Events

Where to party with Fido and Fluffy: "Your pup appreciates the finer things, but never gets invited to cocktail parties—until now. The SPCA of Westchester’s Top Hat and Cocktails gala invites people and their pets to put on their best duds and venture out together. After your portrait is taken by a professional pet photographer, take Spot to the doggie ice-cream bar while you enjoy drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and live and silent auctions."

Teaming with Excitement

Looking at a recent expansion to a local children's bookstore: "The [bookstore] is expanding—taking over the adjacent storefront, previously held by a rug seller—and nearly doubling in size. With the increased space, the shop is adding a tea salon with an assortment of teas, French-press coffee, hot cocoa, pastries and scones. 'I’m thinking of moms at three o’clock, when it’s too early to go home and start making dinner, and the kids might be getting a little fussy,' says owner Francine Lucidon. 'Instead, they can come here, and Mom can have her tea and the kids can have hot chocolate, and everybody can read their books together.'”

February Cultural Highlights

Anthony Bourdain, Jim Breuer, Step Afrika, etc.

March Cultural Highlights

A Woman's Life, Bernadette Peters, Randy Newman, etc.

February Home Theater

It's Kind of a Funny Story, Let Me In, Monsters, and A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop.

March Home Theater

TV shows: Mad Men, Treme, and The Walking Dead.

'Futurama Vol. 5': The Branier Common Denominator

"Futurama‘s return to television has been a slow, strange process. Unlike Family Guy—which was cancelled and then returned to its original form, network, and night—Futurama had to spend some time in a return-to-TV-halfway-house. Comedy Central revived the series as four direct-to-DVD films which, after their debut, where chopped up into half-hour segments and aired in reruns as individual episodes.

Though the creators performed admirably within those limitations, it was not the most natural structure for a television show. Each movie had to have its own narrative arc, with a setup and a payoff befitting a feature-length film. Then, within each story, beats had to be doled out in half-hour increments so that, in reruns, the stories would make sense and feel satisfying as individual episodes. Finally, after the success of the DVD-to-TV experiment, Futurama was allowed to start making new episodes without any of those limitations, with the first of the new batch premiering on Comedy Central on 2010-06-24. 

To the show’s credit, the audience doesn’t often feel the behind-the-scenes machinations—the time restrictions, the unsteady sense of not knowing if the plug will be pulled again—in episodes themselves. 'You guys have gotten really good at writing episodes where you don’t know if it’s the last one or not,' creator Matt Groening tells his crew during the commentary for 'Rebirth', the most recent season premiere. And it’s true: The Futurama writers have mastered the art of finagling a satisfying conclusion with just the right amount of open-endedness.

Thankfully, Futurama Volume 5—which contains the first 13 episodes of the most recent, TV-only season—doesn’t have to concern itself with endings. The series picks up immediately after the last film, Into the Wild Green Yonder. The writing, gorgeous 3D animation, and vocal performances pick up just as quickly, as if the series never had to experience the interlude of cancellation and direct-to-DVD movies."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

No. 13: Justified

"Justified is ostensibly the story of Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), a U.S. Marshal transferred from glitzy Miami to his home town in eastern Kentucky after a (justified) shooting of a criminal. But it’s Givens’ chief antagonist in Kentucky, Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), who really runs away with the series. Taken from the textured world of Elmore Leonard’s short stories, there are few characters like Crowder on television. He’s certainly the villain, but one whose motivations are constantly hazy: Is he sincere and delusional, or faking it and sly?  Puzzling it out is the main pleasure in watching the first season of Justified. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that, while pursuing Crowder, Givens sure looks great in a cowboy hat."

You can read the rest of the list by clicking through to PopMatters.

The Guilty Pleasure Television of 2010

No. 6: Say Yes to the Dress
"Brides-to-be tune into TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress, a reality show that takes place at the tony Kleinfeld’s bridal salon in Manhattan, for the sheer thrill of seeing a barrage of thousands-of-dollar dresses paraded across the screen. Mermaid, fit-and-flare, A-line, and ball gown confections float across the screen, and home viewers have the guilty pleasure of critiquing gowns that they might never afford to try on in the first place. 'This one is too over-the-top,' you might think. 'The first one flattered her figure better.' Yet even after the excitement of seeing new Pnina Tornai and Vera Wang gowns has waned, it’s still mesmerizing to see the way that women sell to other women. Other television shows—The Apprentice, for example—celebrate the hard-hitting, hard-sell approach that men take with each other in business. It’s much more rare to see the approach that female saleswomen take with female clients, and observing those intricate operations is the true guilty pleasure of Say Yes to the Dress."

No. 3: 16 and Pregnant
"MTV’s docu-drama 16 and Pregnant evokes the guiltiest of all guilty pleasures: schadenfreude. 'No matter what troubles I’ve gotten to in my lifetime,' the viewer may think, 'at least I didn’t get pregnant when I was 16.' And, as callous as that may seem, it’s exactly the mission of the series. 16 and Pregnant doesn’t glamorize pregnancy and teen motherhood. Instead, it lays bare a thoroughly un-romanticized reality, full of painful labors, strained and broken relationships, the tedium and expense of raising children, and unrealized potentials and goals. Sure, the series regulars may become tabloid celebrities, but, given the choice, I’m sure that not many 16 and Pregnant fans would want to swap lives with one of its stars."

Though those are the entirety of my blurbs, you can read the rest of the lists by clicking through to PopMatters.