[Televisionary]

Can’t remember what happened to Don, Peggy, and Joan? Ahead of its sixth season premiere on Sunday, I bring you up to speed on what happened last season on AMC’s Mad Men . Plus, read our review of the Season Six premiere . Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Mad Men Returns: A Recap of Season Five," in which I round up all of the important plot points of Season Five of Mad Men in order to get you ready for Sunday's premiere. Season Six of Mad Men begins Sunday evening at 9 p.m. with a stellar two-hour premiere, 10 long months since we last traveled back in time with AMC’s devastatingly elegant period drama. In that time, your brain may have erased precious details about what happened to Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in the dentist’s chair, whether he and “Zou Bisou Bisou” chanteuse Megan (Jessica Paré) repaired their marriage or ended it, and just what Joan (Christina Hendricks) did in order to secure herself a seat at the partners’ table. What ha

Netflix has finally announced a launch date for Season 4 of Arrested Development , the beloved cult comedy which the streaming platform has brought back to life. Over at The Daily Beast, I've got a brief post up, " Arrested Development Finally Gets a Release Date," about the fact that Netflix has finally announced the launch of Season Four of Arrested Development . (Thank god.) Back up the stair car, there’s no need to be blue: Netflix has finally announced a return date for Arrested Development. Mitch Hurwitz’s oddball comedy, which aired on Fox between 2003 and 2006 and revolved around the Bluth clan of Orange County, was resurrected last year by the streaming video provider, which announced today that it will release the fourth season of Arrested Development to subscribers on Sunday, May 26. (That’s right, you can mark your calendars now: May 26 will be the day that the Internet will break in half.) All 15 episodes of Arrested Development will be available

Mad Men ’s Don Draper returns for his penultimate season on AMC Sunday—and he’s as down in the dumps as ever. I write about the dark mood hovering over the show’s brilliant sixth season. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Mad Men Season 6 Review: Triumphant, Lyrical, and Way Existential," in which I review the fantastic sixth season premiere of AMC's Mad Men , which returns on Sunday at 9 p.m. for its penultimate season: "Don isn’t so much a person as a reflection, a shadow, the wet ring left on a bar by a glass of Scotch." Spoilers are funny things. It’s tricky enough to write about a show without delving into the plot mechanics, and even more so when you can’t even touch upon certain aspects of the plot in even a cursory way. But that’s always been the case with AMC’s Mad Men , which returns for its sixth—and penultimate—season on Sunday at 9 p.m. Creator Matthew Weiner wants to ensure that even the most quotidian of details a

Food Network’s Chopped returns for its fifteenth season. I write about why sea cucumbers, speculoos, and lacinato kale--on the surface, ingredients which many of us have never heard of--matter. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Chopped : Why I’m Obsessed with Food Network’s Reality Competition Show," in which I I write about my insatiable obsession with Food Network's Chopped , and how the competition show brings a deeper and richer awareness of food and culinary diversity to the public at large. When the Food Network, the culinary-themed cable network available in approximately 99 million American homes and 150 countries around the globe, launched Chopped in 2009, no one could have imagined the eventual impact the show would have. And by no one, I mean me. I was initially less than enthusiastic about Chopped—a culinary competition show featuring four chefs squaring off by cooking an appetizer, entrée, and dessert from various mystery basket

HBO's fantasy series Game of Thrones returns Sunday for a third season. Can’t remember the difference between a wight and a white walker? Jace Lacob's glossary explains all! (Plus, read our advance review of Season 3 .) At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Game of Thrones Season 3 for Dummies," the third in an ongoing series that each year brings you up to speed (and reminds you of what you may have forgotten) about the people, places, and recurring motifs from the immersive HBO drama (and George R. R. Martin's massive A Song of Ice and Fire novel series), which returns Sunday, March 31. In its riveting second season, Game of Thrones —based on George R.R. Martin’s behemoth A Song of Ice and Fire series and adapted by executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss—brought the war for the Iron Throne to a staggering climax with the amazing Battle of the Blackwater, a hugely dramatic set piece that found the naval forces of Stannis Barathe

Based on a 1,000-page novel, the third season of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ is the best—and most complex—one we’ve seen yet. In this week's issue of Newsweek (and online at The Daily Beast), you can read my latest feature, "Here Be Dragons: Season 3 of HBO's Game of Thrones Reviewed," in which I review the first four episodes of Season 3 of HBO's Game of Thrones , which might just be the best season yet. When it launched in 2011, HBO’s fantasy drama Game of Thrones quickly became part of the global collective consciousness, an often brutally violent and staggeringly beautiful series that offered viewers an immersive television experience. Based on the gargantuan bestselling novel series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones depicts the bloody and vicious battle for control of the Iron Throne in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, a fictional world that bears a resemblance to medieval Europe ... if Europe had once been the home of magic,

She’s wielded a skillet, a rifle, and—in last night’s episode of Justified —nearly ignited a man. Joelle Carter talks to me about the evolution of Ava Crowder, empowerment, and last night's explosive episode of the FX drama. One choice quote: “We wanted to see them on top of a mountain before the fall,” said Carter. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Most Badass Woman on TV," in which I sit down with Joelle Carter to talk about playing Ava Crowder, empowerment, and more. FX’s Justified, based on characters created by novelist Elmore Leonard, revolves around criminals and lawmen who collide in a never-ending bloody battle. Unfolding largely in the backwoods of modern-day Harlan County, Kentucky, the show is grounded in a rough-and-tumble man’s world, one containing a very specific code of honor among the hairy-chested set. It’s a show about how we often stumble upon the path of darkness, how violence defines our worldview, how a gun can re