[Televisionary]

On Thursday evening, NBC burned off the final three episodes of Community ’s third season, 90 minutes of the remainder of the season haphazardly arranged around the 30 Rock finale. These well-received episodes tapped into the heart of what makes the offbeat comedy tick: 8-bit video games, an elaborate heist, and a trial over ownership rights to a sandwich shop. If this all seems gonzo and out there, that’s the point: Community blazed creative trails that were largely heretofore unseen on American broadcast network television. If this had marked the end of Community , it would have gone out with a bang that was both joyous and triumphant. NBC had rescued the show with an eleventh hour reprieve, granting it a 13-episode renewal and moving it to the graveyard of Friday nights. But whether Dan Harmon, whose contract expired at the end of the third season, would be returning to the show he created was still very much unknown when the end credits ran on the final episode. It was report

Over at The Daily Beast, we're keeping you up-to-date with all of the news, renewals, cancellations, and series orders coming out of this week's broadcast network upfronts. You can read our Network Scorecard , which keeps track of all of the renewals and cancelations as well as reactions to the scheduling changes and check out video promos for all of the networks' new shows. And you can read detailed descriptions--as well as insider information--about all of the new series heading to your television in the fall and spring. Jace Lacob and Maria Elena Fernandez take a look at what’s coming up and what’s coming back on TV this fall as television's network upfronts week comes to a close. The CW moved Supernatural to Wednesdays, ordered five new shows, renewed Hart of Dixie, and canceled Secret Circle and Ringer. CBS moved Two and a Half Men to Thursdays and The Mentalist to Sundays, while The Good Wife is staying put. ABC renewed Revenge (moving it to Sundays at 9 p.m.

Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows doesn’t require a deep knowledge of the '60s gothic-horror TV show, but it helps—and my glossary and character gallery explain all! Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Dark Shadows for Dummies," in which I offer a fairly comprehensive glossary of characters, terms, and places from 45+ years of Dark Shadows continuity, several series, films, and a plethora of other materials. What is Parallel Time? Who is Angelique Bouchard? What is Widow's Hill? It's all in here. In the more than 45 years since Dark Shadows first premiered as an afternoon soap opera on ABC in June 1966, the series created by Dan Curtis has spawned numerous feature films, novels, television series, comic books, and even hit singles. Evolving from a standard soap opera into a supernatural horror-fest—overflowing with vampires, witches, ghosts, and H.P. Lovecraftian ancient beings (remember the Leviathans?)— Dark Shadows was a forerunner for m

With the broadcast networks about to unveil their new lineups, I pick my favorite drama pilot scripts—from psychological thriller Mastermind to period drama Ralph Lamb . Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The 13 Best Drama Pilot Scripts of 2012," in which I offer my takes on the best and brightest offerings at CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and the CW when it comes to their drama pilot scripts. At the network upfronts the week of May 14—when broadcasters unveil their fall schedules along with new programming and glad-hand with advertisers amid a series of presentations and parties—broadcasters will reveal the shows that might end up on your TiVo’s Season Pass in the fall. This year, nearly 90 pilots are battling for slots on the schedules of CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and the CW, all of which are desperate to replace aging hits and find those few breakout shows. This year’s crop is especially heavy on the supernatural, imported formats (especially from Israel),

While the pilot was a hit with critics, few have been happy with NBC’s Smash since. How could things have gone so wrong, so quickly? Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature , in which I offer my take on NBC's Smash , which started out with such promise but has turned into a head-scratching mess of a show. (Also, said story is being advertised on the site as, "A Jace Lacob rant." Ha!) What has happened to Smash? Despite a pilot episode that was praised by critics, Smash went from must-see TV to stumbling, face first, into the orchestra pit in a matter of weeks. While the show will be back next season after a renewal last week, the show’s creator, Theresa Rebeck, won’t be returning. That has to be a boon, given how uneven Smash has been. For every well-done and lavish musical number, there have been countless appalling elements each week. One of the concerns about Smash going in was that it would be too insular: that its depiction of the rush to

If you're at all like me, you love Amy Poehler. And if you're at all like me and Amy Poehler, you also love Rachel Dratch. At The Daily Beast, I had a hand in today's interview feature, in which Parks and Recreation 's Poehler interviews her former Saturday Night Live colleague and long-time friend about her new memoir, out this week, as well as about motherhood, ghosts, the prairie, and more. In her new autobiography, Girl Walks Into a Bar…: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle , former Saturday Night Live star Rachel Dratch—the rubber-faced comedian behind Debbie Downer and Abe Scheinwald, to name two of her creations—comes clean about growing up, life behind the scenes on SNL , what happened with 30 Rock , dating possible cannibals, and her life now that she’s in her forties and a first-time mother. When Dratch was performing with improv comedy troupe Second City in Chicago, her understudy was an up-and-comer named Amy Poehler, who woul

At The Daily Beast, Community ’s female stars—and one of its writers—sit down for a roundtable discussion about being a woman in comedy, the show’s legacy, slut shaming, and more. Tears are shed! You can read my latest feature, entitled "The Women of Community ," in which I visit the set of NBC's Community on the final night of shooting Season 3 to sit down with Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Gillian Jacobs, and writer Megan Ganz to discuss being a woman in comedy, the “dark night of the soul” ahead, and the Bridesmaids effect, among other topics. Fans of NBC’s Community —the wildly inventive yet criminally unwatched critical darling, now in its third season—were shocked when the network unceremoniously placed it on an indeterminate hiatus. Those same loyal viewers turned to Twitter hashtags, flash mobs, and original pieces of artwork (depicting the Greendale gang alternately as Batman villains, X-Men, Star Wars characters, and even Calvin and Hobbes), all in an

While fans of NBC's beloved--if low-rated--comedy Community , which went on an indefinite hiatus in December, have had to make due these last few months with casting news (Giancarlo Esposito! John Hodgman! A Law & Order -themed episode!) and ++fan-generated art++ [http://critormiss.tumblr.com/post/17727815698/savecommunity], there is some good news to be had for the loyal followers of the Greendale study group. Community will return Thursday, March 15 at 8 p.m. with the first of twelve all-new episodes. Multiple sources close to the production confirmed the news, first tweeted by Community creator Dan Harmon, that the Sony Pictures Television-produced show would be returning to its old Thursday night stomping ground next month. Read it at The Daily Beast

Over at The Daily Beast, I talk with Anjelica Huston about her husband’s death, her formidable character on Smash , and the “cult of murder” on television today. You can read my latest feature, entitled " Smash 's Scene Stealer," here. It is impossible to miss Anjelica Huston when she walks into a room. In this case, the room was the bar at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, California, a few hours before Huston was set to take the stage before a ballroom of television critics at the TCA Winter Press Tour to answer questions for her new show, the Broadway-set drama Smash , which premieres Monday on NBC. With her raven Cleopatra cut, an armful of gently clanging bracelets, and her impressive height, Huston is unlikely to get lost in a crowd, but her considerable talents as an actress render that an impossibility. As she slinked into a club chair on a gray January morning, she exuded a sense of serenity and warmth that is deeply at odds with the troubled characters she

Fifty years after her death, the mention of Marilyn Monroe conjures up familiar imagery: that whispery voice, the platinum hair, her vulnerability. From Michelle Williams’s recent embodiment to yet another reissue of Monroe’s last photo shoot, she’s still inescapable, and always exerting a gravitational pull on popular imagination. In this week's issue of Newsweek, you can read my latest feature, " Smash 's Big Broadway Bet," which looks at NBC's musical-drama Smash , launching February 6th, through the prism of both Marilyn Monroe's cultural impact and the stakes that the show faces ahead. Will this end up being The West Wing with music or Cop Rock ? I talk to creator/executive producer Theresa Rebeck, Anjelica Huston, and NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt. On The Daily Beast, the piece gets a companion story in "11 Secrets of Smash ," in which I take a look at several questions surrounding the show including: What would the Showti

With the 2011-12 television season in full swing and the cancellation orders stacking up, Jace Lacob rounds up the season’s winners ( Revenge ! Homeland !), losers ( Man Up! Whitney! ), and draws. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story, "Fall TV Report Card: The Winners and Losers," in which I offer up not a critic's list, or a Best of 2011 TV list, but a business story selecting the winners and losers (as well as draws) for the first half of the 2011-12 television season. (Those selections are in the gallery.) With the 2011-12 television season well underway, it’s become increasingly clear that this isn’t the best fall the broadcasters have ever had. Back in May, when the networks touted their new offerings to advertisers, it appeared they were trying to take some risks with their programming. But the opposite is true: most of those shows featured what the networks hoped were built-in audiences for retro brand settings ( Pan Am ! The Playboy Club !)

Community fans, this is your St. Crispin’s Day moment. Dumping Community in favor of shifting around the Thursday-night comedies feels a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Community, after all, is not the iceberg that’s sinking NBC. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story, " Community on Hiatus: Why NBC Is Making a Mistake," in which I look at the case for and against keeping the brilliant and subversive comedy around. For right now, Community airs Thursday evening at 8 p.m. on NBC.

In NBC’s Parenthood , the show’s teens--including Mae Whitman, Sarah Ramos, and Miles Heizer--often walk away with the most heartbreaking and emotional storylines. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "TV's Most Talented Teens" (formerly known as "The Teens of Parenthood "), in which I sit down with Whitman, Ramos, and Heizer to discuss their characters, on-set camaraderie, and, yes, the haircut that launched a thousand tweets. Parenthood returns with new episodes tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

Warning: You do not want to miss Thursday's episode of Community . It's a given that some of the most ambitious episodes of NBC's Community are often the ones with the seemingly most straightforward concepts. Look at Season Two's fantastic "Cooperative Calligraphy" for a strong example of this: the gang at Greendale is locked in the study room when Annie's pen goes missing. A bottle episode is turned on its head (no pun intended) here, transforming a slight idea into a larger one as the group is beset by paranoia and fractures in front of our eyes. The same holds true for Thursday's upcoming episode, "Remedial Chaos Theory," another bottle episode that defies the laws of logic and probability in a way. With Dan Harmon and the writing staff achieving such dizzying heights with "Cooperative Calligraphy," it seemed nearly impossible that they would be able to approach another bottle episode with the same gonzo spirit that made the

It's no secret that I love NBC's Parks and Recreation . Over at The Daily Beast, I have not one but two features on the Pawnee-set comedy today, which returns later this week for a fourth season. In Part One of my Parks and Recreation feature at The Daily Beast, in which I visit the set of Parks and Recreation and spend time with Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Adam Scott, Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, and showrunner Mike Schur, exploring what Offerman deems "the comedy of hope" that the show taps into, and the intelligence and spirit of Parks and Rec . In Part Two , I offer some mild spoilers for Season 4, exploring what's ahead for Leslie, April and Andy, Ron Swanson, Ann Perkins, Mark Brendanawicz, and The End? Season Four of Parks and Recreation begins this Thursday at 8:30 pm ET/PT on NBC.

Time to head back to the couch, America. The fall TV season is here and all of your favorite shows—from The Walking Dead and The Good Wife to Dexter and Boardwalk Empire —and a slew of new ones are soon heading to a TV set near you. Will you find Ringer to be the second coming of Sarah Michelle Gellar… or is it the second coming of Silk Stalkings ? Time will tell, but at least your TV favorites are back with brand new seasons, and lots of plot twists. To refresh your memory after the long summer, over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "The Fall TV Season Begins!," in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I round up a guide to the good and bad times of last season--or in this case, 23 cliffhangers--and offer a peek into what’s coming next this fall.

I had hoped to have a full review of tonight's fantastic Parenthood season opener ("I Don't Want to Do This Without You"), but unfortunately I'm being pulled in a thousand directions at the moment, so you'll have to settle for a glowing (if brief) recommendation to tune in tonight when this remarkable and emotionally powerful series returns for its third season. Five months have passed since we last saw the sprawling Braverman clan, and change is in the air for nearly all of the family members. Adam (Peter Krause) is still out of work and has been reduced to loafing around the house and going on interviews for jobs that he doesn't really want and is over qualified for, having lost his purpose and identity as the family's breadwinner; Kristina (Monica Potter), meanwhile, is quite pregnant and quite capable of bringing home the bacon, having gone back to work. It's interesting to see how the dynamic between the two of them has shifted so considera

Will the 2011-12 television season be a winner or another dud? Over at The Daily Beast, my fellow Daily Beast staffer Maria Elena Fernandez and I offer our first impressions of more than 30 network pilots--from Awake and Ringer to Alcatraz and Work It --coming to TV next season. You can check out our he said/she said-style thoughts in my latest feature, entitled "TV Preview: Snap Judgments of 2011-2012's New Shows." Which fall or midseason show are you most excited about? And which are you most dreading? Head to the comments section to discuss, and see whether you agree with our first impression take on more than 30 broadcast network pilots. Did your potential favorite make the must-see list?

The dust has settled on the TV season— American Idol and The Good Wife are in, The Event and $#*! My Dad Says are out. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "2010-11 TV's Winners and Losers," in which I rate the hits and the flops of the 2010-11 season and take a look at the broadcasters' position going into and coming out of the 2010-11 television season. Brief caveat: please do remember (because I inevitably will receive something to this effect in the comments section), this isn't a critical evaluation. While certainly some shows I love (cough, The Good Wife , cough) did end up in the winners' column , this is more a look at how individual shows and networks fared in terms of series launches, ratings retention, and (to a smaller extent) critically.

In recent years, it’s been a given that romantic pairs on television had to be subjected to the will-they or-won't-they dilemma—where couples as clearly in love as Ross-and-Rachel, Sam-and-Diane, or Jim-and-Pam were prevented from jumping into bed together for years, as the writers forced them through increasingly tight narrative hoops. These days, though, it seems like more and more TV couples just will. As writer-producers have sought to surprise the audience, they’re puncturing romantic tropes in the process. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Death of Will-They-or-Won't-They," for which I talk to Community ’s Dan Harmon, Parks and Recreation ’s Mike Schur and Greg Daniels, and Bones ’ Hart Hanson about how TV is throwing off that age-old will-they-or-won’t-they paradigm in the post-Jim-and-Pam era.