[Televisionary]

Just a quick post today. I'm still in Aspen after the simply amazing HBO/US Comedy Arts Festival . While the festival may have wrapped and the brilliantly hued tent is being dismantled, you can still feel the energy of the festival lingering on. Meanwhile, my thoughts turn to my beloved TiVo back home, which is becoming more and more crammed full of programs (in a sign of increasing co-dependence, I can feel the unit becoming clogged with data). Waiting for me back home: Beauty and the Geek , Black Books , The Simpsons , Big Love , The New Adventures of Old Christine (x2), The Unit , The Amazing Race ... and the list goes on and on. While I attempt to recover from the excesses of the past few days, I look forward to catching up with my old friends on TiVo. What's On Tonight 8 pm: NCIS (CBS); Most Outrageous Moments / Most Outrageous Moments (NBC); Gilmore Girls (WB); According to Jim / According to Jim (ABC); American Idol (FOX; 8-10); America's Next Top Model (UPN; 8

For Valerie Cherish, No "Comeback" in Sight Ran into Lisa Kudrow here in Aspen (she's here to present the USCAF Career Tribute Award to television legend James Burrows, see below) and I couldn't resist questioning her about a possible comeback for, er, The Comeback , her brilliant-yet-cancelled HBO mockumentary (shame on you for not watching it!). Unfortunately, it seems that the chances of resurrection for The Comeback are as slim as Valerie Cherish getting a personal invitation to Paulie G's party (again, shame on you if you don't get the reference). Kudrow and her production company, Is or Isn't, did investigate the possibility of direct-to-DVD release for the show but, without securing HBO's consent to release ownership of the show, it wasn't really feasible. However, she did tell me that the show will be released later this year and that they are planning to shoot additional original material for the disc. Which Valerie Cherish might tell yo

Time for a brief aside on this cold, snowy Sunday morning in Aspen. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Televisionary had been not only mentioned, but quoted no less, about TiVo on technology site CNet 's Blogma, a sub-site devoted to "hot blog topics, chosen by editors and readers." Referring to a story about the announcement that TiVo could soon be giving away their set-top boxes in exchange for higher monthly service fees, Blogma chose Televisionary to represent the blog community and gave us the first release of TiVo Series 3 later this year (hopefully), which utilizes cable card technology, they will effectively clear up space on our cluttered entertainment consoles by doing away with the ubiquitous digital cable set-top box altogether... and allow users with two cable cards to record digital and/or HD programs simultaneously (and has a nifty little digital display on the front to show which program(s) you're recording). Now if only Blogma's article

Confession time: I've never really outgrown watching cartoons. Ugh, scratch that; I hate cartoons . There's something so negative and bubble gummy about that word. Instead, let's call them animated series. I'm not talking about the Bugs Bunny , Care Bears , Dora the Explorer , or even Pokemon kind of animated series (though I will admit to catching the odd Spongebob Squarepants every now and then), but rather animated series that are darker and have more of a more adult sensibility, that are populated by fallible or imperfect characters... perfected by the epitome of the classy animated series, Batman: The Animated Series (henceforth referred to as Batman: TAS ). I will admit that I am a person of profound contradictions. Give me a Jane Austen book, a pot of tea, and a rainy day and I am in heaven. But conversely, there are few things more rewarding and nostalgia-inducing than waking up on a Saturday morning, curling up with my girlfriend on the couch, pouring myself

Ah, midseason. It's that time of year again. When American Idol returns to take over the airwaves, when networks hastily rearrange their schedules, shunting off the tried-and-true to give a new batch of hopefuls the opportunity to shine. That time when the television-viewing audience either discovers a few new gems... or is forced to suffer through some stinkers that for some reason failed to make it on the network schedules back in the fall ( Four Kings , cough, cough). This week, CBS and ABC unveiled their latest entries in the midseason race: The Unit and Sons & Daughters . So far, CBS' midseason track record hasn't been so good (think Love Monkey ) but they are hoping to change that by launching a new military action drama from David Mamet and Shawn Ryan while ABC attempts to undo their disastrous recent comedy offerings ( Emily's Reasons Why Not and Jake Interrupted , among others) with an improvisational comedy about the twisted branches of an extended famil

I'll admit that I was more than skeptical at first when I heard the premise of the WB's reality show, Beauty & the Geek . Perhaps it was the fact that the promos kept billing the show as "Ashton Kutcher's social experiment," a dubious endorsement to say the least. (His marriage to Demi more than fits the bill as "social experiment," but that's not for here.) The concept is pretty basic: six geeks (intellectually advanced yet socially awkward guys) and six beauties (gorgeous yet, er, intellectually challenged girls) are picked to live in a mansion. Sounds rather like MTV's Real World at first, no? But here's the twist: the girls and guys will be paired into teams of two and will compete each week for the priviledge of staying and continuing the experiment... and for the opportunity to win $250,000 at the end. Each week, the geeks and the beauties are forced to compete in various challenges; the winners of which get to decide which teams to

"Lost" In Translation The Sunday New York Times ran an article in the Arts section on Sunday, examining the ongoing relationship between Lost 's married Korean castaways, Sun and Jin. While the article doesn't reveal any hidden clues to the series (or even interview the actors that play Sun and Jin... or any writers for that matter), the article's author puts the couple's relationship into the perspective of the series. "Sun and Jin also stand out on Lost because their storyline, despite the requisite flashbacks, seems to be pushing forward. Other castaways are slaves to the past. The island has freed Sun and Jin, though, to deal with their marital problems in a way they could not back in South Korea. It is their Eden." So the real question is: on an island where no one can be happy for very long, why are Sun and Jin granted a glimpse of marital bliss now? And if so, how long will it be before they are torn apart again? And when? If the promos are