"‘Cougar Town,’ a minor if praiseworthy success for three seasons on ABC, makes its move to TBS on Tuesday night — but rather than gladden its fans with the small miracle of its reprieve, it shuffles toward you with the stink of the dead. Now it’s just another zombie show."
Mini reviews of 22 new shows, plus Hank Stuever’s longer takes on Revolution, The Mindy Project, The New Normal and Partners, and why pilot episodes crash.
"We were lovers in another life."
— Shirley MacLaine on her “Downton Abbey” co-star Maggie Smith, at the summer TV press tour.
Hank Stuever’s best television of 2011.
NBC orders sitcom pilot about dysfunctional First Family from former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett.
Photo by Marvin Joseph (The Washington Post)
"God, sometimes Rachel is so entitled it makes me want to throw my TV in the garbage and then throw the garbage into the ocean and then throw the ocean into outer space and then throw outer space at Rachel."
— Lindy West, recapping/disemboweling “Glee” (which The Washington Post Style Tumblr loathes) on NYMag’s Vulture blog. (H/t Caitlin Gibson)
In case you missed the sublime Fall TV Preview by our critic Hank Stuever, who sorts new series using one question: Better or worse than dead-average “Pan Am”?
Print design by Kim Vu and Jesse Lenz
If ever there was an era that needed someone to explain it all, it’s this one.
Calling all Millennials. Tune in to Nickelodeon Monday night. Photo by Jeff Christensen (AP)
"This is what’s insidiously wrong (and tiresome) about ‘Glee’ and the gays: Its modest ambitions for a little provocative high-school camp were fun to watch up to and until the moment I realized that gay kids (and grown-ups) were taking it seriously."
— Hank Stuever, on “Glee.” A thousand times yes.
This is Paddy Chayefsky’s programming lineup for the fictional TV network in “Network.” “Death Squads”! “Lady Cop”! “Celebrity Canasta”! Amazing.
Check out The New York Times’s delicious interactive story on Chayefsky’s notes to himself.
