Tag: television

Late capitalism gets an antihero show.

Michael Musto looks back at some of the best, worst, and weirdest instances of performers expressing gratitude as they received their shiny trophies.

Media and entertainment grounded in empathy are a critical part of a saner culture — and we can all help by actively producing, seeking, and supporting it.

Pamela Adlon’s Better Things is not a riff on the antihero show so much as it is an antidote to it.

Emily Nussbaum talks about why TV’s relationship with its audience has become more intimate, whether we can blame Trump on True Detective, and how a TV critic’s biggest challenge is just figuring out what to watch.

The jumpsuit is great, but it won’t get you a hot priest or a BAFTA — you’re not Fleabag (or Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

Cersei Lannister could have been a great antihero, but she was on the wrong show.

The Americans shows us one way to write a female antihero.

What if a TV antihero and his wife were partners instead of rivals?

Golden Age antiheroes and the nasty women who humanized them.

A complicated racial anxiety rests at the heart of American entertainment.

How a hard-not-to-love show glosses over the powers that produced its makeover subjects.

Carmen Maria Machado discusses the nuances of “benevolent sexism,” who gets to define the #MeToo movement, and how it should progress.

The true story of the exact moment in the mid-Nineties when reality television morphed from its best self to its worst.

Never underestimate the insidious, destructive power of gaslighting, especially public gaslighting.

A try-out for American Idol put Valentina Valentini permanently off fame-seeking.

We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in arts and culture writing.

How do you talk about a weekly TV show that defies narrative order?

An oral history of “Ally McBeal” from the show’s cast and creators, 20 years after its debut.

This was the year ‘The Bachelorette’ tried to take on race. Things did not go well.

The cult show returned this week. Here, three writers reflect on David Lynch’s effect on their lives.

Kent Russell loves hockey. A lot. I don’t, but Russell’s writing about the game is utterly engrossing

Growing up in the fundamentalist Christian “Quiverfull” movement, Hännah Ettinger saw her own story in Atwood’s vision.

Caroline Framke shadowed the crew of FX’s Cold War spy drama The Americans during the production of season four episode “Clark’s Place” and explained how the show was made.

“One element that survived the entire duration of the show is the set of mixed media pieces covered with things you might find in a pair of pants.”

I don’t remember consciously watching Buffy—it feels like I absorbed it by osmosis. It’s not perfect, but it is wonderful.

Talking late-night television, retirement, and putting comedy in service of our nation, with the great David Letterman.

Helen Hollyman spent a lot of time plumbing the depths of America’s leading purveyor of Donkey Sauce™ to produce this in-depth profile of the man behind the sunglasses, Guy Fieri. But what did she really learn?

Lacey Rose gives the cast and creators of Girls — from Lena Dunham to Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner — the full oral-history treatment.

Her iconic main character inspired millions, but some argued the show needed to go even farther.