originally published October 23, 2013 There are some aspects of life that should probably remain unexamined. For example, a number of the rusty cogs of childhood that prop up our very being – do we need to look too deeply into these things? When I learned about Freud’s theory of the anal phase in infantile […]

originally published October 12, 2013 A couple Sundays ago, over the course of 75 minutes that some of us are still trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to wash out of our brains, Breaking Bad aired its series-concluding episode. 10.3 million people tuned in, scoring a 5.2 share – a phenomenal success, considering the previous season’s finale (the […]

originally published September 2, 2013 As my television dependency shifts more and more from standardized broadcast schedules to the liberating realms of Netflix and Hulu and torrent dowloads, I find myself less and less interested in the annual fall offerings of fresh meat, filtered through tried-and-tested formulae. There was a time when a new slate […]

originally published August 15, 2013 Amid the seemingly infinite waterfall of random thoughts that saturate my brain and prevent it from doing anything particularly beneficial to society comes the realization that my children have grown up in a world where the Fox Network has always existed. They have never known the confines of a 12-channel […]

originally published May 29, 2013 Having grown up as a non-hockey-playing only child in a Canadian town that was either winter or winteresque for more than half the year, I watched a lot of TV. I had a small handful of friends who lived within walking distance, but hundreds of friends who lived in that little box […]

originally published April 25, 2013 Let me paint you a picture. On a Sunday night at 8:00, my family has the option of watching America’s Funniest Home Videos on ABC (channel 13), or flipping over to the latest episode of The Walking Dead on AMC (channel 39). One of these two shows contains profanity, excessive […]

originally published April 5, 2013 Are you planning on watching TV tonight? Sorry, that was a rather personal and forward question, but I assure you, I’m only trying to survey the bleak and unloved landscape of a network TV Friday night. Purely for scientific reasons. You see, network executives have held Friday night with a […]

originally published March 31, 2013 Month’s end – always a great time to look back and reflect on some of the troughs in our culture. For every show like The Wire, there have been hundreds of Manimals – shows so ill-conceived and/or poorly-executed, it’s a wonder how they made it on the air. Especially when […]

originally published March 18, 2013 It’s easy to look at prime time television and come to the conclusion that there simply isn’t much fresh or original going on. Have a look at the top ten ratings from the Nielsen people for the week ending March 4, the most recent they have on their website: NCIS, […]