Image Credit: Jack Zeman/Lifetime

Liz & Dick was a peculiar, drab, damp little TV-movie indeed, wasn’t it? The opening seconds flashed a “based on a true story” message across the screen. But the “story” – that is, the life that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton shared, chronicled here primarily during the 1960s, after meeting during the making of Cleopatra (1963) – was so much richer in reality than it was in this dinky, tin-eared production. Instead, the primary interest in watching Liz & Dick was to behold Lindsay Lohan trying, with varying, wobbly degrees of effort, to make her own career comeback.

In other words, when it came to Lohan “doing” Liz: She done her wrong. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: David Giesbrecht

So Ben’s engagement present to Leslie was a personal meet-and-greet with her sex-object-idol, Vice President Joe Biden. His teeth bright enough to light the Parks and Recreation set, Biden proved to be a good actor — or rather, a good reactor (hey, that’s how John Wayne defined the job anyway), to Leslie’s nonplussed yet turned-on reactions. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Jordin Althaus/NBC

“Whitney is taped in front of a live studio audience,” said Whitney Cummings at the start of Wednesday night’s second-season premiere of Whitney, apparently in an effort to prove that, yes, there really are human beings that laugh at Whitney. READ FULL STORY »

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Back after too long, Parenthood resumed on Tuesday night with an episode that typified what inspires such an ardent following for this series. The hour was filled with small moments — nothing big, grandiose, or excessively dramatic — that nevertheless added up to a meticulously moving hour.

The inescapable center of the series is now Kristina’s cancer diagnosis and how she and her family are responding to it. The episode was titled “Together” with some irony, since the urge to help Monica Potter’s character, a crisis that can bring a family together, is also what left her frequently feeling isolated, misunderstood, and with a desire to be left alone. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Showtime

Wanting someone who wants you, but it just can’t happen. Circumstances — marriage, family, professional responsibilities — keep you apart. Wondering what it would be like if you were together. Would the things that lend your attraction urgency — that tinge of crazy love, an edge of obsession — would those qualities become overwhelming if you spent all your time together? Does the danger that seems to sexy now inevitably lead to frustration, anger, even repulsion?  READ FULL STORY »

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President Obama’s re-election speech, broadcast late last night, hit a lot of the right notes that all Americans might have wanted to hear. “I know that political campaigns can sometimes seem small, even silly,” he said early on. “And that provides plenty of fodder for the cynics who tell us that politics is nothing more than a contest of egos or the domain of special interests.” Yep, that’s what a lot folks doubtless felt over the past few months especially.

After giving numerous examples of the importance of elections to many different kinds of Americans facing different kinds of issues, he said near his conclusion, “I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states.” READ FULL STORY »

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All of the network and cable news networks declared President Obama reelected shortly after 11 p.m., projecting a crucial win in Ohio. TV screens were immediately filled with images of people all over the country — and the world — reacting with joy. The TV analysts were more sober, and in some cases, in disagreement.

Election night on television is always its own riot of staggered results, projected winners, and the wild cheers erupting behind state victors. It’s also cutting-edge technology versus gassy-air punditry. This year, the contrasts were more vivid than ever. I have in the past poked fun at CNN’s John King and his Technicolor-Wizard-Touchy-Feely Map, but on this night, he did a masterful job both physical and mental. By which I mean, his adroit tap-tap-taps on the TWTF Map broke out states county-by-county, and he knew exactly where to find voting totals, previous-election trends, and projected numbers to deliver calm, coherent tales of the tape. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Geronimo Nevada/National Geographic

The TV-movie SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Ladin, which aired on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday evening, turned the story of the hunt for and killing of Osama Bin Laden into a reasonably crisp little action film — it didn’t contain anything you didn’t know, and the dialogue sounded as though it had been checked out from a well-preserved World War II supply closet, but you couldn’t help but get caught up in the tense quality of the mission. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Randy Tepper/Showtime

The current season Dexter was going along pretty well for a while. The whole Deb-finds-out-Dex-is-a-serial-killer was the shocker it was intended to be, and Deb’s reaction was well-calibrated. The announcement that Chuck‘s Yvonne Strahovski had been cast as some sort of maybe-criminal, maybe-romantic, maybe-both new character seemed like a good antidote to what turned out to be the dim Lumen of Julia Stiles. But this week — hoo, boy… SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THIS WEEK’S DEXTER. READ FULL STORY »