New year. New “Chuck.” New Chuck.
Christopher Lawrence
Christopher Lawrence is the movie critic for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
clawrence@reviewjournal.com … @life_onthecouch on Twitter. 702-380-4567
It must have been sneaked onto the air by some conscientious VH1 employee while everyone else at the channel was busy scouring the country for fading celebrities and dozens of young women, with little more than daddy issues and a dream, willing to have sex with them.
Whatever you may think of “The Jay Leno Show,” it has made compiling a list of the year’s best TV much easier.
When I was a kid, I often wanted to crawl inside my TV. Usually around the time “Charlie’s Angels” — and, more specifically, Cheryl Ladd — came on.
No matter how petty, jealous and materialistic some of them might seem — (cough) Tamra Barney (cough) — it’s hard not to feel at least a little sorry for the women of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” (10 p.m. Thursdays, Bravo).
Once cable channels discover a successful niche, they’d almost always rather run it into the ground than try something new.
It would be like realizing in the operating room that your surgeon is Patrick Dempsey. Or that the attorney standing between you and death row is Andy Griffith.
It’s almost enough to make you stop believin’.
Maybe it’s time to give that Urkel kid a second chance.
Having to question the generally unimpeachable genius of creator Matthew Weiner is enough to make any lover of quality television wince. But here goes: What in the name of Betty Draper’s fainting couch is going on with “Mad Men”?
It has all the makings of a new ad campaign from the convention authority.
At some point this season, “30 Rock’s” Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) will have to lose NBC as part of a Nigerian e-mail scam. Or trade it for some magic beans.
The inside of Ryan Murphy’s head must look like an episode of “The Wiggles” written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Or “High School Musical 4: Off to Rehab.”
You don’t necessarily associate words such as “compassion” and “encouragement” with the aggressively in-your-face title “So You Think You Can Dance.”