Filed under: OpEd, TV 101, Reality-Free Because I tend to hang out with mostly hobos and philosophy majors, about 90% of my conversations wind up in hypotheticals about the kind of superpower I would most want. While I don't yet have an answer to that worked out, I have figured out the superpower I ...

Filed under: OpEd, TV 101, Reality-Free I have a 19 month-old son named Keane Black who has recently graduated from a boob-obsessed pink blob into a happy-go-lucky toddler. (Little does he know that, if he follows his father's path, he's only a few decades away from regressing back into a boob-obses...

Filed under: OpEd, The Office, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free (S05E14) I don't usually cringe at The Office. For whatever reason, it's hard for me to disconnect the part of my brain that understands that the people I'm watching are actors speaking words written by writers. I know that makes me sort'v...

Filed under: OpEd, The Office, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free (S05E14) Last week's episode of The Office was kind of like a one-night stand that happens after way too much drinking: good for what it was, but ultimately unsatisfying. Tonight's episode is like finding the girl you're going to marry. An...

Filed under: OpEd, TV 101, Reality-Free Michael Phelps recently went from big-time role-model to big-eared pothead in about the time it took for some d-bag with a cameraphone to press "send." This got me thinking about role models in general. Like it or not, most of us wind up choosing role models f...

Filed under: OpEd, The Office, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free (S05E13) Let me ask you a philosophical question: is it possible for a sitcom to be funny and still not be a very good episode? Technically, all a sitcom is trying to do is make you laugh; if it accomplishes that, it's hard to argue that i...

Filed under: OpEd, The Office, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free (S05E12) If The Office has one weakness it's this: when it feels the need to split time equally between an A-Story and a B-Story, it's a fair bet that one of them is going to suffer. I guess the "curse" of having such a large and talented ...

Filed under: OpEd, Festivus, TV 101, Reality-Free If there's one universal among TV Christmas specials it's this: they all seem to want to tell you what the "true" meaning of Christmas is. There are so many specials trying to explain the true meaning of Christmas, it actually makes you wonder if the...

Filed under: Video, Game Show, Reality-Free From 1986 through 2004, there was a popular English game show called Catch Phrase (we had a version in America, but like tea drinking and civility, we ditched it after only a very brief run). Here's how the bonus game on the show worked: nine blocks covere...

Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Industry, OpEd, Watercooler Talk, Big Brother (US), Hell's Kitchen As an intro to my article about The New York Reality TV School, I've asked Red from The Shawshank Redemption to narrate my opening paragraph: I wish I could tell you that the New York Reality TV Scho...