Duets' Olivia Chisholm and Robin Thicke
Seriously, TV? You couldn't give us 24 hours to catch our breath from the season that just ended with a frenetic bang Wednesday night:
read more
Amy Poehler
KNOPE CAN DO! On a thoroughly charming Parks and Recreation finale, eternal idealist Leslie Knope achieves her lifelong dream of being voted into office — and Amy Poehler captures every nail-biting emotion, from overwhelmed pride at casting a vote for herself to premature despair, an ultimately genuine joy and gratitude to all the friends who made this possible. Her opponent Bobby Newport isn't the only one who's relieved — and geez, show, Paul Rudd is such an adorable boob (the way he stares at a boom mike like it's a chew toy), can't he stick around as a mascot or something? Pawnee City Council may not be Washington, D.C. (where Ben appears to be heading, casting a long-distance pall over the celebration), and a 21-vote margin of victory isn't much of a mandate, but who cares when you have friends like a whisky-laden Ron Swanson, who tells Leslie when she's down that the team rallied to her cause because "that's what you do when you care about someone: You support 'em win, lose or draw." Awww.
read more
The Big Bang Theory
One small gesture can be worth a thousand punch lines. This becomes clear in the last moments of The Big Bang Theory's funny and ultimately touching season finale (CBS, 8/7c), as the gang prepares to watch Howard Walowitz — or "Froot Loops," to his fellow astronauts (you'll learn why) — go into space. But not before hastily arranging an accelerated wedding for Howard and his beloved, Bernadette (Don't Call Her Ma), whose one condition is that ...
read more
Jason Isaacs
How long can Michael Britten live in two realities?
More and more that's becoming the question at the center of NBC's Awake. After Britten (Jason Isaacs) agreed to move with his wife Hannah (Laura Allen) to Oregon — a move encouraged by his therapists as a sign of progress — he received a haunting phone call from the serial killer he was chasing that urged him to not let go of his dual-reality gift.
read more
Laura Allen
Awake's Michael Britten is already living in two worlds, and after Thursday's episode, he may soon be living in a third.
Spring Preview: Get more scoop on new shows
Britten (Jason Isaacs) has been slipping back and forth between two realities ever since a car accident killed either his wife Hannah (Laura Allen) or his son Rex (Dylan Minnette). In Thursday's aptly titled episode "Oregon," Britten learns that Hannah is far more serious than he thought about moving to the Beaver State to pursue law school — and to escape the pain of losing their son.
"Obviously she's devastated by the loss of her son and yet she needs to stay in perpetual motion," Allen tells TVGuide.com...
read more
Jim Parsons
Give a gold star — or whatever qualifies as a decent grade at Greendale Community College these days — to NBC for the smart decision to bring back Community while CBS was preoccupied with NCAA March Madness for several weeks. This allowed the very cult ...
read more
David Mazouz, Kiefer Sutherland
Anyone who thinks TV isn't trying hard enough to raise the bar this midseason should check out tonight's most distinctive shows. With the official series launch of Fox's fantastical Touch (9/8c) and another fascinating episode of NBC's mystifying Awake (10/9c), I imagine some will maintain that they may be trying a little too hard.
It's probably fair to wonder if Fox is touched in the head for going forward with a show as out-there as Touch. This hasn't been an easy time for truly offbeat shows to gain traction, as risk-takers including Smash, The River and Awake have struggled in the ratings, with critics eager to point out their obvious flaws while often undervaluing the ambition it took to put ...
read more
Mary McCormack, Frederick Weller
Send questions to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: Just wondering about Terra Nova and the rumors that they'll be shopping it around to another network. It took them pretty much forever to get the first season prepared, I'm assuming because of the special effects. If they wind up on another network, that probably means a smaller budget, faster production, fewer dinosaurs, more focus on the people, character-driven stories, etc. Right? Sounds entertaining to me. (I do confess, though Terra Nova struck me as a bit of a mess in some ways, I was looking forward to seeing how the story played out.)
read more
Awake
When a new show comes along that blows you away with its risk-taking originality, like NBC's haunting Awake (see my review of the pilot episode here), it's almost inevitable that one of the first ...
read more
Awake
In many ways, Awake is an even riskier bet for NBC than the showtune-happy Smash. The show follows a detective whose reality has splintered following a fatal car accident: one day, he wakes up to comfort his grieving wife because their son has died; in the next, he's a widower living with his son who survived. During one of his mandated therapy sessions, he lays it out: One of these existences might not be real — but he'd rather go on living in both.
More ambitious and certainly more challenging than most network dramas, Awake is not nearly as complicated as traversing through Inception, a comparison some critics have already made. Instead, think of it as a cop drama with a twist, albeit a very ambitious twist
read more