Cheers to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for striking comedy gold at the expense of Donald Trump. Two nights after the SNL alum's fellow "Weekend Update" anchor Seth Meyers — not to mention President Obama himself — decimated the Celebrity Apprentice star at the White House Correspondents Dinner — Fallon nailed Trump with a dead-on impression...
Cheers to Treme for its triumphant second season. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now! If you got fed up with David Simon's pokey post-Katrina HBO drama during its first season, you might want to revisit it. Oscar-winner Melissa Leo has been joined by her killer fellow Homicide: Life on the Street vet Jon Seda as a Dallas developer whose taste for New Orleans' food and music is rivaled only by his thirst to profit from the aftermath of its tragedy. Plus, the always-excellent David Morse has been promoted to full-time regular duty as a beleaguered NOPD cop. His "Let Bourbon Street be Bourbon Street" speech rivaled Hill Street Blues' best squadroom-briefing monologues.
Cheers to Adam Scott for his deliciously deadpan work on Parks and Recreation. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!The Party Down alum seamlessly segued into a role on NBC's late-blooming sitcom as Ben Wyatt, an Indiana state-government auditor who came to Pawnee and stayed....
Cheers to Adam Arkin for becoming one of TV's highest-caliber directors. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now! The veteran actor (Northern Exposure, Chicago Hope), who still does stellar guest shots on shows like The Chicago Code and Sons of Anarchy, has quietly emerged as one of the small screen's most reliable helmers. At FX, he's practically a house director, having shot episodes of The Riches, Dirt, SOA and Terriers. But his finest behind-the-camera work has been on Justified, and he outdid himself with this week's installment, "Reckoning."
Cheers to Pia Toscano for proving American Idol's loss is Dancing With the Stars' gain. The stunningly talented — and just plain stunning — also-sang belted out a note-perfect rendition of the Pretenders' "I'll Stand By You" on the ABC ballroom hit's results show. "How the hell did you get kicked off?" emcee Tom Bergeron quipped...
Jeers to Law & Order: L.A. for keeping up with Khloe Kardashian Odom.Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine.We know NBC's ratings-starved spinoff is desperate for attention, but couldn't they have cast an actual actress as the E!-lebrity client of a slain Hollywood stylist? (Maybe they did; Khloe was apparently added after parts of the ...
Cheers to Joel Kinnaman for his captivating performance on The Killing. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine. The Swedish actor helps give AMC's hypnotic adaptation of a Danish mystery series its chilly Scandinavian/Girl With the Dragon Tattoo vibe as Stephen Holder, the skeevy new partner of Seattle homicide cop Sarah Linden (the incandescent Mireille Enos). With a wiry frame and a live-wire intensity akin to Oscar nominee John Hawkes (Winter's Bone), Kinnaman routinely swipes scenes with his jittery charisma.
Jeers to The Office for mismanaging the Steve Carell-Will Ferrell transition.Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!The Anchorman costars are briefly overlapping on NBC's too-long-running sitcom as Carell's Michael Scott says his looooong goodbye and Ferrell temps as his would-be replacement, D'Angelo Vickers. At first it seemed like the new boss was the same as the old boss — i.e., a clueless boob...
Cheers to Modern Family for exploring a new kind of sibling revelry.Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!With the myriad dynamics among the members of the Pritchett-Dunphy clan, one type of relationship ...
Cheers to Norm MacDonald for getting back where he belongs: behind a fake-news desk.Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!SNL's onetime "Weekend Update" anchor — who, ironically, was fired by ex-NBC Sports head Don Ohlmeyer for making too many jokes about his jock pal O.J. Simpson — scored ...
Cheers to Billy Lush for his arresting work on The Chicago Code. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now! As Liam Hennessy, an undercover cop who's walking a thin blue line between good and evil in his attempt to...
Cheers to Michelle Forbes for her dead-on performance on The Killing.Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!The versatile actress has toggled between outlandish fantasy (Battlestar Galactica, True Blood) and down-to-earth ...
Cheers to Melinda Clarke for two-timing it on Nikita and CSI. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine.The O.C. and Vampire Diaries vet holds down juicy roles on a pair of Thursday at 9 p.m. dramas. She was sadly nowhere to be seen last night on the CW's spy series — back after a too-long hiatus — as Amanda, Division's master manipulator. But fear not, Amanda fans: She'll be back next week, hooking up mole Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca) to a lie detector.Meanwhile, last night Clarke reprised her recurring role on CSI as Lady Heather, the dominatrix who got a kick out of flirting with Gil Grissom (William Petersen). Now working as a sex therapist...
Cheers to Law & Order: SVU for making "Reparations" for previous storytelling crimes. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!In an unusually sober episode of the too-often sensationalistic series, Terrence Howard smoothly crossed over from Law & Order: LA as his character, ADA Jonah Dekker, flew in to defend his cousin (excellent Chicago Hope vet Vondie Curtis-Hall) on rape charges. The case pitted ...
Cheers to NCIS for putting Enrique Murciano back on active duty.Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!The charismatic actor, who spent seven seasons on CBS as streetwise FBI agent Danny Taylor on Without a Trace, resurfaced on the network as CIA operative Ray Sanchez — or "CI-Ray," as DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) dubbed him...
Cheers to Ralph Macchio for proving he's alive and kicking on Dancing With the Stars. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now! The all-grown-up Karate Kid could've been this season's Steve Guttenberg — an '80 relic who remains irrelevant. Instead, he's like the male Jennifer Grey — a movie star who's been out of the picture for years but returns triumphantly to have the time of his life.
Cheers to The Borgias for bringing Derek Jacobi back where he belongs: in a steamy Roman period piece. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!The magnificent British actor first made his name with American audiences as the titular stuttering Roman emperor in the gleefully hedonistic '70s miniseries I, Claudius. Since then, he's appeared in myriad period pieces...
Jeers to American Idol for following its best results show ever with one of its worst...
Cheers to Justified for giving Margo Martindale the role of a lifetime: Mags Bennett. The prodigiously gifted character actress, who's been amazing in everything from Sidney Lumet's sadly forgotten A&E drama series 100 Centre Street to Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winner Million Dollar Baby, is nothing short of miraculous as the backwoods drug runner on FX's just-renewed (yay!) crime drama. You can also see her shine on CBS' new spy dramedy Chaos, debuting on April Fool's Night, and in the current arthouse hit Win Win.
Cheers to Lights Out for putting Valerie Perrine back in the ring. FX's tragically cancelled boxing drama brought the Oscar-nominated actress (for 1974's stand-up biopic Lenny) out of semi-retirement to play Mae, the long-absent mother of heavyweight contender "Lights" Leary (Holt McCallanny). The 67-year-old actress—who was last seen on the small screen in a 2005 episode of Third Watch—still looks great, and she worked up a potent chemistry with Stacy Keach as her ex-husband, Pops...
To hear Timothy Olyphant tell it, playing speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-Glock Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens on Justified is like shooting fish in a proverbial barrel. "I hesitate to say this, but I find the acting to be a piece of cake," he confesses. "Good writing is always pretty easy to do. Bad writing is hard to act, hard to memorize, hard to figure out what the f--- you're doing. When it's well written, it gives you a lot of room to play." It's clear to the nearly four million Oly-fans who tune in to FX's adaptation of crime-novel mastermind Elmore Leonard's work each week that everybody involved is having a blast. "Elmore doesn't know how to write anything that's not cool," Olyphant raves of the Get Shorty/Be Cool/Out of Sight author. "When it really cooks, it's just a great job."
Cheers to Chris Parnell for his endearing guest turn on Mad Love. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine. The SNL veteran guested on CBS' freshman sitcom as a small-town cop, Dennis Barrett, who pulls over Connie (Judy Greer) for speeding. She initially flirts with him to try and get out of the ticket but is eventually charmed by his winning personality. Parnell and Greer have history — they costarred in ABC's underrated gem Miss Guided and both provide voices on FX's animated spy spoof Archer — and they developed a surprisingly potent chemistry in only a few scenes. Thankfully, we haven't seen the last of Parnell on Mad Love — he'll be back for another episode next month.
