The Forgotten Tale of How Black Psychiatrists Helped Make ‘Sesame Street’ by Anne Harrington I’m bound to be enthralled by any smart story that digs into the earliest days of Sesame Street, the PBS program of my youth that was … Continue reading Outside Reading — Sweepin’ the Clouds Away edition
These posts are about great acting performances sustained across the full run of a television series. Kaley Cuoco as Penny in The Big Bang Theory (2007 – 2019) Before Penny, there was Katie. Well ahead of the time The Big … Continue reading The Long Haul — Kaley Cuoco in The Big Bang Theory
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. As someone who experience formative years during the nineteen-eighties, culturally guided by Steven Spielberg’s films and Stephen … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Stranger Things and New Coke
Since great television comedy always begins with the script, this series of posts considers the individual episodes that have claimed the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series over the years. The Larry Sanders Show debuted on … Continue reading Golden Words – The Larry Sanders Show, “Flip”
On the occasion of the announcement of the second season premiere date for David Letterman’s Netflix program, I luckily have this archival piece loaded up and ready to go. Written for the “Flashback Fridays” feature I mounted at my former … Continue reading From the Archive — Late Night with David Letterman
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. I feel like I … Continue reading Laughing Matters — The Carol Burnett Show, “The Oldest Man: The Doctor”
As certainly as Marvel has become an unstoppable force wherever people recline luxuriously in gigantic palaces, the wide-reaching House of Ideas hasn’t quite cracked other media (including some significant slippage in realm of the colorful periodicals of sequential storytelling that … Continue reading That Championship Season — Jessica Jones, Season One
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Although my inability and … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Jonathan Coulton, “Nobody’s Above the Law”
Sometimes in pop culture there are clear end points, and — effective or not — they can provide insights to a whole series, oeuvre, or discography. It took me too long to find Broad City. I didn’t scramble to it … Continue reading Last Call — “Broad City”
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. As Jordan Peele continues … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Key and Peele, “Non-Scary Movie”
Coffee for Two 