Dec. 28, 2015
The Best and Most Interesting TV Comedy from 2015
2015 was a year of quantity, but it was also a year of quality: with Peak TV in full swing, there was not only a lot of TV comedy, there was […]
Dec. 11, 2015
The Deeply Empathetic Humor of ‘Transparent’ Midway through the second season of Transparent, now streaming in full on Amazon, the Pfefferman clan celebrates Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of […]
Dec. 2, 2015
The Disappointing Shallowness of Trevor Noah’s ‘Daily Show’
When we learned that Jon Stewart would be stepping down from The Daily Show desk just as the country ramped up for the 2016 presidential […]
Nov. 25, 2015
The Great ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Is Broad and Emotionally Precise at the […]
In high school, or middle school, or possibly at a summer program, or maybe all of them, I had a musical theater teacher explain that in a […]
Nov. 16, 2015
‘W/ Bob & David’ Brings Back That ‘Mr. Show’ Magic, Inconsistencies and All The first episode of W/ Bob & David, a not-quite-sequel, not-quite-reunion (continuation?) of cult favorite Mr. Show, begins with Bob […]
Nov. 12, 2015
The Heart and Humanity That Makes ‘Nathan for You’ So Good I was late discovering the brilliance of Nathan For You because I was concerned it was a mean show, in the way that prank shows are often mean: […]
Nov. 11, 2015
‘Master of None’ Is Completely Unsubtle, and That’s What Makes It So Good The Master of None season finale begins with Dev (Aziz Ansari) unable to decide what to have for lunch. Settling on tacos is only the […]
Oct. 28, 2015
Matt Walsh’s ‘A Better You’ Finds Humanity in Desperation Dr. Ron Knight is a hypnotherapist and (self-published) author who promises that in just three semi-conscious sessions, you can fix whatever is […]
Oct. 14, 2015
Denis Leary’s ‘Benders’ Could Be Good If It Stopped Trying So Hard to Be […] Denis Leary makes shows about men. Specifically, he makes shows about a certain type of urban, blue collar man, a man who has feelings but no […]
Oct. 7, 2015
Trevor Noah Finds His Footing on ‘The Daily Show’ Let’s get one thing out of the way: if the question was whether Trevor Noah could pull off hosting The Daily Show, the answer is yes. From his […]
Sept. 30, 2015
‘Adam Ruins Everything’ Finds the Joy in Telling You Your Assumptions Are […] Everything you thought you knew is wrong, and Adam Conover is going to tell you about it.
This is the premise of Adam Ruins Everything, […]
Sept. 24, 2015
In Season Two, ‘You’re the Worst’ Settles Into Its Version of Normalcy The easiest way to explain You’re the Worst, FX’s anti-romcom romcom, which entered its second season earlier this month, would be to say that […]
Sept. 16, 2015
The ‘Real’ Stephen Colbert Settles Into His ‘Late Show’ When it was announced last April that Stephen Colbert would be taking over the Late Show, I felt abandoned. I wanted this Stephen Colbert, not […]
Sept. 3, 2015
Parodies Don’t Get More Loving Than ‘Documentary Now!’ If you are a person who has an encyclopedic knowledge of documentary film and has been anxiously awaiting a solid Errol Morris parody to hit […]
May 22, 2012
Hanging Out with Dave Hill The first time I saw Dave Hill perform, he was giving a celebrity interview to Ira Glass and wearing — at least in my memory — some […]
