Getting to Love Hitler and Zooey Deschanel’s TV Show

Slate Takes Its Culture Gabfest to Los Angeles

How true does a good story need to be? And should you bring your toddler to The Hunger Games? These questions and others were the subject of discussion as actress Elizabeth Banks joined editors and critics from Slate in bringing the magazine’s Culture Gabfest Live to Los Angeles at the Petersen Automotive Museum. They talked about the retraction of a story on PRI show This American Life; Zooey Deschanel’s TV show The New Girl; and The Hunger Games, in which Banks plays a starring role.

Truth and Fiction on This American …

My Golden Ride in The Idiot Box

TV Writing Paid My Bills, But I Still Don't Watch

In 2006, I served a long year in the psych ward/nursery school that was the writers’ room for the quickly cancelled NBC drama The Black Donnellys.

The show held great promise, …

Go Ahead: Love Television Today

And Don’t Slight the Shows About Cupcakes

How much should we love what’s on TV? A panel of critics, producers, and television writers agreed that a lot of shows today are excellent and that viewers have more …

Is This the Golden Age of Television?

Maybe You Should Feel Better About the Junk You Watch—Maybe

 

We hate it and we love it. Television is worse than ever and better than ever. Most of us can reel off the names of ten shows that we consider …

Mad Men Look Back on Playboy and Pan Am

TV’s Distorted Gender Nostalgia Isn’t Selling

In a way, it’s too bad NBC’s much-hyped Playboy Club was unceremoniously dumped after merely three episodes. True, the writing was awful and the concept controversial, but for a minute …

Your Kid’s Brain, SpongeBob-ed

When Mindless TV is Too Hard to Follow

SpongeBob SquarePants is not the sharpest sponge in the ocean, despite his angularity. In fact it’s his amiable cluelessness that probably endears him to a large segment of American TV …