Emily St. James is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in Vox, The A.V. Club, and the New York Times. She is the co-creator of the podcast Arden and a writer on the TV series Yellowjackets.
I have a love-hate thing with canons. I think they're useful in general, because they give us all something to react to and push back against, but I also tend to find they have gigantic blindspots, in terms of voices represented, types of work celebrated, and the very
(We're talking about Broadway musicals this week, and it's gone better than you might have expected for an idea I half had one night when possessed by the desire to listen to "Superstar.") Endings are important, but especially in musical theater. A great closing
(We're talking musicals this week, which means it's time for the inevitable Stephen Sondheim post.) It actually took me a while to warm to Stephen Sondheim. And by that I mean, "When I was 12 and listened to lots of original cast albums, I didn&
(We're talking about musicals this week, because I don't really value my subscriber numbers.) There's a tradition in musical theater called the "11 o'clock number," which is based on the idea that shows used to start at 8:30, so
(We're talking about show tunes this week, because I feel like talking about show tunes this week. You can nominate some of your favorites! I probably won't write about them.) Since I received it as a Christmas gift last year, I've kept Stephen Sondheim&
(I'm going to write about my favorite songs from musicals this week, because why not?) When I was 12, there was nothing I loved more than the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I hadn't really had access to pop music as a kid, due to my
When I was 11, there was no TV show I loved more than Mork & Mindy. It was a period in my life when my parents had just broken down and purchased a sizable satellite package. (We didn't have cable; instead, we had a large satellite dish constantly
Today, after I linked to an article I wrote about how I have a lot of streaming skepticism, particularly when you compare this era to the home video era, follower @RevDJEsq asked me if we were headed back to the era of the "Big Three," with three main
One of my favorite video game genres is the "tiny town you build in your phone" genre. I got hooked on it thanks to The Simpsons: Tapped Out, which is not a great game but is a soothing one. I like to check in every so often and
My first journalism job was at the small-town weekly newspaper my cousin operated. It was a place where the definition of "news" was about as elastic as you could possibly get, and it often included, say, photos of children lined up to show off being on the honor
There's been a lot of discussion in recent years about proper behavior on Twitter, which once seemed to me the very best social network out there and increasingly seems to me like the online equivalent of the film Warriors, roamed by seemingly endless series of angry gangs, who
Thanksgiving is the best TV holiday. I should make a caveat to that point. It's not the holiday with the best TV specials (that would still be Christmas). It's just the best holiday around which to center an episode of an ongoing TV show. Precisely the