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.
Rather than prepare you an Episodes on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (as I had been planning), I somehow got distracted by thoughts of Walter Lord's terrific book, A Night to Remember, which led to me reading lots of things about the sinking of the
Recently, I hooked up a new printer. "New" is a bit of a misnomer. I've had it in a box for a few years, since my parents got it for me as a gift, and in all that time, I've had maybe four occasions
Everywhere you walk in Philadelphia, the floor creaks a little bit. This was true of the ancient, renovated row house I stayed in for the weekend I was there. It was true of the many little stores I stopped into. And it was true of the old university building where
(We're talking about scary stuff this week, all right?) In late November 1987, the city of Chicago was briefly seized by a crime that became terrifying precisely because it was so pointless. A man in a Max Headroom mask hijacked the signal of first WGN (famous for Cubs
(We're talking about scary movies and TV shows this week. It's a good week for it, don't you think?) I mentioned yesterday that I love horror perhaps above all other genres (though romance and sci-fi give it a run for its money), and if
(Hey, we're talking about scary TV this week, why not?) My mother would never say this, but I think when she first moved to the farm I grew up on, she thought it was haunted. The way our farm was laid out was like this. You had the
(For the next four days, I'm going to look at some scary TV episodes, ideally ones I haven't seen, though I will inevitably have to write about at least one I'm familiar with.) Horror TV has always understood one thing by virtue of simple
(Don't worry. I still plan on doing some Halloween type stuff this week. Just promised some people I'd get this one out sooner, rather than later.) As part of my ongoing quest to redefine the terms via which we discuss television in the most self-aggrandizing manner
Let's just admit it: Summer is hugely overrated. Spring is just fine. I can enjoy a nice, crisp winter. But summer? Summer is gulping down liquids because you can't stop sweating. Summer is sitting as still as you possibly can in hopes the sun won'
When I was a kid, the de facto "best TV show of all time" was The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It didn't top every list, but it topped most of them, and if you either didn't rank it as highly as other series or
Of all the questions people ask of American TV critics, there's one that's become harder and harder to grapple with over the years: Why do we treat so much foreign TV as a curiosity? When we're making lists of the best TV shows of
One of the delights of moving (if moving can be said to have delights) is the part where you find all of the stuff you had and sort of forgot about. By that I don't mean that you unearth buried treasure or anything like that, but that you