Every July brings one of my least favorite TV rituals: complaining about the Emmy awards. Now, to be sure, there was a time when I was a veteran Emmy complainer. (I once even wrote a whole column full of shaking fury about what the Emmys needed to do to improve.
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(I posted this to Facebook in August of 2015. Its length made me think maybe I should have an email newsletter, so I started one a few days later. USA! USA! USA! USA! Since Mr. Robot returns this week, and since so much of the discussion around it is driven
So as I said a few days ago (before the plane's descent so rudely interrupted me), sitting down with some sort of structure in mind when you're writing a thinkpiece/essay/what-have-you can be the difference between a great piece and one that just repeats itself
(I had been planning a version of this essay to run on July 4, but couldn't find time to write it. It's become accidentally timely, so I'm going to write it now instead. We'll return to our regularly scheduled programming shortly.) I
The most common mistake I find in thinkpieces around this great internet of ours is that they repeat themselves over and over and over again. They find a way to say the same thing in five or six different ways, slap on an intro and conclusion, then get out. After
(I would absolutely read that one about the 1875 mansion, fwiw.) It is, for some, the gravest insult that can be leveled against a piece of online writing: clickbait. The hackles go up. The body shivers. Surely, it's not clickbait. And yet "clickbait" is increasingly becoming
If there's a common thread to most criticisms of Orange Is the New Black's fourth season -- even the mildest ones -- it's that Piper Chapman doesn't really have a reason to be on the show any more. People who disliked the
I left The A.V. Club two years ago next Monday. I started at Vox two years ago next Thursday (I'm assuming you're reading this on Saturday, but if you're reading this in the year 2018, please tweet at me and tell me how
I'm very sad that Game of Thrones is about to leave the air. I'm not sad because it's one of my absolute favorite shows or anything like that (though it's often a lot of fun to watch). No, I'm sad
In the fall of 1993, NBC gambled on Seinfeld. Yes, it had performed impressively well post-Cheers, but with the classic bar-set sitcom (arguably the best traditional sitcom ever made) off the air, it was anybody's guess as to whether audiences would return to the wild weirdness of Seinfeld,
Earlier in the week, I attended the Banff World Media Festival to moderate a panel for The Leftovers. It was a great honor, both to get to discuss a show I love and to attend a hugely prestigious industry event (even if I was only there for a few hours,
Over the weekend, New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik, a friend, tweeted something that resonated with me: of all the pieces of writing advice you can give someone, "write what you know" is about the lousiest. (James's two tweets are here and here.) It'