tv on dvd

Quick: How long did Ellen DeGeneres’ sitcom last? Four episodes? Ten? Maybe it eeked out a full season? Get this: Ellen, one of the blandest, most generic sitcoms in recent memory, endured for five years and one hundred episodes — there’s a hole in your pop-culture memory only because the series, or at least the … more…

It’s hard to conceive of the alternate universe in which “reality TV” hit The Apprentice approaches actual reality. Like a Mafia don drunk on his own power, Donald Trump — holding court from a would-be intimidating oversize executive chair in an underlit conference room and, hand to God, referring to himself as “The Donald” — … more…

It’s End Times thrills for secularists in X-Files creator Chris Carter’s crime drama, which explores millennial paranoia from a decidedly worldly perspective while also managing to maintain an unrelenting, uncanny creepiness. It’s clear, throughout these 22 episodes from the series’s debut 1996-7 season, that retired FBI criminal profiler Frank Black has some paranormal simpatico with … more…

It’s hard to imagine that this idiotic sitcom was ever intended for adult consumption: its putative heroines come across, at best, as mentally retarded, and at worst, as whiny, shallow bimbos. But that’s hardly a surprise: producer Garry Marshall would go on to make a career of denigrating the female gender with films like The … more…

Conan’s nightly show may be hit or miss, but this compilation of his best-of, on the occasion of his first ten years on the air, is a riotous testament to his ongoing, quirky appeal. Practically a sendup of the talk show, Late Night with… here proves to be less “a decade of shameless ass-kissing,” as … more…

How did I miss getting into Sliders the first time around, when it aired on Fox and then the Sci-Fi Channel? It’s totally my kind of show: escapist and science fictional, and there’s a really cute guy, that chubby kid from Stand by Me who grew up so nice. College student Quinn (the no-longer-chubby Jerry … more…

All I remember is how awesome that car was. C’mon: I was a 13-year-old geek, and a benign Hal in a black Trans Am was too cool. But ohmigod, how deliciously, 80s-y awful is Knight Rider today! It’s like the unholy love child of two genres that filled the airwaves in the Carter and Reagan … more…

Do I look fat in this sitcom to you? Obvious and distasteful, this working-class “comedy” relies entirely on class and gender stereotypes to elicit laughs in the same way that one pulls teeth. Doug Heffernan (Kevin James), a professional package-deliverer complete with ugly brown uniform, is like a real-life, unironic Homer Simpson, but his wife, … more…

Nine years after its multiple-Emmy-winning debut season, ER‘s combination of intense medical realism and dishy doctor soap opera has inspired a devoted fan following, and this jam-packed set will be catnip to them. A look back at where these now-beloved characters got their start — burnt-out resident Mark Green (Anthony Edwards), naive med student John … more…

After a blockbuster debut on NBC in 1986, this grim series wallowed in the ratings basement and was condemned for its unflattering portrayal of cops, its violence termed “X-rated” by one police organization. Today, its nihilistic attitude feels thoroughly modern, a stark vision of obsession and pursuit from executive producer Michael Mann (Collateral, Manhunter). A … more…