When a Lost Son Returns, The Family Is Torn Apart
Familial relationships always come with challenges. The bonds developed with family members are undeniably complicated and no where is this subject better explored than in the new ABC physiological...
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Kiefer Sutherland as the Designated Survivor
In Fox’s hit drama, 24, Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer was credited with saving the lives of more than one American president. In Designated Survivor, premiering at 10 p.m. Wednesday, September 21, on...
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Notorious – The Drama Behind Cable News
Wendy Walker spent 32 years at CNN, 18 of those as the senior executive producer for Larry King Live. Criminal defense attorney, Mark Geragos, worked with Walker serving as a consultant. The two are...
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Conviction – Setting Free the Wrongly Convicted
Hayes Morrison is the daughter of a former president whose mother is now running for the U.S. Senate. All similarities with Chelsea Clinton, however, end there. Hayes, who graduated first in her class...
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Kyra Sedgwick’s Ten Days in the Valley
Jane Sadler (Kyra Sedgwick) is writing and producing a police drama that is based on real life events involving a group of dirty cops. Although Jane, a single mom, is devoted to her daughter, Lake...
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Everything Has a Price in Arthur Miller’s Play
Arthur Miller wrote plays that seem timeless. The Price, now playing at Arena Stage, takes place in 1968, but could easily have been set in present time. When financial crises cause people to lose...
View ArticleWhat We’re Watching Now
The holiday movie season is in full swing, but when the weather outside is frightful, you just might want to stay cozy and warm at home watching something on TV. And, let’s face it, these days there is...
View ArticleWhat We’re Watching Now
With spring finally arriving, reruns begin to dominate TV listings. The good news is that there’s lots to watch on cable, streaming services, and, yes, even on the major networks that launch new shows...
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Margaret Hoover–Cherished Legacy
Margaret Hoover has a last name with significant historical connotations—sometimes negative. Nonetheless, it is a last name she is unequivocally proud to share. Her paternal great- grandparents were...
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Woman Around Town: Kati Marton—Her Own Person
Sitting in the warm, wood-paneled living room of Kati Marton’s apartment overlooking Central Park, it’s hard to imagine the fascinating and, at times, courageous journey that shaped her life. Born in...
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Ann Volkwein Saxton—Mixt Salads
Ann Volkwein Saxton is a study in contrasts – pretty, blonde and brainy, her cookbook roster boasts a wide swath of good eating. Italian cooking in the Arthur Avenue Cookbook; Chinese delicacies in...
View ArticleOne Life to Live—The Case for Preserving Soaps
There are many reasons why soap operas, those daytime dramas that once dominated afternoon television, are on life support. More working women, an explosion of other entertainment choices on TV and the...
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Woman Around Town: Emily Rubin—Rediscovering Russia with STALINA
Russians have a peculiar habit of naming their young after poets, scientists and war heroes. Yet, it must’ve taken a special inspiration to christen one’s daughter Stalina after the ill-famed Soviet...
View ArticleOn Mainstream Complacency and the Need for Gaga
Two of my colleagues at the college newspaper I write for submitted articles this week that both posit and argue the same point: that popular culture is swallowing itself whole, there is nothing good...
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Woman Around Town: Susan Sullivan—Castle in the Air
Susan Sullivan is a rarity among actresses. One of her first roles was opposite Dustin Hoffman in a 1960 Broadway production of Jimmy Shine. She has never stopped working. Her career spans more than 40...
View ArticleAurelio Zen—The Italian Detective in Armani
It turns out that British TV executives are just as boneheaded and shortsighted as their American counterparts. Programmers at ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox are notorious for ditching shows when they don’t...
View ArticleFame—Some Want to Live Forever
So, I read that Kim Kardashian got married. Can someone help me out: What exactly is a Kardashian, what do they do and why are we supposed to care? Bob English, in a Letter to the Editor, New York...
View ArticleThe Glam of Pan Am
Wistfully watching the ads for Pan Am, one can’t help but wonder, who are those beautiful girls, garbed in blue and bandied about in the ads for ABC’s Pan Am, airing Sunday, September 25? Turns out,...
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Woman at Work: Mona Vaccarella—Building a Solid Career, Brick by Brick
Mona Vaccarella had an unconventional childhood, one that prepared her well for succeeding in the corporate world. When she was a child, her father made his living selling dry goods out of the backseat...
View ArticleGrimm vs. Once Upon A Time – Battle of the Fairy Tale Shows
One year it’s vampires, another year zombies, and this year it’s fairy tales that have become the new cultural trend. We have not one but two Snow White movies coming out this summer, and this fall two...
View ArticleWho Should Be a School Bus Monitor?
By now the whole world has seen the video of a group of middle school boys bullying Karen Klein, the school bus monitor in Greece, New York. The boys have been vilified, their families threatened, and...
View ArticleWe Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us
Oh, how we long for the early days of 007, when James Bond battled Communists. Remember Lotte Lenya as the SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebbe who tries to kill Bond with a poisoned toe-spike? Killer shoes,...
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Snow White Zombie: Apocalypse—A Brainy Feast for the Horror Fandom
Since the zombie subset of the creature feature genre is my very favorite, I was excited indeed to see Brent Lengel’s dark and delightful (if somewhat oddly punctuated) Snow White Zombie: Apocalypse....
View ArticleTeachers Can Inspire and Save Lives
Details will continue to trickle in about the horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. But one thing we know for sure: the death toll would have been much worse if not for the quick thinking and...
View ArticleOscar 2013 – A Season of Firsts
There will be many firsts at the Oscars this year. Seth MacFarlane will host for the first time. For the first time in 31 years, one film, Silver Linings Playbook, has garnered nominations in all four...
View ArticleRed Widow: The Ultimate Job Switch – From Wife to Mobster’s Secretary
A beautiful house with a white fence, loving children, and a doting husband— all part of Marta Walraven’s perfect picture. There’s a part of her darling husband’s thriving business that Marta, played...
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Let’s Clean Up Coaching
I raised an athletic son. From middle school on he played soccer, baseball, tennis, basketball, lacrosse, and football. So for many years, I spent time on the sidelines, watching my son and watching...
View ArticleWomen on Television Battle Crime While Balancing Work and Family
There’s nothing new about terrorism as a subject on television. This fall writers are adding another hot topic to their shows, one sure to hit home with a female audience: the struggle to balance work...
View ArticleMarvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Brings Super Heroes to the Small Screen
With the extreme popularity for the Marvel Universe on the big screen (The Avengers grossed more than $620 million, Spider-Man, more than $400 million, and Iron Man 3, $409 million), it’s no surprise...
View ArticleTV’s Cliffhanger Has Become a Real Downer
I think I’m safe in saying that we will never see a better cliffhanger than the one produced by Dallas on March 21,1980, when someone shot Larry Hagman’s character, J.R. Ewing. All summer long fans...
View ArticleThe Assets Is No Asset to ABC
Television these days is a cutthroat business and no where is the competition more fierce than among the three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC. With cable TV, Netflix, and other streaming services on the...
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Megan Smith-Harris – Showcasing the Trials And Triumphs of Burn Survivors
Megan Smith-Harris had never met a burn survivor, or even a firefighter, until she began work on her feature documentary, Trial by Fire: Lives Re-Forged. “Seeing a photograph of a child with a...
View ArticleKelly Reilly as Neurologist Catherine Black On ABC’s New Medical Drama, Black...
Since Dr. House hung up his cane and stethoscope, the TV landscape has been looking for the next genius doctor who also happens to have “issues.” House, played brilliantly by Hugh Laurie, walked with a...
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Swoosie Kurtz’s New Book, Part Swan, Part Goose
Starting out in life with a name like Swoosie, might earn a child days of teasing. But this Swoosie is the actress Swoosie Kurtz who somehow manages to turn any challenge into an opportunity. Swoosie’s...
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My Career Choice: Israela Margalit – From Concert Pianist to Playwright
As a concert pianist, Israela Margalit had a career that many musicians can only dream about. Born in Haifa, Israel, she studied at conservatories in Tel Aviv, Paris, and Munich, before performing with...
View ArticleLove Triangles and Two Dead Bodies: ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder
There’s another leading lady joining ABC’s Thursday night lineup along with Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) of Grey’s Anatomy and Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) of Scandal. Viola Davis brings to the...
View ArticleAcademy Awards 2015 – Been There, Won That
The Academy Awards ceremony, which will be broadcast on ABC Sunday, February 22, has evolved into nothing more than a rubber stamp. With so many other shows preceding it – Golden Globe Awards, Screen...
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What’s In a Name?Paul Rand’s Graphic Design
“Everything is Design,” the title of a lively exhibition at the Museum of the City New York, is a play on a quote by the Modernist Paul Rand (1914-1996) who said “design is everything,” an idea...
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My Career Choice: Tricia Brouk – Director, Choreographer, Actor
Tricia Brouk is a triple threat. She’s a director, a choreographer, and an actor. She is currently directing and choreographing Carson – The Musical, about the late talk show host, Johnny Carson. She...
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Arch Campbell Talks About His Career Reviewing Films
David Speck, Managing Director of Speck-Caudron Investment Group, can’t predict exactly what the stock market will do and film reviewer Arch Campbell can’t predict which movie will win next year’s...
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Fighting the Heroin Epidemic
After being mentioned at the top of President Obama’s State of the Union Address, the heroin epidemic made it onto the stage during Saturday night’s Republican Presidential Debate in New Hampshire....
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Our New Guilty Pleasure – ABC’s Deception
Exactly two years ago, on May 16, 2016, the ABC crime-comedy-drama Castle, aired its final episode. I was addicted – in a good way. The show starred Nathan Fillion as Richard Castle, a best-selling...
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The Last Defense: Examining Flaws in the Legal Justice System
On June 6, 1996, the unthinkable happened. Two young boys were attacked and killed inside their home in Texas by an unknown assailant. Their mother, a bubbly blond, was brutally stabbed in the arm and...
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A Million Little Things – A Suicide Tests Friendships
From all appearances, Jon Dixon is leading a dream life – loving family, successful career, and a group of loyal friends. But within the first few minutes of ABC’s new drama, A Million Little Things,...
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Nathan Fillion Stars in ABC’s The Rookie
For seven seasons on ABC, Nathan Fillion played Richard Castle, a best selling mystery writer who teams up with NYPD homicide detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) to solve crimes. In ABC’s new series,...
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