Continue Reading...

From disturbing zombie parables to madcap stoner nostalgia, from grumbling middle-aged men to grandstanding TV executives, the cream of the crop this year transcended their earlier peaks to bring us great entertainment in the comfort of our soft pants. Notable for their sharpness, originality and ability to make us feel uncomfortably human emotions, here are the 10 best TV shows of 2010.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

When we're young, we think old people are nice to each other because they're fake. I was walking the dogs with my 14-year-old stepson yesterday and we passed a couple on the sidewalk. "Hi, how are you?" the man said. "Great, how are you?" I replied.

"That was weird," my stepson said. "It's like he says the same thing to everyone."

"OK, have a great weekend!" I replied.

Old people are a little checked out, it's true. But we're amiably comatose. This friendly state of autopilot is the only way we've found to manage our dashed dreams, our growing contempt for the culture, our creeping disappointments, our fibromyalgia. We grind our teeth at night and have vivid dreams about screwing cheerleaders. We resent the unflattering shape of matchstick jeans and daydream about gigantic claw-foot bathtubs we can't afford. Our elbows hurt and our hair always looks bad and we secretly think all electropop sounds like Kraftwerk.

Continue Reading...

But then, if you take the time to flip through the pages of "Metropolitan Life" or "Social Studies" yet again, you'll find two truly great books that stand the test of time. And how many truly great books do most authors have in them?

The answer to that question, of course, is zero. Or as Lebowitz herself puts it when speaking to a roomful of young people, "There are too many books, the books are terrible, and it's because you have been taught to have self-esteem." This is Lebowitz's distinct talent: making elitist contempt sound charming.

Toni Morrison, a friend of Lebowitz's, puts it a little differently. "You seem to me almost always right," she tells Lebowitz. "But never fair."

"That's why," Lebowitz responds. "I'm always right because I'm never fair."

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Network TV writers remind me a lot of my daughter. I imagine them, sometimes, sitting around in the writers room together, shoving Barbie shoes into their mouths, pouring their Fiji bottles into their laps and peeing in the corners of the room, all the while shouting at each other, "The murder victim should either be a stripper with a coke habit or the cheating wife of a very rich, very powerful man!" "No, no, she should be a depressed midget who travels with the county fair as a carnival freak!" "And one of the hostages should definitely have asthma, or a heart condition … or leprosy!" "And then the murder victim's son should be so traumatized by what he saw that he can't speak … or maybe there are twin sons, who speak a secret language all their own!"

Continue Reading...

No wonder online comments sections have revealed an enraged, tearfully sentimental, depressive, effusive, resentful, anxious populace, feverishly passionate about every shred of trivia that crosses its path. Unable to express the depth of our emotion in any other context without being considered unhinged, we're left to pour our volatile, crippling emotions out to total strangers on the Internets.

Continue Reading...

Longtime professional writers are running scared, sniffing around for new ways to pay the bills without either bleeding the stone or rehashing press releases and wire stories in pace with a mob of monkeys with typewriters But we deserve punishment, don’t we? This is what keeps us in our exquisite bind, keeps us fractured and isolated from each other: Our suspicion that writing itself is a luxury, that no matter how hard we've tried to improve at our so-called craft, ultimately we're just spoiled, soft-pawed neurotics who would better serve society by digging ditches or flipping burgers or doing almost anything else besides basking in the illusion that our silly little derivative thoughts and ideas matter to anyone other than ourselves.

Continue Reading...

When I was younger, I thought it vaguely pathetic to fixate on the past, humming "Glory Days" and exalting the joys of high school or college, of all depraved and undeserving times. But once you're old enough to have at least a loose notion of how the next decade of your life will play out, nostalgia for youth inevitably slips into the frame. The past takes on a sepia-toned magic hour glow: The big hurts and disappointments come to seem just as sweet as the good times.

Far from pathetic, though, nostalgia can bring the richness of the present to light, and illuminate what matters the most to us and what amounts to unnecessary trivia. Nostalgia allows us to view our lives through a more soulful lens.

Continue Reading...

Back then, everyone pathologized themselves and each other. We pointed our fingers at each other and proclaimed, "narcissist," "borderline," "bipolar," "passive-aggressive," "sex addict," then unloaded our anxiety over the demons flying around our heads in our allotted 50-minute sessions. Why were the people who weren't paying $150 an hour to be showered in unconditional positive regard so damn confused?

Continue Reading...

But Sunday night's "Mad Men" finale reminds us of what Matthew Weiner's riveting drama captures best of all: the particularly modern affliction of dissatisfaction, a sickness that robs us of our ability to savor the moment, to relish the mundane details of our lives and delight in all of the joys that our comforts and conveniences bring. Perversely, the more comfortable we are, the more we want. We're constantly distracted by the notion that we could do better or have more, that we might become someone new overnight, that there's magic or a pot of gold around the next corner. Whether it's advertising or celebrity culture or some twisted mix of radio jingles, cartoons, soap operas, political speeches and suspense thrillers, our cultural marinade makes us fixate on easy answers, shortcuts, and magical thinking. We're each about to win the lottery; salvation lies just around the next bend, we just have to wait and see what happens.

Continue Reading...

Yes, "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" (9 p.m. Thursdays on Bravo) are just as terrifying as the others of their kind. In fact, these housewives – soaking in the relentless Southern Californian sun, sucking in the toxic, smoggy air, injecting themselves with the finest biochemical concoctions money can buy, rubbing bony elbows with the rich and famous but never getting close enough to the camera to assuage their oversized egos – may be even more frightening than the rest of their brood. They've come close to the holy grail of fame, but have never sipped from its coveted chalice. And that is what they desire, more than money, more than enormous mansions, more than breasts as buoyant as overinflated water wings. They want to be celebrities, damn it. Sure, they have everything a woman could ever want, but they're still starving for more, more, more!

Continue Reading...

He re-creates himself. After crawling out of a deep, dark hole, Don resolves to reinvigorate himself and everyone around him, using only the powers of his imagination. Instead of seeing them as desperate whores with delusions of grandeur (like his poor dope addict ex, Midge), he imagines SCDP as a valiant crusader for all that is good in the world and stands up against "a product that never improves, causes illness and makes people unhappy."

Continue Reading...

And look, we'd be more than happy to take our menus and smile politely through overzealous talk of 2-for-1 provolone-stuffed meatloaf and happy hour specials on Main Street 'Ritas, if it never segued into a warbling, slightly ironic rendition of Meatloaf's "I Could Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)," followed by a rambling confession about the control issues that arise when a brand-new relationship goes sour faster than a Red Apple 'Rita.

Continue Reading...

"Nothing should change. Nothing will change," Don tells his employees, trying to sound valiant. "We're going to push ourselves shoulder to shoulder and we're going to succeed tenfold, and it will be exhilarating." No one looks exhilarated. Don retreats to his office to put the fear of God into his creative team. But no one looks fearful, except for the new guy, who appears to be the new comic foil/Ms. Blankenship (as if she could be replaced!). We've never seen Don at such an ineffectual moment (when sober). He doesn't have a good answer for this crisis, and you can almost see him second-guessing himself. Faye tries to soothe him by saying, "You're the most hirable man on Madison Avenue!" but he shuts her down. "I'm not at that point yet." Uh-oh, her face says. What were we just talking about?

Continue Reading...

We're so far removed from life without six-cylinder engines and five-speed chiming large-capacity appliances that our schedules unravel at the slightest failure of technology. "Then I had to actually call the repairman and wait for him to show up!" we whine to our spouses and friends in paroxysms of learned helplessness, surrounded by machinery we can't service ourselves.

No wonder the aliens lost interest in us back in the late '60s. Like dimwitted teenagers with bad impulse control, we're a little too pathetic to bother monitoring us very closely. I'm sure the lizard demons of Zambular in the Galaxy of Termitrax are up to far worse.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

And through it all, we're treated to a steady flow of breathless dialogue the likes of which is aimed at keeping this serial drama in motion:

"Who are you and what do you want?!"

"Open the door! You don't have to do this!"

"They have a hidden agenda. I know it in my bones."

"You are my only conduit to the outside!"

"We have to protect ourselves. Can I count on you?"

"I haven't told you everything!"

These mysterious statements, obscure confessions and creepy generalities tend to fall into the same categories as those offered week after week on "Lost": 1) What's going on? 2) Who's in charge here? 3) What aren't they telling us? 4) Who is lying? 5) Why should I join/trust you? 6) How do we stop this catastrophe from happening?

Continue Reading...