Robert Abele

You can’t exactly ignore the central device of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother: It kicks off each show. We see a couple of bored-looking kids from the year 2030 listening to their offscreen dad (Bob Saget’s voice) tell a story about his 20-something days that — voilà!......

The reality-show mainstays are all sputtering to the season’s close, which makes it a risky time for the networks. How can they ensure that fans like me won’t detox from the genre entirely? I’d consider the real estate maxim: location location location. Survivor doesn’t need help: Its producers already know......

Like solos in a jazz showcase or operatic star turns, the flashback stories on Lost serve as chances for cast members to get a little one-on-one time with the viewer. They flex a little character muscle, show some emotional range beyond survivor’s panic, and, with luck, deepen the trust between......

What am I thankful for this year? I’m thankful for the awesome sexy-scariness of Rachel Bilson on The O.C., whose bitchy-witty delivery has a surprisingly wide emotional range, encompassing those times we fear for her enemies and the more vulnerable moments when she’s just an exasperated high school chick with......

Photo by Chris HastonThe dirty secret of Fox’s not-long- for-this-world Arrested Development is that despite its unfailing comedy smarts, it’s heartless. This is why it’s gone begging for viewers. Of course, its heartlessness is actually legitimate, since it’s a show about overprivileged, rich whack jobs. Any whiff of sentiment would......

Fox concluded its two-part Trading Spouses premiere last week with the long-promised “meltdown of biblical proportions” from obese housewife Marguerite Perrin of Ponchatoula, Louisiana. And yes, her scary, maniacal-eyed, leave-my-house rant about being “God’s warrior” was something to behold in its untethered fury. The trigger? A stay as temporary wife......

Between its West Wing debate episode and a special two-hour Law & Order: Criminal Intent, NBC gave us some wickedly entertaining wrong-righting television. First up was a truly live — as in, performed twice that night for both coasts, and alive — performance with Jimmy Smits as Democratic Congressman Santos......

For more than six years now, Aaron McGruder’s comic strip “The Boondocks” has made a beautiful habit of throwing off complacent readers of the funny pages by taking aim at political hypocrisy, race relations, misapplied American spirit and the oeuvre of Vivica A. Fox. His sense of humor sometimes comes......