Joshua Alston

When it was announced, back in 2008, that Oprah Winfrey would soon be getting her own television network, a person could have been forgiven for thinking she already had one of those.

From 'Seinfeld' to 'Friends,' the shows that will put you in the holly-jolly spirit.

The most conspicuous comeback of late belongs to the Sundance Channel and The Comeback, the most incisive, hilarious, and delightfully savage takedown of reality television ever made.

Team Coco finally gets revenge, with a new TBS show that's far better than his last gig on NBC.

"Glory Daze" is a new scripted comedy that's not quite original but is ambitious nonetheless: it's set in college.

There is a increasing number of gay and lesbian characters on television. If only there were such nuance and breadth in the portrayal of the bad guys.

If there's a gringo least suited to a move south of the border, it's Kenny in HBO's "Eastbound & Down," whose attitude toward people of different races leads him to make comments that help make the show the most racist on television.

To Monica and David, no aspect of the American Dream is off limits.

The Browns, who live in a single-family home that is secretly three conjoined apartments, star in the new TLC show "Sister Wives," which captures the family's day-to-day life. It's essentially an unscripted answer to HBO's "Big Love," but unlike that show, in which the harried patriarch Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) is practically crushed under the weight of his tripled domestic duties, Sister Wives casts a more favorable light on polygamy.

One of the most powerful men in the black megachurch movement, Bishop Eddie Long, who in 2004 created a ministry to "deliver" men from homosexuality, faces allegations of taking sexual advantage of three teenage boys. Will the startling allegations make African-Americans rethink the sometimes hostile attitude churches and pastors take toward gays?

And that is educational and professional success, not pursuing "manly" careers.

Here's an advantage that television creators have over movie creators: there's a sense of community created among fans of a TV show that a movie never gets to amass—and generally, that community takes its cues from the top. If Matthew Weiner makes clear that the "Mad Men" community doesn't tolerate spoilers, there's a stigma around them. That's why the marketing campaign for "Catfish," the new documentary with a supposedly wild twist, is almost hilarious in its marketing hubris.

HBO's anticipated new series "Boardwalk Empire," which is set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era, is bound to fuel notions of its historical-drama envy.

With so many buzzy new series and first-time nominees, there were bound to be some shake-ups during this year's Primetime Emmys. But in what categories they would occur was still a moving target, with prognosticators puzzling over whether voters would revert to old habits or reward television's newest hopefuls. Naturally, the answer was a little of both.

Spike Lee discusses the making of his new documentary about the ongoing impact of Hurricane Katrina and the state of New Orleans today.

A look at what's on deck for TV this fall.

Read the transcript of NEWSWEEK's 2010 Emmy Roundtable.

Showtime has been able to find a toehold with this brand of hard-to-classify, half-hour dramedies in a way that has eluded HBO. The reason for their success is that unlike "Hung," which takes an inherently comedic idea and mines it for pathos, Showtime's comedies take dark premises and inject them with laughs.

Bravo's take on the D.C. power-based economy might have yielded interesting results, but any bona fide Beltway divas wouldn't touch this "Housewives" show in a couture hazmat suit. What remains? The lowest-hanging cherry blossoms—the women with no proximity to power, either physical (most of the cast members live in outlying burbs) or personal. To veto, or not to veto?

Don Draper is back—and in many ways, 'Mad Men' now feels like a brand-new show. Some of the differences are subtle—Peggy Olson has freshened her priggish hairstyle, for one thing—but there's so much new going on in Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce that such details might only assert themselves with repeated viewings. What can fans expect?

In spite of quickly becoming an international phenomenon, Nicole Polizzi would probably not feel welcome in France. Not because of the unfair yet persistent perception that the French are less than hospitable to tourists, but because the French Academy of Medicine recently announced it's recommending a nationwide ban on tanning beds. And Polizzi, best known by her nickname, Snooki, needs her tanning bed.

We are, no kidding, in the midst of a golden age of television. There's so much great stuff on, you'll never have time for it all. So when I heard about Hulu Plus, I immediately rushed over to the site to join. Turns out, I might've been a bit hasty.

As television's embarrassment of riches continues, the process of choosing nominees come Emmy time has gotten more and more difficult. Even increasing the number of nominees in each category hasn't helped—year after year, worthy actors, actresses, and shows end up out in the cold.

While names surface for suitable replacements—King himself is rooting for Ryan Seacrest—the question for CNN is not who will replace King, but what. As we're rolling into midterm elections, could the network start to slant partisan?

"The Real World: Return to New Orleans," premiering Wednesday night, couldn't be less like TV's other New Orleans show, "Treme." But they're both deeply flawed. Is there any serial approach to the new New Orleans that works?

Critic Nelson George's new book discusses the year 1982 in Michael Jackson's life, when his album Thriller topped the charts.

Both HBO's dramedy 'Hung' (returning this Sunday) and MTV's new high-school comedy, 'The Hard Times of RJ Berger,' consider the travails of the well-endowed man. It seems Hollywood is finally ready to stop playing coy and cater to its male audience. Which TV show hits the spot?

It's already being called the Summer of Suck: this season's entertainment has become Opposite Land, where down is up, left is right, and no one goes to see "Sex and the City 2." What better time than now for TV networks, usually barren in the hot months, to make a play for eyeballs?

It's not hard to rage at BP, what with CEO Tony Hayward reminding us almost daily about how the company has bungled the gulf oil spill. What's difficult is to point the finger at ourselves, to look at our own energy-consumption practices and think about how each of us could make tough choices in the short term that would benefit our environment and security in the long term.

The third season of 'True Blood' bows Sunday on HBO, and it's kookier than ever. That's the problem.