Joshua Alston

Say what you will about CBS, but don't accuse it of safe programming. Sure, the network is overrun with middle-of-the-road fare such as Criminal Minds and Ghost Whisperer, but rather than give one of its highly rated dramas the benefit of the Super Bowl's massive lead-in audience, CBS chose a rookie: Undercover Boss, a new reality show starring well-heeled CEOs, which is perhaps the perfect postgame salve.

In the beginning, Oceanic Flight 815 started shaking somewhere over the Indian Ocean. "My husband keeps reminding me that planes want to be in the air," Rose nervously tells the passenger sitting next to her, a levelheaded neurosurgeon named Jack Shephard. "Well, he sounds like a very smart man," Jack replies.

How the besmirched dark knight of late-night television can regain his stature—and fans.

It's not just NBC struggling to keep its big stars happy. Fox made an equally risky move by letting Simon Cowell leave at the end of the season. Welcome to the new reality of network TV.

Fear not, America: Oprah Winfrey isn't going anywhere. Yet.

African-Americans have done well breaking into late night. What they've failed in is being funny.

Now that ABC's new sci-fi drama FlashForward has been given a full-season pickup (a plump 25-episode order rather than the standard 22), it's time to decide whether I plan to be around for the entire season.

A couple of months ago I got a frantic phone call from a female friend at 1 a.m. "I need you to come over," she said. "It's an emergency." When I arrived, she informed me that her sewn-in hair weave, for which she had paid around $500, was coming loose, and she needed my help to take it out before she went to work the next morning.

There are issues so polarizing, so emotionally draining, so morally fraught, that we never really solve them as much as we table them for a while. Euthanasia is one such issue, which has come back to fore during the vigorous debate over American health care.

Of all the confounding behaviors that human beings engage in, perhaps none is more irritating—or more common—than hypocrisy. It's fascinating when someone condemns behavior while engaging in it himself, which is what makes David Letterman's relatively mundane sex scandal more intriguing than it has a right to be.

Of all the confounding behaviors that human beings engage in, perhaps none is more irritating—or more common—than hypocrisy. It's fascinating when someone condemns behavior while engaging in it himself, which is what makes David Letterman's relatively mundane sex scandal more intriguing than it has a right to be.

Late last year, Nene Leakes was evicted from her five-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot house in Duluth, Ga. According to the legal notice, she and her husband agreed to leave because they couldn't afford the rent.

Now that all of the major fall TV premieres are in the rear-view mirror (except for the troubled V, which doesn't bow for another month), it's time to separate the winners from the losers, the wheat from the chaff, the 30 Rocks from the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strips.

Survivor contestants go through a lot—thunderstorms, the desert heat, separation from friends and family, limited food (if you don't count rats)—which is why I don't recall anyone ever describing CBS's reality show as "easy." That is, until now.

The Stepfather—Oct. 16, 2009 (Editor: This is part of a recurring series in which we dish on new trailers—then solicit your feedback. Tell us if you'll see the movie below in the comments.)THE LOOK: This remake of an '80 horror flick starring Terry O'Quinn (which, truthfully, isn't too bad by '80s horror standards) has gotten a reboot, with Dylan Walsh as the pathological patriarch, and a radiant Sela Ward as the doomed single mother.

When an awards show kicks off with a huge upset, the rules go out the window. The Emmys have always been pretty tough to call, but with two massively successful, critically ballyhooed series in the comedy and drama categories (30 Rock and Mad Men, of course), this year's awards could have looked like a repeat.

Matchmaker, matchmaker, what should I watch? We're so glad you asked, because we've figured out which fall TV show is your new soulmate.

Our TV guru Joshua Alston divines who'll take home a primetime, statuette-shaped doorstop in '09. The 61st Emmy Awards airs Sunday Sept. 20 at 8 p.m. ET. For the writers and cast of every comedy that is not 30 Rock, I have good news and bad news about this year's Emmy Awards.

Kanye West's profusely apologetic appearance on the premiere episode of The Jay Leno Show proved two things: one, that after becoming known for petulant stunts, Kanye stepped on a land mine this time and he knows it.

by Joshua Alston So let's say you watched the MTV Video Music Awards last night, then woke up this morning to report to an anachronistic corporate job wherein there is an actual water cooler around which people gather to discuss pop culture.

Has a comedy ever caused so much drama? Tonight marks the debut of The Jay Leno Show, which is either a modest proposal that allows NBC to save money while holding onto one of its biggest stars, or a Hail Mary pass with potentially cataclysmic consequences for television as we know it.

  That distant growl you hear is the impending return of FX's motorcycle-club drama Sons of Anarchy, which has its second-season premiere tonight. For those who haven't caught it yet, Anarchy follows the titular biker gang and the fractious relationship between its leader Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman) and his second-in-command, Jackson (Jax) Teller (Charlie Hunnam).

A burial is an event so muted as to almost be anticlimactic. After the wailing and gnashing of teeth that comes with a funeral, there is the far more quotidian task of lowering a casket into the ground and covering it with dirt.

ABC announced today that Charles Gibson, host of its nightly news show World News Tonight, will retire at the end of this year and be replaced in January by Diane Sawyer, the current co-host of Good Morning America.

Jane Lynch has a stealing problem. Nothing that would get her arrested—she doesn't cheat on her taxes or, as far as we know, even take pens from restaurants.

by Joshua AlstonIn a 2001 episode of Friends, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) complains to a hotel clerk that she's not to blame for some of the charges on her bill. "Sir, for the last time, I don't care what the computer says.

After being delayed seven months, because of an extremely boring legal battle, television's fiercest, cattiest, oh-no-she-didn't-est reality competition, Project Runway, is back on the catwalk tonight. (You can read our roundtable with the Project Runway judges here.)But after five seasons on the luxe, aspirational Bravo, it's now on Lifetime, never a network known for its cachet.

We TV is rolling out the fifth batch of its docuseries The Secret Lives of Women, which rummages through the dirty laundry of the fairer sex. Munchausen moms, phone-sex operators, and Wiccan priestesses reveal their unorthodox lives and the lengths to which they go to maintain them.

After a weeklong standoff, executed primarily through a series of tweets, the die is finally cast: Paula Abdul is leaving American Idol after eight seasons, during which time her sunny-side disposition and kid-glove criticism defined the tone and dynamic of the ratings juggernaut.

by Joshua AlstonLOS ANGELES—Yesterday morning at the CBS portion of the Television Critics Association's press tour, Nina Tassler, the network's entertainment president, had a graceful barb prepared for NBC's former programming head Ben Silverman.