Well, we are now down to the top 5! Which means we are so close I can almost taste the confetti.
Last night's Top Six episode of American Singing Competition began what I fear are the two or three most languid weeks of the season (other than auditions, naturally): The Top Six Creep really doesn't end until there are about three people left and the show starts to get exciting again.
Last night PBS aired the first installment of a new Frontline documentary called "Money, Power, & Wall Street," which was about, as you might imagine, that whole big ugly messy thing that happened in the financial sector a few years ago.
Yes, it was just last week that we were gushing lamely about Uma Thurman's guest starring role on Smash, but we're going to gush lamely some more.
One way that Game of Thrones fans have wooed skeptics to their cause has been to insist that, though the show is fantasy, it's not, like, all wizards and spells and crazy creatures and all that.
Last night was, truly, the most shocking rose ceremony in Idol history.
What exactly was happening on American Idol last night? Didn't things seem off and strange?
It's the middle of April now and graduation season is fast approaching. For Glee that means potentially saying goodbye to many of its main characters.
It was just last week that we were complaining about how depressing Smash has gotten, with everyone fighting and breaking up and becoming pillheads. But luckily last night a tall blonde Veela arrived and started to get things back on track.
Amidst all the big prestige cable shows currently clogging up Sunday (plus Once Upon a Time), it can be all too easy to forget another gem on the end-of-weekend lineup, CBS' sharp and surprising The Good Wife.
OK, that was some hot chicanery on American Idol last night, was it not? That was some straight up flimflammery, a scam and a cheat and an ol' run-around. That was a scheme faker than a Jennifer Lopez song. We've been had, America. Hoodwinked and bamboozled.
There was nothing terribly adventurous about any of the singtestants' endeavors last night, but, you know, this really isn't a bad group. There are no true clunkers, which is a rare thing on American Idol these days. So thank god at least for that.
After a strange and somewhat scattered run of episodes, FX's grainy and appealing crime show Justified wrapped up its third season last night, giving us some satisfying moments amidst all the chaos.
If there's one thing we never expected a show about musical theater to be, it's depressing.
Last night Lifetime: Television For Room-Temperature Wine Drinkers debuted its newest series, The Client List, a supposedly sexy and scandalous show about a gal (Jennifer Love Hewitt) who joins the oldest profession (sort of) to make ends meet in these tough economic times.
Another day, another Idol kid sent to the dustbin of pop culture history.
Last night was the 1980s music-themed episode of American Tune Farm, a vaguely depressing night always.
It went on for weeks. We told no one our quiet weird secret. But now it's been months, whole seasons have changed, so it just needs to be said: We've seen every episode of ABC's Once Upon a Time and we are hungry for more.
Whiling away the hours before another grim episode of Smash last night, we went against our better judgment and watched a two-hour episode of The Voice.
Amid a night of overstuffed night of television yesterday (Game of Thrones! Frozen Planet! Teresa Giudice's Business Revenge!), one show began its second season with a busy whimper while another ended its own on a satisfying, almost stirring note.
Another one bit the glorious glitter dust last night, amid all the usual pomp and questionable circumstance. It was actually a somewhat scary bottom three, which will be a more and more frequent occurrence as the weeks wear on and our tributes begin to suffer from exposure. It's a grim business!
Last night was a very emotional night at the ol' Idol song hut, with more than one tribute reduced to tears and everyone singing very intensely. They are starting to feel it, aren't they? The sharp potential for crushing defeat, the ever-brightening hope victory.
Facing a pretty quiet Tuesday night of television (what is it with Tuesday nights?) last night, we decided to go ahead and watch the first episode of ABC's upcoming comedy Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.
At the tail-end of last night's mostly ridiculous episode of Smash there was a scene that, dare we say, bordered on, like, good. Not The Wire good or anything, but definitely campy dramatic good. It was quite refreshing.
Last night, after a nearly two-year wait, AMC's sad but glittery crown jewel Mad Men returned for a fifth season. So how did the premiere measure up against all the aching anticipation? Pretty well, we'd say.
It was Billy Joel night at the song factory.
Another night, another one gone. After Wednesday's CRIME ELIMINATION and all that, last night's just regular old elimination felt a bit staid and boring. It was just what it was, ho hum, oh well. Even if, yeah, it was a little vindicating.
A lot of drama for a Top 12 episode.
Last night NBC debuted its new fashion design competition show Fashion Star, the big hook of which is that you can buy the stuff you see on the show in stores the next day.
Technically we didn't watch The Bachelor last night, but rather on Hulu this morning in a feverish attempt to understand just what is going on with Ben and evil Courtney and the gang. Good lord, this show is strange.
Last night Bravo introduced us to another horde of shallow, materialistic ghouls roaming around California. What's so different that they merit their own show? Well, they're all the children of or are themselves Persian immigrants, thus the Shahs of Sunset.
Ah, our first elimination episode here in the finals, and it was a satisfying one. It wasn't terribly surprising, perhaps, but it still needed to happen. Well done, Idol jerks. But before we get to all that! There's a whole episode to be discussed.
The top 13! How did we get here already? It seems like just yesterday the judges were sitting on an aircraft carrier listening to that girl in the bikini or whatever she was wearing wail away.
Like breaking in a pair of cowboy boots, it takes a little time to settle into a season of Justified.
Have you ever watched 1 Girl 5 Gays? Obviously the demographic for this show, a Canadian MTV import that airs in the States on Logo, is pretty narrow. Watching it last night, it struck us that this might be one of the weirder shows on television.
Last night ABC unveiled their ostensible Desperate Housewives replacement, a Southern hiss-fest called GCB, which is short for the unmentionable (on ABC at least) Good Christian Bitches. The show isn't shocking stuff, but it's certainly entertaining.
Finally, American Idol is real! Gone are the hideous pre-taped auditions and Hollywood Week hysterics. We have arrived at the live shows that we, America, get to vote on.
NBC's once promising, now struggling Smash should drop the attempt to be a savvy look backstage, and just fully embracing the camp and going for out-and-out soap.
We keep promising to never watch Glee again, but we can't help ourselves.
Last night PBS debuted part one of its American Experience look at the presidency of Bill Clinton, with all its triumph and scandal and fraught middle ground. It was an entertaining, oddly familiar look at the recent past, a time that seems in some ways no different from now.
For those of you too chaste and pure of internet soul to watch illicit downloads of Downton Abbey's second season when it aired in the UK last fall, the show's American run concluded last night, so now you finally know what we've known for literally months now.
Last night was the intermediary, the strange middleman, the thing hanging between here and there. And what better place to host such an event than Las Vegas, American purgatory, desert ruin not yet ruined. So, yeah, they went to Las Vegas.
We will all eventually come to dread the two-hour-long episodes of American Idol, but last night's Double Stuf episode, early-ish along in the season, was entirely welcome. We got to see a lot — a lot of singing, a lot of satisfying judging — that we just could not have seen in an hour. So, oddly, thank you for that, Idol dreammakers!
19 Kids and Counting premiered last night, and while it was mostly a typical Duggars episode, with eerily wholesome family activities and a dash of stomach-turning religiosity, there was a new grimness to the series that didn't sit right.
Last night was episode two of Smash, NBC's somewhat make-it-or-break-it drama about the ins and outs of putting on a Broadway show. So after a big opening night last week, how did the show fare yesterday, quality-wise at least? Hm. Let's say reviews are mixed.
AMC's coulda-been-great zombie apocalypse series The Walking Dead returned to the airwaves last night to resume the show's second season after a shocking midseason finale (a concept we really should do away with altogether) back in December.
Last night the hell of Group Night began.
Last night began Hollywood Week, sending some people tumbling down.
The River has a fun premise, but can it ultimately work?
Bravo executive Andy Cohen has been doing his little basement boozefest chat show Watch What Happens Live for a while now, and beside taking a few curious peeks in now and again, we had long avoided it. It was all so silly and awkward, isn't it? But then we started watching it.
Have a story we missed? A link we have to click? A sharp opinion about the news? Instead of waiting for us to post it, tell us on the Open Wire.
Submit your news and ideas | See all reader postsThe Atlantic Wire is your authoritative guide to the news and ideas that matter most right now. Our team tracks newsmakers and opinions across the entire media spectrum: newspapers, web sites, television, radio and magazines.
But we do more than just collect information. By synthesizing, analyzing and summarizing what’s out there, and adding new information when we can, we are a news engine that gives you a quick and valuable account of the issues of the day.
Have a hot tip? A story we missed? Tell us on the Open Wire
How to send us editorial or technical feedback
Get Five Best Columns in your inbox each morning (preview)
