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Mad Men and the 1960s, when Jewish culture and pop culture meld
By the time Mad Men, Matthew Weiner’s seminal dissertation on the quiet desperation of the 1960s-era White American Male, has its Season Five premiere on Sunday night, Don Draper and his discontents...
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Adel Imam, the Egyptian Comedian Convicted of Offending Islam, Was a Beloved...
This week, an Egyptian court convicted the country’s most renowned comic actor, Adel Imam, of offending Islam. A few of his movies, they argued—including The Terrorist, in which he plays a homicidal...
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In Praise of ABC’s ‘GCB,’ a TV Series Without Any Need for Talmudic Analysis
If the media near-blackout and blank stares I receive during my frequent evangelizing on its behalf are any indication, I am the only person in America who is watching GCB, ABC’s hourlong comedy soap...
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HBO's ‘Veep’ Scores Big By Paying Religious Attention to the Little Things
You know that HBO show everyone’s talking about? The one about the young woman who is a little bit lost, struggling to land her dream job, and swatting her way through a predatory big city that is...
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Bravo’s Andy Cohen Just Might Be the Greatest Yenta in the History of TV
Television, if you think about it, is really little more than a wilderness of yentas. The meddlers, the busybodies, the gossips—they are the engines that push plots forward and keep us entertained,...
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AMC’s ‘Breaking Bad,’ a Conniving Cancer Victim, and My Lifelong Distrust of...
Since I was 12 I’ve had an unappealing, didactic distrust of people with the extreme will to live. My father’s parents were Holocaust survivors, and in grade school I received the de rigueur exposure...
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Despite Anti-Semitic Elements, Egyptian TV Series Shows Modest Evolution in...
During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, now winding down, the Arab world’s TV networks air a slew of dramas and comedies, typically serialized in nightly episodes and culminating at the end of the...
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Are Your Favorite Christmas Specials Secretly Jewish and Gay?
Rankin and Bass: If their names aren’t familiar, their work surely is. Turn on your TV set this time of year, and you’ll see it, playing in an endless loop: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the...
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The Neo-Hasid Tour Guide of Hulu and Richard Linklater's Travel Series 'Up to...
Up to Speed, an original show produced by the online video service Hulu, is a series of half-hour American travelogues directed by the indie superstar Richard Linklater and featuring Timothy “Speed”...
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Why 'Downton Abbey' Elides Period-Specific British Anti-Semitism
Happy New Year! Do you watch Downton Abbey? Of course you do; you’re an English-speaking human being with access to machinery. (Ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer, especially if you have to...
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HBO's 'Game of Thrones' Reimagined as the Seven Kingdoms of Jewish Westerows
Game of Thrones has made its triumphant return across the Narrow Sea and is back on Sunday nights on HBO for Season 3. For fans of dragons, medieval warfare, and hilariously gratuitous nudity, this is...
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The Suffering and Ascendance of Jews in AMC's 'Mad Men' Season 6
O ye of little faith. I told you.Continue reading "The Suffering and Ascendance of Jews in AMC's 'Mad Men' Season 6" at...
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'Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah' Singer Allan Sherman Gets Last Laugh in New...
Is there any lower form of comedy than song parody? Dirty limericks and knock-knock jokes may be worthless, but at least they have the decency to be brief. A parody song almost always lasts a chorus or...
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Doctor Who Is the Greatest Jew on TV
There are few undertakings more daunting for a writer interested in popular culture than to attempt to write, coherently and elegantly, about Doctor Who. For one thing, the sheer size of the monumental...
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Why TV Shows Will Never Be as Good as Great Novels
America, someone once said, is a nation where first-rate minds spend their time discussing second-rate movies. That person should’ve seen Netflix. Ever since the video-on-demand service, and others...
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ABC’s New Sit-Com ‘The Goldbergs’ Isn't a Remake
In 1929, the great American radio-listening public was first introduced to The Goldbergs. The brainchild of the actress and writer Gertrude Berg—who starred as the clan’s beloved yiddische mama,...
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Fox’s New Animated Strip Marks the End of TV’s Golden Era
Almost everything worth knowing I learned from TV. I taught myself English by rewinding and replaying old, scratched-up VHS tapes of The Honeymooners. When my own childhood was derailed by a string of...
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‘Homeland’ and ‘24’ Creator Howard Gordon on Terror, Tyranny and TV as Art
The most surprising thing about meeting Howard Gordon in person is how calm he is—you would expect the writer and producer behind such shows as 24 and Homeland to radiate just a touch of the...
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To Make His TV Show ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ Better, Andy Samberg Should Learn...
Andy Samberg is having the best week ever. His new sitcom, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, was picked up for an entire season last Friday, a vote of confidence Fox followed up with an even bigger Valentine: An...
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Sarah Silverman, Potty-Mouthed Queen of the Jewish People, Does Something...
In the first chapter of her 2010 memoir, The Bedwetter—a book as unrelentingly winsome as its author—comedian Sarah Silverman recalls how as a 4-year-old she broke up a room by telling her grandmother,...
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