“And then, of course, there's my beloved, neglected Fringe. Don't you think that somewhere there's an alternate time line in which Community's Abed and Fringe's Walter are right now sipping champagne at having won the Golden Globes already?”
—Ken Tucker on “Golden Globes TV nominations: Why are the choices so smart, yet so frustrating?”“I’m not going to guilt-trip you and say that if you don’t watch Fringe, you’re helping to create an atmosphere in which daring new shows won’t make it onto future network schedules. Instead, I’ll be sad that you’re not sharing in what could be the best puzzle-pieced epic since Lost, and the best portrait of a fractious family since Frasier, or perhaps even M*A*S*H. Because right now, Fringe is promising you nothing less than the world – two of ’em, in fact.”
—Ken Tucker re: Fringe for EW.com
And you’re not watching it because…?
“Whitney is taped in front of a live studio audience,” said Whitney Cummings at the start of Wednesday night’s second-season premiere of Whitney, apparently in an effort to prove that, yes, there really are human beings that laugh at Whitney.”
—Yeah, Ken Tucker still doesn’t like this show.
From A Window Seat - Dawes
Ken Tucker reviews Stories Don’t End, the third album from the LA-based, West Coast folk rock-influenced band Dawes:
If you heard the Dawes song “Just Beneath the Surface” and said, “Somebody’s been listening to their old Jackson Browne albums!,” you’re not exactly insulting Dawes. This band has actually backed Browne on tour and Browne has sung back-up on at least one of their songs, and so you could say they come by their riffs, licks and phrasing honestly. You could, that is, if you want to pigeon-hole this quartet as a throwback to Southern California ’70s soft-rock, which would be a mistake. Why, on the very next cut on their new album Stories Don’t End, they sound like East Coast ’70s soft-rock, on the Steely Dan-ish “From a Window Seat.”
“They must douse these things in Eau d’Oreo Corn de Sucre Candi — these suckers positively stink of candy corn.”
—Ken Tucker reviews Candy Corn Oreos, because it’s Friday and why not?“One of the reasons I like Fringe so much is that it is fearless, in a time when cutting-edge television is supposed to be dark/edgy/pessimistic, about asserting the notion that life is a never-ending wonder capable of healing souls and bringing people together in inexplicable ways. Fringe works in the sci-fi, speculative-fiction genre to work out themes of unity and duality, the spirit and the soul, love and the agony of love’s absence.”
—Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly (x)
Ken Tucker's review of Dolly Parton's new album.
npr.orgThank you! Someone finally acknowledging what an amazing musician and song writer Dolly Parton is. My love for Dolly has been steadfast, and now it is being justified.
