Television

The Pretender survived NBC cancellation and returned for two TV movies, but Jarod's story still wasn't finished. Finale Interruptus investigates what happened.

Land of the Lost gave Rick, Will and Holly Marshall a tantalizing route home, then continued without resolving the family's larger story. Finale Interruptus reopens the case.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, television preserves the images of perhaps the last national tragedy Americans experienced together in real time.

NBC canceled Journeyman after 13 episodes, but its creators saw the danger coming and gave Dan Vasser's first chapter a remarkably satisfying conclusion.

The Starlost ended with Earthship Ark still drifting toward destruction and its heroes' mission unfinished. Finale Interruptus reopens the 1973 science-fiction cold case.

Dark Skies ended after one season with its alternate-history alien conspiracy only reaching 1967. Finale Interruptus examines the much larger story left untold.

The Time Tunnel ended with Tony Newman and Doug Phillips still lost in time—and effectively back where the series began. Finale Interruptus reopens the cold case.

The Pirates of Dark Water ended before Ren could collect all Thirteen Treasures of Rule and save Mer. Finale Interruptus investigates the unfinished quest.

American Gothic was canceled after one season, but its final episode brought Lucas Buck and Caleb Temple's central struggle to a deliberate conclusion. Case dismissed.

The Dungeons & Dragons cartoon never aired a true ending, but the unproduced script 'Requiem' revealed how the kids' journey might finally have ended.

Fox's dark 1996 drama Profit vanished after just eight episodes, leaving Jim Profit's ruthless corporate ascent unfinished. Finale Interruptus reopens the case.

ALF ended with Gordon Shumway captured by the government and no rescue in sight. Finale Interruptus reopens one of television's most notorious cliffhangers.

"Did you see it last night?"

For a generation of Americans, that may have been the most powerful sentence in entertainment.

It wasn't merely a question. It was an invitation into a conversation that millions of people were already having.

Those of us who grew up during the era of three television networks didn't simply consume entertainment—we experienced it together. Friday morning meant the school cafeteria buzzing about the latest sitcom. Monday at work began with somebody leaning over the break-room coffee pot and asking whether you'd seen last night's episode. Even the people who had missed it usually knew enough to smile politely while everyone else replayed their favorite scenes.

Television wasn't just filling an hour.

It was creating common memories.

Every few years Hollywood saddles up again. A new western arrives. A frontier drama climbs the streaming charts. Families rediscover Little House on the Prairie. It happens often enough that you begin to wonder why a nation that is increasingly urban, digital, and connected keeps looking back toward cabins, ranches, wagon trails, and wide-open skies.

The latest revival comes in the form of Netflix's new take on Little House on the Prairie. Whether the series succeeds or not almost seems beside the point. Its very existence says something about what audiences continue to seek from frontier stories. Hollywood doesn't keep returning to the nineteenth century because it has run out of ideas. It returns because the frontier remains one of America's foundational myths.

Physical media remains the one form of home entertainment you truly own. While streaming services rotate titles in and out of their libraries based on licensing agreements, bandwidth limitations, and corporate strategy, a DVD set on your shelf is always available—no subscription required, no sudden removals, and no dependence on internet connectivity. For collectors and fans of long-running television series, physical releases also preserve original broadcast edits, bonus features, and consistent picture quality that is not subject to compression or fluctuating streaming bitrates. In an era where digital libraries can vanish overnight, a complete series set represents permanence, reliability, and peace of mind.

Image Source: Pexels

Last year, a host of titles arrived on Netflix that allowed viewers to choose the path the main characters took, influencing the outcomes. Seen as a new form of entertainment that bridged the gap between their standard shows and gaming content, the spate of programs was short-lived. Many have now been removed from the content schedule, with only a few remaining. So what happened to Netflix's interactive shows? 

It's been a big finish for The Venture Bros, Cartoon Network's adult take on the animated adventure genre that blends shows Jonny Quest and Birdman with the sheer banality of ordinary existence -- even if your ordinary existence consists of secret agents, fringe science, and villains who are evil for the sake of being evil.

In back-to-back releases, fans can now get The Venture Bros: The Complete Series on DVD (no doubt a special Blu-ray set is in the works), showcasing the daily lives of Doctor Rusty Venture (James Urbaniak), his indefatigable bodyguard Brock (Patrick Warburton), and his two adventurous sons, Hank (Christopher McCulloch) and Dean (Michael Sinternicklaas), as they explore super-science, deal with their feelings of inadequacy, fend off attacks from their arch nemesis The Monarch (also McCulloch) and his band of butterfly-themed minions as well as his mate, Dr. Mrs. The Monach (Doc Hammer).

A few days ago I watched a debate between Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They were crude, foul-mouthed, and insulted the viewers of the debate by name.

It was on Twitch, and it was all done through the power of AI speech generator, voice imitation, deep fake imagery, and iterative content responsiveness to input from comments in the chat. And it was all in real-time.

That's funny. Because the two men in question are public figures, each prone to ridicule, and as such the content was protected under parody laws.

Now imagine that the charcter on the screen is you -- or an idealized version of you, using a deep fake actor -- taking input from all the listening and video devices that surround you all day, devices you bought voluntarily with your own money, and modifying that input to make things just a little bit more dramatic. And imagine there's nothing you can do about it because it's all completely legal.

Quick, what do the first season of Amazon’s Rings of Power and the Swedish black metal band Reverorum Ib Malacht have in common? If your first impulse was some variation on “Uh, nothing?” then you’re absolutely right. There is, however, a Deeper Answer. That answer is, “Well, nothing yet, but. . .”

You see, black metal has always had a rather ambivalent relationship with Professor Tolkien’s work. Pick any ten of these bands and nine of them will be explicitly Satanic—take, for example, the Dutch band Sauron and their 1999 EP “Death...Tyranny...War...Blasphemy”—and yet, at least two or three of those ten will probably also be named after people or places from Middle Earth. This is kind of funny, because Tolkien himself was extremely—well—Catholic.

The first teaser trailer to the new animated series: MY ADVENTURES WITH SUPERMAN is here!