Goode Family Not Great

NBC musical dazzles critics... mostly

(NEWSER) - If you watched the Super Bowl, you just might have heard of Smash, NBC's new drama about the making of a Broadway musical. It premiered last night, and critics are (mostly) giving it a standing ovation:

• The buzz has gotten so intense that the conversation isn't even about whether it'll be good. "Good? Darling, it's great!" gushes Mary McNamara of the LA Times . The creators have "managed to capture the grand and sweeping gesture that is musical theater and inject it with the immediate intimacy of television," an impressive, unprecedented feat.

AMC will air final 16 episodes

(NEWSER) - AMC has picked up 16 final episodes of Breaking Bad, a last batch that could run as a single season or two shorter seasons, Entertainment Weekly reports. “It’s a funny irony—I’d hate to know the date of my own last day on earth, but I’m delighted to know what Walter White’s will be (episodically speaking),” said series creator Vince Gilligan. “This is a great gift to me and to my wonderful writers. It’s knowledge which will allow us to properly build our story to a satisfying conclusion.” More»

Critics: New reality show 'upsetting,' 'uncomfortable'

(NEWSER) - Joan Rivers’ new reality show on WE, Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?, follows the 77-year-old comedian as she moves in with her daughter in Los Angeles. It’s as artificial as the botox Rivers extols:

• The show is “upsetting,” writes a pained Linda Stasi in the New York Post . From pushing her daughter to pose nude to giving “away all of her living room furniture,” “it's all so wrong that as much as I love her, I have to say, in this case, ‘Joan Knows Worst.’”

Did we really need the first 'Love Boat,' let alone the second?

(NEWSER) - Hollywood is constantly churning out movie remakes that really should never have been greenlighted, but TV doesn’t get off scot-free. The Huffington Post lists 11 boob-tube remakes we really never needed to see:

• Knight Rider: “The original starring The Hoff is a camp classic,” writes Ross Luippold, but “not even Will Arnett, who was cast as the voice of KITT until being replaced by Val Kilmer, could save this dud.”
• The Love Boat: “The 1970s were encapsulated in The Love Boat: polyester clothes, soft lighting, and a swingin' good time.” Something that time-sensitive should never be remade.

Forget new shows: You're missing out on these old shows

(NEWSER) - This fall, instead of trying to figure out what NBC's sure-to-be-mystifying The Event is actually about, why not pick up a great show that's already on the air? Kevin Fallon gives his 12 picks in The Atlantic :

• Cougar Town: Don't count Fallon among the many Cougar Town haters . He calls the Courteney Cox show one of "television's strongest ensemble comedies," a "sharply written sitcom about a quirky group of friends and neighbors."
• In Treatment: Don't be scared by its unusual format (often, "the screen is shared by just two actors for an entire episode"): Gabriel Byrne 's show about therapy is "one of the finest acting showcases in television."