| Contents |
The big picture: how Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned me into a TV critic -- The long con: The Sopranos -- The great divide: Norman Lear, Archie Bunker, and the rise of the bad fan -- Difficult women: how Sex and the City lost its good name -- Cool story, bro: the shallow deep talk of True Detective -- Last girl in Larchmont: the legacy of Joan Rivers -- Girls girls girls Hannah Barbaric: Girls and Enlightened -- Big gulp: Vanderpump rules -- Shark week: House of cards and Scandal -- The little tramp: Inside Amy Schumer -- Hello, Gorgeous: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel -- Candy girl: The unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt -- Confessions of the human shield -- How jokes won the election: how do you fight an enemy who's just kidding? -- Breaking the box. Love, actually: Jane the Virgin -- Return of the repressed: The Comeback -- Shedding her skin: The Good Wife, -- Castles in the air: Adventure Time -- Depression modern: The Leftovers -- Swing states: The Middle -- Smoke and mirrors: High Maintenance -- What Tina Fey would do for a SoyJoy: the trouble with product integration -- In living color: with Black-ish, Kenya Barris rethinks the family sitcom -- In praise of sex and violence: To serve man: Hannibal -- Trauma queen: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit -- Graphic, novel: Marvel's Jessica Jones -- L.A. confidential: Behind the Candelabra -- What about Bob?: The Jinx -- The Americans is too bleak and that's why it's great -- Riot girl: Jenji Kohan's hot provocations -- A disappointed fan is still a fan: Lost -- Mr. Big: how Ryan Murphy became the most powerful man on TV. |
| Abstract |
"From her creation of the first 'Approval Matrix' in New York magazine in 2004 to her Pulitzer Prize-winning columns for The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum has known all along that what we watch is who we are. In this collection, including several substantive, never-before-published essays, Nussbaum writes about her passion for television beginning with Buffy--as she writes, a show that was so much more than its critical assessment--the evolution of female protagonists over the last decade, the complex role of sexual violence on TV, and what to do about art when the artist is revealed to be a monster. And, she also explores the links between the television antihero and the rise of Trump. The book is an argument, not a collection of reviews. Through it all, Nussbaum recounts her fervent search, over fifteen years, for a new kind of criticism that resists the false hierarchy that places one kind of culture over another. It traces her own development as she has struggled to punch through stifling notions of 'prestige television,' searching for a wilder and freer and more varied idea of artistic ambition--one that acknowledges many types of beauty and complexity, and that opens to more varied voices. It's a book that celebrates television as television, even as each year warps the definition of just what that might mean." --Provided by publisher. |
| General note | Includes index. |
| Awards note | Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. |
| Genre/form | Essays. |
| Genre/form | Criticism, interpretation, etc. |
| Genre/form | Essays. |
| LCCN | 2018055067 |
| ISBN | 9780525508960 (hardback ; acid-free paper) |
| ISBN | 9780525508984 (pbk.) |
| ISBN | 0525508961 (hardback ; acid-free paper) |
| ISBN | (ebook) |
