Check out our 2011 Honorable Mentions list powered by reader submissions here on LAist and via Twitter. Thank you for your contributions! There were so many good shows, you can appreciate the difficulty in even attempting a "Top Ten." more ›

HBO is showing the pilot of their star-studded series, "Luck," this Sunday. It's about horse racing, gambling, it stars Dustin Hoffman, we're there. --- Katy Perry hosts "SNL" this weekend but we're there to see Robyn. --- All new/awesome ep of "After Lately" on Sunday. Check out the TV Junkie Must-Watch Plan. more ›

A handful of programs tonight, virtually nothing on Saturday, and an avalanche of shows on Sunday - thanks TV programmers! --- Wrapping up Sunday's programming is the season premiere of "After Lately" which is excellent! --- More news & The TV Junkie Must-Watch Plan. more ›

There are some great shows on this weekend: tonight' premiere of Ricky Gervais' "Talking Comedy" on HBO, Saturday's premiere of "Doctor Who" & "Animals Distract Me" and Sunday's season finale of "After Lately" to name a few. Check out the TV Junkie Must-Watch Plan and the listings. more ›

We had the chance to sit down to speak with Chris Franjola, regular cast member and longtime writer on "Chelsea Lately" and its new spinoff show, "After Lately." Please check out our video interview with Franjola as well as our discussion of some of the finer points of both shows. more ›

Since we're big fans of Joel McHale's work on both "The Soup" (E! tonight @ 10pm) and "Community" (Thursdays at 8 on NBC) we were elated to hear he was hosting the 2011 Film Independent Spirit Awards (Saturday, 10pm on IFC). We had the chance to ask him a few questions about his preparation so check out the interview. We predict the Spirit Awards will be more entertaining than Sunday's Oscars. Review our TV Junkie Must-Watch Plan. more ›

Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa have a reality show series that premiered last week on WeTV: "Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best" on Tuesdays at 9pm. The mother-daughter duo have returned to the scene in a big way over the past year with the release of the excellent documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work that we saw in the theater as well as on Showtime last week. more ›

Hollywood Arts, a non-profit targeted at providing arts education for high-risk youth, has announced Michael Yo from E! will host this year’s Dream Awards, which will be held at Raleigh Studios in Los Angeles on November 13. The third annual award ceremony is Hollywood Arts' big fundraiser geared toward raising funds for the school’s new facility. With a little over 100 students ages 18 to 25 and around 40 students 13 to 17, the organization says... more ›

We might just miss the first 5 minutes of "CSI" to finish watching the LIVE broadcast of NBC's "30 Rock" (8:30pm). The cast will do the show twice, once for the East Coast/Central and once for the West Coast. It's ambitious but not like it hasn't been done before: "Scrubs" and "ER" both did it, plus some others... more ›

The much-anticipated (and simultaneously dreaded) season finale of "True Blood" aired last night - what did you think? There were some excellent twists and many questions were raised for next season. These questions were raised a little too conveniently in our estimation, telegraphed from a million miles away, which left the episode a little less than gripping. Still it was fun and we can't believe we have to wait until next summer for more swampy vampire shenanigans. more ›

The Emmys are finally here and we'll be reporting them live today. I'll be on the red carpet where arrivals are expected to start at 2:30pm and conclude at 4:45pm. We'll be tweeting via @TheTVJunkie and we will attempt to Ustream from the red carpet at our channel depending on how pummeled the cellular network is in downtown LA. Lindsay William-Ross will be liveblogging the awards on LAist starting at 5pm with nuggets from myself in the press room. Later on the the evening we will be at the HBO after-party at the Pacific Design Center so follow my twitter feed for updates from there. HBO is expected to walk away with a couple dozen awards by the end of the Emmys so we expect spirits to be high. Tomorrow we will have a wrap up of the day with our own high-quality photos and video. more ›

On Sunday, March 7th, 2010, the E! network held an Oscars after-party at Drai's Hollywood club at the W Hotel. While nobody who was nominated or who won at the Oscars showed up before we left at 10:30pm, we took advantage of the chance to speak with Josh Sussman (aka Jacob Ben Israel of FOX's "Glee"), Iqbal Theba (aka Principal Figgins of FOX's "Glee") more ›

We will be reporting live from the Independent Spirit Awards this evening with photos and video to be posted this weekend. You can watch the official UStream red carpet feed starting at 5pm before the live broadcast begins at 8pm on IFC. Follow the TV Junkie on Twitter and check back here often. more ›

Fire on the Mountain (not the Grateful Dead song): With the LA fires again making national and international news, we recall our recent interview with The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore who specifically talked about the built up areas of the Angeles National Forest. You heard it here first. more ›

Hasbro and the Discovery Channel(??) are forming a children's TV network together to launch sometime next year. I'm hoping to see the "MythBusters" guys blow up some My Little Ponys. --- In the kinda old news category, Disney has now bought 30% of Hulu which means ABC shows like "Lost" will now be available on the web network. more ›

The TV Junkie Goes to E!'s "The Soup" from Tom Lewis. more ›

Weekend EditionLast night the TV Junkie was very fortunate to be invited to the taping of "The Soup" which will air on E! tonight at 10pm. It was a fantastic experience made all the more special by a great special guest and some hilarious shenanigans. Charming and kind host Joel McHale and executive producers KP Anderson and Edward Boyd (very fun men in their own right) gave us a few minutes for a video piece that will be posted later tonight. "The Soup" has always been a weekly gem and to see it being put together before one's eyes was an amazing experience. We're so fortunate to have this team at E! process and present a week's worth of TV and pop culture for us with just the right perspective of smart and biting humor. Watch it tonight, it's even better than usual. more ›

Unless you are a basketball or baseball fan, this weekend's options are kind of slim - feel free to sift through our picks - what are you going to watch? If it's not on our list, let us know and we'll talk about it. more ›

The Internet is abuzz today with promotion of HBO's "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" to air this Sunday. Some writer's are pointing out that the show doesn't address any of the problems going on in Africa these days (AIDS, war, famine, rape, pillaging of natural resource) - instead it depicts a laid-back and idyllic place with only quaint soap opera-esque concerns. more ›

Tonight marks the end of "Battlestar Galactica", for about 20 years until the geeks of the future resurrect it like they did the now-campy 1970s version. Some have complained that this final season swung the show onto a science-fiction track that was too science-fiction-y but the show had to return to its roots, its core, before wandering off into the cosmos. more ›

Sunday @ 10pm features the return of AMC's incredible series, "Breaking Bad", with Bryan Cranston (pictured, right) as Walt White, the terminally-ill high school science teacher-turned meth cooker. We've been eagerly waiting for this show to resume and AMC has done a great job whetting our appetite with their sneak webisodes and other promos. Since the other stuff we like to watch on Sunday's @ 10pm are available on-demand, this is one of our prime picks of the weekend. more ›

Tonight marks the last broadcast of Conan O'Brien on "Late Night..." and what a ride it's been. From being a virtual unknown in front of the camera, O'Brien is now a staple of late night television. O'Brien's resurrection of NBC's "Late Night" after the departure of David Letterman to CBS was not easy and the first few years were very tenuous ones for the wild haired funnyman. With support from Lorne Michaels, O'Brien was given enough time to build an audience, something almost unheard of these days. more ›

Controversial contestant Joanna Pacitti has finally been pulled from "American Idol" after it was revealed that she had friendships with multiple executives with "Idol" co-producer 19 Entertainment. For fans of the show who couldn't believe that she had made the cut after performing poorly and fumbling lyrics to several songs during the Hollywood rounds of auditions, it will be assumed that she had moved ahead due to these personal relationships and not merit. more ›

A lot of our sport fan/fiend friends are convinced that this Sunday's Super Bowl event will be a boring blow out - "the Cardinals will win how?" is oft heard. But for a lot of media dorks, ourselves included, the Super Bowl is all about the ads. We already know that GoDaddy and PETA have had their ads denied (as must have been planned for). Adweek's Barbara Lippert analyzes past Super Bowl commercial foibles as well as a list of all expected advertisers for XLIII. On Saturday, CBS also takes a trip down memory lane with a program on the "best" commercials of years past. more ›

A lot of programs return to or make their premiere on premium cable this Sunday including: "Big Love", "The L Word", "The United States of Tara", and "Secret Diary of a Call Girl". What we most eagerly anticipate is the season premiere of "Flight of the Conchords". The pair of musicians and their hapless manager, all hailing from New Zealand, might not have made a second season due to low viewership but their cult like following gave us one more. So enjoy every episode like a smooth New Zealand Merlot, savor it, because this might be their last run, on HBO at least. more ›

The bachelorette DeAnna Pappas and her fiance Jesse Csincsak have broken up and poor Seth Green just can't handle the sad news. more ›

Looks like HBO will buy a documentary on president-elect Barack Obama and will air it in 2009. The documentary was produced by actor Edward Norton's production company, Class 5 Films, and was bought "in the seven-figure range". A nice bet by Norton paid off evidently. more ›

You know Hal Sparks from hosting "Talk Soup" on E!, or as Michael from "Queer as Folk", or even from VH1's "I Love the..." series. Sparks has a local appearance before heading back out on national tour. He's also got a TV show and a couple feature films in the works, not to mention voicing Tak in Nikelodeon's "Tak & the Power of Juju" - LAist was pleased to be able to ask the busy Sparks a few questions before his appearance tonight at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills with fellow "Talk Soup" alum, Aisha Tyler. more ›

If you thought you'd seen the controversial trailer for Oliver Stone's W., look again. The Soup offers their version for the upcoming biopic. more ›

Shark Week winds down - I'm almost all sharked out anyways, plus the TV Junkie will be heading for a week's vacation at the beach so he was getting a little freaked out. more ›