Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever loved the latest HBO documentary on "gun carnage," as the Monday headline has it. Online, the headline was "A deep wallow in gun-related senselessness."
It was "remarkably good" and "notably free of a direct anti-gun harangue," Stuever wrote, but he was still depressed that HBO was only preaching to the liberal choir ("people already horrified by gun violence and gun culture") and the film "won't ever be seen by those who most need to see it."
Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever didn’t hate NBC’s three-hour “Peter Pan Live” musical. Allison Williams as the flying title character was fine (after becoming become the most promoted stage musical actress in decades, just by being on an NBC stage.)
Stuever turned the second half of his review into disgust at how relentlessly tacky NBC-Universal is in promoting its own products that it takes the smell out of Brian Williams pushing his own daughter in America’s face, since well, he makes a fraction of what Jon Stewart takes home. NBC is now "the tackiest house on the street."
While so much of “reality television” dwells on catty “Real Housewives” and Snooki-style party-hearty debauchery, it's interesting to note that a small fraction of this ever-expanding genre is celebrating evangelical Christianity and values like chastity.
This drives the libertines crazy. Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever recently raged on the Internet against the Duggar family of TLC’s “19 Kids & Counting” and how they are no more worthy of attention than the Kardashians. Their children are denied “freedom of choice.”
The programmers at the cable channel TLC have often promoted the Duggar family as strangely, exotically Christian – just as much of a curiosity as the polygamous family of “Sister Wives.”
On Friday, The Washington Post published segments of an online chat with their TV critic Hank Stuever, where he brought out the verbal bat and suggested TLC treats Duggar-family fans as “learning disabled” – and perhaps that fits the Duggars, too:
The Washington Post's Style section occasionally publishes the online Q&As with its TV critic Hank Stuever...even when they get testy.
On Friday, someone lauding the "excellent" work of John Oliver on HBO mocking the Miss America pageant. Stuever's apparently heard this line too much among liberals, and insisted that Oliver (and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert) get praise for "reporting" things that they could easily find in a newspaper or even an old Spy magazine (which stopped publishing in 1998, the Year of Lewinsky):
At first, Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever traveled with the critical mass on the trashy, ugly-sex-and-nudity show “Girls” on HBO, and its twentysomething creator, Lena Dunham (you know, the one who urged girls to pop their voting cherry with Obama). Just a month ago, Stuever found the show’s second season “left me feeling underserved.”
But wow, has he decided he hates the show now. A picture of Dunham took up the whole top half of the Style section in Friday’s Post with the headline “Despicable, she.” Stuever literally wrote he was rooting for Dunham’s character Hannah to choke on her chocolates:
Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever sure knows how to puncture the arrogance of HBO. On Sunday, he compared “The Newsrooom” to TLC’s “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” and likes the redneck reality show much better.
Ouch. Stuever reported “Both shows are back again this week, but only one seems unscathed and completely sure of itself.” It’s not the Jeff Daniels-plays-Olbermann show:
Media liberals are rooting for NBC’s two-gay-dads sitcom The New Normal. USA Today TV critic Robert Bianco made it number two on his favorite new shows: “For the most part, Normal plays like a lovely, small movie, mixing humorous moments with sweet, gentle grace notes.” Alessandra Stanley at The New York Times tries to make the bold statement: "Gay is the new straight."
Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever is less impressed, given that its producer (Glee creator Ryan Murphy) tends to lose creative steam. But Stuever loves the “deliciously acid” Phyllis Schlafly character with Callista Gingrich hair:
“Can’t wait for the stoning-of-adulteresses question,” Washington Post TV critic Lisa de Moraes snarked in a column back in March about The American Bible Challenge, an original game show in development for GSN (formerly the Game Show Network), to be hosted by comedian Jeff Foxworthy.
Fast forward to this morning’s Washington Post, and readers would find Hank Stuever’s scathing review on the front page of the Style section. Since GSN isn't listed in the Post’s daily TV listings grid – nor is it necessarily a highly-trafficked cable network – it seems obvious that the only reason for a review would be to malign it. And trash it he did.
A new reality TV show featuring C-list celebrities doing military training exercises to compete for charity was denounced as "empty jingoism" and a modern-day spin on "[a]dding a celebrity quotient to the military-industrial complex," kind of like when Bob Hope entertained the troops during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
That's pretty much the reaction of Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever to the new "Stars Earn Stripes" program, which debuts tonight at 8 p.m. EDT on NBC. "It also feels about five years too late, in both its reality-TV tropes and its message of pride," Stuever huffs. "It harks back to the 'Mission Accomplished!' era of attacks and setbacks in the Middle East":
"Either we're spoiled by TV's unlimited population of giant personalities or this woman is one of the most boring people of her era," observed Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever regarding Chelsea Clinton's television journalism debut on last night's Rock Center.
"It's no surprise whatsoever that Chelsea Clinton didn't electrify broadcast journalism with her debut" on last night's Rock Center, but, "what was surprising" was "how someone can be on TV in such a prominent way and, in her big moment, display so very little charisma -- none at all."
While columnist Dana Milbank complained about "The irrelevancy of the Obama presidency" -- noting Republican laughter during the Obama speech (especially the line "This isn't political grandstanding") and Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) reading the newspaper -- TV critic Hank Stuever sat at the Tom Shales Desk of Obama Speech Puffery. "Obama reiterates his mastery of medium" was the headline on the front of the Style section.
Stuever's expert of choice on Obama was Lou Dobbs of Fox News, whom he plucked out for declaring it was "The best speech he's ever given." That's not exactly what Dobbs said on The O'Reilly Factor after the speech. Dobbs said it was the best speech of his presidency. But then Dobbs agreed with Bill O'Reilly that it was extremely political and not a transparent proposal: