Thursday, July 26, 2007

Spoilers (or not).

Remember when I said yesterday I didn't know what day it is? I wasn't exaggerating, as I published my "Mad Men" review a day ahead of schedule. Apologies to anyone who clicked through; I've yanked the post and will put it back up tonight before I fly home and get some badly-needed rest.

It's the last day of tour, and my next-to-last tour column is a discussion of the delicate dance shows with ongoing storylines have to do when they come to face a couple of hundred news-hungry reporters. There's spoiler-y stuff of varying degrees about "Friday Night Lights" (big), "The Office" (little), "Heroes" (maybe big), "House" (ibid), and "Lost" (medium, at best), so don't follow the link if you don't want to know.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've noticed in your NJ.com articles that some guy pops up and starts talking to you.

Is there any way to get rid of this.

I know ads are important, but geez this is annoying.

Alan Sepinwall said...

There are about 50 things I would change about NJ.com if given the chance, and that's one of them.

Are you using Firefox? It has a pretty good pop-up/ad blocker extension, and I can't remember the last time I visited NJ.com via Firefox and got one of those ads.

Alternately, you could always do like I do when I go to ESPN.com and pre-emptively mute your computer.

afoglia said...

Firefox with Flashblock works wonders killing all those loud obnoxious ads. (You could go even further with AdBlock extensions, but I think it's overkill.)

My complaint is that every time I go to the second page of your articles I need to enter my zip code, year of birth, and gender. Every freakin' time. So 99% of the time, I just don't read your second pages.

Alan Sepinwall said...

That has to be annoying. Do you have cookies disabled? Because if you have your cookies turned on, it's not supposed to do that.

I suppose I could link to the single-page, printable version of each story, but the problem there is that everyone will automatically get a window popping up with printer options.

Like I said, there's lots of things I would change if I could.

Unknown said...

Well, you could paste the whole article here.

Mapeel said...

Topical to tonight: Tom Watson is going to be live blogging Mad Men tonight at Newcritics.com (10:00 p.m.EST) It seems the sort of show that will elicit fun/funny/snarky comments.

TL said...

Oh, good. I saw your review this morning and thought that I'd missed the show....

Anonymous said...

totally off topic, but Alan can you please, please not hold back during the Private Practice panel tonight and really call Shonda out on some of the horrific storylines from last season and the decisions she made in terms of character development

I'd also be interested in what she had to say regarding bringing on Marti 'Showkiller' Noxin, and I'm insanely happy she's now running the day-to-day at Private Practice and is completely away from Greys. I know she had an overall deal with Touchstone and after she got kicked off B&S they needed to place her somewhere, so I'm curious if Touchstone forced her on Shonda or Shonda actually wanted her and solicited the Showkiller's help.

Alan Sepinwall said...

Well, you could paste the whole article here.

No, I can't. The Star-Ledger owns that content and wants people to read it on their site. A handful of times I've posted full articles here if there's been some kind of massive technical failure at NJ.com, but I can't do more than that.

David J. Loehr said...

I leave cookies enabled, but still get the zip code page from time to time. So I do what I used to do with the Washington Post site and enter the zip code from my birthplace, the earliest birthyear I can do--some let you claim to be 106 years old--and pick a gender at random.

Haven't been talked to yet, but I've got a good pop-up blocker.

Anonymous said...

When I want to read a full article without going through the zip code b.s., I just hit "Print this article" and then cancel the printer when that dialogue box pops up. Two clicks and I have the full page--not as much a hassle as the zip code doohickey, IMHO. Of course, at home, I don't have that problem since I'm "registered" (via cookies) at the site.

Taleena said...

I am happy to see that Pasdar still has a connection with the show and am also glad to see the Quito, that dreamboat!, return. I knew House didn't have the cajones to get rid off all the his team.

I could care less about the Lost spoiler. Sorry to tiresomely ask again Alan, but have you heard anything about HBO's True Blood?

Alan Sepinwall said...

Sorry to tiresomely ask again Alan, but have you heard anything about HBO's True Blood?

Quote from one of the two new HBO bosses, Michael Lombardo, from the HBO exec session eighteen weeks ago (or whenever it was):

"We just finished the pilot/first episode, and we're anxious -- Alan's putting it together. We're anxious to take a look at it, and we hope at the next TCA we'll be talking about the "True Blood" series."

Alan Sepinwall said...

Without speaking ill of my fellow critics, I'll simply say that I wasn't one of the people in the room growling for McPherson to give up the dirt instead of saving it for that "fan convention."

Christy said...

Hey! Sylar is playing Mr. Spock for J.J. Abrams! How weird is that?

Anonymous said...

One of the cool things I picked up at that "fan convention" was a temporary tattoo of the "S" pattern found on Sylar, Jessica, and some of the other "Heroes." Missed seeing Nimoy, though, drat!

Anonymous said...

A quick way to get past the "fill in your name, age, etc." page on NJ.com?

Click the tiny icon that says "Outside the U.S." Zaps away the whole page.