Posts by Tara Ariano

February 22, 2012
New Girl and the Adorkability Conundrum

When it picked up the sitcom New Girl, Fox made a risky gamble: It pinned the success of a freshman series on the polarizing cultural figure known as Zooey Deschanel. A member of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Club since her star turn in (500) Days Of Summer, Deschanel has a very specific celebrity brand: […]
February 20, 2012
Ranking the Likelihood That a Celebrity Voice-over Actor Actually Uses the Endorsed Product

Some stars are happy to show their faces in commercials, lending their celebrity to endorse the products they truly believe in, as Tina Fey is doing with that Garnier Nutrisse hair dye, or Matthew Broderick did with his Super Bowl riff on Ferris Bueller for Honda. Others try to keep a lid on their shilling […]
February 9, 2012
The Running Man TV: How Dystopian ICS Programming Compares to What’s On Now

With the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ YA novel The Hunger Games about to hit theaters, Americans are getting more comfortable with the idea of a reality competition in which ordinary kids are challenged to fight to the death. But Collins’ book trilogy, as well received as it has been, did not originate the notion […]
February 1, 2012
Grantland Infographic: The TV Comedy Cabal

The hardest-working contemporary comedy icons and the sitcoms that repeatedly employ them.