Posts by Tess Lynch
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Shark Tank: The Wisest Investment in Friday-Night Reality Television
I put on my time travel glasses recently and peered back to the spring of 2007, when On the Lot premiered. I could see myself — younger, drunker, so hopeful — looking people in the eye and telling them, “I am excited to watch On the Lot.” I wasn’t lying; I really thought that I […]
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American Horror Story: Asylum Season 2, Episode 2: ‘Tricks and Treats’
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about, American Horror Story: Asylum. While the pilot wasn’t as scary as I’d hoped, last night’s episode delivered plenty of the gray-faced exorcisms, shots of knives carving bloody meat during unsettling conversations, and electroshock treatments that are so close to my weird old heart. And what about Dr. Arden (James […]
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SNL Episode 5: Mars Does Double Duty and Hanks Lends a Hand
Before I get to this SNL recap, I have a public service announcement to make: If you’ve been busted for cocaine, especially if you have never! ever! previously done drugs in your life, don’t wear sunglasses in the dark. I am not a person who suspects people of doing cocaine in general; you can sit […]
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American Horror Story: Asylum, Episode 1 — Welcome to Briarcliff
Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk sure do love them some secrets ‘n’ shame. The first installment of American Horror Story was a sort of revelatory study in how bizarre television can get, with its plates of brains and unabashedly over-the-top rubber suit rapes and “weep-sturbating”; it was campy while retaining its fright factor, psychologically fascinating […]
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SNL Episode 4: A Return Two Decades in the Making
Do you remember when Kelly Bundy sang the “Bottles of Beer on the Wall” song? I do: “Eighty-nine bottles of beer on the wall, eighty-nine bottles of beer. If one of those bottles should happen to fall, eighty-ten bottles of beer on the wall.” I can’t remember how The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ends, […]
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10 Things That Can Kill You (And That You Won’t Find in This Year’s Batch of Horror Movies)
1. The flu. Also, the vaccine for the flu, which, even when it doesn’t prove deadly, makes children scream “I don’t like the pills, Daddy! Please don’t make me have the pills!” 2. Reading war bulletins. (But apparently you cannot die until you hear The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin.)
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SNL Episode 3: Daniel Craig, Big Bird, and Muse Walk Into a Late-Night Show
It’s too bad that entire generations of people had to die without ever hearing James Bond compare a woman to “a big bowl of butt soup with extra nipples” in a Triborough Bridge accent. Thankfully, Saturday Night Live took care of that for the rest of us, and now we — or our children — […]
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Probst, Seacrest, and the Mysterious Art of Reality TV Hosting
While watching the debates, and then reading the flurry of critiques that inevitably follow them, it’s hard not to let your mind wander into the realm of personal possibility: Could you have done better? Thinking about actually being president is a complicated brain-knot, and it doesn’t take too long before you decide that the math […]
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666 Park Avenue vs. American Horror Story: To Rent or to Buy Your Housing Nightmare?
Which is smarter, to rent or to buy? You know what, screw it: Which is scarier? Buying a house is freaky because of the symbolic permanence and the unknowns. Even if you drop three grand for inspections (general, mold, asbestos, foundation, sewer line, electrical, geographical, environmental, spiritual, astrological), there still exist a litany of nightmare […]
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Top Chef Masters Season 4 Finale
The Top Chef Masters finale happened, and here is my gripe: As with this season of MasterChef, the finalists were made up of one person who had been slaying it all competition (in the case of MC this was Christine, who was, incidentally, blind) and one culinarian who had been bobbing along in a warm […]
