Mobster stories are always a harder sell for me. I don't romanticize organize crime the way others do, though I can be swayed.

It seems to me conspiracy is at the heart of dozens of TV dramas currently on. Maybe that itself is some kind of conspiracy.

I do get lots of links to advance screeners, which helps, but there's no way I could do my job without the full-on cable subscription.

We got Arbitron diaries at my house in the 1980s, when the family was down to just my mother and me, and we tried for a couple of days to fill it out (I of course treated it like we'd been asked to write a new book of the Bible), but we got really bored with it and gave it up.

In the end, all critics should be guided by this one principle: Is this piece of work [TV show, movie, play, concert, album, restaurant] succeeding at what it set out to do?

I don't really like to arrange shows by best performances. That's why Emmy season is kind of a chore for me. Unlike movies, where it's easier to decide who was the best performance, a TV show goes up and down, including characters/portrayals.

"Big Bang Theory" focuses on main characters who in other shows would only be auxiliary players hewing to stereotype: The gawky nerd who lives next door and says oddball things.