I'm not much a TV reporter, as in someone who covers the daily machinations of the television industry, though I certainly follow it and weave it into my reviews and essays about the medium.

"Star Trek" expands almost instinctively - the more information you seek from it, the more it gives. It also has the benefit of taking place in our future, our mutual destinies as occupants of a peaceful, non-polluted Earth.

I think the occasional appearance of the UFO is a very oblique pop-cultural reference that anyone who was alive and sentient in the late 1970s will get right away.

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

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

In fact, when it comes to TV, I'm not even sure what my real, true preferences are.

I don't have scientific data, but I think plenty of perfectly nice weekends are being given over to the binge craze.