Jane Rosenzweig

When Wendy Wasserstein’s play An American Daughter premiered in 1997, critics deemed it superficial, suggesting that Wasserstein had failed to do justice to the multitude of political issues she had raised. The criticism also holds true for the film version of An American Daughter, which was adapted by Wasserstein herself, and which airs this month […]

Each fall at least one prime-time television show premieres to the much-hyped anticipation of critics and viewers that it will stand apart from the rest of the lineup and fit into–or, better yet, raise the standards for–that elusive category called “quality television.” This season, the burden of those expectations was reserved for ABC’s new drama […]

You probably haven’t heard of him, but Rob Nelson is working hard to change that. Nelson, the thirty-something host of the FOX News Channel’s fledgling Saturday night talk show The Full Nelson, wants to run for political office (he doesn’t say which office, but the show’s audience coordinator cheerfully told me that she believes Nelson […]

When last I wrote in these pages about the portrayal of women on television, I argued that the creators of shows such as FOX’s Ally McBeal and NBC’s Providence seem unable to conceive of thirty-something women as concerned about anything other than marriage and childbearing. After perusing the offerings of Oxygen, the new cable television […]

So, like, okay. It’s the first day of boarding school, and you’re the new kid. Not only that, but you’re not like these other boys. You’re on scholarship. Your name is Will Krudski, and you feel guilty because you bought the school’s entrance exam on the Internet. You know this was wrong, but you didn’t […]

W hen the second season of NBC’s West Wing premiered in October, with nine Emmys on the mantel and the lives of many key presidential staffers dangling in the balance thanks to last season’s cliff-hanger assassination attempt, a stunning 25.1 million viewers tuned in to survey the damage. True, a bigger audience–about 50 million–watched the […]

The advent of television has long been associated with the beginning of the endof the “good old days.” Historians, sociologists, filmmakers, and yes, even TVshows (think Brooklyn Bridge and The Wonder Years) have explored this relationship. In his 1990 film Avalon, Barry Levinson heartbreakingly rendered the effects of TV on three generations of an immigrant […]