Link Tank: TV Blog Coalition Roundup for Jan. 9-11

Televisionary is proud to be a member of the TV Blog Coalition. At the end of each week, we'll feature a roundup of content from our sister sites for your delectation.

This week, I offered advance reviews of the first two episodes of Season Five of Lost (and nearly passed out from excitement) and the first four episodes of Showtime's new dark comedy series The United States of Tara, as well as offered up my list of what I'll be watching this spring and discussed the casting of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who.

I also posted my reviews of the well lush Gavin & Stacey and Doctor Who Christmas specials and my interview with Damages creators Glenn Kessler, Todd Kessler, and Daniel Zelman and series lead Glenn Close, broke down the clues in the second season premiere of FX's Damages, discussed the latest episodes of 30 Rock, and expressed my excitement that BBC America is launching the second season of Last Restaurant Standing later this month.

Elsewhere in the sophisticated TV-obsessed section of the blogosphere, members of the TV Blog Coalition were discussing the following items...

With a ton of reasons to watch TV this month, Buzz picked her 12 favorites. (BuzzSugar)
Remember the awesomeness of Sports Night? GMMR's Take 5 looks back at the five best episodes of this fantastic show. (Give Me My Remote)
After watching Confessions of a Teen Idol, a part of Scooter's soul died. (Scooter McGavin's 9th Green)
Vance put Friday Night Lights at the top of his Best of Television for 2008 list! (Tapeworthy)
Ed Westwick's eyebrows? Heidi Klum's legs? Vote on which TV body part gave the best peformance in 2008! (TiFaux)
The TV Addict previewed the new season of 24 with none other than Jack Bauer himself, Kiefer Sutherland (The TV Addict)
Jennifer celebrated the return of Scrubs, but didn’t realize she’d require a box of Kleenex. (Tube Talk)
Raoul was shocked --shocked!-- that True Beauty sucked. (TV Filter)
Heather went searching for Easter eggs at Ajira Airlines (TV Spy)

Comments

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

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What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

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In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj

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