Watch TV Shows Online: Full Episodes

Their friends acknowledge it always has been this way: Tina Fay gets lots of headlines and personal appearances while Amy Poehler does the majority of the comic heavy lifting. The trend continues in NBC's high-powered Thursday night comedy line-up as Fay continues driving "30Rock" to the top of Nielsen's charts and Poehler brilliantly busts-out gut-busters with her new sit-com "Parks and Recreation." In much the style of "The Office," Poehler's "Parks and Recreation" TV show works the popular mockumentary format; and her character, Leslie Knope, willingly gives voice to her relentless optimism as she speaks directly into the camera. Leslie serves as the Deputy Director of the parks and recreation department in Pawnee, Indiana, where she considers herself a rising star in the local political firmament. Think of her as the female equivalent of Steve Carrell's "Office" character, prone to pretzelating the truth with observations like, "These people are members of a community that care about where they live. So what I hear when I'm being yelled at is people caring loudly at me." Professionals devoted to the sad enterprise of explaining the jokes stress that Poehler's genius lies in her ability to make an obvious ditz both funny and sympathetic rather than just plain weak. Women may not feel inspired to vote for Leslie, but they cannot help loving her.

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In their more than twenty years on Fox Network, the Simpsons have become not only a staple in the primetime line-up but also American cultural icons. Created by Matt Groening with early help from comedy genius James L. Brooks, "The Simpsons" brilliantly but brutally satirize working-class American life. Homer personifies the character of the average "working stiff," oblivious to the myriad ways his job and family abuse and exploit him. Marge, Homer's wife, captures the plight of the long-suffering housewife, imprisoned by but also devoted to her family. Precocious pre-teen Bart embodies every aggressive, rebellious, marginally criminal urge in adolescent American boys"”James Dean on a skateboard. Lisa, Bart's sister, represents every family's precious little princess; and Maggie is just "the baby." "The Simpsons" TV show owns a privileged place in American television history: In 2009, the simply but cleverly animated series surpassed "Gunsmoke" and "Law and Order," becoming the longest-running primetime series. Along the way to the record, "The Simpsons" became America's longest-running animated program and its longest-running sitcom. Even more impressively, "The Simpsons" earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and Time magazine called it the twentieth century's best television series.

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"Trauma" survived almost a whole season in NBC's primetime line-up, but it ultimately became a victim of the Jay Leno scheduling brouhaha and its own penchant for taking itself much too seriously. The promotional materials for "Trauma" declared, "Executive producer Peter Berg delivers"¦the first high-octane medical drama series to live exclusively in the field where the real action is." The promo went on to describe "Trauma" as "an adrenaline shot to the heart," but viewers tended to characterize it as a sedative shot to higher consciousness, complaining that characters were stereotypic and plots were contrived. For all of its melodrama, "Trauma" did set valuable precedents for other, better-written medical dramas: The plots promoted paramedics and nurses over physicians as the true wonderworkers of emergency medicine, and the paramedic team included an openly gay character whom the writers treated with considerable insight and sensitivity. Held against TLC's "Life in the ER," "Trauma" betrayed its promise of realism, but it occasionally showed the promise of medical dramas focused on real caregivers instead of over-educated biochemists.

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"Mad Men TV show" delivers its drama in the same slick and glossy packaging the Madison Avenue ad-men serve-up to their clients, making it just as stylized, trendy, and gotta-have-it cool as anything as a two-page spread for Chryslers and Chesterfields in the centerfold Life. Central character Don Draper, a pitch-man with a secret and sordid past, ruthlessly and relentlessly courts clients and seduces women, attempting to feed his insatiable ego. In other words, he personifies the archetype of the ad-man. Draper races full speed to stay one step ahead of changing times, cut-throat competitors, and revelation of his secrets: Born the son of a prostitute who died in childbirth, he stole a Korean war buddy's identity to put on a patina of respectability. Propriety and respectability figure prominently in the drama, which accurately represents steamy seductions and corner-office conniving hiding behind the Norman Rockwell wholesomeness of 1960s family values. Brilliantly written, beautifully photographed, and consummately well acted, "Mad Men TV show" has collected a boatload of awards, including three Golden Globes and back-to-back Emmys.

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Kitchen Nightmares TV show is an American reality television series on the Fox network, in which Chef Gordon Ramsay spends a week with a failing restaurant in an attempt to revive the business. Gordon Ramsay, famed chef and star of HELL'S KITCHEN, is taking off his apron and stepping out of his own kitchen to rescue restaurant owners in crisis. You haven't seen a nightmare quite like this one: In this sizzling new unscripted series, Chef Ramsay hits the road, exposing restaurants that are barely staying afloat. Whether it's due to lazy chefs, temperamental wait staff or unsanitary kitchens, the owners of these restaurants are losing business; and their minds. Each week, Chef Ramsay will try to turn one uninviting, deserted eatery into the hippest, most sought-after venue in town.

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Call it one of television's most credible attempts at realistic fiction: Ryan Murphy, "Nip/Tuck's" producer, insists the medical conditions and procedures on which the episodes center "are 100% based on fact." Ironically, though, "Nip/Tuck's" representation of the surgeon's private lives may impress ordinary viewers as the program's most faithful representation of real life people and events. "Nip/Tuck" centers on Sean McNamara and Christian Troy, successful plastic surgeons, originally practicing their science and art in Miami, but conveniently relocated to Los Angeles at the end of "Nip/Tuck's" fourth season. Dr. McNamara, "the nice one," struggles to keep his family together as they weather trials and tribulations that come as the complications of success. Dr. Troy, "the naughty one," loves money and sex, and sometimes commits serious scalpel screw-ups. Never shy about taking-on controversial subjects, "Nip/Tuck" won critical acclaim, Golden Globe and Emmy awards for its treatment of domestic violence, promiscuity, recreational drug use, and the risk of addiction to cosmetic surgery. On March 3, 2010, "Nip/Tuck's" one hundredth episode, last in the series, became the most-watched scripted program in the history of the FX network.

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Designed and built according to Bravo's standard blueprint for reality programming, "Shear Genius" TV show pits hairstylists against one another in cut-throat competition for reputation and glamorous prizes. In its first season, "Shear Genius" series steadily gained loyal viewers by word-of-mouth, and the original coterie of just over one million fans has made the program just popular and just profitable enough that Bravo programmers have stayed with it. For the first two seasons, "Charlie's Angels" mega-star Jacklyn Smith came out of retirement to host "Shear Genius"; in the third season Brazilian super-model Camila Alves took over hosting and refereeing the competitions. Like the top chefs and the aspiring fashion designers, the hair stylists on "Shear Genius" compete against the clock, arbitrary constraints, and one another, submitting their work for celebrity judges' approval. In some of the most intense challenges, the shear wizards work on mannequins' hair; in some of the eliminations, they work on aspiring models' locks. Winning styles are displayed on the Wall of Fame at Allure magazine, and the best stylist is celebrated with the signature expression, "Your work is shear genius!"

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If your family drama cannot be "Modern Family" or "Brothers and Sisters," then what can it be? It almost inevitably will be NBC's "Parenthood," a mid-season, post-Olympic experiment boldly launched in February, 2010. The "Parenthood" experiment tests the hypothesis that good writers and actors can find the middle ground between "Modern Family's" understated but outrageous satire and "Brothers and Sisters'" intensity. Producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are re-working the basic premise of Parenthood, the 1989 movie starring Steve Martin as a frazzled father trying with all his might to do the right thing for everyone he loves. The New York Times accurately observes, "'Parenthood,' with its polished scripts and beautifully shot exteriors, seems like a last gasp of television past," big-big production values and a cast of small-screen all-stars including Craig T. Nelson, Bonnie Bedelia, and Lauren Graham. "Parenthood's" plots and dialogue exploit the irony in everyday family life, winning empathetic laughs and wry smiles where other teams might push too hard for punchlines. Some of the dialogue has the same brilliant serrated edge that distinguished "Gilmore Girls," but, as Lauren Graham points out, "I do not have to talk so fast." Like all good comedy, the teasing and quirkiness are fundamentally good-natured, and every episode features at least one weep-worthy segment. Because "Parenthood" is not "Modern Family" or "Brothers and Sisters," it has become the rarest of rare productions at NBC"”a hit.

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When Bravo began promoting "The Real Housewives of Orange County" TV series in 2006, the producers and the network hyped the series as a "documentary" hybrid of ABC's monster hit "Desperate Housewives" and Fox's equally popular "The OC." The emphasis on "real" did not suggest "average and ordinary"; instead, it suggested "real" as opposed to the housewives on Wisteria Lane and all the pretty people in the rest of the prime real estate south of Los Angeles and north of Camp Pendleton. In its first several seasons, "The Real Housewives of Orange County" TV show beguiled and enraged viewers with its emphasis on five frighteningly wealthy women ensconced inside an exclusive gated community and addicted to shopping, tanning, and their own petty dramas: for example, should a smart-mouthed, disrespectful daughter get a new BMW or a new Mercedes for her sixteenth birthday? In subsequent seasons, reality has caught-up with the housewives, who have been forced to down-size and down-scale in the wake of job losses, foreclosures, marital problems, and other genuine crises in the lives of "real" housewives.

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Handsomely animated in the style of old-school newspaper comic serials, "Archer" TV series illustrates the life, times, adventures, and quandaries of super-sleuth Lew Archer, would-be international man of mystery. Critics aptly characterize Sterling Archer as "suave, vain, and overly confident," quickly adding that his exceptional expertise as a secret agent contrasts sharply with his bumbling ineptitude in every other area of his life. "Archer" TV show especially satirizes office intrigues and American corporate politics by extension, making global crises and dangerous espionage simply pre-texts for International Secret Intelligence Service agents to make one another look bad. "Archer" creator H. Jon Benjamin, who also does the voice of Sterling Archer, is not particularly kind to his stereotypically American hero: Archer's more-than-vaguely Oedipal relationship with his mother complicates all the plots; and, at work, Archer must team-up, awkwardly, with his former girlfriend Lana, who has moved-on to another relationship with an ISIS employee.

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