Alan Sepinwall
Born (1973-10-19) October 19, 1973 (age 50)
United States
Alma materUniversity of Pennsylvania
Occupations
  • Television reviewer
  • writer
Years active1994–present
Employers
Height6 ft 3 in (191 cm)
Children2

Alan Sepinwall (born October 19, 1973) is an American television reviewer and writer. He spent 14 years as a columnist with The Star-Ledger in Newark until leaving the newspaper in 2010 to work for the entertainment news website HitFix. He then wrote for Uproxx, where he worked for two years. Since 2018, he has been the chief TV critic for Rolling Stone.[1]

Sepinwall began writing about television with reviews of NYPD Blue while attending the University of Pennsylvania, which led to his job at The Star-Ledger. In 2007, immediately after The Sopranos ended, series creator David Chase granted his sole interview to Sepinwall. In 2009, Sepinwall openly urged NBC to renew[2] the action-comedy series Chuck, and NBC Entertainment co-president Ben Silverman sarcastically credited Sepinwall for the show's revival.

Slate.com said Sepinwall "changed the nature of television criticism" and called him the "acknowledged king of the form" with regard to weekly episode recaps and reviews. Sepinwall and television critic Dan Fienberg hosted a podcast at HitFix called Firewall & Iceberg, in which they discussed and reviewed television until October 2015. During his time at Uproxx, Sepinwall hosted a podcast called TV Avalanche with fellow television critic Brian Grubb.

Early life

Sepinwall grew up in Pine Brook, New Jersey. His father, Jerry, was a psychopharmacologist,[3] and his mother, Harriet, is a former professor of social studies education at the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, New Jersey. Sepinwall attended Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell, New Jersey.[4] He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where he began writing television reviews during his sophomore year in 1993. Sepinwall was later critical of his writings from this period, describing it as full of "misspellings, bad grammar and, even worse, observations that make me cringe".[5]

Career

In the 1990s, Sepinwall was a particular fan of the ABC police drama NYPD Blue and wrote reviews of the show on Usenet newsgroups. Those reviews helped lead Sepinwall to begin a career in television journalism at The Star-Ledger in Newark; in 2004, Sepinwall said "without Blue, I wouldn't have the career or the life that I currently do".[5] However, after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Sepinwall wrote a long piece in Rolling Stone detailing his mixed feelings about NYPD Blue and cop shows in general, and concluding that shows in the police drama genre had to massively change in the new reality, or no longer be made at all.[6]

The Star-Ledger

Sepinwall began working as The Star-Ledger's television columnist in 1996.[7] He is a member of the Television Critics Association.[8] Slate.com writer Josh Levin described Sepinwall's week-to-week, post-episode reviews of The Sopranos as "a new form" that combined episode recaps with analyses of the show's subtexts and hidden meanings.[5] Sepinwall has said his writing style was partially inspired by newsgroup reviews of Star Trek television episodes written by Timothy W. Lynch, as well as the episode recaps and discussions generated on the website Television Without Pity.[9] Around 2005, in addition to his newspaper columns, Sepinwall began blogging for The Star-Ledger on the website "All TV".[4] Around that time, he also began maintaining his own private blog, "What's Alan Watching", in which he posted reviews and interacted directly with readers.[10]

HitFix and Uproxx

After 14 years with The Star-Ledger, Sepinwall left the newspaper in 2010 for a job at the entertainment journalism website HitFix, where he would review as many as 15 television shows each week.[5] On that site, he also did a podcast with television critic Dan Fienberg called Firewall & Iceberg.[11]

In 2010, Slate.com writer Josh Levin said Sepinwall "changed the nature of television criticism" and called him the "acknowledged king of the form" with regard to weekly episode recaps and reviews.[5] The A.V. Club writer Steve Heisler called Sepinwall "an inspiration to TV critics throughout the country".[12] Sepinwall made a cameo appearance as an extra in an October 2010 episode of the NBC comedy Community, a show which he has strongly praised.[5][13] He later wrote that, in hindsight, he regretted appearing on the show due to "the extreme blurring of the line [between reviewer and fan] it caused".[9]

In 2016, Sepinwall began writing for Uproxx. From 2017 to 2018, Sepinwall hosted a podcast called TV Avalanche with fellow Uproxx television critic Brian Grubb.

Rolling Stone

In May 2018, Sepinwall announced he was leaving Uproxx and was moving to Rolling Stone.[14]

As a stretch goal for charity fundraising during The George Lucas Talk Show, Sepinwall agreed to review The Star Wars Holiday Special, which he had never seen. The review, in which Sepinwall detailed what a complete disaster and bad idea the special was, was later published in Rolling Stone.[15]

Interviews

Sepinwall has interviewed such television figures as The Wire creator David Simon, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz, and Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan. He also wrote a book about the Fox teen drama series The O.C. called Stop Being a Hater and Learn to Love The O.C., which was published and released in 2004. In 2007, immediately after The Sopranos ended, series creator David Chase gave Sepinwall the sole interview he granted to any journalist at the end of the show.[8] In 2009, when NBC was contemplating canceling the action-comedy Chuck, of which Sepinwall was a strong proponent, he wrote an open letter to NBC executives urging them to renew the show and encouraging them to seek revenue by expanding existing product placement marketing deals. The show was ultimately renewed, and NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman partially credited Sepinwall for the show's revival, which reportedly helped increase Sepinwall's prestige.[5][12] Sepinwall has been a particularly strong advocate for such shows as Lost, The Shield, Breaking Bad, and The Wire.[8]

Personal life

Sepinwall lives in Scotch Plains, New Jersey,[16] with his wife, daughter[4] and son.

Published works

References

  1. ^ "Alan Sepinwall - Rolling Stone". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 2019-07-11. Retrieved 2019-07-13.
  2. ^ Sepinwall, Alan (20 April 2009). "Chuck: An open letter to NBC to save it". NJ.com. Archived from the original on 19 October 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
  3. ^ "Paid Notice: Deaths SEPINWALL, DR. JERRY". The New York Times. August 6, 1998. Archived from the original on March 30, 2014. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
  4. ^ a b c Kaplan, Ron (September 11, 2008). "They pay you for this?". New Jersey Jewish News. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Levin, Josh (February 14, 2011). "The TV Guide". Salon.com. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
  6. ^ Sepinwall, Alan (9 August 2020). "A History of Violence: Why I Loved Cop Shows, and Why They Must Change". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 18 May 2022. Retrieved 18 May 2022.
  7. ^ Sepinwall, Alan (December 21, 2009). "Best of the '00s in TV: Introduction". The Star-Ledger. Archived from the original on May 31, 2011. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
  8. ^ a b c Fienberg, Daniel (April 26, 2010). "HitFix welcomes Alan Sepinwall". HitFix. Archived from the original on December 2, 2016. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
  9. ^ a b Sepinwall, Alan (February 14, 2011). "In which I talk about Slate talking about me". HitFix. Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved June 25, 2018.
  10. ^ "The Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall Moves to HitFix.Com". Business Wire. April 26, 2010. Archived from the original on 8 July 2011. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
  11. ^ "Firewall & Iceberg Podcast". HitFix. 2011. Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved June 25, 2018.
  12. ^ a b Heisler, Steve (April 26, 2010). "Rightfully adored TV critic Alan Sepinwall leaves New Jersey's The Star-Ledger for HitFix.com". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on 23 June 2011. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
  13. ^ Sepinwall, Alan (October 7, 2010). "'Community' - 'The Psychology of Letting Go': You just broke my force field". HitFix. Archived from the original on June 26, 2018. Retrieved June 25, 2018.
  14. ^ Sepinwall, Alan (May 30, 2018). "Programming Note: Alan Sepinwall Is Moving On". Uproxx. Archived from the original on May 20, 2020. Retrieved June 3, 2018.
  15. ^ Sepinwall, Alan (December 30, 2020). "Revisiting the Horror Show That Was 1978's 'Star Wars Holiday Special'". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 2020-12-30. Retrieved May 18, 2022.
  16. ^ "The College Club welcomes Alan Sepinwall on Oct. 23" Archived 2022-12-26 at the Wayback Machine,Community Bulletin, September 17, 2017. Accessed December 25, 2022. "The College Club of Fanwood-Scotch Plains welcomes Scotch Plains resident Alan Sepinwall for the program at its Oct. 23 meeting. The title of his presentation is What's Alan Watching?."

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