THE AMERICANS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful […]

  ARMY WIVES:  Sunday 9PM on Lifetime Lifetime’s venerable ARMY WIVES returned for its seventh season tonight, but really this will be the 2.0 version of the show.  Most of the original cast is gone this season or minimized to recurring (only Catherine Bell, of the original core group of spouses, is returning as a […]

  COUGAR TOWN survived its trip from ABC to the wilds of cable, as well as the day-to-day departure of series co-creator and original showrunner Bill Lawrence, with its charms mostly intact, even if the show is starting to feel a bit predictable around the edges.  While not a breakout performer for TBS (it didn’t […]

  It’s almost unheard-of for a franchise to need 5 installments to hit its stride, but that was the case with 2011’s Fast Five.  After kicking around with its first, moderately successful quartet in various locations and featuring shifting combinations of characters (aside from a seconds-long cameo, neither Vin Diesel nor Paul Walker even appeared […]

  MISTRESSES:  Monday 10PM on ABC Previously… on MISTRESSES:  A group of friends are all enmeshed, one way or another, in wayward sex, including Savannah (Alyssa Milano), a lawyer who compensated for the woes of having a husband with low sperm count by plunging into colleague Dominic (Jason George); her happily slutty sister Josslyn (Jes […]

  THE BUTLER:  Worth A Ticket – Superb Acting Elevates A History Lesson THE BUTLER, in its form and earnestness, recalls the days of prestige TV movies and miniseries that used to be associated with the Hallmark Hall of Fame and network sweeps periods (and which now exist only as a vestige on pay-cable, mostly […]

  Like his Oscar-winning A Separation, Asghar Farhadi’s THE PAST is concerned with the abyss of uncertainty and mystery that lies under seemingly straightforward actions, the ever-increasing complications that become evident whenever one scrutinizes the events and motives of everyday life. Although the setting this time is Paris, and the characters aren’t the same, in many ways, The […]

  NASHVILLE:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC NASHVILLE was last season’s biggest underachiever.  In the ratings, it hovered at a meager 1.6-1.8 despite beatable competition, and it would have been a bubble show if its songs (which are dynamite) hadn’t become hits on iTunes–and if ABC weren’t in such general disarray elsewhere.  Creatively, Callie Khouri’s series […]