NEW GIRL:  Tuesday 9PM on FOX WHERE WE WERE:  In an apartment with four very strange inhabitants:  Jess (Zooey Deschanel) of the title, who does have her magic pixie dream girl moments but enough issues and grit of her own to make her more than a male fantasy; Winston (Lamorne Morris), a former (European) […]

  LINCOLN:  Worth A Ticket – The West Wing, Civil War Edition In today’s Hollywood, there aren’t many directors whose names are trademarks.  “A Martin Scorsese movie” doesn’t have the meaning that “an Alfred Hitchcock movie” used to have; David Fincher’s name doesn’t promise the same kind of specific entertainment that John Ford’s once did.  […]

  After 6 years and a 55-minute clip show retrospective, and bearing enough promos for The Carrie Diaries for that show to establish a network of its own, GOSSIP GIRL came to a breezy, mostly satisfying end by concentrating on its original basics:  Blair and Chuck (Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick), Serena and Dan (Blake […]

  The most paranormal thing about FRINGE, in the end, was that it actually survived 5 seasons on the air, as very possibly the lowest-rated series to be regularly renewed in the history of network television.  (Made possible by budget restrictions and Warner Bros Television’s willingness to accept sharply lowered license fees because of the […]

  The old truism that Park City empties out during the second half of the Sundance Film Festival, making it possible to see all the hot titles that premiered at the festival’s start, is far less true than it used to be.  It was impossible to get into the festival’s big buy, The Way, Way […]

  DEAD MAN DOWN:  Watch It At Home – Effectively Moody Tale of Revenge Until its final reel, when it arrives pretty much where you thought it was going to go from the very start, and in a way even dumber than you expected, DEAD MAN DOWN is a surprisingly rich B-movie in a movie […]

  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE usually benefits from having a host with the confident comic talent that Melissa McCarthy brings to the table, but even with a 3-week hiatus in its pocket, the writing staff came up with little that was up to her level.  The result was a very long 90 minutes. Almost everything that […]

  It’s a little churlish, in the face of tonight’s mostly splendid Season 4 finale of THE GOOD WIFE, to point out that for the most part, the rest of the season didn’t quite live up to its high level of quality.  We will, unavoidably, get to that.  But let’s start by talking about what a […]