Under showrunner Scott M. Gimple, this fifth season of THE WALKING DEAD became steadily better as drama than the series has ever been, drawing closer to deserving its phenomenal level of ratings as still (even after the arrival of Empire) TV’s biggest non-football success.  Gimple and his team have greatly improved the show’s eternal […]

  Dwayne Johnson is an ideal kind of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE host:  a big-time movie star with enthusiasm, panache, a sense of humor about himself, and a willingness to be utterly silly.  It’s no surprise that tonight was his 4th time as host, and while his presence wasn’t enough to rescue a typically uneven SNL, […]

  The network is preserving its contractual rights, but the signs are rife that tonight’s HART OF DIXIE was the last we’ll see of the series.  After being banished to Fridays, it was held for midseason, then left off CW’s extensive list of early renewals; star Rachel Bilson has made it clear that she wants […]

  IZOMBIE:  Tuesday 9PM on CW Previously… on IZOMBIE:  Liv Moore (Rose McIver) was a go-getting Seattle hospital resident when she suffered an untimely death at a party on a boat, her arm slashed by a mysterious figure.  That hasn’t gotten her down, though:  an unusually sentient zombie, she’s taken a job at a morgue, […]

ONE BIG HAPPY:  Tuesday 9:30PM on NBC Previously… on ONE BIG HAPPY:  Luke (Nick Zano) and lesbian best buddy Lizzy (Elisha Cuthbert) have followed through on their vow to try and have a baby together if neither is with anyone else by age 30.  But the timing is off:  Lizzy finds out she’s pregnant just […]

  There’s a reason why serialized dramas usually have some sort of “franchise” powering them:  a mystery to be solved, patients to be cured, a quest to be undertaken, etc.  Generating compelling stories on a weekly basis out of something like ordinary life can become awfully difficult, and a series can quickly turn mundane.  THE […]

  Not to be cynical, but no show on TV could have an easier time coming up with a season-ending cliffhanger than CHASING LIFE, a YA soap whose heroine is battling leukemia.  For most of the back half of the series’ first season, April’s (Italia Ricci) cancer had been in remission, which left the show […]

  In its 4th season, the geist of GIRLS no longer seemed to be hitting the zeit the way it used to.  Ratings were down, and so was the sense of buzz.  Some of that was simply the fact that shows of the moment don’t stay that way forever, and HBO didn’t help by giving […]