FALLING SKIES:  Sunday 10PM on TNT After a falsely cheerful minute or two, the Season 4 premiere of TNT’s sturdy post-apocalyptic alien war saga FALLING SKIES set to work establishing its lines of battle for this summer.  By the end of the opening sequence, the script, by new series showrunner David Eick, had jumped forward by […]

> Whit Stillman has one of the most distinctive voices in American film, and his 13-year absence from the screen barely shows in his new comedy DAMSELS IN DISTRESS; it feels as though, had it been made immediately after The Last Days of Disco in 1998, nothing about it would be the slightest bit different. […]

  MULANEY:  Sunday 9:30PM on FOX Previously… on MULANEY:  John Mulaney (the series creator playing a character with his own name) is a stand-up comic who supports himself by serving as a producer on a comedy game show hosted by egomaniacal, insecure old-timer Lou Cannon (Martin Short).  John’s roommates are college friend Jane (Nasim Pedrad) […]

> Watch It At Home. Were the executives at Warner Bros so desperate to be in business with Russell Brand that they huddled together in a conference room one day, frantically going through their library titles in search of alcoholic lead roles he could play?  (“Days of Wine and Roses… a little dark.  Clean and […]

  AMERICAN HORROR STORY – COVEN:  Wednesday 10PM on FX Caged and tortured slaves, mid-coitus spontaneous brain aneurisms and gang rape aside, the COVEN season of AMERICAN HORROR STORY was relatively restrained in its start, at least compared to other AHS seasons.  There appears to be one basic story being told, and all the mythology […]

  BREAKING BAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC This is actually the back half of Breaking Bad‘s last season (AMC separated the 16 episodes into two parts for scheduling and budgetary reasons–namely, that actors, writers and other Guild members are entitled to automatic bumps in pay if and when a “new season” begins).  That may help […]

  ALLEGIANCE:  Thursday 10PM on NBC Previously… on ALLEGIANCE:  Alex O’Connor (Gavin Stenhouse) has an Unforgettable-level memory–if also a semi-Asperbergian inability to handle social intercourse–that have made him the CIA’s most brilliant analyst.  One thing he hasn’t figured out, though, is that his mother Katya (Hope Davis), father Mark (Scott Cohen) and sister Natalie (Margarita […]

  THE NORMAL HEART:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – DVR Alert When Larry Kramer’s just-barely-semi-autobiographical THE NORMAL HEART was first written and performed in 1985, it was as “ripped from the headlines” as any episode of Law & Order, a furious, mournful expose about the AIDS crisis as it was happening just outside the theater […]