THE NIGHT SHIFT:  Monday 10PM on NBC THE NIGHT SHIFT was a workmanlike performer for NBC last summer, but its promotion to The Voice‘s lead-out on the network’s midseason schedule says more about the empty shelves at NBC than about the show itself, which remains a (very) sub-Grey’s Anatomy mix of surgery and romance. The […]

  Tonight’s Season 2 finale of SLEEPY HOLLOW conspicuously concluded in a way that could also serve as a series finale, a distinct possibility because this underwhelming season has left the series with ratings down 40% from last year’s heyday (and less than half of its original hit premiere).  The finale turned out to be […]

  There were no surprises of any scale at tonight’s ACADEMY AWARDS (a full list of winners is here) , and that went for the telecast, too.  Neil Patrick Harris was as personable a host as anticipated, and he/his writers were sometimes quick on their feet, as when he had a gag ready about a Documentary […]

  THE ODD COUPLE:  Thursday 8:30PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… As Chandler Bing might say:  Could there be a more CBS show than a reboot of a 45-year old multicamera sit-com, with a star 10 years from his last hit?  If the network’s new version of THE ODD COUPLE works, maybe […]

  THE SLAP:  Thursday 8PM on NBC Previously… on THE SLAP:  A group of friends and relatives gathered for the 40th birthday party of mid-level NY public official Hector (Peter Sarsgaard), and tensions ran high, between Hector (who’s in the midst of a mid-life crisis) and his wife Aisha (Thandie Newton), between Aisha and Hector’s mother […]

  STATE OF AFFAIRS ended its season tonight with a cliffhanger that will almost certainly remain unresolved, although one might speculate whether the mysterious airstrike that was heading toward Charleston Tucker (Katherine Heigl) in Afghanistan might have been sent not by Victor Gantry (Adam Arkin), the perfidious head of a paramilitary conglomerate or President Constance […]

  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 SLAP:  Thursday 8PM on NBC – Potential DVR Alert THE SLAP is strikingly different from everything else on broadcast television–it’s unusual even by cable standards, with an indie film, non-genre mindset that brings little to mind beyond Showtime’s The Affair and HBO’s Togetherness (and even The Affair has its flash-forward murder plot to help […]