THE PLAYER:  Thursday 10PM on NBC Previously… on THE PLAYER:  Alex Kane (Philip Winchester), former government agent, soldier and security consultant, was recruited by a shadowy, sociopathic, all-knowing organization based in Las Vegas that places bets on whether crimes can be stopped by a single well-equipped individual with advance notice.  (One of their bets, […]

  ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK may be the most tolerant show on television (or “television,” or whatever it is we’re calling distributed entertainment content in this new Netflixed world).  All the characters, even those who commit the most heinous acts–inmates and guards both–have their reasons and their frailties.  They’re miserably in love, or living […]

  Tonight’s footnote to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE history was that it featured the debut of new cast member Sasheer Zamata, who is, not incidentally, an African-American woman–“not incidentally” only because her hiring came after a rather embarrassing amount of pressure, both internal and external, was applied to force Lorne Michaels to acknowledge that SNL was […]

Even the acceptance speeches are classier on THE TONY AWARDS.  Tonight’s telecast featured a eloquent salute to “All those who say ‘Yes’” in the name of theatre from the lead producer of Best Play winner Clybourne Park, and a little later on, an anecdote from Best Musical winner Once‘s producer incorporating Harold Clurman and Constantin […]

  AGENTS OF SHIELD has been given one more final season after the sixth that concluded tonight, and that will bring to an end an extended footnote to Marvel’s cultural domination of our moment.  Agents was the project most caught up in the territorial strife between Marvel Television and the increasingly all-powerful Marvel Cinematic Universe, […]

  RAY DONOVAN had an odd, misshapen Season 5, bleak even by its own depressed standards.  It was perhaps best viewed as a long runway to Season 6, which will by necessity involve something of a reboot, since Showtime has announced that the series is relocating to New York.  The show thus far has been […]

> WRATH OF THE TITANS:  Watch It At Home – Put Back the Kraken The producers of WRATH OF THE TITANS swore that this time the 3D would be better than it was in 2010’s Clash of the Titans, and you know what… it is.  That’s not saying an enormous amount, since the 3D in […]

> BEING FLYNN:  Watch It At Home – Troubling Story That Doesn’t Go Deep Enough There’s a scene in Paul Weitz’s new film BEING FLYNN where Jonathan Flynn (Robert DeNiro), the alcoholic, narcissistic, pitiful, self-destructive father of Nick (Paul Dano), reads to his son from a publisher’s rejection letter.  Jonathan sees himself as one of […]