The fifth season of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES was great fun as usual, although also a bit sloppier than the norm.  That could well be the result of series mastermind Julie Plec having to spread her time between Diaries, the new Originals, and whatever her duties were on The Tomorrow People, of which she was […]

  HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  Sunday 10PM on AMC Previously… on HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  In 1983 Texas, the enigmatic, charismatic Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) comes to sleepy Cardiff Electric and manipulates the company into going to war with IBM, his former employer.  He recruits Cardiff engineer Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy), depressed by the drudgery […]

  If nothing else, this first half of 2014 has been marked as The Year of Eva Green.  Green will probably never be a mainstream Hollywood star–there’s something too feral and broken about her for wide audiences to be comfortable in her presence–but in 300:  Rise Of An Empire and in Showtime’s PENNY DREADFUL, she’s […]

  SEED:  Monday 9PM on CW Previously… on SEED:  Years ago, bartender and serial dater Harry Dacosta (Adam Korson) donated his sperm to a clinic for cash.  Now, he discovers in short order that he’s the father of (at least) teen Anastasia (Abby Ross), and 9-year-old Billy (William Ainscough).  When they track him down, he […]

  SUITS is USA Network’s last remaining scripted hit, yet it finds itself in a bind:  with tonight’s midpoint of Season 4, it’s taken its original premise–Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) having been hired as a law firm associate by partner Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), even though Harvey knew that Mike had never attended law […]

  It’s a mystery how some network messes ever get on the air, but that wasn’t the case with CBS’s EXTANT.  On the contrary, its path was completely clear.  After the network had a surprise smash hit last summer with Under the Dome, one that came with hardly any risk because of a co-financing deal […]

  SELFIE:  Tuesday 8PM on ABC Previously… on SELFIE:  Any resemblance to characters created by George Bernard Shaw and musicalized by Lerner & Loewe couldn’t be more intentional, as exacting, exasperated pharmaceutical PR branding expert Henry Higgs (John Cho) undertakes to turn sales rep Eliza Dooley (Karen Gillan) into the modern equivalent of a well-bred […]

  INTERSTELLAR:  Worth A Ticket – Christopher Nolan’s Imperfect Odyssey Remember A.I.: Artificial Intelligence?  It was the deeply odd sci-fi/fairy tale quasi-collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, originated by Kubrick but rewritten and filmed by Spielberg (at Kubrick’s request) after Kubrick’s death.  Spielberg clearly meant it as a tribute to a great filmmaker and friend, but […]