BELIEVE was one of the more regrettable failures of the 2013-14 broadcast season.  That wasn’t because of its premise (super-powered girl is pursued by evil scientists who want to weaponize her gifts, ho hum), but due to the involvement of the great Alfonso Cuaron as series co-creator.  But Believe was in trouble from the […]

  POWER:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Previously… on POWER:  James “Ghost” St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick) is secretly one of New York’s most successful narcotics distributors, as well as the owner of the hot new nightclub ironically named “Truth.”  Ghost’s wife Tasha (Naturi Naughton) and partner Tommy (Joseph Sikora) want him to concentrate on his drug […]

  SPOILER ALERT:  This review will discuss events that occur throughout Season 2 of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK. The second season of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, like the first, ends with an act of violence–and this one is (seemingly) more fatal than the first–and yet the tone couldn’t be more different.  Season 1 […]

  SUITS:  Wednesday 9PM on USA Because of the way USA scheduled last season’s episodes of SUITS, it feels as though Season 3 barely ended (it was just 2 months ago), and now Season 4 is already here.  The events of the Season 3 finale required a moderate reboot, as Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) […]

  HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2:  Worth A Ticket – Bigger Isn’t Always Better, But Still Good Enough Like a lot of sequels animated and not, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 has been conceived on a much more spectacular scale than its predecessor, and as it’s become a bigger and more conventional action-adventure, […]

  GRACELAND:  Wednesday 10PM on USA GRACELAND is USA’s attempt to meld its jokey procedural sensibility (and that of series creator Jeff Eastin, who previously created White Collar for the network) to the kind of hipper, darker crime dramas that distinguish other cable networks.  The title refers to a seized drug dealer’s beachside house in […]

  Season 1 of CW’s THE 100 worked better than logic suggested it should, considering that it was basically a thrift shop of plotlines and tropes from other, more ambitious fantasies, some aimed at teens (The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies), some not (Lost, Battlestar Galactica).  The post-apocalyptic survival stories moved briskly, sparked by […]

  MTV’s FAKING IT did a surprisingly deft job of sustaining its limited premise over 8 half-hour episodes–until, at least, the last 30 seconds of the season fell victim to a bad case of Season Finale-itis, reaching for one plot twist too many so that people would have something to talk about during the hiatus.  […]