INTELLIGENCE:  Monday 10PM on CBS Previously… on INTELLIGENCE:  Gabriel Vaughn (Josh Holloway) is, thanks to scientist Shenandoah Cassidy (John Billingsley) and his nerdy son Nelson (P.J. Byrne), a government agent with a chip in his head that wires him directly into all of the world’s electronic signals, making him a human internet, cloud, e-mail […]

  In fairness, I should note up front that I didn’t keep up with THE CARRIE DIARIES very often after its season premiere, so this won’t pretend to be an authoritative look at its second season.  Still, checking back in for its season (for now) finale, the mild growing-up tale I found wasn’t very different […]

  GROWING UP FISHER:  Tuesday 9:30PM on NBC Previously… on GROWING UP FISHER:  When Henry Fisher (Eli Baker) is 12 years old, his parents Mel (J.K. Simmons) and Joyce (Jenna Elfman) decide to divorce, but with little effect on the family’s camaraderie, which has also barely been touched by the challenge of Mel’s blindness, a […]

  After five seasons, COUGAR TOWN has run through multiple networks (TBS, after ABC) and showrunners (Blake McCormick, following series creators Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel, and then Ric Swartzlander), and it’s achieved a level of comfort that’s increasingly indistinguishable from toothlessness.  That Florida cul de sac where Jules Cobb (Courteney Cox) and her BFFs […]

  Marvel may own the movie houses, but DC Comics has been demonstrating that it has the edge when it comes to the small screen.  ARROW has steadily improved since its debut, and in its second season it provided a model of the way comic book action-adventures can work on TV within the limitations of […]

  EDGE OF TOMORROW:  Watch It At Home – Needed To Hit Reset One More Time There’s a lot of inventiveness in EDGE OF TOMORROW, which combines the premise of Groundhog Day with a War of the Worlds-like plot–certainly more than the usual for a mega-budgeted Hollywood summer action movie.  That keeps it compelling for […]

  MANHATTAN:  Sunday 10PM on WGN America – Potential DVR Alert If Salem was WGN America’s Hemlock Grove, the new MANHATTAN is the network’s bid for a House of Cards, a serious, classy drama that takes on Big Issues and is meant to put its network into another, higher league.  Of course, since WGN doesn’t […]

  THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX Previously… on THE STRAIN:  A jet stops on the tarmac at JFK with–it appears–virtually all of its occupants mysteriously dead.  Missing from the cargo hold:  a huge, ornately carved box–sort of, um, like a coffin–filled with earth and with worms that squirm into human flesh.  CDC investigator Dr. […]