MOTIVE:  Thursday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel It’s a paradoxical truth that when TV’s “summer” begins, cable networks get adventurous and creative, and the US broadcast networks get generic.  (And Canadian.)  There may be some bright spots this season–certainly CBS’s Stephen King miniseries Under the Dome sounds like it could break the […]

  THE INTERNSHIP:  Watch It At Home – No Search Engine Necessary To Predict the Plot Vince Vaughn has been playing his motormouth-with-a-heart-of-gold character pretty much non-stop since Swingers in 1996.  That’s 17 years of minimal variations on the same basic schtick.  It’s not that he can’t do anything else–he was quite good in a […]

  No show enjoys running around in circles more than VEEP.  Armando Ianucci’s political sitcom glories in Vice-President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her staff of venal incompetents mistakenly navigating through 180, 360 and often 720 or more degrees of spin every week, usually managing to slam into whatever iceberg they’ve most been trying to […]

  COVERT AFFAIRS:  Tuesday 9PM on USA Last season was an important one for COVERT AFFAIRS, as it transitioned from being a light spy caper about appealing newbie CIA agent Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) to presenting Annie as a serious, more experienced operative.  While no one would confuse it with a LeCarre thriller, the show […]

  ENLISTED:  Friday 9:30PM on FOX  – Change the Channel Not all goofy, barely-functional family sitcoms are alike, and although FOX has paired the new ENLISTED with Raising Hope on its Friday schedule, the two aren’t much of a match.  Raising Hope is a very smart comedy about people who aren’t necessarily rocket scientists, while […]

  KILLER WOMEN:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC – Worth A Look KILLER WOMEN can’t keep up the pace of its Kill Bill-inflected opening, but it’s a fun ride nonetheless.  The premise, adapted from an Argentine format (one of the producers is Sofia Vergara) by US series developer Hannah Shakespeare, is straightforwardly procedural:  Molly Parker (Tricia […]

  It wasn’t a great final season for DEXTER, and tonight’s last episode muffed its chance at a fully satisfying conclusion by falling into the trap of one twist too many.  In a way, that was fitting for a series that always tried to play both sides against the middle, with a protagonist who was […]

  THE GOLDBERGS:  Tuesday 9PM on ABC Previously… on THE GOLDBERGS:  It’s the era of Muppet Show lunchboxes and acid-washed jeans, and the Goldberg family spends its time driving each other crazy:  grumpy dad Murray (Jeff Garlin), smothering mom Beverly (Windi McLendon-Covey), cool grandpa Pops (George Segal), teen son Barry (Troy Gentile), daughter Erica (Hayley […]