The material didn’t always keep up with the cast, but tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE was one of the more enjoyable recent episodes.  Host Jim Carrey obviously knows his way around uninhibited sketch comedy, and the advantage to his not being anywhere near the center of the comic zeitgeist lately was that his mannerisms aren’t […]

  It’s difficult, even after a full and absorbing season, to know exactly what to make of THE AFFAIR.  The series hasn’t fit neatly into either of the genres it seemed to be invoking:  despite the title and occasional bits of premium cable-level sex (as in tonight’s season finale), physical passion isn’t its main subject […]

  BETTER CALL SAUL:  Monday 10PM on AMC Previously… on BETTER CALL SAUL:  In 2002, the man who will become Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) is still Jimmy McGill, a struggling New Mexico criminal attorney struggling to make ends meet and saddled with his brother Chuck (Michael McKean), a much more successful lawyer who’s unfortunately had […]

  GLEE went out with dignity–and given that this was Glee, that was far from a sure thing.  Over its 6 years (at least 2 more than wisdom would have allowed), Glee made so many disastrous turns into overblown silliness, meanness (sometimes outright cruelty), inconsistency, repetition and camp that more than anything else, tonight’s series finale […]

  Like many visitors to the Hamptons, REVENGE stayed too long at the party, and what had once been an amusingly twisted soap eventually became repetitious and silly.  The series would have been better served as an American Horror Story/True Detective type anthology that told its story and rebooted the next season.  As it was, […]

  MASTERS OF SEX:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Turning the lives of sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson into a continuing series was an audacious idea from the start, and Season 2 of MASTERS OF SEX proved a challenging one, less focused and compelling than the first season had been.  Tonight’s first episode of […]

  FEAR THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 6PM on AMC   Previously… on FEAR THE WALKING DEAD:  Something odd is happening in Los Angeles, years before and a continent away from Rick Grimes and his troupe of survivors.  People are dying and then coming back to life, hungry for more than sushi and protein shakes.  High […]

  SCREAM QUEENS:  Tuesday 9PM on FOX – Change the Channel SCREAM QUEENS could have been more accurately titled “Ryan Murphy Presents,” in the manner of the old Alfred Hitchcock show, because it’s essentially his own salute to his favorite tropes and styles.  As Bill Hader’s Stefon might say, it has everything:  Glee, American Horror […]