Even though death is part of the daily menu of our television and movies, dying–lingering, fatal illness–is much rarer.  We prefer our deaths to be mere starting points for police investigations, or the byproduct of our fascination with serial killers–puzzles rather than human beings.  Even on medical shows, patients who die rarely take up […]

  ROSEWOOD:  Wednesday 8PM on FOX – If Nothing Else Is On… If there’s one overriding theme running through the network television premieres this fall, it’s their almost defiant lack of ambition.  The Big 4 may be watching their audiences erode and their advertising revenues shrink, they may be besieged by literally hundreds of other […]

  THE ODD COUPLE:  Thursday 8:30PM on CBS Previously… on THE ODD COUPLE:  You know the drill.  Oscar Madison (Matthew Perry) is an emotionally superficial slob sportswriter, his old friend Felix Unger (Thomas Lennon) is a neurotic neat freak photographer, Oscar’s a longtime divorcee, Felix’s marriage is just breaking up, Oscar invites him to move […]

> For everyone journeying to the multiplex this long weekend, some reviews to click on: THE TREE OF LIFE:  An often stupendous achievement that courts ridicule–and sometimes earns it. THE HANGOVER PART II:  It wasn’t broke, they didn’t fix it. KUNG FU PANDA 2:  This franchise has been working out. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: A tasty […]

  B POSITIVE – Thursday 8:30PM on CBS These are tumultuous times.  (Hell, as this is being written, these are tumultuous hours.)  And that’s true in the world of broadcast television as well, which was already being hammered by new technology and viewing habits even before the pandemic hit.  And yet the model of the […]

  NASHVILLE:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC NASHVILLE was last season’s biggest underachiever.  In the ratings, it hovered at a meager 1.6-1.8 despite beatable competition, and it would have been a bubble show if its songs (which are dynamite) hadn’t become hits on iTunes–and if ABC weren’t in such general disarray elsewhere.  Creatively, Callie Khouri’s series […]

  NEXT CALLER:  TBD Midseason on NBC – Change the Channel If you were going to do a satire about network television in the vein of Episodes, one that required a show-within-the-show to illustrate how hackneyed and witless a TV sitcom could be, you might well make it about a burned-out, sexist–but secretly sensitive–radio shock […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots Not even the presence of Michael Chiklis and Elizabeth Perkins could make VINCE UNCENSORED endurable.   Deservedly consigned by CBS to its trash-bin, this isn’t one of those pilots you’ll be likely to hear about again.  The storyline of Vince Uncensored uses a contrivance to get to an […]