AMERICAN HORROR STORY – ASYLUM:  Wednesday 10PM on FX WHERE WE WERE:  Doesn’t matter.  It wasn’t clear until late in Season 1, but the gimmick of AMERICAN HORROR STORY is that each season will offer a completely new setting, storyline, and group of (mostly doomed) characters, although some of the actors return in new […]

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  SUBURGATORY:  Wednesday 9:30PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  Meeting Grandma.  In the season finale, having survived her first year in the titular Chatswin, Tessa (Jane Levy) met her long-absent mother’s mom–on Mother’s Day, no less.  Also, Tessa’s best friend Lisa (Allie Grant), who had spent most of the season thinking (hoping) that she’d been […]

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  MAJOR CRIMES has been doing for TNT what it was created to do–that is, fill the hole left by the departure of the network’s long-running hit The Closer–and it’s earned the Season 2 renewal it’s already received.  Putting aside a bump for last night’s season finale, it’s been getting around a 0.7 rating in […]

  EMILY OWENS, MD: Tuesday 9PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… Say this for EMILY OWENS, MD:  it really makes you appreciate Shonda Rhimes.  The seeming ease with which Grey’s Anatomy mixes medical drama, soap opera, humor, sex and romance every week is tempting to take for granted, but really it’s a […]

  There were a few moments in this week’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE where you could actually have mistaken it for a place that offers trenchant political satire.  That’s hasn’t been SNL‘s mode since Tina Fey hung up her Sarah Palin glasses–the political bits have instead tended to the silly and bland.  But the “Tech Talk” […]