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 […]

  DEXTER:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime WHERE WE WERE:  In a frozen instant of time, as Detective Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) watched her adopted brother Dexter (Michael C. Hall), a blood spatter expert on her own forensic investigative team, murder a man in cold blood. WHERE WE ARE:  That same moment.  And there was reason […]

  THE GOOD WIFE:  Sunday 9PM on CBS WHERE WE WERE: Waiting for Kalinda’s door to open.  She (Archie Panjabi) was calmly waiting inside with a gun, waiting for her former husband, a man who even Kalinda thinks is dangerous.  It was the end of a long, somewhat meandering season highlighted, so to speak, by […]

  ONCE UPON A TIME:  Sunday 8PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  Watching a season finale that looked like it could end the series, as Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison), AKA the daughter of Snow White/Mary Margaret Blanchard (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming/David Nolan (Josh Dallas), gave her seemingly dead biological son Henry (Jared Gilmore) a […]

  HOMELAND:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime WHERE WE WERE:  Wincing, as bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) underwent electroshock therapy, which we knew was going to make her forget the proof she had that former POW, current Congressional candidate and all-around American hero Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) was actually a deep-cover terrorist, working for […]

  FRINGE:  Friday 9PM on FOX WHERE WE WERE:  The present, or at least a version of it where our Earth exists in multiple parallel near-duplicate dimensions, and “Observers” from the future make sure everything stays on track.  Our FBI team of agents and scientists, headed by Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and troubled genius Walter […]

  The limits of critical adoration are demonstrated by LOUIE.  Despite possibly terabytes of raves and features about Louis C.K.’s show in every corner of the media all season, the ratings, especially since Anger Management finished its run, have been terrible, and last night’s season finale was watched by fewer than 450,000 people in its […]

  PERSON OF INTEREST:  Thursday 9PM on CBS WHERE WE WERE:  Watching Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), the secretive billionaire creator of the super-surveillance system that keeps tabs on all potential criminals and victims in the country, being kidnapped by the woman calling herself Caroline Turing (Amy Acker), who manipulated Finch’s system to make it appear […]