LOOPER:  Worth A Ticket – Maybe Too Enthralling For Its Own Good   Rian Johnson’s most salient trait as a filmmaker may be a tendency to get carried away.  His first film, Brick, was a high school film noir so shrouded in mock-tough guy dialogue and exhaustively detailed mood that it forgot to tell […]

  GREY’S ANATOMY:  Thursday 9PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  In a plane crash.  After a difficult year in which many of our characters had to pass their medical boards and then choose/be chosen by a hospital for a permanent position–Karev (Justin Chambers) to Johns Hopkins, Cristina (Sandra Oh) to the Mayo Clinic–a group of […]

  MADE IN JERSEY:  Friday 9PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS is the network of The Good Wife, but don’t get your hopes up for its new legal drama MADE IN JERSEY.  This one is a thin example of why the words “CBS Drama” typically get little respect, an undistinctive procedural with nothing […]

  SCANDAL:  Thursday 10PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  Washington DC, where Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is the best fixer around.  Not a lawyer (although she has a law degree), not a publicist (although she’s expert at manipulating the press), and not a lobbyist (although she’s been known to influence public policy), she’s the one […]

  When football teams have a late game on Sunday and then have to play in the next Thursday night game, they sometimes blame a loss on the short week and limited practice.  Lorne Michaels and the SNL writing staff may want to rehearse those kinds of excuses after an underwhelming Thursday installment of the […]

  MODERN FAMILY:  Wednesday 9PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  Gloria (Sofia Vergara) is pregnant.  That’s really all you need to know.  Well, that and Cam and Mitchell (Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson) failed in their attempt to adopt a second child.  But mostly, Gloria is pregnant. WHERE WE ARE:  The next day, which […]

  CSI:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS   WHERE WE WERE:  This time, as they say, it was personal.  In last season’s finale, imprisoned former Las Vegas Undersheriff and more recently mob boss Jeffrey McKeen (Conor O’Farrell) reacted badly to losing $2M in bribe money.  He had Undersheriff Conrad Ecklie (Marc Vann)–the father of CSI Brody […]

  ELEMENTARY: Thursday 10PM on CBS -Potential DVR Alert ELEMENTARY has been given CBS’ showcase Thursday 10PM timeslot in the fall.  Perhaps surprisingly, it may deserve to be there. The series concept is… well, let’s just say it’s not complicated.  (Nor is it entirely original, since the BBC got there first a couple of years […]