CAMP:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC Previously… on CAMP:  Camp Little Otter in upstate New York is an old-fashioned place where the kids learn crafts, the counselors try to get laid and the owner, Mack Greenfield (Rachel Griffiths), is trying to hold on while enduring a divorce from her dickish husband Steve (Jonathan LaPaglia), who […]

  JACK REACHER:  Watch It At Home – Next on TNT:  Tom Cruise If Tom Cruise’s career ever takes him to do a TV pilot, it would be a lot like JACK REACHER.  And not a classy, sophisticated pilot for AMC or HBO or Showtime or FX–no, this would be a standard basic cable procedural, or a […]

  BLACK BOX:  Thursday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel In ABC’s (partial) defense, BLACK BOX wasn’t intended to run during the regular broadcast season.  It was meant to be seen in summer, when standards are lower, but the network was caught flat-footed when Kerry Washington’s pregnancy caused Scandal to cut its season by […]

BURN NOTICE – Thursday 9PM on USA   WHERE WE WERE:  On the jailhouse steps.  Uber-evil Anson Fullerton (Jere Burns), the shrink who “burned” our hero Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) and destroyed his CIA career for years, had successfully framed Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), the love of Michael’s life, for a bombing that killed innocent people.  […]

  The idea of a changed format turned out to be something of a pretense:  until the last 10 minutes of the final episode, which jumped forward half a day, 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY could more accurately have been called 12.  But the need to fill only half as many hours was a tonic for […]

  MASTERS OF SEX:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime MASTERS OF SEX was one of television’s best surprises last season.  Despite a title and premise–the groundbreaking study of human sexuality by Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson–that seemed to promise a pay-cable softcore version of history, Michelle Ashford’s series was so bracingly smart and emotionally complicated […]

  The HBO miniseries version of Gillian Flynn’s novel SHARP OBJECTS proved to be a fascinating exercise in adaptation.  Although the TV credits reported the show to be “created by” showrunner Marti Noxon, it was clearly the result of a close collaboration between Noxon, Flynn (not just a producer on the project but one of […]

          GUYS WITH KIDS:  Wednesday 8:30PM on NBC   WHAT IT’S SAYING:  Everyone loves Judd Apatow movies, right?  Irreverent guys who hang out together and give each other crap?   Because this is totally Apatow-esque–with cute babies! WHAT IT’S REALLY SAYING:  The last show that tried to imitate Judd Apatow was Work […]