SHERLOCK HOLMES:  GAME OF SHADOWS:  Watch It At Home – Far Too Elementary   We have to come to terms with the fact that an entire generation may recognize the name Sherlock Holmes not as the template for brilliant amateur crime-solving, but as a moderately intelligent action-comedy hero who dresses up in funny […]

    FRIENDS WITH KIDS:  Worth A Ticket – Sitcom, In A Good Way   We live in a pop culture where the recent Emmy Award nominees are so clearly superior to the films up for this past year’s Oscar that it’s not even worth arguing about. (Mad Men vs The Artist?  Game of Thrones […]

  FALLING SKIES – Sunday 9PM on TNT   WHERE WE WERE:  On our way into a spaceship.  The aliens have arrived, and contrary to what Executive Producer Steven Spielberg used to tell us, they’re not nice at all.  The ones in FALLING SKIES murdered most of the human race, and the only reason some […]

  MAJOR CRIMES:  Monday 9PM on TNT   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, […]

  PARENTHOOD:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC   WHERE WE WERE:  The wedding of Crosby (Dax Shepard) and Jasmine (Joy Bryant), an event long in coming, considering that they’ve been raising Jabbar (Tyree Brown) together and were initially engaged two seasons earlier.  The joyous event was made more joyous when Mark (Jason Ritter) asked Sarah (Lauren […]

  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 […]

  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” […]

  Cable’s USA Network has the reputation of being a place where procedurals basically repeat variations on the same episode over and over for years, until the series finally dies of old age.  That’s certainly the case with some of the network’s stalwarts like Psych and Burn Notice, but recently USA has shown a welcome […]