It was inevitable that with Andy Samberg returning to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE as host, tonight’s season finale would have the feel of an SNL class reunion.  The cameo guests were indeed plentiful:  Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers, Martin Short, and Maya Rudolph all showed up, and that’s not even to mention […]

  Season 1 of CW’s THE 100 worked better than logic suggested it should, considering that it was basically a thrift shop of plotlines and tropes from other, more ambitious fantasies, some aimed at teens (The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies), some not (Lost, Battlestar Galactica).  The post-apocalyptic survival stories moved briskly, sparked by […]

  TAMMY:  Not Even For Free – Melissa McCarthy Fumbles Her Industry Clout When a star earns hundreds of millions of dollars for Hollywood, it can show its appreciation by handing over the creative reins to the star (on a modest budget), allowing him or her to realize a “passion project.”  That’s where Melissa McCarthy […]

  HELL ON WHEELS:  Saturday 9PM on AMC HELL ON WHEELS has found a cozy spot for itself on Saturday nights, where the older audience available for TV-watching has given it comfortable total viewer numbers, if less impressive 18-49s.  (AMC will be running reruns of Turn after this season’s Hell episodes, which may suggest where […]

  UNDER THE DOME went rather bonkers in its second season, apparently flummoxed by the fact that it existed at all.  Dome had originally been conceived as a limited summer series that, like the Stephen King novel which inspired it, would have a beginning, middle and end.  But the show became a sensational hit, the […]

  A TO Z:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC Previously… on A TO Z:  Dating website marketer Andrew (Ben Feldman) and lawyer Zelda (Cristin Milioti) have had their meet-cute, they’ve discovered that the office windows in their adjacent buildings overlook one another, so they can signal each other during their work-days, and now they’ve embarked on […]

  Cameron Diaz has had an extremely busy year, already starring in the hit The Other Woman and the flop Sex Tape, and with a featured role in the rebooted Annie (as Miss Hannigan) still to come.  Her promotional duties on the latter brought her to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE tonight, where like most hosts she […]

  PARKS AND RECREATION:  Tuesday 8PM on NBC There will be plenty of time to lament the passing of PARKS AND RECREATION, and what it portends for network TV comedy and especially for NBC.  Well, “plenty” may be overstating it, since NBC is burning off the remaining episodes two at a time, apparently in a […]