JUDY (Roadside – September 27):  Oscar bait in its fullest form, a showbiz celebrity biography built around the work of a performer making a comeback, requiring said performer to alter appearance and render services beyond mere acting.  Judy the film has already become the story of Renee Zellweger the Best Actress candidate, a story […]

  WHITE COLLAR:  Thursday 9PM on USA Season 5 of WHITE COLLAR couldn’t be in more of a rush to get the hell away from its Season 4 cliffhanger.  When we left intrepid FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay), he was in prison for killing a US Senator, a crime actually committed by the father […]

  POWER:  Sunday 9PM on Starz Although Starz has embraced the classy Outlander as the face of its original programming, recently giving it a 2-season renewal, the network’s bread and butter is Courtney A. Kemp’s  hip-hop crime saga POWER, which is by far its highest-rated original.  This season, Starz is using the 3rd stanza of […]

  FULL FRONTAL WITH SAMANTHA BEE:  Monday 10:30PM on TBS – Potential DVR Alert It is written, apparently, that all alumni of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show who aren’t starring in movies or sitcoms must have their own comedy news series, and tonight it was the turn of Samantha Bee.  TBS’s marketing of the series […]

  THE MICHAEL J. FOX SHOW:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC (airing tonight at 9PM) – If Nothing Else Is On… Behind its feel-good star and tone, THE MICHAEL J. FOX SHOW is–even more than most TV shows–as much a business proposition as it is a piece of entertainment, so let’s start with that.  In a […]

  Which plotline really grabbed you in Season 4 of GLEE?  Was it Rachel’s (Lea Michele) one-episode pregnancy scare?  Her involvement (unwitting) with a male escort?  Was it the weeks of sullen silence between Mr. Schue (Matthew Morrison) and Finn (Cory Monteith) after Finn impulsively kissed Mr. Schue’s fiance Emma (Jayma Mays)?  Was it Blaine […]

  COUGAR TOWN:  Tuesday 10PM on TBS To quote the eternal wisdom of the COUGAR TOWN opening title card, “Season Five?  Didn’t see that coming.”  The survival of Cougar Town isn’t quite as remarkable as Community‘s–it does, after all, star sitcom royalty Courteney Cox–but the show has had to reinvent itself twice to make it […]

  Not every novel needs to be a 4-hour miniseries, and a good example is A&E’s new version of COMA.  Robin Cook’s novel was capably filmed in 1978 by Michael Crichton in a brisk 113 minutes, and extending the story by more than an hour (once commercials are removed) does nothing but protract a tale […]