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 […]

  JANE THE VIRGIN:  Monday 9PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… PLAYERS:  Ugly Betty, plus the whole notion of basing US TV shows on Spanish-language series (Red Band Society and The Mysteries of Laura are two more this season), and especially Executive Producer Ben Silverman, who’s was one of those behind Betty […]

  For fans of his remarkable Battlestar Galactica reboot, it’s still strange to see series creator Ronald D. Moore switch to Starz’s much more old-fashioned OUTLANDER.  (Some of the abruptness of that switch was accidental:  Moore was attached to other, more BSG-like shows in the interim, but they weren’t picked up to series.)  Nevertheless, on […]

  One of the ways that, even at a time overwhelmed with quality TV drama, Cinemax’s THE KNICK has proven itself extraordinary has been in its subversion of the accepted TV template.  Conventional wisdom has had it that the auteurs of television are its writer/producers, with the directors as skilled craftspeople devoted to realizing the […]

  “Wildly uneven” was probably the best that could have been hoped from a SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE hosted by non-actor, non-comic (but NBC synergy bait) Blake Shelton.  There were times when the need to come up with ideas for a star out of their comfort zone seemed to inspire the SNL writers, but also some […]

  “There are no good guys,” titular Chancellor of post-apocalyptic Earth Abby Griffin (Paige Turco) told her teenage daughter Clarke (Eliza Taylor), who had supplanted her as de facto warrior queen of humanity, toward the end of THE 100’s Season 2 finale tonight.  Abby was trying to comfort Clarke, who had just massacred men, women and children […]