CODE BLACK:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS’s new CODE BLACK is a mini-film festival of medical show cliches.  It’s set in a notoriously busy emergency room at a Los Angeles hospital, which frequently reaches the point where the patients needing immediate treatment swamp the resources available to treat them–designated “Code […]

  Will THE GOOD WIFE be remembered as the last great broadcast network drama?  It’s impossible to know for sure, but it seems like a good bet.  Other shows will make the attempt, of course:  ABC’s American Crime, which may or may not return for a 3rd season, has been filled with ambition, even if […]

  ELEMENTARY:  Thursday 10PM on CBS For those of us mildly obsessed with BBC’s superlative Sherlock, it may have been unwise for CBS’s ELEMENTARY (which all concerned agree is not, legally, a knock-off) to bring its updated Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, in its Season 2 premiere, to London.  Kept on their separate continents, Jonny […]

  The heart sank when 15 minutes into tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE–the part of the show that’s still supposed to be funny–the first post-monologue sketch was a labored, silly bit that went nowhere with host Daniel Craig as a construction worker unable to come up with coherent catcalls when women walked by, instead praising her […]

  The people on SCANDAL just can’t talk fast enough.  There’s so much invective they need to get out of their mouths, so much self-justification and passionate, furious strategizing, so much spin, that the words don’t just flow, they flood–a tsunami of verbiage.  When a rare quiet scene arrives, two people so angry or done […]

  STATE OF AFFAIRS ended its season tonight with a cliffhanger that will almost certainly remain unresolved, although one might speculate whether the mysterious airstrike that was heading toward Charleston Tucker (Katherine Heigl) in Afghanistan might have been sent not by Victor Gantry (Adam Arkin), the perfidious head of a paramilitary conglomerate or President Constance […]

  Even by the standards of current network TV, the ratings drop for SCANDAL has been steep and swift.  It’s down 50% from where it was 2 seasons ago, and down 30% this season.  It’s still one of ABC’s higher-rated hours, because it had been so huge at its peak, so its renewal was never […]

  The fact that ABC’s QUANTICO has been renewed for a third season (albeit with a 13-episode order, a reduced network license fee and an as-yet-unchosen replacement showrunner) tells you everything you need to know about broadcast network television circa 2017.  Qnantico has recently been earning same-day 18-49 ratings at the 0.5 level, a number […]