For all its gigantic, game-changing success, THE WALKING DEAD seems fated always to be a dramatically uneven series.  Under new showrunner Scott M. Gimple (who, contrary to previous practice, will keep his job in the already-ordered Season 5), the first half of Season 4 got off to a strong start, with an emphasis on […]

  One never knows, but the rebranding of its network probably doesn’t bode well for RECOVERY ROAD.  The recently-renamed Freeform, which has over the last few months canceled Chasing Life and Switched At Birth, while renewing Stitchers and Shadowhunters, seems to be moving in the direction of heroine-led fantasy-adventures and procedurals, rather than the YA […]

  Something unexpected has been going on in the first half of the fourth season of AMC’s franchise spin-off FEAR THE WALKING DEAD.  Fear has always felt like a corporate calculation and a creative afterthought, unable to find a lasting identity as it roamed from being a Walking Dead prequel to being all too literally […]

  Not to beat up on Agents of SHIELD more than it already has been, but comparisons between it and ARROW are particularly clear right now since both shows are pursuing essentially the same storyline, in which there’s an evil plan underfoot to inject innocent people with a serum that will transform them into super-soldiers […]

  The signs are foreboding for AGENT CARTER:  not only have the Season 2 ratings gone from lukewarm to frigid, but star Hayley Atwell has signed for another ABC pilot (although since the same studio and network are involved, and Carter only produces a limited number of episodes each season, doing both isn’t impossible).  It […]

  It seems that for many viewers, ONCE UPON A TIME has become too conceptual for its own good.  The ratings, so robust just 2 seasons ago, have continued to sink (down another full ratings point this season), and while Once is still relatively successful by ABC standards, it’s no longer a substantial hit.  Nevertheless, […]

  THE ORIGINALS and its creator/showrunner Julie Plec have been fearless about plunging viewers of the New Orleans-set supernatural soap into a veritable bayou of mythology.  We’re half a season in, and already swamped by vampires, werewolves, vampire/werewolf hybrids, an impossible unborn hybrid baby, a teen super-witch, an assortment of garden-variety witches, and the occasional […]

  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 […]