GLEE: Friday 9PM on FOX Among the many wrongheaded decisions made by FOX over the last several years, one was giving GLEE a two-year renewal–just as the bottom was starting to fall out of its ratings. Last year, things went from bad to ghastly, not only in the ever-worsening ratings but creatively, as the […]
THE FAMILY: Sunday 9PM on ABC Previously… on THE FAMILY: Ten years after his disappearance and presumed death, a now-teen Adam Warren (Liam James) appears, freshly escaped from what he describes as a decade spent in a hole in the ground near a “dragon.” In the intervening years, his mother Claire (Joan Allen) has […]
JUSTIFIED: Tuesday 10PM on FX Final seasons, as we all know, can be tricky, but JUSTIFIED seems to be in strong shape as it enters its last lap. Justified lost a bit of its mojo last year, the victim of some inadequate villains and scattered plotting (the whole Mexican druglord subplot seemed to come […]
SUITS: Thursday 9PM on USA SUITS has returned from its lengthy fall/winter hiatus for the short 6-episode back “half” of its third season, and for a series usually in love with byzantine complications, reversals and twists, it was an unusually straightforward episode. The hour, written by Story Editor Erica Lipez and directed by Cherie […]
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 MESSENGERS: Friday 9PM on CW – Change the Channel CW wasn’t in any rush to get THE MESSENGERS on its air, holding it until the last month of the broadcast season, and then putting the show in the lowest-visibility slot on its schedule, the Friday 9PM hour. The series, created by Eoghan O’Donnell […]
12 MONKEYS: Friday 9PM on Syfy – If Nothing Else Is On… Last year, the writer/producer Noah Hawley miraculously inhabited Joel and Ethan Coen’s Fargo, creating something that was original and yet satisfyingly true to the vision of two of the most distinctive filmmakers around. Lightning doesn’t strike that way for Syfy’s 12 MONKEYS. The 1995 […]
With the addition of Rockne S. O’Bannon to the REVOLUTION writing/producing team as co-showrunner, alongside series creator Eric Kripke, the first half (actually 9/22nds) of its second season has been more tightly focused and dramatically effective than the mess of its first year. There were considerably less of Season 1’s annoying mannerisms: endless trudging […]