PARENTHOOD:  Thursday 10PM on NBC PARENTHOOD, like Parks & Recreation, is one of NBC’s little engines that could, chugging along to a fourth season despite mediocre ratings.  (And last night’s series-low-tying 1.6 in its Thursday night debut won’t help any.)  Whatever the network may consider its failings from a bottom-line point of view, creatively it […]

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full TV pilot reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots FAMILY ALBUM was one of the more buzzed-about FOX pilots of this past development season, and although it’s not on the network’s announced schedule, Deadline reports that it’s in contention for midseason and will even shoot a second prototype episode.  So this isn’t so much a postmortem as […]

  The material didn’t always keep up with the cast, but tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE was one of the more enjoyable recent episodes.  Host Jim Carrey obviously knows his way around uninhibited sketch comedy, and the advantage to his not being anywhere near the center of the comic zeitgeist lately was that his mannerisms aren’t […]

  THE KNICK:  Friday 10PM on Cinemax Previously… on THE KNICK:  New York’s Knickerbocker Hospital circa 1900 is a highly respectable institution, funded by wealthy benefactors and with a conscientious staff, but to modern eyes, it’s little more than a sewer, with “state of the art” operating procedures that seem savage and conditions that are […]

  BATTLE CREEK:  Sunday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel While not the worst show of the season, BATTLE CREEK may well be the most disappointing.  The light procedural combines the talents of two of TV’s premier writer/showrunners, Breaking Bad‘s Vince Gilligan and House‘s David Shore, with a cast that includes Josh Duhamel, Dean […]

  DALLAS:  Monday 9PM on TNT As TNT pushes its action-oriented “Boom” branding campaign (successfully with The Last Ship, not so much with Murder In the First nor apparently the new Legends), DALLAS seems more and more like a remnant not just of an earlier era of television, but of its own network’s past.  The […]

  Barring unusual financial or political considerations, David E. Kelley’s MONDAY MORNINGS–which has had wretched ratings since its debut–aired its final episode on TNT with tonight’s technically season finale, so we won’t spend a lot of time poking around the body.  Returning to the show after its first month of episodes, hardly anything seemed to […]