NECESSARY ROUGHNESS:  Wednesday 10PM on USA Sometimes even a moderately successful sports team will decide to shake things up and change the line-up (just ask the Clippers, Nets and Grizzlies at the moment), and that time seems to have come for NECESSARY ROUGHNESS, which ushered in its third season tonight with a virtual reboot. […]

  Lorne Michaels has never been happy when primetime overruns push the start time of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, and he must like it even less in the DVR era, when many people on the East Coast will miss the last 27 minutes of tonight’s episode forever.  But that’s the cost of airing college football on […]

  In contrast to last week’s Kristin Wiig-fest, tonight’s season finale of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE didn’t give victory laps to all the franchise characters Bill Hader and Fred Armisen have contributed to the show over their 8 and 11 seasons.  (And, praise God, it didn’t give them both a last “The Californians” sketch.)  Instead, each […]

> We’re not on the tabloid beat at SHOWBUZZDAILY, but when Lindsay Lohan put herself in front of the cameras tonight on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, she made herself fair game.  It would be heartwarming to be able to report that with tonight’s appearance, she’s finally taken the first real step of her professional rehabilitation, but […]

> ENLIGHTENED – Mondays 9:30PM on HBO – If Nothing Else Is On… As a writer, Mike White is drawn to stories of delusion.  Even though their tones (and commerciality) are widely divergent, his screenplays from Chuck & Buck to The School of Rock, The Good Girl to Nacho Libre share protagonists who are firmly […]

  BEAUTY & THE BEAST: Thursday 9PM starting 10/11 on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… Disclaimer: Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall. Pilots are often reedited and re-scored, and in some cases even recast or reshot. These critiques shouldn’t be taken as […]

  And so the curtain drops on the first season of SMASH, which may have set the all-time television speed record for going from shining beacon to punching bag.  Tonight’s season finale, written by now-deposed showrunner and series creator Theresa Rebeck and directed by Michael Morris, wasn’t the worst episode of the series, but it […]

  LONGMIRE:  Monday 10PM on A&E LONGMIRE may be the best CBS show not to air on CBS.  A cleanly-executed, straightforward procedural that skews old (3/4 of its viewers are over 50), it’s a show that knows what it wants to accomplish and doesn’t try to reach for more.  The Season 2 premiere, written by […]