Season 1 of CW’s THE 100 worked better than logic suggested it should, considering that it was basically a thrift shop of plotlines and tropes from other, more ambitious fantasies, some aimed at teens (The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies), some not (Lost, Battlestar Galactica).  The post-apocalyptic survival stories moved briskly, sparked by […]

  MTV’s FAKING IT did a surprisingly deft job of sustaining its limited premise over 8 half-hour episodes–until, at least, the last 30 seconds of the season fell victim to a bad case of Season Finale-itis, reaching for one plot twist too many so that people would have something to talk about during the hiatus.  […]

  MURDER IN THE FIRST:  Monday 10PM on TNT – If Nothing Else Is On… Steven Bochco practically invented modern television with Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, so even though it’s been a while since his glory days were in full swing, attention must be paid when he takes another turn at bat.  His […]

  MAJOR CRIMES:  Monday 9PM on TNT MAJOR CRIMES returned for its third season tonight with a grim but unremarkable hour.  The episode, written by Co-Executive Producer Michael Alaimo and directed by David McWhirter, tipped off its hand very early for anyone raised on cop procedurals:  when the wife and mother of a missing family […]

  CHASING LIFE:  Tuesday 9PM on ABCFamily – Change the Channel ABCFamily is launching all its summer shows over the next week or two, so it appears to be luck rather than careful planning that’s resulted in its new CHASING LIFE, about a lovely young woman diagnosed with cancer, just a few days after the […]

  TURN seemed to have its finger on a fascinating footnote to American history, telling the story of colonial undercover spies during the Revolutionary War under the direction of George Washington, but it’s never succeeded in coming to life.  Craig Silverstein’s series offered oddly little spycraft in the course of its season, and the plotting […]

  HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  Sunday 10PM on AMC Previously… on HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  In 1983 Texas, the enigmatic, charismatic Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) comes to sleepy Cardiff Electric and manipulates the company into going to war with IBM, his former employer.  He recruits Cardiff engineer Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy), depressed by the drudgery […]

  One of the ways the emergence of Netflix as an important programming platform has changed the way we regard “television” is in its obliteration of the concept of a series “season” as something that takes place over an extended time.  When Netflix releases a full batch of episodes all at once, it’s more akin […]