666 PARK AVENUE: Sunday 10PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert 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 full pilot reviews, but rather […]

  With far less fanfare than last night’s farewell to The Closer, tonight TNT rang down the season’s curtain on FRANKLIN & BASH, a show that can barely be bothered to remember that a season finale is different from any other episode.  This isn’t a series very interested in story arcs or even continuity; it […]

  WHITE COLLAR lost a little of its charm this season (or half-season, depending on how you characterize USA’s bifurcated order pattern).  The should-FBI-agent-Peter Burke (Tim DeKay)-trust-former-thief-Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer)-and-vice-versa dynamic became repetitious and circular, with each of them switching places by the week, and some of the romance dropped out of the show’s spirit.  […]

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  JUSTIFIED has the luxury of time.  The series typically tells one or two extended stories through the course of its season, so tonight’s Season 4 premiere, written by series creator Graham Yost and directed by Michael Dinner, mostly served to introduce the year’s plotlines and allow us to make the acquaintance of some new […]

  SUITS didn’t have a winter season this year so much as it had the stub of its fall season, just 6 episodes that seemed to be what was left over from the real season after an overlong holiday break.  That scheduling glitch may have contributed to the general feeling of letdown that accompanied the […]

  BONES brought out the big guns for its Season 8 finale–a long-awaited marriage proposal from Brennan (Emily Deschanel) to Booth (David Boreanaz), and the return of the show’s arch-villain, Christopher Pelant (Andrew Leeds).  Pelant is both a genius-level computer hacker and a serial killer who, the last time we saw him, had stolen Hodgins’ […]

  Think of MR. SELFRIDGE as the methadone to Downton Abbey‘s pure heroin.  It’s not remotely the real thing, but it serves to feed the craving through these many months until Downton returns in January 2014.  Although both are period pieces set in early 20th-century England, Downton has a distinctly, irresistibly modern pace and urgency, […]