MAN WITH A PLAN:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS – Change the Channel As the traditions of television splinter around them, the broadcast networks have fled en masse to TV comfort food this fall–but for CBS, that’s no more than the status quo.  Aside from its Robert & Michelle King shows, the network hasn’t moved […]

  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 […]

  In fairness, I should note up front that I didn’t keep up with THE CARRIE DIARIES very often after its season premiere, so this won’t pretend to be an authoritative look at its second season.  Still, checking back in for its season (for now) finale, the mild growing-up tale I found wasn’t very different […]

  SEED:  Monday 9:30PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… Remember last year’s Vince Vaughn (purported) comedy Delivery Man?  CW’s summer sitcom SEED isn’t a rip-off of the movie, exactly, since it premiered in Canada before the Vaughn movie opened (although whether it’s a rip-off of Starbuck, the 2011 Canadian movie that preceded […]

VEEP has no particular interest in going anyplace, so its season finale tonight was more or less the same as any other episode.  This has made for a fun, but somewhat repetitive, ride over the show’s initial 8-episode season.  Every week Vice President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) fails to accomplish anything at all, usually drilling […]

  BACK IN THE GAME:  Wednesday 8:30PM on ABC Previously… on BACK IN THE GAME:  Newly divorced Terry Gannon, Jr (Maggie Lawson), with her son Danny (Griffin Gluck), has little choice but to move back home with her father Terry Sr, better known as “The Cannon” (James Caan).  The Cannon was a baseball player and […]

  The first season of AMC’s INTO THE BADLANDS felt entirely predigested.  It was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by way of Game of Thrones by way of every post-apocalyptic Chosen One fantasy you’ve ever seen.  The Matrix was in the mix, and so was Star Wars, and Mad Max, and The Wizard of Oz, and […]

  THE PLAYER:  Thursday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel How fond are you of grade-B basic cable action series?  Do you watch the anonymous movies your cable/satellite service piles on its pay-per-view schedule each week?  Do you remember Cannon Films, and are you nostalgic for its product?  Does it mean something to you […]