SURVIVING JACK:  Thursday 9:30PM on FOX Previously… on SURVIVING JACK:  In the 1990s, Frankie Dunleavy (Connor Buckley) chafes under but also learns valuable life lessons from his disciplinarian father Jack (Christopher Meloni), who’s taking a larger role raising Frankie and his sister Rachel (Claudie Lee) while their mother Joanne (Rachael Harris) is resuming her […]

  Would ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND have fared better if scheduled as originally planned, in the role of Sunday 8PM filler between the two half-seasons of its parent Once Upon A Time, instead of being sent to fend for itself on Thursdays?  In the short term, probably so, as Once fans might well […]

  After five seasons, COUGAR TOWN has run through multiple networks (TBS, after ABC) and showrunners (Blake McCormick, following series creators Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel, and then Ric Swartzlander), and it’s achieved a level of comfort that’s increasingly indistinguishable from toothlessness.  That Florida cul de sac where Jules Cobb (Courteney Cox) and her BFFs […]

  It was probably unwise for TWISTED to end its first season with a cliffhanger, since it seems to be doomed–the ratings were low even when it had Pretty Little Liars as a lead-in, and once that show finished its season, they became downright awful.  As much as one hates to see people lose their […]

  Since this is posting before the West Coast airing ends, SPOILER ALERT. …although I’m not sure how much of a Spoiler it is when the Internet has been expecting it for weeks.  Perhaps the biggest surprise in the series finale of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER was that series creators Carter Bays and Craig […]

  FRIENDS WITH BETTER LIVES – Monday 8:30PM on CBS (Preview Tonight at 9PM) – If Nothing Else Is On… FRIENDS WITH BETTER LIVES is a CBS comedy of the post-2 Broke Girls era, which is to say that while a thoroughly conventional multi-camera sitcom in many ways (it’s even directed by the dean of […]

  MR. SELFRIDGE:  Sunday 9PM on PBS MR. SELFRIDGE, the solace for PBS viewers between editions of Downton Abbey, has returned for its second season.  It lacks the dramatic urgency of Downton and is altogether a more conventional piece of work–it’s literally a show that, set in 1914, climaxes its opening hour by having someone […]

  There were so many ads for summer blockbuster movies during tonight’s Season 4 finale of AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD, it was almost like watching the Super Bowl.  One by one, the latest installments of Planet of the Apes, X-Men, Spider-Man, Transformers–pictures not opening for months, sometimes two or even three in a single commercial […]