> Premieres Thursday 10PM on USA:  If Nothing Else Is On… (But it’s summer, so nothing is.) At this point, I think we could all identify a USA Network series blindfolded and with the soundtrack running backwards.  There’s the quirky, unconventional savant lead–available, like a comfortable sweater, in several colors:  cop/detective (In Plain Sight, Psych, […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots IDENTITY is so clearly a Jerry-Bruckheimer-for-CBS procedural that it comes as a shock to realize that it was neither produced by Bruckheimer nor developed for CBS.  In fact, Mark Gordon’s company produced the show for ABC Studios and the ABC network, which must have remembered at some point […]

> A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and 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 in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and […]

> Thursday night brought a mother lode of returning serialized dramas to broadcast TV, with both ABC and CW returning to duty.  Let’s start by looking at ABC’s 10PM PRIVATE PRACTICE, airing a fresh episode for the first time since a 2-hour special on November 17. WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  As usual, there was all […]

> Previously On… THE WALKING DEAD:  Our erstwhile humans spent many, many episodes on a farm owned by cranky vet Hershel (Scott Wilson), while they searched for the missing Sophia (Madison Lintz).  There were lots of lengthy conversations about the meaning of life in a zombie-infected universe, and whether it was worth going on–let alone […]

> The second-season finale of Showtime’s SHAMELESS was unusually low-key for the rambunctious series, the result of having to deal with the aftermath of last week’s Thanksgiving dinner, where bipolar mom Monica (Chloe Webb) very graphically attempted suicide, and of Karen (Laura Wiggins) giving birth to a baby who turned out to have Downs Syndrome.  […]

The title of MAD MEN‘s Season 5 finale was “The Phantom,” and as is almost always the case with Matthew Weiner’s opus, it had several meanings.  (Weiner shared credit for the finale’s script with Jonathan Igla, and directed the episode himself.)  Most specifically, the phantom was that of Adam Whitman, Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) brother, […]

  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 […]