Reviews

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Episodes”

Posted March 17, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  Showtime’s EPISODES has improved markedly from its first season, which mostly invited viewers to join British television writers Sean and Beverly Lincoln (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) as they turned their noses up at the woeful idiocy of American TV comedy and its practitioners.  (It was a subject series creators David Crane and Jeffrey […]

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Reviews

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Finale Review: “The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story”

Posted April 6, 2016 by Mitch Salem

  It’s easy enough to say that the phrase “stranger than fiction” would have had to be invented to describe the murder trial of OJ Simpson if it didn’t already exist, but still, the natural tendency of Hollywood is to gild the non-fictional lily, making melodrama out of drama.  When it was announced that THE […]

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Reviews

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Complications”

Posted August 14, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  You have to feel a little sorry for COMPLICATIONS, introduced by USA Network during the same summer that the network unveiled Mr. Robot, a game-changer that may be the most exciting new show of the year on any network.  Complications, by comparison, felt like the last act of a dying old programming regime–specifically, the […]

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Reviews

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “The Goodwin Games”

Posted May 21, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  THE GOODWIN GAMES:  Monday 8:30PM on FOX – If Nothing Else Is On… Note:  we reviewed the original pilot for this show back in August.  Since then, however, it underwent fairly significant recasting and reshooting, so it seemed fair to give the new version another look. The term “busted pilot” is fairly well known, […]

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Reviews

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Finding Carter”

Posted April 1, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  FINDING CARTER:  Tuesday 10PM on MTV FINDING CARTER was one of last year’s genuine surprises.  Showing up on MTV, of all places, it rose past its contrived premise–teen Carter (Kathryn Prescott) finds out that Lori (Milena Govich), the mother she’s grown up with, is actually the woman who kidnapped her as a child, and […]

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Reviews

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Treme”

Posted December 2, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  TREME:  Sunday 9PM on HBO You don’t need big ratings to be considered a success on HBO (just ask Lena Dunham), but generating buzz is essential.  That’s something TREME never did, despite a small hard core of enthusiastic fans that can sometimes drive that kind of attention.  Perhaps it was the downbeat setting of […]

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Reviews

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Cougar Town”

Posted January 8, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  COUGAR TOWN:  Tuesday 10PM on TBS To quote the eternal wisdom of the COUGAR TOWN opening title card, “Season Five?  Didn’t see that coming.”  The survival of Cougar Town isn’t quite as remarkable as Community‘s–it does, after all, star sitcom royalty Courteney Cox–but the show has had to reinvent itself twice to make it […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED’S FALL PILOT REPORT: ABC’s “666 Park Avenue”

Posted July 13, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  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 […]

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