FALLING SKIES told a somewhat different story this season under showrunner Remi Aubuchon than it had in its first two years, and the changes worked fairly well for the most part.  Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) and his plucky band of rebels against the evil alien Espheni, instead of roaming the east coast, were based […]

  Whenever The Killing feels badly about how abused it gets for being a lame murder mystery dotted with time-wasting red herrings, it can look over at TWISTED to boost its morale.  With the help of the biggest lead-in ABCFamily has to offer in Pretty Little Liars, Twisted managed to keep its ratings decent enough […]

  GREY’S ANATOMY:  Thursday 9PM on ABC In the miracle season of 2004-05, ABC launched three smash hits:  Desperate Housewives, Lost and GREY’S ANATOMY.  Ten seasons later, the only one still around is Grey’s, and its blockbuster days are past, with ratings last spring around a 3.0 that didn’t always carry its timeslot, and with […]

  HELLO LADIES:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO Previously… on HELLO LADIES:  Stephen (Stephen Merchant) is a British web designer who lives in LA, where he has a very nice house and two friends:  woeful, newly-separated Wade (Nate Torrence) and paraplegic ladies’ man Kives (Kevin Weisman).  What Stephen doesn’t have is any luck with women, which […]

  Television is a little less berserk and interesting tonight with the departure (although not the death) of Kenny Powers (Danny McBride), the unstoppable id of EASTBOUND & DOWN.  The series finale, written by series co-creators McBride and Jody Hill (who also directed) and Consulting Producer John Carcieri,  cleverly managed to have its cake and […]

  In this new era of serialized television drama, plot–and the skill with which it’s doled out–is more important than ever.  An overall clumsiness with the handling of its storylines is what’s held back Lifetime’s WITCHES OF EAST END from being more than a pleasant diversion, and tonight’s season finale was sadly no exception.  The […]

  SUBURGATORY:  Wednesday 8:30PM on ABC For a comedy that seemed to have a strong sense of itself on its debut, SUBURGATORY suffered from a surprisingly rocky case of the Terrible Twos.  Creatively, the second season of Emily Kapnek’s series wobbled from its original tart satire of suburban mores to weakly serialized romances, dumbed-up silliness […]

  THOSE WHO KILL:  Monday 10PM on A&E – Worth A Look It has the accoutrements of a basic cable crime drama–the heroes are seriously screwed-up, and occasionally say “shit”–but THOSE WHO KILL is a surprisingly conventional procedural in its initial hour, especially given its adjacency on the A&E schedule to the more perverse and […]