SMILF:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime – In the Queue SMILF is TV’s latest auteur dramedy, a semiautobiographical work from star/writer/producer/director Frankie Shaw.  (She was Elliot’s ill-fated neighbor on Mr. Robot.)  As the title suggests, the show is the story of young single mom Bridgette (Shaw), who has a friendly relationship with her son’s dad Rafi […]

  BILLIONS:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime The fourth season of a successful series can be an inflection point.  By the time Season 4 begins, the show’s makers know what works, but it’s still early enough that the talent isn’t beginning to itch for their next big things.  It’s easy enough to glide along the path […]

  WATCHMEN:  Sunday 9PM on HBO The Damon Lindelof/HBO WATCHMEN provides a new wrinkle to the world of IP exploitation.  It’s not an adaptation of the classic Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel (a la Zack Snyder’s all-too-reverent 2009 film) or even a reboot, but a newly conceived work that’s more like a spin-off or a […]

  Before the final 2 weeks of its run, the word no one would ever have dreamed of attaching to TRUE BLOOD was “subdued”; it was the guilty pleasure HBO series that was loaded with sex and violence and got great ratings, but without the class of, say, Game of Thrones, and with no serious […]

          GO ON:  TUESDAYS 9PM ON NBC   WHAT IT’S SAYING:  Chandler Bing… um, Matthew Perry is back!  Still sarcastically quipping to hide his deeper feelings after all these years.   WHAT IT’S REALLY SAYING:  Also back:  Dear John.  With a dash of a (less bizarre) Community, as the oddball grief […]

With the 2011-12 broadcast season now concluded, here’s a list of all our Season Finale reviews at The Sked: 2 BROKE GIRLS  30 ROCK 90210 AWAKE  BONES COMMUNITY More after the break–

> If you haven’t heard (and if you haven’t–and you care–consider this a SPOILER ALERT), the 13th episode of AMC’s series THE KILLING, its season finale, concluded on Sunday night without answering the question of just who killed Rosie Larsen.  Since this was what the series purportedly set out to do, it’s provoked the kind […]

> Another TV year is officially in the books, and the statuettes have been handed out to prove it.  Since the Emmys end at 8PM LA time for the convenience of East Coast eyes, by midnight the main parties are trailing off, and those winners lucky enough to still have jobs for the new season […]