NANCY DREW:  Wednesday 9PM on CW Although NANCY DREW doesn’t hail from CW’s go-to producer Greg Berlanti (its showrunners are Gossip Girl‘s Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who created the show with Noga Landau), the series is clearly meant to follow in the path of Berlanti’s Riverdale as an “adult” (i.e., sexualized and violent) […]

  Even though nothing particularly thrilling happened on this seventh season of ARMY WIVES, it was a crucial season for Lifetime’s veteran drama.  The show completed the reboot it had begun in Season 6, and assuming an 8th stanza on the way–which seems fairly likely–the only original Army Wife from the show that debuted in […]

      No one expected DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES to end with the revelation that the housewives had been dead all along, and Wisteria Lane existed in a Sideways alternate dimension.  (Although that might’ve been interesting.)  The show, which exited tonight after 8 seasons, always knew its audience, and it left the scene with a satisfying […]

    There’s no half-hour on network television more consistently accomplished than MODERN FAMILY.  The show may not reach for the demented highs of a Community (at least, you know, the old Community), 30 Rock or Happy Endings–it traffics instead in a heightened but very relatable emotional reality, and does so, virtually every week, with […]

> This year’s WONDER WOMAN pilot did not fly under the radar.  Produced by Warner Bros Television for NBC, it was the subject of speculation before it was even placed with a network, scrutiny while it was being produced, and analysis after it had been rejected.  With the exception of Terra Nova and Smash, it […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots The word was that Stephen Gaghan’s pilot METRO was in serious consideration for NBC’s schedule until the very end (conventional wisdom has it that the final choice came down to Metro vs. Awake, and the latter made the cut).  That’s too bad:  the pilot is an impressive piece […]

> 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 […]

> Even diminished from the powerhouse it once was, GREY’S ANATOMY is the foundation of ABC’s drama schedule, and its return to the air after a nearly 2 month absence should lift the network’s Thursday considerably. WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  Things were grim when we last visited Seattle Grace.  Cristina (Sandra Oh) had, unknowingly, operated […]