LAST MAN STANDING:  Friday 8PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  In the home and workplace of Mike Baxter (Tim Allen).  Not just a man’s man but a sitcom dad’s sitcom dad, Mike argues the cause of hunting, fishing, and all other middle-class-straight-white-male pursuits in the vlogs he does for his sporting goods company, where […]

  HELL ON WHEELS – Sunday 9PM on AMC WHERE WE WERE:  Building the transcontinental railroad.  Our antihero, former Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon, joined the Union Pacific Railroad’s march to the west only because he was tracking down the Union soldiers who murdered his wife during the Civil War, and (mistakenly, it seems) believed the […]

  Jimmy Kimmel’s set got a bit of an upgrade, but other than that there was little visible evidence that the 11:35PM version of JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE will be very different from its midnight incarnation.  Kimmel has never been Mr. High-Concept–he leaves that for Letterman and Conan–and as Jay Leno, still the winner in both […]

  If Ryan Murphy’s goal with the second season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY was to demonstrate the breadth of the show’s anthology branding, not just in subject matter but in style and structure–unlike the relative consistency of his American Horror Story, with its repertory company of writers and stars–well, mission accomplished.  Murphy handed the keys […]

  MAN SEEKING WOMAN:  Wednesday 10:30PM on FXX – If Nothing Else Is On… You know how on Family Guy a character will say “This is just like when________” or “You’re like________,” and there’s an instant cutaway to whatever the character was talking about, no matter how bizarre?  (An example from this past week:  Stewie […]

  The first half of The Walking Dead‘s 9th season included so many major changes that its ratings continuing their general downward trend rather than collapsing entirely may count as a sort of moral victory, even though the numbers are now at series lows.  New showrunner Angela Kang had 8 episodes to cover a whole […]

  THE LAST MAN ON EARTH:  Sunday 9:30PM on FOX – Potential DVR Alert THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is both excitingly original and disappointingly cliched, an odd mix that leaves its future prospects somewhat unsettled.  However it ends up, though, FOX and its creator/star Will Forte deserve credit for embarking on a show that’s […]

  RISE:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC – In the Queue RISE creator Jason Katims practically demands that viewers compare his new series with his classic Friday Night Lights.  The song that accompanies the opening scene sounds like it came off the Lights soundtrack, director Mike Cahill (an indie filmmaker whose best-known works are Another Earth […]