SAVE ME had a late start, but it managed to be the worst network show to premiere during the 2012-13 season.  Unspeakably self-righteous, smug and narcissistic–and also not remotely funny–it was a series about religion that could have been underwritten by atheists.  While the idea of having The Big C creator Darlene Hunt run […]

  CAMP:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… If drive-in theaters hadn’t been superseded by multiplexes, NBC’s new CAMP would be the TV equivalent of a drive-in movie, a throwback to B-movie 80’s comedies like Meatballs, Summer School and One Crazy Summer.  (It would prefer to be a throwback to better […]

  BREAKING BAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC This is actually the back half of Breaking Bad‘s last season (AMC separated the 16 episodes into two parts for scheduling and budgetary reasons–namely, that actors, writers and other Guild members are entitled to automatic bumps in pay if and when a “new season” begins).  That may help […]

  ROOKIE BLUE did a solid job of wrapping up its fourth season and setting up cliffhangers for Season 5 (already ordered) with last night’s episode.  Although the Grey’s Anatomy-with-guns police soap has never had the level of success as its medical forebear, it’s been a steady summer performer for ABC, and this season successfully saw it […]

  As the respect and stature given to TV drama has increased, so has the pressure to deliver a perfect ending.  Series finales are not only expected to satisfyingly end the major storylines and round out the lives of the show’s characters, but to sum up and clarify the themes and overall mission of the […]

  ARROW:  Wednesday 8PM on CW ARROW didn’t lose a step in its second-season return, with little sign of the season-premiere-itis often afflicting serialized shows that have to dig themselves out of the plot twists forced by the previous season’s finale.  The potential was there, since the episode began with Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) having renounced […]

  JA’MIE: PRIVATE SCHOOL GIRL:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – Change the Channel JA’MIE: PRIVATE SCHOOL GIRL belongs to that particular British Empire school of comedy in which the central joke is that a female character is played, very obviously, by a man in drag–not that the character is a man pretending to be a […]

  There was one last super-powerful conspiracy for NIKITA (Maggie Q) to bring down in tonight’s series finale, and a climactic showdown with arch-villainess Amanda (Melinda Clarke) to survive, as CW’s low-rated yet hard-to-kill action series finally came to an end after a truncated 4th mini-season. The final episode (fittingly entitled “Canceled”), written by Executive […]