Although the ratings continued heading downward, there were heartening developments in the back half of THE WALKING DEAD‘s Season 9.  Under new showrunner Angela Kang, the show took some steps to jar itself loose from the rut it gotten itself into.  The departure of star Andrew Lincoln may have kick-started the need to explore […]

  Damon Lindelof is fascinated by the elements of storytelling, sometimes to the detriment of the story itself.  It was fitting that a motif of WATCHMEN, both in its Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons 1987 graphic novel version and in Lindelof’s HBO sequel/spin-off, was the construction of watches, because this new version could feel like a fantastically […]

  “Interactive TV” is a phrase that’s been used many times in many contexts over the years, and HBO’s WESTWORLD provided a new way to look at the concept.  The first season of Westworld was–more than Lost, more than Mr. Robot, even going back all the way to The Prisoner–an unprecedentedly elaborate series of puzzles.  […]

  There was no way BONES could top its season finale from last year, when the show finally addressed its eternal Will They Or Won’t They? about Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and FBI Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) by cleverly disclosing that they already had, and in fact that Brennan was pregnant with Booth’s […]

    Even as the scripted drama business on the broadcast networks subsides into increasing irrelevance, new players arise who want to take part.  Dramas may not be cost-effective in the way that they once were, but they’re still an unmatched vehicle for branding–just ask AMC–and Netflix, Amazon and Hulu are among the entities who […]

>The FOX pilot LOCKE & KEY is a very effective hour of creepiness, but it’s not that hard to understand why the network didn’t put the project on its schedule.  The show screams “cult hit” at best, and the pilot feels more like a shortened feature film than the viable prototype for a continuing weekly […]

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]

> 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 […]