ONCE UPON A TIME:  Sunday 8PM on ABC The Season 3 premiere of ONCE UPON A TIME didn’t step foot in Storybrooke, nor did it feature any flashbacks to pre-curse incarnations of the protagonists.  Whether this was a one-time event for the premiere or a new template for the series is unclear, but the […]

  IRONSIDE:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC Previously… on IRONSIDE:  NYPD Sergeant Robert Ironside (Blair Underwood), shot in the back and now in a wheelchair, has won the right to a hand-picked squad (Pablo Schreiber, Spencer Grammer, Neal Bledsoe) helping him to solve crimes, under the sometimes exasperated command of rule-bound Captain Rollins (Kenneth Choi).  Ironside […]

  The hits just kept coming on tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, which packed a whole fall’s worth of glitz into the show’s final 90 minutes of 2013.  Technically, Jimmy Fallon was the host and Justin Timberlake was musical guest, but as anyone would have expected, the two were essentially a team–and if they weren’t enough […]

  LOOKING:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – Worth A Look HBO’s LOOKING is distinctive for the obvious reason that it’s a dramedy about gay characters, of a completely different order than the network universe of a Sean Saves the World or Glee.  That doesn’t just mean it’s far more sexual than a broadcast network would […]

  GROWING UP FISHER:  Tuesday 9:30PM on NBC Previously… on GROWING UP FISHER:  When Henry Fisher (Eli Baker) is 12 years old, his parents Mel (J.K. Simmons) and Joyce (Jenna Elfman) decide to divorce, but with little effect on the family’s camaraderie, which has also barely been touched by the challenge of Mel’s blindness, a […]

  TURN:  Sunday 9PM on AMC – If Nothing Else is On… Unlike just about any other armed conflict in history, and for reasons that have never really been pinned down, the American Revolutionary War has rarely been a fertile source of drama either in the movies or on television.  Mel Gibson’s The Patriot was […]

  BLACK BOX:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Previously… on BLACK BOX:  Dr. Catherine Black (Kelly Reilly) is a brilliant neurologist who happens also to be hiding her bipolar condition from almost everyone in her life, even though her propensity to stop taking her meds can make her symptoms dangerously obvious.  These include a hypersexuality that […]

  It was inevitable that with Andy Samberg returning to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE as host, tonight’s season finale would have the feel of an SNL class reunion.  The cameo guests were indeed plentiful:  Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers, Martin Short, and Maya Rudolph all showed up, and that’s not even to mention […]