90210 has never been CW at its best.  The semi-network specializes almost exclusively in fantasies, either of the supernatural or soapy kind (or both), and some of its shows deliver those fantasies with wit and compelling storytelling–The Vampire Diaries and the early years of Gossip Girl, for example. 90210, though, has always a very […]

  BONNIE & CLYDE:  Concludes Monday 9PM on Lifetime/A&E/History It’s been 46 years since the classic movie, and besides, plenty of historical events and figures have been the subjects of multiple productions, so the idea of a new BONNIE & CLYDE was perfectly legitimate–until, that is, the present one turned out to be resoundingly phony in […]

> Last night ABC’s REVENGE became the first of the network serialized dramas to return from its long midseson hiatus.  Let’s see how the show managed its 2012 arrival. WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp), who’s really Amanda Clarks, continued her plot to bring down the super-rich Grayson family, headed by matriarch Victoria […]

  Stripped of its period trappings and the fact that its heroine is named Carrie Bradshaw, THE CARRIE DIARIES is the most basic and least interesting of CW’s YA romances.  The season finale, like countless season finales set in high school before it, revolved around the junior prom, even though none of the characters ever […]

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the 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) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  Sometimes shows overthink their season finales, and that may have been the case with tonight’s HART OF DIXIE.  The show has gotten along quite well all season in its native Bluebell, Alabama, but for the finale series creator Leila Gerstein and fellow Executive Producer Len Goldstein broke the characters up into unfamiliar pairings and […]

  Whatever one may say about WHITNEY and whether it’s a sitcom that deserves to reach a Season 3, it’s clear that NBC and its producers (including star Whitney Cummings herself) heard the complaints about the show’s original version.  Season 2 wasn’t officially a reboot, but it featured an assortment of changes in style and tone.  Both Whitney and […]

> Michael Scott is really gone.  Technically, that’s been true since a few episodes before the end of THE OFFICE‘s last season, but with tonight’s season premiere, Office 2.0, the most well-publicized reboot of the new season, began to tell us what it’s going to be.   Which is, for now at least, a somewhat jarring […]