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 […]

  For anyone who doubts the challenges of sustaining a serialized narrative across 22 broadcast-network hours, there’s QUANTICO.  Joshua Safran’s series went from one of the brightest spots of ABC’s fall schedule to a show that may have been lucky to have an early Season 2 renewal in its pocket, unable to effectively navigate its […]

  RECKLESS:  Sunday 9PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… In the Charleston of CBS’s summer potboiler RECKLESS, it seems like just about everyone is sleeping with everyone else, or wants to.  That absurdly overheated quality is the most likable thing about what’s otherwise a fairly conventional legal procedural, which comes from a […]

> PARENTHOOD is sort of the Bizarro version of a broadcast network drama:  it shines when addressing the kind of tiny moments of human interaction that just about every other show on TV can’t be bothered to notice, but it sometimes falters when attempting the Big Event Episode that’s bread and butter for most series. […]

Although IN PLAIN SIGHT was never one of USA’s breakout hits or signature shows like Monk or Burn Notice, it gave the network 5 sturdy seasons, holding down slots on 3 different nights in the course of its run, and tonight it made a dignified exit from the network. The final episode, written by series […]

  BEAUTY & THE BEAST:  Thursday 9PM on CW The opening hour of the fourth and final season of CW’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST was practically meta, what with the characters seeming to spend half the episode complaining about the fact that just when they thought they were finished with it all, here they were […]

  TYRANT:  Wednesday 10PM on FX FX’s TYRANT has never been as incisive or daring as it could have been, given its incendiary setting in a fictional Middle Eastern nation on the brink of revolution, but it’s a survivor, back on the air for its third season.  After an unengaging initial run, the series remade […]

  THE CARMICHAEL SHOW:  Wednesday 9PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… THE CARMICHAEL SHOW is the latest sitcom to be aired by NBC with a stealth run that suggests one of the network’s programming executives looked at another recently and asked “Do you even remember why we ordered this thing?” and got […]