LOUIE:  Thursday 10:30PM on FX We’ve learned over time that it’s impossible to take the measure of a season of LOUIE until we see what its auteur has in store for us.  Last year’s Season 4 was extraordinarily ambitious, with a feature-length episode that only barely featured its star tossed off in the midst […]

  In a way, tonight’s off-key Season 4 finale of HOMELAND was the hour its seriously odd season deserved.  As bipolar as its main character, Season 4 began with misguided attempts to recapture something of the early glory days of the series, mixing psychological insight with political and espionage-driven suspense.  Then it became a season […]

  Louis CK’s last visit to host SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE in 2012 was one of the show’s best recent episodes, and now that his signature Louie is resuming (finally!) on FX in May, he came back tonight for a return engagement.  Expectations were high, and there were definitely some inspired moments, although the night ended […]

  The peril of dotting a season finale with cliffhangers is that if the show is canceled, they’ll never be resolved.  That may very well be the dilemma for fans of NBC’s summer drama CROSSING LINES, which closed its season tonight with a 2-hour finale that was entirely open-ended.  One can never be sure with […]

  ROSEWOOD:  Wednesday 8PM on FOX Previously… on ROSEWOOD:  Although he appears to be bursting with good health, Dr. Beaumont Rosewood (Morris Chestnut) has enough congenital illnesses to fell the entire emergency room of Code Black, and they’ve affected him in two ways:  he has an easygoing desire to fully enjoy each day as if […]

  The fourth season of NBC’s THIS IS US wasn’t a standout, relatively speaking, which in a way made the expertise of its execution more clear.  Even when it’s in second gear, Dan Fogelman’s series is constructed and acted so well that it holds its grip on viewers quite well  (This Is Us looked particularly […]

  1600 PENN:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC 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 […]

  COUNTERPART:  Sunday 9PM on Starz, starting 1/21/18 – In the Queue Tales of alternative earths are an increasingly popular form of fiction these days, possibly because our actual Earth is currently so difficult to handle.  Just as The Man In the High Castle runs the subgenre through tropes of old-time war movies, Starz’s new […]