SMASH:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC The intermission that began last May is over, and what SMASH desperately wants you to know isn’t just a second season but a full-fledged Version 2.0 kicks off with the self-aware lyric “I know I’ve kept you waiting/I know I’ve made you mad.”  In an attempt to get the […]

  MONDAY MORNINGS:  Monday 10PM on TNT – If Nothing Else is On… About 15 years ago, David E. Kelley was David Chase, Aaron Sorkin and Ryan Murphy combined.  Legendary for his ability to personally write most of the scripts for his multiple shows himself (in long-hand on legal pads, no less), Kelley was the […]

  The historical significance of HOUSE OF CARDS in the evolution of television is by now well-established.  It’s the first original production created specifically for Netflix, and the company made its first bet a huge one:  26 one-hour episodes, 2 full seasons worth, ordered without even a pilot (at a reported cost of $100M), and […]

  Tina Fey’s 30 ROCK left the building very much the way it entered 7 years ago:  with a million gags (at least ten thousand of them meta), a bit of sentiment (usually followed instantly by undercutting silliness), and a gnawing taste for the hand that fed it. If there was any surprise in the […]

  THE AMERICANS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX – DVR Alert The renaissance of pop culture spies–good and bad, ours and theirs, real-life and fictional–continues with FX’s new series THE AMERICANS.  Joe Weisberg’s drama is set in 1981, at the start at the Reagan administration, when Cold War rhetoric ramped up for one last frightening gasp […]

  DO NO HARM: Thursday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… What is it with NBC and dual personalities?  Is the network trying to tell us something?  A couple of years ago it gave us My Own Worst Enemy, with Christian Slater as an ordinary family man who periodically transformed into a […]

  THE FOLLOWING:  Monday 9PM on FOX 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 […]

  DALLAS:  Monday 9PM on TNT The most important fact about this second season of the revamped DALLAS is, of course, the sad event that occurred off-screen:  the death of Larry Hagman, the legendary J.R. Ewing.  Hagman apparently worked right up to the end, and in fact despite evident frailty, he was quite prominent in […]