Some smart shifts in emphasis have left HART OF DIXIE in fine shape as it reaches the midpoint of its second season, changes that were evident in tonight’s midseason finale, written by series creator Leila Gerstein and directed by Patrick Norris. Season 1 of Hart was essentially Gilmore Girls meets “Southern Exposure,” the travails […]

  It felt like 12:55AM for the entire last half-hour of tonight’s SNL, and that wasn’t a bad thing.  Every post-Update sketch had the kind of oddball conceptualism that’s usually reserved for the last minutes of the show, and while the sketches didn’t all work, they had more imagination and wit than just anything that […]

  For reasons sociologists can ponder, we happen to be at a great moment for spy stories.  Last year’s remake of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the superb Homeland (barring last week’s speed-bump episode) and the upcoming Zero Dark Thirty, the reconstruction of the fossilized bones of James Bond into the triumphant Skyfall–you can hardly take […]

  ABC’s NASHVILLE has reached the midpoint of its season as one of the better dramas on network television, and also one of the more frustrating.  Particularly galling is that it seems to falter worst at the things other, less interesting shows do with much less effort. Plotting, for example.  Within the show’s mostly parallel […]

  Having blown up the initial premise of their show in its Season 1 finale, ONCE UPON A TIME creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz have inventively plotted a Season 2 that came to a satisfying Act 1 culmination in the show’s Fall Finale episode, which they wrote and which was directed by Ralph Hemecker.  […]

  REVENGE, in its second season, demonstrates the perils of stretching a good thing too far.  (Also being stretched:  ABC’s concept of a “fall finale,” since unlike shows like Revolution and The Walking Dead that won’t be returning until February or March, Revenge will be back after the holidays.) Revenge started with a premise that […]

  The Season 3 finale of BOARDWALK EMPIRE, like the season itself, was an exercise in patience and a mix of satisfaction and anti-climax.   Written by series creator Terence Winter and Executive Producer Howard Korder, and directed by house director Tim Van Patten, the first half of the episode had antagonists Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) […]

  It’s odd to think that the biggest hit on American television is centered around the flesh-eating undead, but enough about Fox News…  THE WALKING DEAD is a genuine television phenomenon, in more ways than one.  To begin with, it’s a staggering success, a cable series that routinely has larger audiences (in the 18-49 demographic, […]