Reviews

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “IZombie”

Posted April 12, 2016 by Mitch Salem

  Rob Thomas and Dianne Ruggiero-Wright’s CW series IZOMBIE is a show that would benefit from a season order shorter than the 19 hours it had to deliver this year–and with its less than stellar ratings, that might be exactly what it gets next season.  As it was, this season was overextended, with too many […]

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Midseason Finale

SHOWBUZZDAILY Midseason Finale Review: “Fear the Walking Dead”

Posted June 11, 2018 by Mitch Salem

  Something unexpected has been going on in the first half of the fourth season of AMC’s franchise spin-off FEAR THE WALKING DEAD.  Fear has always felt like a corporate calculation and a creative afterthought, unable to find a lasting identity as it roamed from being a Walking Dead prequel to being all too literally […]

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Reviews

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Hostages”

Posted January 7, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  The failures of HOSTAGES were many, and they separate into two dimensions.  One–the more important to CBS–was commercial; the show proved to be dead in the water from the night it premiered against the launch of The Blacklist.  Despite a summer of heavy promotion, NBC and James Spader wiped the floor with Hostages, and […]

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Articles

THE SKED PILOT REPORT: ABC’s “Once Upon A Time” – PREMIERING TONIGHT

Posted October 23, 2011 by Mitch Salem

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]

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Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Supergirl”

Posted October 26, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  SUPERGIRL:  Monday 8PM on CBS (premiere at 8:30PM tonight) – In the Queue SUPERGIRL is more thrilling as an experiment in network scheduling than as a TV show.  There’s nothing terribly wrong with the series itself, which comes from the Greg Berlanti factory of DC Comics adventures that’s already given us CW’s Arrow and The Flash, with […]

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Reviews

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Hell On Wheels”

Posted October 8, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  The 2nd season of HELL ON WHEELS was different, and perhaps somewhat better, than its first.  (Behind the scenes, experienced producer John Shiban was brought on to showrun with series creators Joe and Tony Gayton.)  If the show manages to come back for a 3rd season, it appears that incarnation will be yet another […]

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Reviews

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Westworld”

Posted June 25, 2018 by Mitch Salem

  For all that HBO’s WESTWORLD is deliberately obscure and oblique, one thing has become increasingly clear through the course of its second season:  series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy expect viewers to decide for themselves what aspects of the show are features and which are bugs.  Most obviously, Westworld has no interest in […]

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Reviews

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Finale Review: “The Astronaut Wives Club”

Posted August 21, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB never achieved much in the way of lift-off, and although ABC knew it was coming–there was a reason it was pushed to a summer run as the lead-in to Mistresses–the show’s flat quality must have initially taken the network by surprise.  On paper, the show seemed like it was exactly […]

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