Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here. MOM:  Monday 9:30PM on CBS starting Sept. 23 – Worth A Look The Chuck Lorre sitcom machine is a major reason that CBS is the most successful of the Big Four networks.  The Big Bang Theory is the biggest scripted hit on broadcast television, and while 2 […]

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime It’s a bit surprising that RAY DONOVAN has been a steady performer for Showtime, considering that its tone tends toward the glum and monotonous, but next to Homeland, it’s one of the network’s more consistent titles.  Despite that success, Showtime deposed series creator/showrunner Ann Biderman at the end […]

  The past two seasons of FALLING SKIES have been something of a wreck, all the way through to tonight’s flat finale, and with its ratings echoing the show’s title, it’s hard to regard the show’s departure with much beyond relief.  Under showrunner David Eick, Season 4 featured a spectacularly wrongheaded series of plotlines that […]

  THE PLAYER:  Thursday 10PM on NBC Previously… on THE PLAYER:  Alex Kane (Philip Winchester), former government agent, soldier and security consultant, was recruited by a shadowy, sociopathic, all-knowing organization based in Las Vegas that places bets on whether crimes can be stopped by a single well-equipped individual with advance notice.  (One of their bets, […]

  SECRETS & LIES – Sunday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel Everything about the return of ABC’s SECRETS & LIES feels a bit off.  Even the scheduling of the quasi-anthology series (different stories and characters, except for the connecting presence of Juliette Lewis as stern lead detective Andrea Cornell) is odd–the series took […]

  TRUST:  Sunday 10PM on FX – DVR Alert TRUST is distinguished initially by what it isn’t.  Despite its placement on FX and the fact that it’s a saga of real-life celebrity crime and scandal, it’s not a Ryan Murphy production.  And although it tells the story of the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty […]

  Anne Hathaway has been one of the most versatile of recent SNL hosts, and in her third stint tonight, the show used her heavily, featuring her in everything but the cold open, Update and a brief pre-taped commercial parody.  The material, alas, wasn’t often up to her level, and in what’s been a heavily […]

  The first season of BATES MOTEL pulled one of the season’s more interesting sleights of hand.  In theory a prequel to Psycho, more often than not it used the source material as pretext for a quite different kind of series.  (Unlike Hannibal, which for all its distinctive, archly disgusting visuals and doomy mood has […]