> Let’s face it, “season finale” is a euphemism for what tonight’s episode of THE RIVER almost certainly was in reality:  the SS Minnow from Gilligan’s Island is more likely to make a return voyage than the Magus is of continuing to float down the Amazon.  So what went wrong with The River, a thriller […]

  DALLAS – Wednesday 9PM on TNT:  If Nothing Else Is On…   DALLAS is a gusher, all right.  TNT’s disinterment of the 1980s blockbuster soap is loaded with so many emptily portentous glares and melodramatic reaction shots that it might almost be a telenovela. In 1978, the year the original Dallas went on the […]

  Although it’s part of the CW/Greg Berlanti DC Comics assembly line, BLACK LIGHTNING, created by Salim Akil, has been strikingly different from its comrades.  So far, it hasn’t noticeably been part of the shared universe formed by Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow, aside from its invocation of “meta-humans” to describe those […]

  LAW & ORDER:  SVU:  Wednesday 9PM on NBC WHERE WE WERE:  A turf war between escort services run by Delia (Brooke Smith) and Ganzel (Peter Jacobson) turned murderous, leading to the death of a prostitute and the former Governor of NY.  Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Amaro (Danny Pino) were on the case, along […]

  The most tantalizing question of the Summer 2018 TV season is whether Jesse Armstrong, the creator of HBO’s slow-boil triumph SUCCESSION, knew what he was doing all along, or if the first 3-4 episodes were as uncertain as they seemed at the time.  In that beginning phase, Succession felt like Billions for The Gang […]

  TRUE BLOOD:  Sunday 9PM on HBO Although TRUE BLOOD shares with its HBO cousin Game of Thrones a predilection for high body count, sexual content and ratings, the two shows are very different.  Where Game is, in many ways, an exercise in elegant restraint, with climaxes carefully spaced out over years of storytelling, True […]

  How do you launch 90 minute of live television comedy less than 36 hours after one of the most awful crimes in American history?  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE tried to finesse the moment by starting its telecast tonight with a children’s choir singing “Silent Night,” but there was nevertheless some unavoidable awkwardness when the show […]

  Throughout its third season, reactions to GIRLS seemed to depend to a large extent on the particular vision of the series that viewers had.  Season 3 of Lena Dunham’s show was notably less conceptual and experimental than Season 2 had been, with its standalone episodes, abrupt shifts in tone and focus, sexual frankness unusual […]