Reviews

THE SKED FALL FINALE REVIEW: “Grimm”

Posted November 17, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  GRIMM aired its 12th and last episode of 2012 tonight, although NBC isn’t being specific about just when in 2013 it’s due to return with its remaining 10 hours.  The series has been markedly better in its second season that it was in its first, largely because although most episodes still feature a creature […]

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Reviews

THE SKED SEASON PREMIERE REVIEW: “Californication”

Posted January 13, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  CALIFORNICATION:  Sunday 10:30PM on Showtime Even in the relatively free-and-easy world of paycable, there’s something about CALIFORNICATION that seems to get under people’s skin.  Perhaps it’s the casual tone of the show’s debauchery, or the way it implicates viewers in its hedonism with its tendency toward soft-core porn.  In any case, it’s probably the […]

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Reviews

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “House of Lies”

Posted April 8, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  Showtime’s HOUSE OF LIES was a bit more ambitious in its second season, and that was a good move, even if the results were uneven.  In its initial season, House was all too clearly a companion piece for Californication, a weekly half-hour of light, sexy satire around the consulting group campfire, with Don Cheadle’s […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “Maron”

Posted May 4, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  MARON:  Friday 10PM on IFC – If Nothing Else Is On… Everyone wants their Louie.  TV comedies built around fictional versions of real-life comics are nothing new–they go back to the days of Jack Benny and George Burns–and Larry David followed Seinfeld with his own notable success on Curb Your Enthusiasm.  But the near […]

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Reviews

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Grimm”

Posted May 22, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  The second season of NBC’s GRIMM was considerably more satisfying than its first, although it did show the strain of trying to establish a series mythology.  The season’s final episode (really, last week’s hour and this one formed a cohesive 2-hour finale), written by series co-creators David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf, and directed by […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “King & Maxwell”

Posted June 11, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  KING & MAXWELL:  Monday 10PM on TNT – Change the Channel Jon Tenney and Rebecca Romijn are an attractive, appealing pair of series leads, but they’re not enough to make the markedly sub-par new procedural KING & MAXWELL worth watching.  Even by TNT’s usually unadventurous summer standards, this is a show that never should […]

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Pilot + 1

THE SKED’S PILOT + 1 REVIEW: “Under the Dome”

Posted July 2, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  UNDER THE DOME:  Monday 10PM on CBS Previously… on UNDER THE DOME:  Well, there’s a giant freaking dome.  One peaceful Sunday afternoon, it suddenly came down over Chester’s Mill, Maine, enveloping the town and imprisoning all who dwell within as though inside an inverted fishbowl.  They include hero-with-secrets Dale Barbara nee “Barbie” (Mike Vogel), […]

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Reviews

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Falling Skies”

Posted August 5, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  FALLING SKIES told a somewhat different story this season under showrunner Remi Aubuchon than it had in its first two years, and the changes worked fairly well for the most part.  Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) and his plucky band of rebels against the evil alien Espheni, instead of roaming the east coast, were based […]

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