After 6 seasons, PARKS & RECREATION is still the most reliably lovable show on network television–maybe on all of TV.  No other series wears its heart on its sleeve as genuinely as Parks, and no ensemble provides more joyful fun than its cast.  The Season 6 finale, written by Co-Executive Producer Alan Yang and […]

> GAME OF THRONES:  Sundays 9PM on HBO Bend the knee, everyone:  GAME OF THRONES is back. WHERE WE WERE:  Reeling from the decapitation of Eddard Stark, who until the loss of his head had seemed to be the stalwart hero of the entire saga.  It was sociopathic teenage King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), supposedly the […]

  Did anyone, anywhere, expect LIZ & DICK to be something other than junk?  Lifetime’s TV-movie, with its stunt casting of Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor, was calibrated to get train-wreck eyeballs (it might as well have come with a TMZ tie-in) and it certainly may succeed at that.  There’s some justice to this, since […]

> CW’s biggest only hit THE VAMPIRE DIARIES returned to the schedule. WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  The painstakingly-mounted plot to once and for all kill Original Vampire Klaus (Joseph Morgan) failed when Stefan (Paul Wesley), realizing that Klaus had rigged things so that if any harm came to him, Stefan’s brother Damon (Ian Somerholder) would […]

  MAJOR CRIMES:  Monday 9PM on TNT – If Nothing Else Is On…   As soon as plans for the Closer spin-off MAJOR CRIMES were announced, the central question was always how a series could work whose main protagonist was going to be Internal Affairs Capt. Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell), the least likable, most humorless […]

  You would have thought that if there was one SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE host who’d escape the cliche of a musical monologue, it would be Christoph Waltz, but you’d be wrong.  “Smile, Damn It, Smile” wasn’t even a funny song, an Austria gag without any teeth or edge.  (Although Taran Killian’s Casual Hitler was a […]

  Aided by a compatible WWE Smackdown lead-in and a red state-friendly storyline, SHOOTER has been a sturdy performer for USA, already renewed for a second summer season.  The series is low-ambition compared to USA’s Mr Robot or even Suits or Colony (or the awful Falling Water, for that matter), but series creator John Hlavin […]

  In the fall of its fifth season, THE WALKING DEAD has remained a ratings phenomenon like nothing else on television, and for much of this run of episodes, the always-uneven show deserved some of its wild success.  Showrunner Scott M. Gimple and overall Walking Dead honcho Robert Kirkman made unexpected pacing choices that kept […]