COVERT AFFAIRS:  Tuesday 9PM on USA Last season was an important one for COVERT AFFAIRS, as it transitioned from being a light spy caper about appealing newbie CIA agent Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) to presenting Annie as a serious, more experienced operative.  While no one would confuse it with a LeCarre thriller, the show […]

  FRANKLIN & BASH made a few cosmetic changes for its third summer on TNT, but nothing to disrupt the show’s basic air of genial dishevelment.  The most high-profile move was bringing in Heather Locklear as new senior partner Rachel King in the show’s law firm of Infeld Daniels King, although once it had her, […]

  SUITS remains easily the smartest and most entertaining show on USA Network (not to mention one of its biggest hits), but its third season so far hasn’t been the equal of its second.  The series, which reached its “midseason” point tonight (actually 10 episodes out of 16, so closer to two-thirds of the way through) […]

  EASTBOUND & DOWN:  Sunday 10PM on HBO EASTBOUND & DOWN is an acquired taste that, to be honest, I’ve never quite acquired.  Not that the show hasn’t made me laugh, not that I fail to recognize the glory that unbridled Danny McBride can be and the show’s terrific supporting cast and guest stars–but a […]

  WELCOME TO THE FAMILY:  Thursday 8:30PM on NBC Previously… on WELCOME TO THE FAMILY:  What could possibly be funnier than the unplanned pregnancy of 18-year old recent high school graduates Molly (Ella Rae Peck) and Junior (Joey Haro)?  Well, what if she were a flighty Anglo and he a studious Latino?  And what if […]

  The crises on HART OF DIXIE, perhaps the most amiable hour on network television, tend to be fairly low-intensity, and tonight’s midseason finale–a Hanukkah episode, of all things, not something you often see on a show where the main characters aren’t Jewish–was no exception.  The major dramatic development of the hour came when the […]

  THE ASSETS:  Thursday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel It’s easy enough to see why ABC would like to be in the spy-TV business.  Homeland, whatever its flaws, is a major hit, and The Americans, while not as sizable, has been a critical success and buzz magnet.  The novels of John Le Carre […]

  Season 5 of WHITE COLLAR rebounded nicely from its more lachrymose previous season, which asked us to care far too much about the backstory issues of con man/forger/FBI consultant Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and his sidekick Mozzie (Willie Garson).  This year, the show was back to doing what it does best, providing breezy capers […]