GROWING UP FISHER:  Tuesday 9:30PM on NBC Previously… on GROWING UP FISHER:  When Henry Fisher (Eli Baker) is 12 years old, his parents Mel (J.K. Simmons) and Joyce (Jenna Elfman) decide to divorce, but with little effect on the family’s camaraderie, which has also barely been touched by the challenge of Mel’s blindness, a […]

  TURN:  Sunday 9PM on AMC – If Nothing Else is On… Unlike just about any other armed conflict in history, and for reasons that have never really been pinned down, the American Revolutionary War has rarely been a fertile source of drama either in the movies or on television.  Mel Gibson’s The Patriot was […]

  BLACK BOX:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Previously… on BLACK BOX:  Dr. Catherine Black (Kelly Reilly) is a brilliant neurologist who happens also to be hiding her bipolar condition from almost everyone in her life, even though her propensity to stop taking her meds can make her symptoms dangerously obvious.  These include a hypersexuality that […]

  It was inevitable that with Andy Samberg returning to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE as host, tonight’s season finale would have the feel of an SNL class reunion.  The cameo guests were indeed plentiful:  Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers, Martin Short, and Maya Rudolph all showed up, and that’s not even to mention […]

  BELIEVE was one of the more regrettable failures of the 2013-14 broadcast season.  That wasn’t because of its premise (super-powered girl is pursued by evil scientists who want to weaponize her gifts, ho hum), but due to the involvement of the great Alfonso Cuaron as series co-creator.  But Believe was in trouble from the […]

  THE BRIDGE:  Wednesday 10PM on FX THE BRIDGE was simultaneously one of the best and most frustrating series of last season.  Loaded with atmosphere, superbly acted by an expansive cast headed by Demian Bichir and Diane Kruger, and with plenty of fascinating quirks in its characters and dialogue, it was also a structural and […]

  THE KNICK:  Friday 10PM on Cinemax – DVR Alert It’s yet another measure of where television is these days in relation to movies that Steven Soderbergh, the main figure behind Cinemax’s new historical medical drama THE KNICK, found his ambitions too big for the big screen.  Soderbergh is now “retired,” which has turned out […]

  It’s already been announced that next season will be the fifth and final one for TNT’s FALLING SKIES, and that seems best for all concerned.  The series, under new showrunner David Eick (probably best known as a producer, although not creator, of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica), took a wrong turn both creatively and in […]