REVOLUTION:  Monday 10PM on NBC Of all the mysteries that surround the events of NBC’s REVOLUTION, the one that definitely won’t be answered this season is how the show would rate if it didn’t have The Voice as its lead-in.  NBC decided that it would be safer to keep Revolution off the air for 4 months than to air […]

REVOLUTION:  Monday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… REVOLUTION is Falling Skies without aliens, The Walking Dead without zombies, Jericho… well, actually it pretty much is Jericho.  We’ve all strolled down this post-apocalyptic road before (let’s not even try to count the number of movies set there), and based on its pilot, […]

  2 BROKE GIRLS:  Monday 9PM on CBS WHERE WE WERE:  At a Brooklyn diner, where Max (Kat Dennings) is a loudmouth waitress from the streets, and Caroline (Beth Behrs) is a former Manhattan socialite, down on her luck since her father was arrested for Madoff-like swindles; in the logic of TV comedy, naturally the […]

    THE FOLLOWING:  Midseason MONDAY 9PM on FOX WHAT IT’S SAYING:  Jack Bauer meets Hannibal Lecter.  Only this time, Lecter has a cult of imitator serial killers. WHAT IT’S REALLY SAYING:  Not for the kiddies.  It may look more like a movie than a continuing series, but it certainly gets its point across.  Kevin […]

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full TV pilot reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content […]

  MR. ROBOT – Wednesday 10PM on USA Previously… on MR. ROBOT:  Elliot (Rami Malek) is a master hacker with an assortment of antisocial and other disturbing quirks, including paranoia, depression, and perhaps schizophrenia, who self-medicates (taking both morphine and a withdrawal drug) and barely manages a friendship with Angela (Portia Doubleday).  He works for […]

  Even after a full season of RIVERDALE, it’s not entirely clear what the show is trying to accomplish.  The high-concept premise is clear enough:  take the fresh-faced characters from the Archie comics world, and set them loose in a dark, sexualized YA soap.  But beyond that, series creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (who’s also been involved […]

  THE GIFTED:  Monday 9PM on FOX – In the Queue FOX’s THE GIFTED exists in the X-Men region of Marvel’s mythology, which in corporate terms means that it (along with Fantastic Four) belongs to 20th Century Fox rather than Disney.  Fox has been more adventurous in its part of the superhero terrain than Disney, […]