In a season that was loaded with bad news for the broadcast networks, none may have been more distressing than the ratings trajectory of EMPIRE.  With all due respect to This Is Us, Empire was the last network show to provide reassurance that not just solid hits but actual blockbusters were still possible–at its […]

  Did we really need THE FLASH to go dark?  What had been the peppiest of CW’s DC/Berlanti-verse shows spent its 3rd season marked by existential angst, 22 episodes of Barry Allen’s (Grant Gustin) penance for having created “Flashpoint,” a parallel timeline where his mother and father survived.  Even after Barry reversed reality more or […]

  SUPERGIRL undertook a journey this season more unusual than its own heroine’s passage from Krypton to Earth, transferring from CBS to CW.  It suffered little if any damage in the process–other than in the ratings, since CBS’s universe of viewers is far larger than the one at its new home.  Budgets were reportedly slashed, […]

  SCANDAL is full of characters who take one step over the line of ethics and morality, sometimes for what they’ve convinced themselves are the best possible reasons, only to find themselves in a morass they can’t escape.  The same has come to be true of the series itself, which took its fatal step when […]

  DESIGNATED SURVIVOR has been running through showrunners like breath mints (a fourth is scheduled to join the show for Season 2, and reportedly every script makes its way through star/executive producer Kiefer Sutherland as well), so it’s not much of a surprise that the tone and even the genre of the show has wobbled […]

  The ratings for ABC’s AGENTS OF SHIELD have never been worse, and the show has been demoted for next season, reduced to serving as the Agent Carter for Marvel’s new Inhumans series and filling in during its post-fall hiatus.  The truth, though, is that these past two seasons were creatively probably the best SHIELD […]

  The fact that ABC’s QUANTICO has been renewed for a third season (albeit with a 13-episode order, a reduced network license fee and an as-yet-unchosen replacement showrunner) tells you everything you need to know about broadcast network television circa 2017.  Qnantico has recently been earning same-day 18-49 ratings at the 0.5 level, a number […]

  As everyone knows by now, although ONCE UPON A TIME has been renewed for a 7th season, tonight’s 2-hour “Final Battle” episode marked the end of the series as we’ve known it.  Only 3 members of the core cast are returning–Lara Parrilla’s Regina, Robert Carlyle’s Rumplestiltskin, and Colin O’Donoghue’s Hook–and as we learned in […]