The thing to remember, when charting the collapse of THE OFFICE, is that the producers weren’t taken by surprise.  Steve Carell made it clear early last season that he wouldn’t be returning, and the show had months to plan for his departure and The Office 2.0.  The abject failure that resulted is a remarkable […]

  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 […]

  History will record that on the same night the curtain rang down for Mad Men, THE ROYALS also concluded its season.  As utterly different as the two shows are, The Royals is one of the many cable scripted series that probably wouldn’t exist if Mad Men hadn’t proven how valuable a single drama can […]

  There was remarkably little rust on Shonda Rhimes’s GREY’S ANATOMY in its 14th season.  The series, now under the showrunning stewardship of longtime writer/producer Krista Vernoff (Rhimes herself is leaving ABC Studios for Netflix, but will continue to be in uber-charge), smoothly balanced its huge cast of regulars and recurring characters through 24 episodes […]

  Tina Fey’s 30 ROCK left the building very much the way it entered 7 years ago:  with a million gags (at least ten thousand of them meta), a bit of sentiment (usually followed instantly by undercutting silliness), and a gnawing taste for the hand that fed it. If there was any surprise in the […]

  It’s appropriate for GOSSIP GIRL, of all shows, that news about it be conveyed via online buzz.  That buzz says that the series’ upcoming 6th season will be shortened and final–and really, it’s time.  Past time, in fact.  The show has reached that point where its characters are simply being moved around like chess […]

      Where were Jack and Sawyer?  Embracing the idea of “go big or go home,” the 8th season finale of GREY’S ANATOMY opened like the pilot for Lost, in the aftermath of the horrible crash of a plane on which several of our main characters had flown.  Shonda Rhimes is not against shaking […]

  SUITS didn’t have a winter season this year so much as it had the stub of its fall season, just 6 episodes that seemed to be what was left over from the real season after an overlong holiday break.  That scheduling glitch may have contributed to the general feeling of letdown that accompanied the […]