The first season of Showtime’s EPISODES was hobbled by its own agenda, but in its much better Season 2, the series relaxed into a very solid sitcom.  The show, written throughout by Must-See-TV veterans David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik (Klarik’s credits date back to Mad About You, and Crane was co-creator of an obscure […]

  There were so many ads for summer blockbuster movies during tonight’s Season 4 finale of AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD, it was almost like watching the Super Bowl.  One by one, the latest installments of Planet of the Apes, X-Men, Spider-Man, Transformers–pictures not opening for months, sometimes two or even three in a single commercial […]

  You can take a time-travel journey back to 20th-century network television with LAW & ORDER: SVU, the last remnant of Dick Wolf’s once-behemoth franchise.  Visiting the show for the first time since last fall reveals a few small surprises–Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) has acquired a boyfriend–but for the most part, SVU is very […]

  In its 6th season, NURSE JACKIE went all the way back to square one.  There were cosmetic differences, of course–Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) is now divorced, and increasingly alienated from her daughters Grace (Ruby Jerins) and Fiona (Mackenzie Aladjem).  But for the most part, the season was Jackie redux, as she cunningly (and sometimes […]

  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 […]

  The headlines have all been in PERSON OF INTEREST‘s favor this past season.  As stories of massive worldwide surveillance by the NSA and other agencies have continued to surface, what not so long ago looked like a CBS entry into sci-fi has taken on the feel of just slightly exaggerated reality.  The series itself […]

  ABC, which passed on DEVIOUS MAIDS and allowed it to be picked up by corporate sibling Lifetime, is probably lucky the cable network only programs the show during the summer off-season.  Maids, which of course is the brainchild of Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry, has been zeroing in on what was once the Housewives […]

  Starz’s DA VINCI’S DEMONS was unsatisfactory in just about every respect, all the way through to tonight’s Season 1 finale, a cluster of cliffhangers that resolved almost nothing.  Watching the end of Season 1, it was fairly clear that this had been envisioned and probably budgeted by Starz and its production partner the BBC […]