The midseason finale of the purported romantic thriller BEAUTY & THE BEAST delivered almost all romance, no thrills, as it continues to have only a glancing relationship with its title. Plotting has been this show’s weak spot from the start, so the fact that its procedural crime-solving story of the week was underdeveloped to […]

  There are a multitude of serialized dramas on television these days, but none has fully embraced the form in the way that GAME OF THRONES does.  The other serials nearly always hedge their bets:  there’s a storyline introduced and resolved within each hour, and an arc that’s concluded by the end of the season. Thrones, […]

  Although its production studio MRC is seeking a stay of execution from another network or streaming service, it currently appears as though Starz’s Season 2 finale of COUNTERPART will be the last we see of the show, which is both a shame and less than a shock.  In an era where much of TV […]

    The dirty little secret at the heart of 30 ROCK has always been that it doesn’t really have one–a heart, that is.  That doesn’t make the show any less brilliantly written or superbly performed, but it explains why despite all its massive acclaim and zillions of awards, in 6 years on the air […]

  Among other things, the midseason finale of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES gets credit for the season’s most subversive use of Christmas carols, playing cheerily under ancient vampire Klaus (Joseph Morgan) as he first slaughtered a dozen vampire-werewolf hybrids, and then cold-bloodedly drowned Mayor Lockwood (Susan Walters) as a blow against her son Tyler (Michael Trevino), […]

  Starz’s SURVIVOR’S REMORSE took some confident steps forward in its second season, even if that wasn’t reflected in the lackluster ratings.  Season 1 was mostly content with being a sports-driven Entourage clone (a position now occupied by HBO’s Ballers) about basketball star Cam Calloway (Jessie T. Usher) and his family basking in free agency […]

    HATFIELDS & MCCOYS, already a blockbuster hit, kept its best and most compelling hours for last.  Although the conclusion of the 6-hour tale, directed throughout by Kevin Reynolds and with this installment written by Ted Mann and Ronald Parker, has its share of tense confrontations and large-scale action, it dwells more on the […]

  It was a somewhat underpopulated 8th and final season for PSYCH.  Maggie Lawson, the show’s female lead Juliet O’Hara, was off shooting Back In the Game most of the time, and Kirsten Nelson’s Chief Vick of the Santa Barbara Police had been relieved of her duties at the end of Season 7, so both […]