TV is a little poorer for the loss of TREME, a series that never fully received the appreciation–from viewers or critics–that it deserved.  Even a bit watered down from its usual density in a last season of only 5 hours (well, 5 1/3 with tonight’s supersized finale), it was a unique mix of New […]

  The curtain rang down on the 4th season of WHITE COLLAR tonight, an unusually labored one.  The show still has a fair amount of style and charm, but it’s starting to feel as shackled as Neal Caffrey’s ankle bracelet (and harder to slip out of). Partly the series is a victim of its own […]

  If there was a way to turn its premise into a TV series worth watching, TOUCH didn’t find it.  The show tried very different approaches in its two seasons, but FOX’s cancellation notice this week closed the door on any further tries. In its first season, Touch was built around the feel-good idea that […]

  Road trip!  It was a decidedly odd way for COPPER to exit the scene, even if last night’s episode was intended just as a season finale, not as an end to the entire series.  (BBCAmerica didn’t cancel the low-rated show until last week.)  But nevertheless, our hero Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones) and his pals, […]

  If HOMELAND hadn’t once been so good, it wouldn’t be so painful now to see what it’s become.  Season 5 was by no means terrible:  it was crisply produced, Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin remain enviable leads, and the plotting was no sillier than that of many other TV action-adventures, which could also have […]

  Has any great television series ever had the protracted, agonizing death of THE OFFICE?  We’re used to shows that stay on the air past their prime, and to those with disappointing or even disastrous finale episodes (the technical term for the latter is Episodus Lostus).  But watching The Office for the past two seasons […]

  DEFIANCE never really got much momentum going in its first season, and although there were quite a few major developments in tonight’s season finale, events clearly meant to be shattering and dramatic, it all felt rushed and a little desperate to set the stage for next year.  (Despite unexceptional ratings, the series has already […]

  The problem with having your main character “go dark” is that she actually has to get somewhere.  In the Season 4 finale of COVERT AFFAIRS, Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) finally seemed to cross a line by coldbloodedly shooting her season-plus nemesis Henry Wilcox (Gregory Itzin) to death in a Hong Kong alley, but like […]