It was no easy feat for the second season of THE FOLLOWING be even more idiotic and vicious than its Season 1.  But devotion to craft pays off in the end, and series creator Kevin Williamson and his writer/producer partners managed to do it, with tonight’s season finale capping the accomplishment. Where to begin […]

  People take their GAME OF THRONES very seriously.  That’s not a new phenomenon, of course–the term “fanboy” was invented to describe audience members obsessed with their chosen (usually fantasy/sci-fi adventure) sagas, and that level of commitment predates the word and applies to all genders–but this season, the level of debate reached a new height.  […]

  FX probably shouldn’t hold its breath for THE AMERICANS to become a wider popular success than it is. The series, for all its excellence, was more grim in its 3rd season than ever–the sun barely even seemed to shine on its distressed, and distressing, characters.  There was intense drama, to be sure, and outbursts of shocking violence […]

  You have to feel a little sorry for COMPLICATIONS, introduced by USA Network during the same summer that the network unveiled Mr. Robot, a game-changer that may be the most exciting new show of the year on any network.  Complications, by comparison, felt like the last act of a dying old programming regime–specifically, the […]

  Do Westworld‘s creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have free will?  This third season of HBO’s was supposed to be fundamentally different from the first two, and certainly things changed in some key ways.  The action was set almost entirely in the “real world” and not the titular park, there were important new characters […]

  The past two seasons of FALLING SKIES have been something of a wreck, all the way through to tonight’s flat finale, and with its ratings echoing the show’s title, it’s hard to regard the show’s departure with much beyond relief.  Under showrunner David Eick, Season 4 featured a spectacularly wrongheaded series of plotlines that […]

  SCREAM QUEENS was 13 consecutive hours of shrill campiness, and it was only fans of shrill camp who turned out for it–and they were far lower in number than FOX and the Ryan Murphy brain-trust had hoped.  As the MTV reboot of Scream had previously demonstrated, slasher movies don’t lend themselves to being extended […]

  Hardly anyone has been watching KIDDING, which makes Showtime’s decision to renew the show for a second season a sign of their commitment either to indie movie sensibility or to being in business with Jim Carrey.  In either case, the renewal gives the series a year to decide whether to work past its seemingly […]