The ratings dipped badly for FRANKLIN & BASH in its 4th season, and if it stays on TNT’s air, it will likely be because the network has too many other problems (Dallas is already gone, Falling Skies is entering its final season, and neither Murder In the First nor Legends launched well) to cancel […]

  ABC’s AMERICAN CRIME is Serious and Important, but how good is it?  John Ridley’s series takes on the biggest topics–all of them, it seems–from race to class to sexual orientation to school violence and the loss of privacy in the internet age, and not even Oscar-bait films wear a mantle of unrelieved misery quite […]

  Although it’s part of the CW/Greg Berlanti DC Comics assembly line, BLACK LIGHTNING, created by Salim Akil, has been strikingly different from its comrades.  So far, it hasn’t noticeably been part of the shared universe formed by Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow, aside from its invocation of “meta-humans” to describe those […]

   THE VAMPIRE DIARIES brought its A-game to its 3rd season finale, wrapping up (or at least advancing) some storylines while providing massive fodder for Season 4.  It should be noted that Diaries thrives on plot twists and surprises, so SPOILERS WILL ABOUND after the page break.

> Warning:  Spoilers Ahead Here, in the end, is all you needed to know about TERRA NOVA:  in its entire 2-hour season–and very possibly series–finale, dinosaurs were sighted for a grand total of about 2 minutes. Remember the original promos for Terra Nova, the ones that played on FOX for months while the show kept […]

  With the exception of those shows that don’t know they’re about to be canceled, rarely has a long-running series come to less of a conclusion than tonight’s last episode of THE CLOSER.  And with good reason, of course–the episode was less an ending than a brief interruption, with the spin-off Major Crimes literally premiering […]

  SCANDAL has been having a barn-burner of a Season 2, emerging as a pulpier, crazier Homeland (not that Homeland hasn’t been pretty crazy the last couple of weeks), a DC-set melodrama where everybody is lying to someone.  It’s culminated for now in a midseason finale that kept the machinery of twists and schemes humming. […]

  The Ewing family had to figure out how to muddle through this season after the loss of its most illustrious and colorful member, and so did the TV show that created them all.  DALLAS survived the death of Larry Hagman, and the consequent passing of J.R. Ewing, with ratings that stayed fairly steady in […]