There was a sequence late in the one and only season of VEGAS that suggested what the show could have been.  It wasn’t a big deal:  deputy sheriff Dixon Lamb (Taylor Handley) needed a favor from the entertainment director of one of the casinos (Enver Gjokaj), who’d only grant it if he got some […]

> PARENTHOOD is sort of the Bizarro version of a broadcast network drama:  it shines when addressing the kind of tiny moments of human interaction that just about every other show on TV can’t be bothered to notice, but it sometimes falters when attempting the Big Event Episode that’s bread and butter for most series. […]

  The people on SCANDAL just can’t talk fast enough.  There’s so much invective they need to get out of their mouths, so much self-justification and passionate, furious strategizing, so much spin, that the words don’t just flow, they flood–a tsunami of verbiage.  When a rare quiet scene arrives, two people so angry or done […]

  The thing to remember, when charting the collapse of THE OFFICE, is that the producers weren’t taken by surprise.  Steve Carell made it clear early last season that he wouldn’t be returning, and the show had months to plan for his departure and The Office 2.0.  The abject failure that resulted is a remarkable […]

  There were a lot of nips and tucks in the now-concluded 2d season of USA’s FAIRLY LEGAL.  The show overall had a less comedic feel, and the heroine, Kate Reed (Sarah Shahi), was turned into more of an adult, which is to say a conventional TV protagonist.  Kate is still a mediator who works […]

It isn’t the preference of networks and producers for obvious reasons, but for viewers, there can be something particularly thrilling about a series that finds its greatness after its first season.  Shows like Mad Men, The West Wing, Breaking Bad or for that matter Friends came out of the box fully-formed, and they’re all unquestionably […]

  As zombie shows go, Z NATION exists very far in the shadow of The Walking Dead in every way, from ratings to quality.  And yet Syfy’s good-humored rip-off can be seen as the show Walking Dead fans sometimes wish that blockbuster would be:  pulpier, faster and more singlemindedly splatterific, with little interest in existential […]

  Season 4 of  JUSTIFIED may or may not have been its best so far–Margo Martindale’s Mags Bennett still towers over Season 2–but it was unquestionably the most thrillingly novelistic, true to the show’s original source in the writing of Elmore Leonard.  The series, created and run by Graham Yost (who’s also been supervising The Americans […]