POLITICAL ANIMALS remained uncompelling to the very end, which is remarkable when you consider that its final episode threw in, among other things, the (apparent) death of the President of the United States.  The show had plenty of suds and political intrigue, and yet it never amounted to more than a pale imitation of other […]

  The first season of CW’s musical-comedy CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND was by far the most daring and distinctive show on broadcast television, but a nagging question remained:  what could it do for an encore?  It wasn’t clear how long the story could follow Rebecca Bunch (series co-creator Rachel Bloom) in her stalking of one-time summer camp […]

  In the post-Homeland era of Showtime, SHAMELESS, the network’s Parenthood on crack, has been pushed even farther to the background–and to be sure, the two shows aren’t comparable in terms of seriousness of purpose or blazing quality.  Nor does Shameless have the tabloid zing of Dexter‘s plots.  Nevertheless, apart from being a steady, reliable performer […]

  Calling a season of AMERICAN HORROR STORY “grounded” is like calling a batch of moonshine smooth:  it’s still going to make your eyes water on the way down.  But creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk set CULT in something that resembled our real world, certainly as compared to ultra-baroque previous installments like Freak Show […]

  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 […]

  MTV’s FINDING CARTER is another high-concept series challenged by its concept losing some of its height.  The original impetus for the story was teenager Carter (Kathryn Prescott) being rescued from a kidnapping at the hands of Lori (Milena Govich) that Carter didn’t even know had happened, because Lori had taken her at the age […]

  SUITS didn’t have a winter season this year so much as it had the stub of its fall season, just 6 episodes that seemed to be what was left over from the real season after an overlong holiday break.  That scheduling glitch may have contributed to the general feeling of letdown that accompanied the […]

  Was this the season that Cinemax’s comparatively low-rent BANSHEE surpassed Justified?  In the subgenre of cop show pulp, the FX series has been the unquestioned class entry, with its distinguished Elmore Leonard auspices and elegantly violent plotting and dialogue.  But with a few episodes to go this season, Justified has felt a bit desultory, […]