Losing both David Letterman and Jon Stewart in a single TV year is more than a viewing public should have to endure, but tonight it was Stewart’s turn to walk through the exit door of THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART after 16 years on the air, a run that changed the very concept […]

  Very little about STITCHERS has made sense, and that includes ABCFamily’s decision to renew it for another season, despite ratings that have been lousy even with Pretty Little Liars as its lead-in.  The word is that the network desperately wants to be in the procedural business, and Stitchers is the only show it’s got […]

  HALT AND CATCH FIRE is in part a show about the cold realities of business, and business logic suggests that a third season for the series is unlikely.  The ratings, cool in Season 1, were icy this year; the show neither occupied the zeitgeist nor found any love from Emmy voters; AMC’s recent renewal […]

  If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past few seasons, it’s that no matter how much a network swears it’s airing a “closed-end” or “event” series, that’s never ever the case.  If the initial run of episodes have any kind of success, the network will find a way to keep the series going, […]

In its second season, John Logan’s gothic horror mash-up PENNY DREADFUL remained an elaborate conceit that pays off only from time to time.  Logan has gathered together a host of characters for his saga.  Some hail from classics of the genre:  Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway), his Monster (Rory Kinnear), and the latter’s intended Bride (Billie […]

  “That’s not moving on, that’s moving in a circle,” said returning Dr. O’Hara (Eve Best) in tonight’s finale of NURSE JACKIE, and of course the statement applied to most of the 7 seasons of the series as well.  Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco), a born nurse, was always sociopathically lying her way out of being […]

  It’s not as though HAPPYISH creator Shalom Auslander is unaware that many would consider his protagonists Thom and Lee Payne (Steve Coogan and Kathryn Hahn) to be whiny, tiresome, self-important narcissists–he has plenty of other characters tell them that’s exactly what they are through the course of the series.  Watching the show, though, it’s […]

  The third season of ORPHAN BLACK was a step up from Season 2, although the show is still the victim of its plotting.  The main narrative for the season was set up in the Season 2 finale, with the discovery that along with the (mostly) female “Leda” clones, all played by Tatiana Maslany, there […]