When FX’s ATLANTA began its 2nd season at the beginning of March, it seemed like a big enough deal to note that with the departures of Louis C.K. and Ryan Murphy (for very different reasons), Atlanta‘s creator Donald Glover had ascended to being the emblematic creative face of the network.  But now, a bit […]

  For the most part, Shonda Rhimes and the Season 10 finale of GREY’S ANATOMY kept its Cristina Yang Farewell Extravaganza confined to a 20-minute chunk in the second half.  The opening half of the hour, written by Co-Executive Producer William Harper and directed by Tony Phelan, was concerned with an explosion at a shopping […]

  In contrast to last week’s Kristin Wiig-fest, tonight’s season finale of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE didn’t give victory laps to all the franchise characters Bill Hader and Fred Armisen have contributed to the show over their 8 and 11 seasons.  (And, praise God, it didn’t give them both a last “The Californians” sketch.)  Instead, each […]

  MISTRESSES faced some challenges in its 3rd season.  Two were interrelated:  for budget reasons, the network and studio decided to relocate the production to Vancouver, and that prompted marquee star Alyssa Milano to disengage from her contract.  Season 3 didn’t really suffer from these changes, since Milano’s character Savi had a relatively weak role […]

    The Season 2 finale for CW’s NIKITA was probably shot with the idea that it could well be the series finale–and logically it should have been, considering the show’s ratings.  In recent weeks, Nikita has had a 0.4 rating in 18-49s, making it what has to be one of the lowest-watched shows ever […]

  KILLJOYS is, along with Dark Matter, one of the ultra-cheap scripted pieces that Syfy runs on Friday nights.  (Defiance, which airs with them, is a somewhat more ambitious enterprise.)  The grubby aesthetics of the two Canadian imports are so similar that it’s no surprise there’s been talk about a crossover between their universes–assuming both are […]

  The curtain rang down on the 4th season of WHITE COLLAR tonight, an unusually labored one.  The show still has a fair amount of style and charm, but it’s starting to feel as shackled as Neal Caffrey’s ankle bracelet (and harder to slip out of). Partly the series is a victim of its own […]

  What kind of show, in the end, is HOMELAND?  Focus groups are often asked simply to describe whatever it is they’ve just seen, and Homeland has tried to be a romance, a thriller, an action adventure, a story about politics and terrorism, a psychological drama, and more–all at once.  That it’s succeeded much of […]