> And so we come to the age-old query:  after 6 months and 22 half-hours of television, has WHITNEY gotten any better? Well, it’s changed.  A revisit to the show on the occasion of its season finale, written by creator/star Whitney Cummings and directed by Betsy Thomas, presents a series that–whether because of network notes […]

  Voting is going on right now for this year’s Emmy nominations, and LOUIE is on the ballot as a “comedy.”  It’s not the only show to squeeze into a category where it may not truly belong–Orange Is the New Black and Shameless are “comedies” too, and the 8-episodes-and-done True Detective has decided that it’s […]

  WHITE COLLAR didn’t do anything very remarkable with its final season.  Only 6 episodes were ordered, and the season was almost entirely serialized, although it did find time for one tangential hour that allowed us to meet Mozzie’s (Willie Garson) con woman ex-wife.  The main storyline tried to gritty the show up a bit, as […]

  The Season 3 finale of BOARDWALK EMPIRE, like the season itself, was an exercise in patience and a mix of satisfaction and anti-climax.   Written by series creator Terence Winter and Executive Producer Howard Korder, and directed by house director Tim Van Patten, the first half of the episode had antagonists Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) […]

  The final season of AMC’s HELL ON WHEELS was a sprawl, made worse by the network’s decision to play the season in two chunks separated by a year.  This last stretch of 7 episodes was particularly choppy.  One hour was a virtual two-hander for hero Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount) and arch-foe The Swede (Christopher […]

  It was utterly on-brand for THE AMERICANS that the most electrifying sequence of its series finale was about four people talking to each other.  This was the epic confrontation six seasons in the making:  FBI agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) had finally, once and for all, discovered that his neighbors and supposed best friends […]

  SUPERGIRL undertook a journey this season more unusual than its own heroine’s passage from Krypton to Earth, transferring from CBS to CW.  It suffered little if any damage in the process–other than in the ratings, since CBS’s universe of viewers is far larger than the one at its new home.  Budgets were reportedly slashed, […]

  FX’s THE STRAIN is doing something that The Walking Dead and its cohorts in the undead genre won’t:  telling a (more or less) coherent story from beginning to end, and exiting when it’s over.  During this third season, it was announced that next year, despite ratings that are still more than acceptable (if far […]