Magic was one ingredient that MAGIC CITY lacked, and so despite its not-insubstantial virtues, tonight’s Season 2 finale also marked its finish as a series.  The low-rated show was a passion project of its creator Mitch Glazer, built around his own childhood memories about mostly Jewish gangsters in the lavish Miami Beach hotels of […]

  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 […]

  There was a time when BONES was a breath of fresh TV air.  When it arrived in 2005, the networks were deep into Peak Grim Procedural mode, as shows like CSI, Criminal Minds and NCIS thrived and spawned seemingly endless spin-offs.  Bones pumped some changes into the format, adding rom-com, screwball comedy, warmth and […]

  No, honestly:  what the hell was that? All snark aside, it was admirable and really long past due for USA Network to try to get out of the “characters welcome,” franchise-centric box it had put itself into.  When people start using the phrase “well, it was sort of like a USA show” as disparagement, […]

  RAY DONOVAN had an odd, misshapen Season 5, bleak even by its own depressed standards.  It was perhaps best viewed as a long runway to Season 6, which will by necessity involve something of a reboot, since Showtime has announced that the series is relocating to New York.  The show thus far has been […]

  KING & MAXWELL isn’t the kind of show you’d particularly expect to see evolve between its premiere and season finale, and in fact it didn’t.  That’s too bad, because the TNT series, developed by Shane Brennan and based on characters created by novelist David Baldacci, was badly in need of improvement.  It may be […]

  Sometimes one piece of casting is what it takes to turn a TV series around, and for SALEM, that was the arrival, about midway through the season’s 13 episodes, of Stephen Lang as the Reverend Increase Mather, father of series regular Cotton (Seth Gabel).  Increase, a witch-hunter so fanatical that he didn’t much care […]

  The original CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION turned the corner on its 14th season tonight, and at its age, the show has little interest in reinventing itself beyond the bare minimum.  The days when William L. Petersen starred and people like Jerry Stahl were writing dark-humored, sometimes transgressive episodes are long past, and after a […]