One of NBC’s many puzzling decisions this year was the choice to hand over its most important timeslot for launching dramas, the post-The Voice hour on Mondays, to the merely serviceable summer medical soap THE NIGHT SHIFT.  The series had done well enough against weak off-season competition, but there was nothing to suggest that it […]

  Hardly anyone who wasn’t earning a paycheck from Kevin Williamson’s THE FOLLOWING will miss it.  It was as close as any network series has ever come to torture porn, with at least one or two innocents being slaughtered or at least terrorized every week, and without the aesthetic artistry of Hannibal to justify its […]

  Matthew Weiner had always cultivated an air of mystery around MAD MEN (those impenetrable promos!), and the show itself has been its share of enigmatic at times, which made many wonder if tonight’s series finale would be some kind of a cryptic bone to chew on, one that would cause viewers to puzzle its […]

  History will record that on the same night the curtain rang down for Mad Men, THE ROYALS also concluded its season.  As utterly different as the two shows are, The Royals is one of the many cable scripted series that probably wouldn’t exist if Mad Men hadn’t proven how valuable a single drama can […]

  At the close of its 6th season, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES finds itself at a crossroads.  The ratings are way down, and for the first time since it premiered, the series isn’t one of CW’s biggest hits, but just a mid-range performer.  Viewers didn’t seem to respond to the witch-centric narrative of the season, or […]

  Watching Shonda Rhimes’ SCANDAL has more than once been likened to an addiction, and as with a drug, the danger is that users will build up a tolerance over time, requiring more and more to achieve the same high.  In the case of Scandal, that high is from endless, crazy, jaw-dropping, WTF plot twists.  […]

  GREY’S ANATOMY is no longer Shonda Rhimes’ brightest, shiniest toy, but in a way her skills as a producer are most evident in the way that her first hit hums along, now in its 2d decade on the air.  That’s incredibly difficult for a serialized drama, especially one that started off as being about […]

  Hit dramas rarely go south as quickly as THE BLACKLIST.  In November 2013 it was earning a 3.0 rating, one of the highest rated 10PM shows on TV.  In May 2014 it was still at 2.6.  In November 2014 it was almost as strong at 2.5.  2 weeks ago?  A new series low of […]