Considering how defiantly unlike the rest of broadcast television HANNIBAL is, not to mention its love of metaphor, it made sense for the show’s Season 2 finale to air entirely on its own, separate from the last episodes of just about every other network series, and 2 days after the end of the regular […]

  In its second season, THE AMERICANS continued to be a expertly crafted saga of betrayals, both political and personal.  Tonight’s chilling season finale, written by series creator Joe Weisberg and his co-showrunner Joel Fields, and directed by Daniel Sackheim, brought all its themes together brilliantly, and set the stage for what should be an […]

  A return visit to LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT on the occasion of its 15th season finale revealed a procedural that had gone positively soapy–possibly a result of creator Dick Wolf’s recent success with his more serialized Chicago pair of series. Both of the cases covered in the hour, which was written by […]

  REVOLUTION was sort of a sad story.  The lights-are-out sci-fi adventure was NBC’s top priority in Fall 2012, promoted like crazy and given the network’s prized post-The Voice timeslot.  At first the show looked like the hit NBC desperately needed, but once it started dropping in late fall it didn’t stop, and by the […]

  Like a middle schooler suddenly realizing that final exams are around the corner, the mostly tired 9th season of BONES went into overdrive tonight to deliver a super-dramatic season finale. The season had inherited a bummer of a cliffhanger from Season 8:  Booth (David Boreanaz) was blackmailed by petulant recurring serial killer Pelant (Christopher […]

  There was so much going on in tonight’s finale of the sensational fifth season of THE GOOD WIFE, it felt at times like a 2-hour episode that had been forced at gunpoint to strip down to a single hour.  There was barely enough time for Veronica (Stockard Channing), the irresponsibly direct mother of Alicia […]

  MR. SELFRIDGE, which might as well be called “Downton Abbey Won’t Be Back For 10 Months, So What Else Are You Gonna Watch?”, concluded its second, very earnest season on PBS tonight.  World War I came to Mr. Selfridge this season, much as it had to Downton, and the result was a less bustling […]

  In all ways but one, GRIMM had a highly enjoyable third season.  Its one significant flaw came when it tried to cultivate a deeper mythology than the events in Portland where it’s set.  That took the show away from its core characters, while the plot elements it used–mysterious keys, a puzzle map, a nobility […]