It’s easy to overlook the ingeniousness of Dan Fogelman’s THIS IS US, the season’s only broadcast network smash hit.  On its face, the show is a familiar, even old-fashioned family soap, in which the various members of a clan are constantly beset by romantic, professional or medical problems–The Fosters with older siblings.  But Fogelman’s […]

  The second season of TNT’s ANIMAL KINGDOM concluded on a fitting note of dissolution and violence.  It was a well-told season, shepherded by series creator Jonathan Lisco and uber-showrunner John Wells, who’s been guiding TV dramas to long runs since China Beach and ER.  Lisco and Wells successfully increased the stakes among the criminal […]

  And so the curtain drops on the first season of SMASH, which may have set the all-time television speed record for going from shining beacon to punching bag.  Tonight’s season finale, written by now-deposed showrunner and series creator Theresa Rebeck and directed by Michael Morris, wasn’t the worst episode of the series, but it […]

> Last night, of course, was not intended to be the end of LUCK.  The enormously high-profile show, created by David Milch and with production supervised by pilot director Michael Mann, and fearuring a cast headed by Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, had already been renewed for a second season, with one of those instant […]

  A very busy season of NECESSARY ROUGHNESS came to an end tonight with an unusually far-fetched hour.  The show isn’t exactly known for its hard-hitting realism, but this episode, written by series creators Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro, and directed by David Grossman, really piled on the melodramatic contrivances. The main storyline continued the […]

  The most paranormal thing about FRINGE, in the end, was that it actually survived 5 seasons on the air, as very possibly the lowest-rated series to be regularly renewed in the history of network television.  (Made possible by budget restrictions and Warner Bros Television’s willingness to accept sharply lowered license fees because of the […]

  FX’s THE AMERICANS has been, by a substantial margin, the best new show of this season.  And if tonight’s season finale was slightly less ambitious than we might have hoped in terms of delivering the shocking twists or cliffhangers that we now expect from our top serialized series, it still delivered an expert mix […]

  NASHVILLE is a superior network series, loaded with talent and powerful moments, but it can also drive you up a wall, beset as it is with sometimes infuriating shortcomings.  The same was true for tonight’s season finale, written and directed by series creator Callie Khouri. Some of the show’s problems are glaringly obvious.  Its […]