> Warning:  Spoilers Ahead Here, in the end, is all you needed to know about TERRA NOVA:  in its entire 2-hour season–and very possibly series–finale, dinosaurs were sighted for a grand total of about 2 minutes. Remember the original promos for Terra Nova, the ones that played on FOX for months while the show kept […]

  After three sets of series creators and two pilots, THE CATCH certainly zeroed in on its inspirations:  To Catch A Thief plus The Thomas Crown Affair, with a touch of Soderbergh’s version of Ocean’s Eleven.  The Catch longs for fizzy romantic intrigue, with light (but opulent) crime stirred alongside flirtatious banter between glamorous people, […]

> Some shows find their creative voices during the course of their first season–but even after a super-sized order of 24 episodes that ended last night, UP ALL NIGHT is still floundering. On paper, Up All Night seemed to have everything going for it.  Its Executive Producer/godfather was Lorne Michaels, and it was created by […]

  If the first season of THE FOLLOWING stands for anything, it’s that the significant difference between the best cable dramas and the vast majority of their network counterparts hasn’t been about the ability to depict extreme violence.  The Following was as relentlessly violent as anything this side of The Walking Dead (and much more […]

  Like the famous tortoise, PARKS & RECREATION has hung in there long enough to become the highest-rated (all-but-certainly) returning sitcom on NBC’s air.  That is, admittedly, a low bar, but it’s still a triumph for a show that’s been at risk of cancellation more or less since it came on the air.  Parks & […]

  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 […]

  You couldn’t tell it from the ratings, which were if anything more dismal than ever, or from tonight’s somewhat disappointing season finale, but the return of Founding Genius Dan Harmon rejuvenated COMMUNITY‘s fifth season.  It wasn’t that last year’s replacement team had done a shameful job–they worked hard to provide the same species of […]

  It’s been a heavy week for epochal TV.  On Sunday, Mad Men sold us one last Coke, and tonight marked the end of David Letterman’s reign, one that’s lasted into a fourth decade on the air and has had an almost incalculable influence not just on late-night TV or even TV in general, but […]