There was one last super-powerful conspiracy for NIKITA (Maggie Q) to bring down in tonight’s series finale, and a climactic showdown with arch-villainess Amanda (Melinda Clarke) to survive, as CW’s low-rated yet hard-to-kill action series finally came to an end after a truncated 4th mini-season. The final episode (fittingly entitled “Canceled”), written by Executive […]

  FX’s just-concluded third season of Noah Hawley’s FARGO was its most divisive, and the criticisms came from a number of directions.  One segment was simply done with Hawley’s theme-and variations approach to the Coen Brothers’ original film, in which each season tells a new story, but one that always features a disruptive representative of […]

  The ratings for ABC’s AGENTS OF SHIELD have never been worse, and the show has been demoted for next season, reduced to serving as the Agent Carter for Marvel’s new Inhumans series and filling in during its post-fall hiatus.  The truth, though, is that these past two seasons were creatively probably the best SHIELD […]

  It wasn’t a great final season for DEXTER, and tonight’s last episode muffed its chance at a fully satisfying conclusion by falling into the trap of one twist too many.  In a way, that was fitting for a series that always tried to play both sides against the middle, with a protagonist who was […]

  With a full season of experience and audience feedback under its belt, it’s not unusual for a TV series to improve in its second season.  What’s considerably less typical is for the reverse to happen.  Yet whether due to the addition of new showrunner Brad Kern (although series creators Sherri Cooper and Jennifer Levin […]

  MADAM SECRETARY quietly had one of the most interesting paths of recent broadcast network dramas.  Airing of all places on CBS, it was a frankly political series that began its run in 2014 and ended 5 years later, bridging two entirely different eras of real-life US politics.  The show’s own center-left policies on social […]

  For the most part, Shonda Rhimes and the Season 10 finale of GREY’S ANATOMY kept its Cristina Yang Farewell Extravaganza confined to a 20-minute chunk in the second half.  The opening half of the hour, written by Co-Executive Producer William Harper and directed by Tony Phelan, was concerned with an explosion at a shopping […]

  WHITE COLLAR lost a little of its charm this season (or half-season, depending on how you characterize USA’s bifurcated order pattern).  The should-FBI-agent-Peter Burke (Tim DeKay)-trust-former-thief-Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer)-and-vice-versa dynamic became repetitious and circular, with each of them switching places by the week, and some of the romance dropped out of the show’s spirit.  […]