It was utterly on-brand for THE AMERICANS that the most electrifying sequence of its series finale was about four people talking to each other.  This was the epic confrontation six seasons in the making:  FBI agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) had finally, once and for all, discovered that his neighbors and supposed best friends […]

  The curtain rang down on the 4th season of WHITE COLLAR tonight, an unusually labored one.  The show still has a fair amount of style and charm, but it’s starting to feel as shackled as Neal Caffrey’s ankle bracelet (and harder to slip out of). Partly the series is a victim of its own […]

  There were a lot of nips and tucks in the now-concluded 2d season of USA’s FAIRLY LEGAL.  The show overall had a less comedic feel, and the heroine, Kate Reed (Sarah Shahi), was turned into more of an adult, which is to say a conventional TV protagonist.  Kate is still a mediator who works […]

  The headlines have all been in PERSON OF INTEREST‘s favor this past season.  As stories of massive worldwide surveillance by the NSA and other agencies have continued to surface, what not so long ago looked like a CBS entry into sci-fi has taken on the feel of just slightly exaggerated reality.  The series itself […]

  GO ON is a genuine bubble show–not just in its ratings (which are strong when it has The Voice as a lead-in and barely acceptable when it doesn’t), but in its quality.  The series wobbles from episode to episode and even between storylines in a single episode, sometimes smart and charming and equally often […]

  Throughout its third season, reactions to GIRLS seemed to depend to a large extent on the particular vision of the series that viewers had.  Season 3 of Lena Dunham’s show was notably less conceptual and experimental than Season 2 had been, with its standalone episodes, abrupt shifts in tone and focus, sexual frankness unusual […]

  SLEEPY HOLLOW has been trying very hard to justify its survival this season under new showrunner Clifton Campbell.  In addition to telling its core story arc about Pandora (Shannyn Sossamon) gathering sundry demons to strengthen her evil god husband The Hidden One (Peter Mensah) in preparation for his destruction of, you know, the world, […]

  NBC was so eager to get UNDATEABLE off its schedule that the network unceremoniously threw 4 episodes onto tonight’s line-up, 1 rerun and 3 new half-hours culminating in the season finale.  That treatment was a bit unfair, because although Adam Sztykiel’s series is easy to damn with faint praise, it managed the summer show […]