You have to feel a little sorry for COMPLICATIONS, introduced by USA Network during the same summer that the network unveiled Mr. Robot, a game-changer that may be the most exciting new show of the year on any network.  Complications, by comparison, felt like the last act of a dying old programming regime–specifically, the […]

  Among other things, the midseason finale of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES gets credit for the season’s most subversive use of Christmas carols, playing cheerily under ancient vampire Klaus (Joseph Morgan) as he first slaughtered a dozen vampire-werewolf hybrids, and then cold-bloodedly drowned Mayor Lockwood (Susan Walters) as a blow against her son Tyler (Michael Trevino), […]

  Even though death is part of the daily menu of our television and movies, dying–lingering, fatal illness–is much rarer.  We prefer our deaths to be mere starting points for police investigations, or the byproduct of our fascination with serial killers–puzzles rather than human beings.  Even on medical shows, patients who die rarely take up […]

  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 […]

  ROOKIE BLUE did a solid job of wrapping up its fourth season and setting up cliffhangers for Season 5 (already ordered) with last night’s episode.  Although the Grey’s Anatomy-with-guns police soap has never had the level of success as its medical forebear, it’s been a steady summer performer for ABC, and this season successfully saw it […]

  What is it with endings?  Why do they rattle the brains of even the greatest of television’s creative minds?  Half-endings, too, which is what tonight’s finish to the first half of MAD MEN‘s 7th and final season was, the remaining 7 hours to sit on an AMC shelf until a year from now.  (That […]

  The gap between British and US airings of DOWNTON ABBEY gives rise to some dislocations.  The series airs each fall in England, but PBS holds it for January-February because it doesn’t want to compete with the start of the new network season here.  (Although at this point the Downton audience is so large and […]

  Hardly anyone in America watched THE DIVIDE this summer, and it wasn’t because the series was some kind of bleak, off-putting experiment in reinventing the form of television drama, taking pleasure in alienating all but the most esoteric viewers.  On the contrary, the series was a big-tent crime melodrama that energized its traditional format with […]