THE BLACKLIST was a hit before it was much of a show, and it’s still decidedly uneven.  That was underscored again by tonight’s season finale, which killed off–well, apparently; you never know with this series–at least one regular and grievously injured more, but put very few cards on a table that could have used […]

  The ratings dipped badly for FRANKLIN & BASH in its 4th season, and if it stays on TNT’s air, it will likely be because the network has too many other problems (Dallas is already gone, Falling Skies is entering its final season, and neither Murder In the First nor Legends launched well) to cancel […]

  In recent years, Cameron Crowe has had trouble keeping his scripts coherent even when they only have to last 2 hours.  It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise that giving him 10 hours to play with was asking for trouble, and much of his Showtime series ROADIES has been unfocused and self-indulgent, a […]

  Some smart shifts in emphasis have left HART OF DIXIE in fine shape as it reaches the midpoint of its second season, changes that were evident in tonight’s midseason finale, written by series creator Leila Gerstein and directed by Patrick Norris. Season 1 of Hart was essentially Gilmore Girls meets “Southern Exposure,” the travails […]

  The MTV version of SCREAM nailed its own problem back in the pilot, courtesy of its one-man meta machine Noah (John Karna)–but diagnosing one’s own illness is a long way from curing it.  A TV series, indeed, can’t possibly duplicate the experience of a slasher movie, because that genre plays a numbers game:  its […]

  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 […]

  In this new era of serialized television drama, plot–and the skill with which it’s doled out–is more important than ever.  An overall clumsiness with the handling of its storylines is what’s held back Lifetime’s WITCHES OF EAST END from being more than a pleasant diversion, and tonight’s season finale was sadly no exception.  The […]

  CW’s THE 100 has set its bar fairly high fover the years, and on those terms, Season 5 wasn’t quite up to par.  The central crisis–our protagonists had to face off against a pack of vicious thawed-out convicts–was uncomfortably close to a Direct-to-VOD premise, and the climactic arrival of yet another nuclear holocaust struck […]