The third season of DEFIANCE may have been its most assured and cohesive to date.  However, as the most expensive of Syfy’s low-rated trio of Friday scripted summer shows, its fate has been far from certain.  In fact, tonight’s season finale, written by series co-creator Kevin Murphy and directed by Michael Nankin, felt overwhelmingly […]

  After a season or two where it seemed as though JUSTIFIED had run past its best days, burdened with villains and tangents unworthy of it, Graham Yost’s crime drama returned with a vintage 6th and final saga that brought the series back to its prime.  The show’s last rodeo may not have been as […]

  In all ways but one, GRIMM had a highly enjoyable third season.  Its one significant flaw came when it tried to cultivate a deeper mythology than the events in Portland where it’s set.  That took the show away from its core characters, while the plot elements it used–mysterious keys, a puzzle map, a nobility […]

  Rob Thomas and Dianne Ruggiero-Wright’s CW series IZOMBIE is a show that would benefit from a season order shorter than the 19 hours it had to deliver this year–and with its less than stellar ratings, that might be exactly what it gets next season.  As it was, this season was overextended, with too many […]

  It took some down-to-the-wire negotiations between ABC and production studio Lionsgate, but NASHVILLE made its way to a Season 3 renewal this week.  (And barring further ratings collapse, that makes a Season 4 more likely than not, since ABC would share in the increased revenues from syndication that would follow a 4-season run.)  It […]

  No show enjoys running around in circles more than VEEP.  Armando Ianucci’s political sitcom glories in Vice-President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her staff of venal incompetents mistakenly navigating through 180, 360 and often 720 or more degrees of spin every week, usually managing to slam into whatever iceberg they’ve most been trying to […]

  There’s a reason CBS is as successful as it is.  PERSON OF INTEREST is just a procedural–albeit one with an unusually complicated premise–but it mixes solid plotting, well-paced action and just enough character backstory to give it a little substance, and the result is an hour of television that works.   Person starts with […]

  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 […]