The second season of Lena Dunham’s GIRLS has been as polarizing as anything on TV since the conclusion of Lost; with its relatively low viewership, it’s sometimes felt as though literally every person who watches the show has been writing about it.  The season finale, written by Dunham with fellow Executive Producer Judd Apatow […]

  As a series, Cinemax’s BANSHEE has been notable for the sheer knock-down, drag-out-edness of its action scenes.  One episode started with a bungled robbery which led to a chase that must have lasted 10 minutes, and when hero ex-con turned fake-sheriff of Banshee, PA Lucas Hood (Antony Starr) faced down an MMA fighter who […]

  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 […]

  I speak–clearly–not as a fan:  ENLIGHTENED was less unbearable in its second season than it was in its first. The show does have its fans, meager in number (fewer than 300,000 viewers watched the initial airings of recent episodes, and only around 100,000 of those were under 50–no doubt those numbers go up when […]

  It won’t surprise anyone if last night’s episode of GUYS WITH KIDS turns out to be not just its season finale but its farewell to the airwaves.  The show has struggled with ratings in the low 1s all season, and although that’s not particularly worse than its hour-mate Whitney, when it comes to Guys, […]

  The second half of BUNHEADS‘s first (and potentially only) season seemed designed to drive even fans of Amy Sherman-Palladino a little crazy.  The auteur delights in having her characters dance on the head of conversational pins, and if her non-stop dialogue is to be more than mere verbal choreography, it’s critical that the scenes […]

  SUITS didn’t have a winter season this year so much as it had the stub of its fall season, just 6 episodes that seemed to be what was left over from the real season after an overlong holiday break.  That scheduling glitch may have contributed to the general feeling of letdown that accompanied the […]

  Professional sports are so central to American culture, and so particularly critical to the television business, that it’s surprising the area had been largely ignored as the locale of a series until USA’s NECESSARY ROUGHNESS debuted.  Of course, since Roughness is a USA show, it’s mostly been content with superficial light drama, without any […]