The second season of TNT’s ANIMAL KINGDOM concluded on a fitting note of dissolution and violence.  It was a well-told season, shepherded by series creator Jonathan Lisco and uber-showrunner John Wells, who’s been guiding TV dramas to long runs since China Beach and ER.  Lisco and Wells successfully increased the stakes among the criminal […]

  Every year at about this time, Marvel faces a contradiction.  Even as it has a giant movie dominating multiplexes worldwide (this year, of course, it’s Captain America: Civil War, which is approaching the $1 billion mark), its TV business struggles.  Over the past few weeks, network cousin ABC has canceled hiatus series Agent Carter, […]

  The peril of dotting a season finale with cliffhangers is that if the show is canceled, they’ll never be resolved.  That may very well be the dilemma for fans of NBC’s summer drama CROSSING LINES, which closed its season tonight with a 2-hour finale that was entirely open-ended.  One can never be sure with […]

  Calling a season of AMERICAN HORROR STORY “grounded” is like calling a batch of moonshine smooth:  it’s still going to make your eyes water on the way down.  But creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk set CULT in something that resembled our real world, certainly as compared to ultra-baroque previous installments like Freak Show […]

  The fifth season of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES was great fun as usual, although also a bit sloppier than the norm.  That could well be the result of series mastermind Julie Plec having to spread her time between Diaries, the new Originals, and whatever her duties were on The Tomorrow People, of which she was […]

  MADAM SECRETARY quietly had one of the most interesting paths of recent broadcast network dramas.  Airing of all places on CBS, it was a frankly political series that began its run in 2014 and ended 5 years later, bridging two entirely different eras of real-life US politics.  The show’s own center-left policies on social […]

  After two full seasons, it’s become clear that Mindy Kaling’s THE MINDY PROJECT may never be a “well-made show.”  Characters pop in and out–it was recently announced that receptionist Betsy (Zoe Jarman) is the latest regular who won’t be back in the fall–or they change randomly–was it ever clear why Jeremy (Ed Weeks) needed […]

  Everyone on Stephen Falk’s FX comedy YOU’RE THE WORST is a wreck, and yet the pieces of the show have fallen together rather neatly.  The series isn’t so much an anti-rom-com as a kicking and screaming one, peopled by characters who, if they aren’t doing terrible things, do right ones for the worst possible […]