> The title “Best Drama On Network Television” used to mean a lot more than it does these days (what’s the competition?  Parenthood has lovely moments but also its share of contrivances; Fringe and The Vampire Diaries are terrific niche shows), but for whatever it’s still worth, THE GOOD WIFE continues to own the crown.   […]

  THE WHISPERS never made much sense, and that went triple for tonight’s finale.  On a macro level, it was probably unwise to end the season with a cliffhanger, since reports are that although the ratings were no worse than middling, ABC had let the cast options lapse when it postponed the show to summer, […]

  Season 4 of ONCE UPON A TIME was a rather misshapen one.  The Fall cycle was a tie-in to Disney’s blockbuster Frozen (creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz swore it was their idea and not a corporate mandate), and although it didn’t bring out the best in the series, it delivered in the ratings.  […]

  Showtime’s HOUSE OF LIES was a bit more ambitious in its second season, and that was a good move, even if the results were uneven.  In its initial season, House was all too clearly a companion piece for Californication, a weekly half-hour of light, sexy satire around the consulting group campfire, with Don Cheadle’s […]

Tonight’s season finale of Lifetime’s very softcore (so soft it’s basically liquid) prostitution hit THE CLIENT LIST was more guilty than pleasure.  The hour, written by Producer Barbara Nance (from a story by Nance and star Jennifer Love Hewitt) and directed by Hewitt herself, was actually quite bewildering.  After last week’s climactic bombshell of Riley’s […]

  The fourth and final season of Cinemax’s BANSHEE felt more like an epilogue, or even a spin-off, than a climax.  It wasn’t the time jump between Seasons 3 and 4, or the shortened 8-episode order, or even the physical relocation from North Carolina to Pennsylvania (for tax credit reasons).  The focus, the center of […]

  One never knows, but the rebranding of its network probably doesn’t bode well for RECOVERY ROAD.  The recently-renamed Freeform, which has over the last few months canceled Chasing Life and Switched At Birth, while renewing Stitchers and Shadowhunters, seems to be moving in the direction of heroine-led fantasy-adventures and procedurals, rather than the YA […]

  The third season of ORPHAN BLACK was a step up from Season 2, although the show is still the victim of its plotting.  The main narrative for the season was set up in the Season 2 finale, with the discovery that along with the (mostly) female “Leda” clones, all played by Tatiana Maslany, there […]