THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC Last year’s season premiere of THE WALKING DEAD was the show’s most polarizing hour, introducing long-awaited Big Bad Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and lingering on his brutal murders of two series regulars.  That seemed to hit a saturation point for some viewers, and although Dead is still […]

  WHITE FAMOUS:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime – Change the Channel Showtime’s shaky new comedy WHITE FAMOUS is spectacularly ill-timed for the week after the downfall of Harvey Weinstein.  The premiere half-hour has as its comic centerpiece a sequence where a famous Hollywood figure meets with an aspiring young performer in his trailer, sitting so […]

  GOOD BEHAVIOR:  Sunday 10PM on TNT As TNT continues with its scorched-earth policy of shedding its old-guard mainstream successes (Rizzoli & Isles, Major Crimes) for the more adult, serialized dramas favored by network head Kevin Reilly, pressure is increased on those new shows to perform–not necessarily in the traditional metrics, but with younger viewers […]

  DYNASTY:  Wednesday 9PM on CW – In the Queue The new DYNASTY isn’t the fall’s worst new show, but it’s the most puzzling.  Was there really a surge of interest among CW’s 18-34 target demo for a revival of an ABC soap that went off the air 28 years ago?  The show has a […]

  VALOR:  Monday 9PM on CW – Change the Channel VALOR is the CW version of a military drama, which makes it markedly different from NBC’s The Brave and CBS’s SEAL Team.  For one thing, it’s significantly lacking in production values, even in its pilot, which would typically have a higher budget than regular series […]

  ONCE UPON A TIME:  Friday 8PM on ABC This season’s Version 2.0 of ONCE UPON A TIME exists because of dwindling ratings, which led to a reduced budget and consequently a cast dump.  (The show was also moved to a less demanding Friday night slot.)  The potential advantage of that hardship was that after 6 […]

  SCANDAL:  Thursday 9PM on ABC How tough is Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), newly minted as both Chief of Staff to President Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young), and head of secret intelligence and torture bureau B613?  As Season 7 of SCANDAL has it, Olivia is so tough that when she has Huck (Guillermo Diaz) train a […]

  KEVIN (PROBABLY) SAVES THE WORLD:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC – In the Queue ABC’s KEVIN (PROBABLY) SAVES THE WORLD is the closest any broadcast network has to a Big Swing this fall, and as such, it deserves some respect.  But wow, is it a mess.  The only reason the fantasy-inspirational dramedy holds together even […]