LIVING BIBLICALLY:  Monday 9:30PM on CBS – Change the Channel LIVING BIBLICALLY is a CBS sitcom for the Age of Trump, and like so many artifacts of this age, it may well thrill its target audience while causing others to shudder. Although inspired by a nonfiction book, Living Biblically is fully as hacky as […]

  THE AMERICANS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX THE AMERICANS thrives on complications–moral, political, ethical and sexual–and it starts Season 2 with a nifty one.  In the Reagan era, when the show is set, the fundamentalist Afghan mujahideen that deep-cover KGB agent Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) betrays and kills were mortal enemies of the Soviets backed […]

  PSYCH:  Wednesday 10PM on USA PSYCH felt every one of its 7 seasons in its premiere tonight.  The show’s premise has always been thin–goofy detective Shawn Spencer (James Roday) pretends to be a psychic and, with sidekick Gus (Dule Hill) gets himself hired as a consultant by the Santa Barbara Police Department to solve […]

  SUBURGATORY:  Wednesday 9:30PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  Meeting Grandma.  In the season finale, having survived her first year in the titular Chatswin, Tessa (Jane Levy) met her long-absent mother’s mom–on Mother’s Day, no less.  Also, Tessa’s best friend Lisa (Allie Grant), who had spent most of the season thinking (hoping) that she’d been […]

  UNCLE BUCK:  Tuesday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel ABC’s UNCLE BUCK is exactly what you’d expect from a network sitcom left on the shelf for the entire regular broadcast season, then unloaded two at a time during the summer.  As ABC sitcoms go, it is to Black-ish what Family Tools briefly was […]

  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE had one of the quietest off-seasons in its recent history, with the addition of featured player Jon Rudnitsky as its only major change, so for better and worse, tonight’s Season 41 premiere felt as though it could easily have aired last season. There were a few indications that time has passed.  […]

  THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT:  Tuesday 8:30PM on ABC THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT is ABC’s 9th family sitcom currently on the air (10th if you count the quasi-family of Single Parents), which puts it in a meta position not unlike its focal character Timmy Cleary (Jack Gore), the middle child of eight Catholic sons and […]

  LETHAL WEAPON:  Wednesday 8PM on FOX – Change the Channel By the time the LETHAL WEAPON movie franchise reached its 4th installment, it was virtually a TV series anyway, so there’s no reason for moral outrage that it’s now been turned into one.  But FOX’s small-screen reboot fails in the most obvious way:  it […]