WILFRED:  Thursday 10PM on FX Thursday’s back-to-back double-episode Season 3 premiere of WILFRED provided a good picture of a show with, fittingly, a somewhat split personality, at times an existential, cosmic joke about the search for meaning in life and the nature of identity, and then again a rude comedy about a man’s friendship […]

  JUSTIFIED:  Tuesday 10PM on FX JUSTIFIED is pure dark pleasure to watch.  Other cable series are more thematically or structurally ambitious (which is why Justified is unfairly ignored at awards time), but Graham Yost’s series, taking its cue from the late Elmore Leonard’s original prose, is utterly assured in its command not just of plotting […]

  MAD MEN:  Sunday 10PM on AMC Fresh episodes of MAD MEN will likely still be airing more than a year from now, so all the obituaries for the series that have been appearing lately run the risk of sounding like “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead” when they’re repeated in 2015.  The only reason […]

  WILFRED:  Wednesday 10PM on FXX WILFRED, that metaphysical, existential compendium of stoner, fart and dick jokes, is going for its last walk, relocated to the FXX network for a shortened 4th and final season.  The producers claim that fundamental questions will be answered about the show’s central mysteries:  the nature of Wilfred’s (Jason Gann, […]

  COMPLICATIONS:  Thursday 9PM on USA – Change the Channel USA Network has been hammering away at its own image for some time now, trying to find a show that will brand it as cooler and edgier than the home of Monk and Psych.  Suits has given the network a 2d generation hit, and a […]

  THE NIGHT OF:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – DVR Alert “Noisy” is the byword of the television moment, and HBO makes noise as well as any programming service, whether its shows are laden with dragons, foul-mouthed politicians or coke-snorting record executives.  Every so often, though, the network demonstrates that it can also deliver unadorned […]

  SHOOTER:  Tuesday 10PM on USA – Change the Channel USA Network has had a tough time populating its post-Mr. Robot schedule.  Sam Esmail’s series, while not a ratings blockbuster, has been a re-branding triumph, instantly changing the image of USA from the stodgy network of Monk and Royal Pains to something darker, younger, cooler, […]

  INTO THE BADLANDS:  Sunday 10PM on AMC The vigorously pulpy INTO THE BADLANDS has returned for a second season, gifted by AMC with a Walking Dead lead-in for the first 3 weeks of its run that should guarantee some viewer attention.  This time it has a 10-episode order, not necessarily good news considering how […]