NEW GIRL:  Tuesday 9PM on FOX NEW GIRL returned for its fourth season tonight with something to prove.  Rarely has an acclaimed, popular comedy plunged so quickly and so badly, both critically and with viewers:  the series that premiered in 2011 with a 4.8 rating had lost three-quarters of that audience by last May, […]

  MAN SEEKING WOMAN:  Wednesday 10:30PM on FXX – If Nothing Else Is On… You know how on Family Guy a character will say “This is just like when________” or “You’re like________,” and there’s an instant cutaway to whatever the character was talking about, no matter how bizarre?  (An example from this past week:  Stewie […]

  FARGO:  Monday 10PM on FX Despite all the pressures of launching a new storyline and cast–not to mention living up to its brilliant first season–Noah Hawley’s reincarnation of the Coen Brothers’ FARGO gave no sign of missing a step in its Season 2 premiere (unlike, say, a certain anthologized HBO detective series one could […]

  THE CATCH:  Thursday 10PM on ABC – If Nothing Else Is On… Not much remains of the original pilot for ABC and ShondaLand’s THE CATCH, beyond its basic premise and some of the cast.  Original series creator Jennifer Schuur has been discarded in favor of showrunner Alan Heinberg, a ShondaLand veteran (Schuur retains a script credit […]

  KEVIN CAN WAIT:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS (thru 10/17, then 8PM) – Change the Channel Sometimes when a TV star returns to the tube, it’s to try something excitingly different.  Think of Rob Lowe’s second career as a comic actor, or Kyle Chandler’s move from the heroic coach of Friday Night Lights to the […]

  SLEEPY HOLLOW:  Friday 9PM on FOX FOX’s TV series version of SLEEPY HOLLOW is, of course, about a man who won’t stay dead, namely Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison), who died in the 18th century and was brought back in the 21st to hunt demons.  For the series itself, though, having been rebooted in its […]

  STILL STAR-CROSSED:  Monday 10PM on ABC – If Nothing Else Is On… The idea of a Shonda Rhimes-produced sequel to one of Shakespeare’s classics sounds like something that might air on a satirical network, but STILL STAR-CROSSED is real, albeit relegated by ABC to its summer minor leagues.  (The actual series creator/showrunner is Heather […]

  ME, MYSELF & I:  Monday 9:30PM on CBS – In the Queue CBS’s ME, MYSELF & I is a gimmick sitcom, which CBS seems to regard as necessary for single camera comedies (see Life In Pieces, or don’t).  The high-concept here is more or less This Is Us with one-liners  As in the NBC […]