GLEE:  Thursday 9PM on FOX It was announced a while back that GLEE will wait until its third episode, after its previously planned 2-part salute to The Beatles, to deal with the passing of Cory Monteith and the absence of his character Finn.  Nevertheless, it was hard not to feel as though Lea Michele’s […]

  DOWNTON ABBEY:  Sunday 9PM on PBS In its fourth season as the most successful regular series in PBS history, DOWNTON ABBEY operates as smoothly as a well-staffed ancestral estate.  Even though the larger subject of the series is the creeping spread of democracy into the centuries-old system of English aristocracy, which would eventually undermine […]

  GAME OF THRONES:  Sunday 9PM on HBO GAME OF THRONES is such an assured, expert piece of work that it’s easy to forget how many rules of conventional TV storytelling it routinely violates.  It’s not just the teeming mass of central characters–so many that tonight’s Season 4 premiere wasn’t even able to visit all […]

  COVERT AFFAIRS:  Tuesday 10PM on USA Last season, Season 4 of USA’s COVERT AFFAIRS took a turn for the dark, with mixed results.  It was a relief to see CIA agent Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) finally act like an adult instead of a gawky if gifted trainee, but there were problems with tone and […]

  ELEMENTARY:  Thursday 10PM on CBS Nothing makes ELEMENTARY look better than the arrival of ABC’s Forever, an even more ersatz updated Sherlock Holmesisn procedural that features a fantastically knowledgeable British detective partnered with a more practical American (and adds a supernatural element, as Forever‘s hero is immortal).  Forever is simplistically sentimental and overly ingratiating, […]

  DEFIANCE:  Friday 8PM on Syfy The second season of Syfy’s DEFIANCE was often jarringly different from its first, shifting from its initial post-apocalyptic-western procedural form to a heavily mythological storyline that broke up the central father-and-adoptive-alien-daughter relationship of Nolan (Grant Bowler) and Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas) for much of the season, while embracing a mystical […]

  YOU’RE THE WORST:  Wednesday 10:30PM on FXX The secret shame of Jimmy (Chris Geere) and Gretchen (Aya Cash), the protagonists of YOU’RE THE WORST, is that they’re far more conventional than they’re desperately trying to appear (to themselves, let alone anyone else), and that’s proven to be a rich source of comedy for Stephen […]

  LEGENDS OF TOMORROW:  Thursday 8PM on CW – In the Queue Even with a half-season and the resources of two other series to prepare the way, LEGENDS OF TOMORROW finally arrived on CW heavy with exposition.  It was such a premise pilot, in fact, that the show’s ability to stand on its own feet […]