Category: TV Reviews

It feels good to experience a great new TV show from the pilot onward. The same way it might mean more to invest in a company before the whole world knows about it, well, that’s roughly the way I feel when I watch a show like Breaking Bad or Arrested Development from the pilot episode the…

Last night brought some of the final season finales for broadcast TV, as three shows that had rather disappointing seasons finally drew to a close… “Modern Family”…As has become the formula for Modern Family—-which borrows a lot more from 90’s sitcoms than we might realize—-last night’s episode mostly featured one character saying something and then…

Last year, there were few shows I enjoyed more than the first season of FX’s The Americans. Each episode felt tense, exciting, layered, and complicated in a good way. It was the rare show that could have tight plotting without sacrificing character depth. So what’s gone so wrong this season? In a nutshell, the show…

I never watch the Syfy Channel. That might sound like snobbery—-and maybe it is—-but I’m just not down with watching intentionally awful TV movies and unintentionally awful TV shows. So a small little Syfy reality show about people who want to make amazing puppets for a living wasn’t exactly on my radar until very recently….

I wanted to like NBC’s new sitcom About a Boy (with back-to-back episodes tonight serving as the season finale), I really did. For starters, I love both the Nick Hornby book it’s based on and the movie adaptation that (in my humble opinion) is still the best of the Hugh Grant rom-coms. Secondly, who isn’t a fan…

Cinemax’s violent and pulpy drama-noir “Banshee” and HBO’s sobering (but exciting) R-rated news magazine “Vice” may not seem like natural fits but they are both premium cable breakouts that air on Friday nights and are mostly enjoyable even when (or perhaps especially) when going over the top.   “Banshee”  …This season of Banshee didn’t live…

It takes a big reviewer to admit when he’s wrong, and wrong I was about HBO’s Winter sensation “True Detective.” My review of the pilot was only lukewarm (the exact grade was a B-) because I felt the series was taking itself a little too seriously and the dialogue felt obtusely poetic to the point…

“Mixology”…The novel premise of this show is that it’s centered entirely in a bar during one night, and there’s ten single people (five straight guys, five straight girls) and we have to wonder who gets with who by the end of the night. Last night mainly focused on one of those horribly bitchy women who’s…

NBC’s debuting two “new” comedies tonight (although one is a remake and the other an adaptation) but they’ve already shown the pilots after two different nights of the Olympics, so the secret’s out somewhat…   “Growing Up Fischer”…One long blind joke. See, the title kid’s father is blind and his newly divorced mom (Jenna Elfman)…

Netflix’s somewhat-overpraised sensation House of Cards is back and the internet giant sure has gotten cocky in the space between. Before House of Cards first season, Netflix had Lilyhammer…Now, they’ve been nominated for Emmys, had two shows that were on every critics Best of the Year list (the other being “Orange is the New Black”),…