This season, HAVEN delved deeply into its own mythology, with mixed results.  Haven‘s own situation is unclear, existentially speaking:  it received a super-sized 26-episode order from Syfy earlier this year, with 13 episodes to air in 2014 and the rest at some as-yet undetermined date next year that could end up being in the […]

  The first half of The Walking Dead‘s 9th season included so many major changes that its ratings continuing their general downward trend rather than collapsing entirely may count as a sort of moral victory, even though the numbers are now at series lows.  New showrunner Angela Kang had 8 episodes to cover a whole […]

  THE ORIGINALS and its creator/showrunner Julie Plec have been fearless about plunging viewers of the New Orleans-set supernatural soap into a veritable bayou of mythology.  We’re half a season in, and already swamped by vampires, werewolves, vampire/werewolf hybrids, an impossible unborn hybrid baby, a teen super-witch, an assortment of garden-variety witches, and the occasional […]

  What is it with endings?  Why do they rattle the brains of even the greatest of television’s creative minds?  Half-endings, too, which is what tonight’s finish to the first half of MAD MEN‘s 7th and final season was, the remaining 7 hours to sit on an AMC shelf until a year from now.  (That […]

  GREY’S ANATOMY doesn’t get much attention these days, not even compared to its creator Shonda Rhimes’s shinier Scandal—Grey’s is just a soap–but after 10 years, it still knows how to pull off a big episode.  The fall finale, written by Co-Executive Producer William Harper and directed by Tony Phelan, effectively kicked off a long […]

  Last week’s episode of NBC’s THIS IS US notched an impressive achievement:  in Live + 7 ratings, it moved past Empire to become the highest rated drama on broadcast TV.  Admittedly, L7 ratings aren’t the most meaningful metric for advertiser purposes, and being the highest rated broadcast drama isn’t the gala event it would […]

  Today’s CW announcement that in March, THE TOMORROW PEOPLE will move to Monday nights, swapping the hit Arrow for the untested Star-Crossed as its lead in, probably starts the clock ticking on the show’s remaining time to prove itself.  The series has made a few steps to improve since its underwhelming pilot, but it’s […]

  HOUDINI & DOYLE:  Monday 9PM on FOX – Change the Channel Paranormal procedurals have been fertile ground for FOX since at least The X-Files, recently with Lucifer and Sleepy Hollow (and the rebooted X-Files).  The network’s early-arrival summer series HOUDINI & DOYLE, though, is a plodding, uninspired miss in the subgenre. As the rules […]