24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY:  Monday 9PM on FOX – DVR Alert Jack Bauer didn’t speak until 40 minutes into the first hour of tonight’s 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY premiere.  It’s not that he wasn’t around:  he had a fight scene, a chase, and some interrogation sequences during that span.  He just didn’t say anything.  […]

  It’s not paranoia if they really are after you, as the saying goes, and CBS’s PERSON OF INTEREST, a well-styled, relatively intelligent and ambitious action drama about mega-surveillance computer programs that trafficked in paranoia, in the end fell victim to a system larger than itself:  the new broadcast network ecosystem, in which it’s increasingly […]

  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 […]

  AGENT CARTER:  Tuesday 9PM on ABC Under showrunners Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, the second season of ABC/Marvel’s retro comic book adventure AGENT CARTER, at least in the early going, makes a less strenuous effort to fit into the larger Marvel universe, and the result is more streamlined and smoother than Season 1. The […]

  ONE BIG HAPPY:  Tuesday 9:30PM on NBC – Change the Channel Have you heard the one about the guy who makes a pact with his lesbian best friend that if they’re not with anyone else when they turn 30, they’ll have a baby together?  Have you heard the one about the guy who meets […]

  JUSTIFIED:  Tuesday 10PM on FX Final seasons, as we all know, can be tricky, but JUSTIFIED seems to be in strong shape as it enters its last lap.   Justified lost a bit of its mojo last year, the victim of some inadequate villains and scattered plotting (the whole Mexican druglord subplot seemed to come […]

  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 […]

  With the addition of Rockne S. O’Bannon to the REVOLUTION writing/producing team as co-showrunner, alongside series creator Eric Kripke, the first half (actually 9/22nds) of its second season has been more tightly focused and dramatically effective than the mess of its first year.  There were considerably less of Season 1’s annoying mannerisms:  endless trudging […]