It wasn’t a great final season for DEXTER, and tonight’s last episode muffed its chance at a fully satisfying conclusion by falling into the trap of one twist too many.  In a way, that was fitting for a series that always tried to play both sides against the middle, with a protagonist who was […]

  Before the final 2 weeks of its run, the word no one would ever have dreamed of attaching to TRUE BLOOD was “subdued”; it was the guilty pleasure HBO series that was loaded with sex and violence and got great ratings, but without the class of, say, Game of Thrones, and with no serious […]

  Although Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin are still present to provide a continuing center of gravity, the HOMELAND that concluded its sixth season tonight is almost unrecognizable from the one that premiered in 2011.  That series was a dazzling mix of doomed romance and psychological spy thriller, about a bipolar CIA agent who couldn’t […]

  Think of MR. SELFRIDGE as the methadone to Downton Abbey‘s pure heroin.  It’s not remotely the real thing, but it serves to feed the craving through these many months until Downton returns in January 2014.  Although both are period pieces set in early 20th-century England, Downton has a distinctly, irresistibly modern pace and urgency, […]

  REVENGE made a concerted effort this season to earn back its… well, let’s call it “credibility,” although that word doesn’t have much to do with this series.  Creator and original showrunner Mike Kelley was shown the door, and Executive Producer Sunil Nayar took over, all but banishing the phrase “The Initiative” from the series […]

  It’s already been announced that next season will be the fifth and final one for TNT’s FALLING SKIES, and that seems best for all concerned.  The series, under new showrunner David Eick (probably best known as a producer, although not creator, of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica), took a wrong turn both creatively and in […]

  Damon Lindelof is fascinated by the elements of storytelling, sometimes to the detriment of the story itself.  It was fitting that a motif of WATCHMEN, both in its Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons 1987 graphic novel version and in Lindelof’s HBO sequel/spin-off, was the construction of watches, because this new version could feel like a fantastically […]

  After a so-so fall spent mostly in Neverland, ONCE UPON A TIME rebounded strongly with its midseason arc, which brought the Wicked Witch of the West (Rebecca Mader) to Storybrooke.  The plotline effectively continued the process of redemption for former Evil Queen Regina (Lana Parrilla) and Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) that had started in the […]