TROPHY WIFE:  Tuesday 9:30PM on ABC Previously… on TROPHY WIFE:  Kate Harrison (Malin Akerman) is the cheerful, committed, trying-really-hard third wife of Pete (Bradley Whitford).  As such, she’s inherited both his previous spouses, scary Diane (Marcia Gay Harden) and New Age-y Jackie (Michaela Watkins), as well as their combined children:  Diane’s teens Warren (Ryan […]

> Previously… On ALCATRAZ:  San Francisco cop Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones), whose partner was recently killed, finds herself embroiled in a mysterious case in which an Alcatraz inmate from 40 years ago, apparently long dead, has turned up not having aged a day and committing new murders.  Rebecca learns that all the Alcatraz prisoners who […]

  A weaker show than HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER would be crippled by its sizable flaws.  With the all-important exception of its central character, Philadelphia law professor and expert criminal lawyer Annalise Keating, and Viola Davis, the richly talented actress who plays her, the rest of the characters and cast are bland to […]

  Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here and Midseason Pilot Reports here. WE ARE MEN:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS – Change the Channel It hasn’t been a great fall for new sitcoms.  On CBS, WE ARE MEN (which could have better been called We Are Mediocrities) joins Mom, The Crazy Ones, and The Millers, […]

  BITTEN:  Monday 10PM on Syfy Syfy’s Canadian werewolf import BITTEN is noticeably low-rent.  Even its transformation sequences use as little CG as possible:  a morphing hand, a back becoming increasingly hairy, and voila, there’s the fake wolf. Although the show has a bit more sex then the Syfy norm, it gives off a very […]

  SALVATION:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS CBS’s summer series SALVATION presents a potential end of the world so pedestrian that viewers might fall asleep while awaiting the apocalypse.  It’s a disappointment, because at their best (BrainDead, the first season of Under the Dome), CBS’s forays into the sci-fi potboiler genre can be entertainingly over the […]

      No one expected DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES to end with the revelation that the housewives had been dead all along, and Wisteria Lane existed in a Sideways alternate dimension.  (Although that might’ve been interesting.)  The show, which exited tonight after 8 seasons, always knew its audience, and it left the scene with a satisfying […]

  LIFE OF PI:  Worth A Ticket – A Floating Display of Visual Marvels A boy and a Bengal tiger get into a lifeboat… The digital paintbox now available to filmmakers provides an almost limitless variety of visual possibilities, and also a certain amount of temptation, because like any resource, it can be overused.  Ang […]