SEAL TEAM:  Wednesday 9PM on CBS – In the Queue CBS’s entry in the fall’s military drama sweepstakes, SEAL TEAM, has several advantages over NBC’s The Brave. It’s been put together by a team of veteran craftsman:  series creator Benjamin Cavell has been a senior writer/producer with Graham Yost on Justified and Sneaky Pete, co-showrunner Edward […]

  Great TV dramas tend to arrive on our screens fully-formed.  (The same isn’t true of comedies, which sometimes take an entire season to find their voices.)  By the end of the first hours of The Sopranos, Mad Men, Deadwood, The West Wing, The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Shield, Lost–it was clear that we were […]

> Premieres Thursday 10PM on USA:  If Nothing Else Is On… (But it’s summer, so nothing is.) At this point, I think we could all identify a USA Network series blindfolded and with the soundtrack running backwards.  There’s the quirky, unconventional savant lead–available, like a comfortable sweater, in several colors:  cop/detective (In Plain Sight, Psych, […]

  GRACELAND:  Thursday 10PM on USA Previously… on GRACELAND:  Mike Warren (Aaron Tveit) is a straight-out-of-the-academy FBI agent and the newcomer to a luxurious Malibu beachhouse that was seized by the government from a druglord (he was an Elvis fan), which now serves as both residence and base of operations for FBI, DEA and Customs […]

  PARENTHOOD:  Thursday 10PM on NBC PARENTHOOD, like Parks & Recreation, is one of NBC’s little engines that could, chugging along to a fourth season despite mediocre ratings.  (And last night’s series-low-tying 1.6 in its Thursday night debut won’t help any.)  Whatever the network may consider its failings from a bottom-line point of view, creatively it […]

  When a show is as successful as AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD, it can afford to spend virtually the entire back half of a season as little more than a lead-up to the next.  But can it also provide no satisfaction at all when it reaches the end of the season finale?  Of course, Walking […]

After 3 seasons of telling more or less the same story, Season 4 of Showtime’s NURSE JACKIE took a leap that revitalized the show.  Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco), having successfully concealed her drug addiction, her adulteries, and her many, many lies from her husband (Dominic Fumusa), and her friends and colleagues, was finally caught.  Her […]