Scandal, the new ABC drama from mega-producer Shonda Rhimes, is set in the world of politics, which is not to say that it is a political drama. It’s about politicians, and the associates and secret lovers around them. There are …
tv tonight
TV Tonight: Community-mentum?
I’m not going to tell you to watch Community tonight. Don’t take that to mean I don’t love the show. There have been plenty of encomiums, tributes and pleas written on the show’s behalf over the last three years, some of them by …
TV Tonight: Awake
What’s more depressing than a primetime drama about a man mourning the death of his wife? Maybe a primetime drama about a man mourning the death of his child. And what’s more depressing than either of those two? A primetime drama …
TV Tonight: The Loving Story
For Richard and Mildred Loving, their marriage was a pretty simple matter. They grew up in a small Virginia town where everyone pretty much knew everyone, fell in love (not without some obstacles; she found him “arrogant” at …
TV Tonight: The River
There’s a school of thought that says the scariest thing in a horror movie (or TV show) is the thing you can’t see. Another approach is to scare the hell out of the audience with images they can see–the more imaginatively …
TV Tonight: Touch
If, as the new Fox drama Touch suggests, we are all connected and all our actions affect everyone else, then maybe I should take some tiny responsibility and/or blame for the show. I’m always complaining on this blog that …
TV Tonight: The Sing-Off Sings Itself Off
The most important show on television, The Sing-Off, ends its first regular-season outing—and, if I’m to guess from the ratings, possibly its last—tonight with a live finale. As I wrote earlier, together with Top Chef it’s …
TV Tonight: Suburgatory
There are a lot of things that critics look when reviewing pilots: premise, plot, dialogue, chemistry between actors, directing and so on. To me the most important is an intangible that’s hard to put a finger on, but without …
TV Tonight: Fringe
A quick reminder that tonight is the return of Fringe, which more or less fully embraced the weirdness of its battle-between-the-mirror-universes story last season and lived to tell the tale. There’s not much I can say about …
TV Tonight: Person of Interest
Particularly when you have only a pilot to go on, reviewing a new TV series can be more like describing a forked path, and guessing which way each turn could lead. This was how it was this year with, for instance, 2 Broke Girls, …
ABC’s Revenge: Are You Ready for Some Class Warfare?
Earlier this week, President Obama put forward a deficit-reduction plan that, pointedly, involved raising taxes and closing loopholes for the wealthiest Americans. Republicans, as they often have when facing a proposal that picks …
TV Tonight: 2 Broke Girls, Playboy Club
Tonight brings the debuts of two network premieres, CBS’s 2 Broke Girls and NBC’s The Playboy Club, which I covered in my roundup in this week’s TIME of series focusing on female characters. It’s a busy season, and neither pilot …
TV Tonight: Season 7 of Sunny and an Archer Bonus
Consider this more a public service announcement than a review (I’ve been too busy with fall pilots to get through all the screeners), but FX’s Thursday comedy block returns tonight, a week before NBC’s does. Starting off is It’s …