Downton Abbey’s dramatic third season finale was full of progress and change. The changes were subtle at first, before reaching an ending that changed the course of the show. At first, I was frustrated with this episode. Like the show’s patriarch, Robert, it seemed Downton was digging its heels at anything that strayed from a […]
For a period in the show’s 4th and 5th seasons, it became incredibly hip to decry the downfall of 30 Rock. But suck it haters, because they just managed to have one of the best final seasons of all time. Liz Lemon was always going to be a workaholic with a tendency towards bitchiness, swearing, […]
The final season of Fringe was not a misstep, but a plummet off a cliff of stale, forced ideas. I am being melodramatic in order to care, at all, about the meandering storylines and wasted potential of this season. I can pinpoint the precise moment when my apathy turned to rage: in the ninth episode, […]
While I am sure there are some fans of Burn Notice who feel the finale was a little rushed, I’m actually happy the entire story was ended without spilling into season seven. Don’t’ get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed watching the whole ‘cat and mouse’ chases between Westin and Reily for the last several episodes but […]
After just six episodes, BBC’s The Hour has wrapped up its intense, brilliant, though not flawless second season. (*This is a review of the entire season, so there will be some spoilers ahead.*) The plot this year was incredible. The season premiere indicated this season would focus on domestic violence and vice. While the team […]
Oh Homeland, where to start? When this show premiered it was so cool. Not a lot of people were watching it yet so it had that inherent underrated thing going on but was good from the get go. The writing was sharp, full of storytelling so engrossing that it was at once suspenseful to the point […]
Showtime is one of the best channels out there and they seem to be getting better as the years pass. Here’s the second part to our three-part look at some of the shows that made Showtime stand out this year. (You’ve already heard all about the end of Weeds)* Shameless This show just keeps getting […]
We made it! Those of you still with me on this dramatic, unpredictable, sometimes fun, often difficult, far longer than expected ride- we made it all the way to the end of Gossip Girl. That’s 6 seasons, 121 episodes, approximately 90 straight hours of television (without commercials)- and I watched every single moment. I know […]
In its final season, Weeds got back to basics in a lot of ways. It’s been 8 very long years with the Botwins but ultimately it’s been 8 pretty good ones. At the end of season three, when Agrestic burned to the ground, the series lost its satirical core (and many of its most engaging […]
Going into their summer mid-season finale, Burn Notice had good momentum. Still coming off the shocking death of Michael’s brother Nate and the hunt to find his killer, our heroes took their eye off the ball and were unaware they were being set up. The man doing the set up might have possible ties with […]
The summer provided some great television for those who were not in the mood to spend their every waking moment watching sports. While many summer shows had some solid seasons, in my personal opinion the best season finale of the summer was hands down, without a shadow of a doubt, the Falling Skies season two […]
For better or for worse, the final season of Breaking Bad is half over. As discussed previously, AMC has decided to spread the remaining episodes of Breaking Bad over the next two years. Eight episodes have aired thus far in 2012, and eight more are expected during the summer of 2013. Rather than ride the […]
Political Animals‘ 6-part season was great and if it doesn’t get a second season, I’ll be sad, but it’ll still be a great mini-series that got to the heart of its humans while completely leaving pretension at the door. The great James Wolk and Sebastian Stan got better and better each episode, Ellen Burstyn stayed […]
I can finally exhale. The Newsroom season finale is everything I wanted it to be. Or at least it’s almost everything I wanted it to be and knowing as I do that Aaron Sorkin is but a human being I will take “almost everything” any day. The episode wraps up stories that needed to be […]
First Things First: If you’ve been watching the show and thinking… “meh,” last episode was aptly titled because THE TIDE WAS TURNING, YO! The episode was nuttier, funnier, dramatic-er, stupidly schmoopier, and epic-er than those that came before it. If nothing else, it was NOT meh. It was anti-meh. It was insane hysterical laughter followed […]
In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably admit that I feel a greater connection with the characters on Girls than I probably have with any characters since Freaks and Geeks. I should probably also admit that this connection is a double edged sword, given how often people like to casually toss off the […]
Matthew Weiner said that this season of Mad Men was about the unhappiness at the center of contentment. The season finale, “Phantom,” dealt with this idea explicitly – making that subtext text by having not one, but two characters explain exactly how little any of our characters’ success means to them. Pete, in a heart […]
When Veep first premiered, Kelly took the show to task for being endlessly cynical and overusing “shocking” profanity. She also admitted to being a West Wing-raised idealist. I’ve never seen The West Wing (a pop culture omission that makes me feel only slightly less ashamed than the fact that I’ve never seen Jaws), but I would […]
After last week’s (sadly unreviewed by me) action battle awesomefest, I spent most of this week’s Game of Thrones wanting to hug the characters. Maybe that’s not the right reaction to have to characters so completely embroiled in the Game of Thrones, but tell me you didn’t get a bit teary eyed watching Tyrion come […]
The trajectory of NBC’s would-be hit Smash has been a little wonky. The buzz was incredible, the previews wondrous, the pilot acceptible and the following couple episodes really truly promising. After those initial episodes, I was high on Smash. Obviously, the show had its problems, but there were lots of promising stories on the horizon, […]
First of all, let me say Kudos to Vampire Diaries. Throughout much of the back half of the show’s third season, I was ready to expound on how the show had lost it (more on that later), but this final episode left me pumped to see what the old-by-CW-standards girl has left in her. But […]
I get what you were going for, How I Met Your Mother. It’s actually kind of clever. Have Barney flat out tell the audience that he is all about the misdirection, then have the show itself pull a major misdirection in regards to Barney’s love life. Only problem is, no one’s misdirected. In magician terms, […]
*spoiler alert* I was sure, going into the Parks & Rec finale last night, that Leslie Knope would lose the election. All TV characters lose elections because no one likes to move a sitcom forward. But Parks & Rec couldn’t care less about rules like that (other rules they discard: Sam & Diane, cast changeup, […]
Zombies are nothing new. They’ve been a staple of the silver screen, starting in 1968 with Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, to today’s modern 28 Weeks Later and Zombieland. Zombies feature prominently in books, comics, music (think Michael Jackson’s Thriller), and especially video games. Yet somehow, it took until 2010 for the zombie hordes […]
This was an amazing TV season for new shows, but I would trade all of them in (except New Girl, we have to keep New Girl) to save my favourite, Pan Am. I think the concept seemed odd to a lot of people, so they just didn’t tune in from the get-go and critics hardly […]
I flip flop on how much I like FX’s zany bad-person comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The inspired pilot and strong first season earned the show my continued devotion, but Danny DeVito’s grotesque Frank became a thorn in season 2’s side and has remained a symptom of the show’s idiotically broad tendencies ever since. […]