I really wanted to like Powerless, and I'll probably see out the season now, mainly out of inertia, but it just isn't very good. Bottom line, it has no idea what to do with its central concept, and it keeps veering quite wildly between ignoring it completely and acting like a normal (and not particularly interesting)…

Kind of feels like we're ignoring The Good Place here. Conceptually, it's pretty out there, and the execution requires some effort - it could never just be a hangout show. And while it wasn't a huge hit, it certainly did better than Powerless and Trial and Error.

Just remember how development delays made us all pessimistic about "Westworld"

I've said this before, but the whole fall season/spring season concept is clearly failing all around, and the sooner the networks ditch it, the better. Either make shorter seasons (which would be better for the shows anyway) or air them on something like a normal schedule.

Yeah, I don't doubt that he had a career in the intervening 30 years, but he wasn't a star the way Scandal has made him, and I'm sure he realizes who that's down to.

I'm sure Tony Goldwyn, a man whose last big hit was Ghost, is eager to make waves with Shonda Rhymes, a woman notorious for cutting off actors for prima-donna-ish behavior. It can't possibly be that he just had another engagement.

It was a D+ review. I came to watch the trainwreck.

If that person is the president then yeah, I absolutely expect them to be able to do that. And if they can't, that's what the 25th amendment is for. I don't even watch Homeland anymore, but the idea that "she's just traumatized!" excuses erratic behavior that affects the lives of all Americans, not to mention most…

I think it's obvious that the biggest flop is Time After Time, but everyone is voting for Doubt so I'll vote for that too. I think Heigel-schadenfreude may be coloring this decision.

I don't know if you're obliquely referring to it, but this basically describes several storylines on Legends of Tomorrow.

I don't know how much of an inducement the Thor films are. We'd like to see Sif again, but it's not as if the previous two films did that much with her (not entirely their fault in the case of Thor 2, but still), and I think in terms of her career she's probably gotten as much out of them as she was going to get. …

I don't know if anyone is doing Lost numbers (maybe Empire?), but both AoS and Supergirl started very strong - in the latter case, ratings of about 4.0 or 5.0. They immediately cratered, though, and I think the curiosity about superhero shows that fed those numbers is probably gone. As I said, ABC is working very…

ABC is working very, very hard to a) sell this as a major TV event, and b) downplay even the slightest hint of a connection to AoS. I imagine it'll get at least a first look from a lot of people, though I'm not sure it'll do quite as well as the AoS or even Supergirl pilots. Those days are probably over.

Considering that they've already swapped the order of several episodes, it would surely have been no trouble to do so again and air one that isn't reminiscent of a horrific recent act of mass murder.

When Iron Fist came out, there were several people joking about a putative reverse story in which a Chinese girl is rescued from a plane crash in deepest, most mysterious Texas, and returns to her home years later, having mastered the arcane art of rodeo.

So I guess we know how traumatized US networks think their audiences have been by the poison gas attack in Syria, if they're so comfortable airing a sitcom episode about same two days later.

I would absolutely prefer no Blaine to redeemed Blaine. And certainly a redemption that is as half-assed as "he doesn't remember doing it, so it's OK that he murdered all those children". That's not really about redemption so much as it's about making it OK for the show and the fans to like Blaine (and even root for…

I'm reading my old paperback copy from 2002. I didn't realize there was that much extra material in the rerelease version. Honestly, I don't think it reflects that well on the book - it kind of seems to reaffirm my sense that it's an enjoyable but shapeless blob more memorable for its moments than its whole.

I don't know if the comparison to the Lecter books is all that instructive, because they are incredibly tightly-plotted thrillers with a surprising amount of psychological depth (I'm talking about the first two here, not Hannibal or Hannibal Rising). And on the other hand, there's a lot of stuff that I appreciated in…

On my flight home yesterday I read about 2/3 of American Gods, which I'd decided to reread before the show starts. At this point (and I don't see this changing before the end of the book) I'm having the same reaction I had in 2002 - I really don't know why this book works as well as it does. It shouldn't - it's…