Because Agents of SHIELD is box office poison that will either be cancelled this year or (more likely) come back for a shortened final season and then be cancelled. Inhumans is ABC's third bite at the MCU apple, after the failures of AoS and Agent Carter. The very last thing they want is anyone getting the idea that…

He was basically a psychopath for the first season of that show. He used to eat his lunches with the frozen corpse of the woman he (accidentally) killed.

So the new director wants to stress "Britishness" (totally not a loaded term and approach right now) and the first example of that is an adaptation of a classic American novel?

It's a show whose first episode revolves around a scary black guy who is a literal ticking time bomb, and who the heroes have to shoot in the head for his own and the world's good.

I found it particularly telling that Liv spent the entire episode trying to dominate everyone she encountered - even, as you say, in non-sexual, non-consensual settings - and then as soon as things get serious with Major, that aspect of her personality disappears. They even have sex, and it appears to be completely…

Look, Arrow: this doesn't work. Either Oliver is a psychopath, or he isn't. Personally, I think the man I've been watching for five seasons is not a psychopath. But maybe he should have been, and either way you're the ones who decided that he once skinned a man alive "for practice", and that guy absolutely is a…

I bailed on AoS, among other reasons, because it was fascist and racist. From everything I've read, it's only gotten worse on both fronts. So I think I'll pass.

No, it's a Fox show (hence airing on FX). It might cross over with the X-Men movies, but not the MCU.

Jessica Jones and Luke Cage do interesting things with sexual assault and the dangers of being black in America, which no other work in the superhero genre has done. Daredevil has some good fight choreography and a well-done villain in its first season. Other than that, no, there's nothing particularly unique in any…

As I recall, they wore the costumes for about fifteen minutes, during the film's climactic action scene when you had a lot of other stuff to look at.

It's not really about distinctive outfits, though, as anything resembling a sense of style. Everyone in that show seems to wear black all the time, and only within a fairly limited range of what's fashionable right this minute. It's part and parcel of how completely unimaginative the show's look is in general.

I think AoS is still worse, because at least some of the people in this picture have distinctive outfits.

Well, there go my hopes that ABC has learned any lessons from Agents of SHIELD. Specifically, in the department of not making your cast look completely boring and constipated. I swear, I've never seen a show as skilled at making attractive people look nondescript and washed out, but it looks like there's going to be…

Of course the family is a sham, and both Paige and Henry have noticed it, even if he can't put it into words (though, smart as he is, I imagine he has). You think the kids haven't noticed that Philip and Elizabeth are lying all the time, that their minds are always on something else, that there's something off about…

A round of applause, please, for Henry Jennings, for finding a way to put the maximum legal distance between himself and his parents before they destroyed him completely. If only Paige could have done the same.

The only criticism I've seen of Kimmel from the left has been for his mealy-mouthed characterization of the problems with health care as rooted in "partisanship". This is not a both-sides-do-it thing. It's a matter of one side wanting newborn babies to die because their parents can't afford lifesaving treatment, and…

There was a lot of stuff in this episode that I liked: the fact that almost all the action was moved by women (including the Lena/Rhea stuff, where Lena acts like the smart cookie she's always been; I strongly suspect we're going to find out she always knew who Kara was, but whether that information will be put to…

Oh, shit, Jorge is going to get picked up by ICE and deported, isn't he?

The thing is, though, when it wants to, Elementary can be really good at character drama, including covering some issues, like recovery, that hardly any other show on TV does, and with a sensitivity that you rarely see. But it's never been particularly good at procedural or mystery storytelling - at best, it can be…

I've once again reached the point where I have a lot of unwatched TV banked up, so I'm spending Saturdays clearing my hard drive. This week: