Shameless: Season 5 — a review

This season takes place two to three months after the events of Season 4. Take heed: I’m going to spoil the hell out of it, so skip down to the bottom if you haven’t watched the series yet. As always, we deal with the aftermath of the story threads from the previous season. Ian Gallagher […]

Shameless: Season 4 — a review

Season 4 of Shameless dares to go a little dark. We never expect things to go smoothly with the Gallaghers, our favorite family in Chicago’s South Side. And, they don’t this season either. We do expect things to remain entertaining, however. They do continue to entertain, but the drama this year, as I said at […]

GLOW: Season 1 — a review

My maternal grandparents were wrestling fans. This means wrestling was playing on their television whenever I visited them, and since we lived in the same smallish town, that was often. They swore that wrestling wasn’t fake. Even when the WWE (or maybe it was still the WWF in those days) had to admit that what […]

Shameless: Season 3 — a review

You don’t need additional reasons to hate the character Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy). You’ll still get more reasons during Season 3, anyway. In most real ways, this Showtime series is about the Gallagher children, not about their father. Frank is more of a force of nature, existing primarily to complicate plots. Seldom are the […]

Shameless: Season 2 — a review

I doubt that I will ever suggest that I’m growing more fond of Frank Gallagher. He remains one of the most reprehensible television characters I’ve ever seen. I am, however, a fan of William H. Macy, the actor who portrays him. He’s conducting an acting clinic every time he appears on the screen. There’s a […]

New Girl: Season 2 — a review

Some writers, and some showrunners, get it. It’s about the characters. If you allow the characters you create to come to life, whether on the page or on the screen, the stories that develop from them will be more engaging, on one hand, and less important, on the other. Character-driven stories are the best kind, […]

Gilmore Girls: Season 5 — a review

Amy Sherman-Palladino and the other great minds behind Gilmore Girls know how to write characters that you grow to care about. That’s what keeps me watching this series, which is a veritable Masters class on characterization. Towns such as Stars Hollow, Connecticut, do not exist. They’ve probably never existed except on shows like this one, […]

Gilmore Girls: Season 2 — a review

It bothers me when Gilmore Girls is referred to as a “chick series.” I am an older man (I shuddered a little when I wrote the word “older,” but I guess it’s true), middle-aged only if I live into my 100s, which looks doubtful. While my testosterone levels may be lower than when I was […]

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