[Televisionary]

At 66 and four-feet-nine, Linda Hunt is an unlikely action heroine. But as the enigmatic Hetty Lange on NCIS: LA , Oscar winner Hunt (who won for her staggering performance as a male Indonesian-Australian dwarf in Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously ) has become a Teen Choice Award recipient and the show’s breakout character. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "The Cult of Linda Hunt," in which I sit down with the Oscar (and Teen Choice Award!) winner Hunt to discuss NCIS: Los Angeles' Hetty, The Year of Living Dangerously , water from the moon, and what the future holds. (I also talk to creator Shane Brennan and Chris O'Donnell about the remarkable Hunt and her character.) NCIS: Los Angeles airs Tuesday evenings at 9 pm ET/PT on CBS.

The wait is over. After months of waiting breathlessly for the repercussions of Alicia (Julianna Margulies) and Will (Josh Charles) entering that hotel room together (with Alicia taking control of the situation), The Good Wife returned for the start of its third season ("A New Day"), written by Robert and Michelle King, with a new night and timeslot, a new haircut for Alicia, and a new office for our erstwhile good wife, who proved this week just how bad she can be. Among other areas, The Good Wife has excelled in its handling of female sexuality, particularly in terms of how it's handled within the confines of a primetime broadcast network drama. This hasn't been a show featuring much bed-hopping from its main character, who spent the first two seasons coming to terms with her husband's infidelity, her passion towards her boss, and her decision to kick said husband to the curb after learning that he had slept with one of the few friends she had (that would ...

Jennifer Ehle, best known for playing Elizabeth Bennet in BBC’s Pride & Prejudice , co-stars in a new CBS drama, A Gifted Man . Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " A Gifted Man 's Leading Lady," in which I sit down with Jennifer Ehle to discuss ghost sex, Game of Thrones, A Gifted Man, Pride & Prejudice , attachment parenting, Mr. Darcy, and more. A Gifted Man begins tonight at 8 pm ET/PT on CBS.

There is an emergency session underway within the writers’ room of CBS’s critically acclaimed drama, The Good Wife , which returns for its third season on Sunday, Sept. 25. With 48 hours to go, the writers—overseen by husband-and-wife creators Robert and Michelle King—must rewrite the latest script and untangle a Gordian knot to come up with a new procedural case for hotshot lawyer Alicia Florrick (recent Emmy Award winner Julianna Margulies) and the firm to tackle. In the second season of the critical and ratings hit, the personal loomed large for all of the show’s characters. Alicia gave into temptation and slept with her boss, Will (Josh Charles), after years of having bad timing. Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) went to great lengths to conceal a long-buried secret—that she had, years before, slept with Alicia’s husband, Peter (Chris Noth)—in a storyline that involved baseball bats, smashed-out windows, and assaulting rival investigator Blake (Scott Porter). With its deft plotting an...

Try as you might, there are some marks that can never be scrubbed out entirely. There are some people who leave an indelible impression on our souls which remains long after they've gone, an afterimage burned onto our retinas, an echo of a cry for help, a sigh, a plaintive wail, or a whispered declaration of love. Within the world of Fringe , Peter Bishop no longer exists. We saw him blink out of existence at the end of the third season finale, flickering before our eyes as two universes forgot all about him. Nature, of course, abhors a vacuum, so time and space rush to fill the void left behind when an item is plucked out of the timestream. What does all of this have to do with Season Four of Fringe ? I'm glad you asked. ( PLEASE DO NOT REPRODUCE THIS REVIEW IN FULL ON ANY WEBSITES, BLOGS, MESSAGE BOARDS, OR SIMILAR. ) The season opener ("Neither Here Nor There") contains a rather ordinary procedural plot, but it also reintroduces us to the two universes, and to ...

It's no secret that I love NBC's Parks and Recreation . Over at The Daily Beast, I have not one but two features on the Pawnee-set comedy today, which returns later this week for a fourth season. In Part One of my Parks and Recreation feature at The Daily Beast, in which I visit the set of Parks and Recreation and spend time with Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Adam Scott, Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, and showrunner Mike Schur, exploring what Offerman deems "the comedy of hope" that the show taps into, and the intelligence and spirit of Parks and Rec . In Part Two , I offer some mild spoilers for Season 4, exploring what's ahead for Leslie, April and Andy, Ron Swanson, Ann Perkins, Mark Brendanawicz, and The End? Season Four of Parks and Recreation begins this Thursday at 8:30 pm ET/PT on NBC.

The fall television season is now upon us, and the offerings seem pretty underwhelming for the most part. From must-watch entries like A Gifted Man, Revenge, Homeland , and Pan Am to the better-forgotten Terra Nova , I Hate My Teenage Daughter , Man Up! , and Grimm , I break down which new shows you should be watching this fall and which will have you running from the room, in my latest feature at The Daily Beast, "TV to Watch (and Skip) This Fall." What will you be watching this fall? And what are you skipping altogether? Head to the comments section to discuss.

While the Primetime Emmy Awards aren’t typically known for offering gasp-inducing surprises, last year’s ceremony did make an instant star out of The Good Wife ’s Archie Panjabi, who walked off with the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, even as most of the crowd gathered said, “Who?” (Those of us who know and love The Good Wife, however, cheered for Kalinda’s win.) Anything is possible, particularly in some key races (like Panjabi’s category again this year) that are going neck-and-neck as we move into the days leading up to Sunday’s telecast, which will air—for the second year in a row—live from coast to coast. The winners will be announced on Sept. 18’s live Primetime Emmy Awards telecast on Fox. But, in the meantime, over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Our Emmy Picks!," in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I offer their predictions of who and what will take home the top prizes in 10 key Emmy races. Will stealth frontrunn...

Time to head back to the couch, America. The fall TV season is here and all of your favorite shows—from The Walking Dead and The Good Wife to Dexter and Boardwalk Empire —and a slew of new ones are soon heading to a TV set near you. Will you find Ringer to be the second coming of Sarah Michelle Gellar… or is it the second coming of Silk Stalkings ? Time will tell, but at least your TV favorites are back with brand new seasons, and lots of plot twists. To refresh your memory after the long summer, over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "The Fall TV Season Begins!," in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I round up a guide to the good and bad times of last season--or in this case, 23 cliffhangers--and offer a peek into what’s coming next this fall.

I had hoped to have a full review of tonight's fantastic Parenthood season opener ("I Don't Want to Do This Without You"), but unfortunately I'm being pulled in a thousand directions at the moment, so you'll have to settle for a glowing (if brief) recommendation to tune in tonight when this remarkable and emotionally powerful series returns for its third season. Five months have passed since we last saw the sprawling Braverman clan, and change is in the air for nearly all of the family members. Adam (Peter Krause) is still out of work and has been reduced to loafing around the house and going on interviews for jobs that he doesn't really want and is over qualified for, having lost his purpose and identity as the family's breadwinner; Kristina (Monica Potter), meanwhile, is quite pregnant and quite capable of bringing home the bacon, having gone back to work. It's interesting to see how the dynamic between the two of them has shifted so considera...

"I'll always be with you." I've been quiet about the last few episodes of True Blood , partly because I've had a massive amount of deadlines at work and am in the process of moving house (and taking time off as a result), but also because my enthusiasm for the series has waned considerably during the final few installments of Season Four. After a series of strong episodes, I felt the quality drop considerably out of the final third of the season. I will say, however, that I did quite enjoy the season finale ("And When I Die"), written by Raelle Tucker and directed by Scott Winant, which is a head-scratcher as I typically don't love the True Blood season finales as a rule, as they tend to be more about setting up the next season than wrapping up storylines. (I tend to think of them more as epilogues or codas than anything else.) Given how little I've liked the rally massacre/standoff at Moon Goddess storylines, I was surprised by how much ple...

The race for the Emmy Awards’ top drama prize isn’t as cut and dried as it looks. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Real Race for Best Drama: Why Mad Men May Not Win," in which I examine the cutthroat competition this year for best drama, and why Mad Men may not win the top spot at next weekend's awards ceremony. (Though it probably will.) What's your take on the drama race this year? Will Mad Men four-peat? Will The Good Wife claim the top pick? Will HBO's Game of Thrones or Boardwalk Empire walk away with the statuette? Or will Friday Night Lights pull off the impossible and finally get some recognition for its outstanding fifth and final season? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Mad Men 's fourth season episode "The Suitcase" was instantly deemed a classic hour of TV. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Mad Men Up Close," in which series creator Matthew Weiner and star Jon Hamm offer an oral history of the gut-wrenching, Emmy-nominated episode "The Suitcase." Weiner and Hamm dissect six of the most powerful and indelible sequences from “The Suitcase,” the relationship between Don and Peggy, and Hamm’s performance, which Weiner called “magical.” Get your handkerchiefs ready. Season Five of Mad Men is slated to begin March 2012 on AMC.