[Televisionary]

The season finale of The Good Wife was full of dramatic bombshells. I talk to creators Robert and Michelle King about rebooting the show, the start of a ‘civil war,’ Alicia and Kalinda’s dynamic, and what’s next. WARNING: Spoilers galore. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " The Good Wife Creators Tell All," an exclusive Season 4 postmortem interview with The Good Wife husband-and-wife creators Robert and Michelle King, in which we discuss the Alicia (Julianna Margulies)/Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) dynamic (or lack thereof), what really happened between Kalinda and Nick (Marc Warren), the year of Cary (Matt Czuchry), Robyn Burdine (Jess Weixler), and much more. (Seriously, it's a long interview and I had to cut a lot for space.) With two simple words (“I’m in”) the fantastic fourth season of CBS legal drama The Good Wife came to a staggering conclusion on Sunday evening with the revelation that Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), Illinois’s n...

British murder mystery Broadchurch , heading to the U.S. later this year on BBC America, is a worthy successor to Forbrydelsen . My take on ITV’s tantalizing thriller, which wraps up tonight in the U.K. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Broadchurch : This British Murder Mystery Will Be Your Next Television Obsession," in which I review ITV's sensational murder mystery Broadchurch , which stars David Tennant and Olivia Colman and which will head Stateside later this year on BBC America. Not to be missed! The British have an insatiable appetite for crime fiction, whether it appears in print or on television screens. Putting aside the twee tea cozy mysteries of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, however, these thrillers are not only taut but also bleak depictions of the psychological fallout from murder: tracing, as novelist Ruth Rendell has done so well in her work, how crime affects not just the victim, but also those left behind...

Netflix will today offer all 13 episodes of its latest original series, Eli Roth’s horror drama Hemlock Grove . My take on how Netflix has stumbled with this poisonous fare. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Hemlock Grove : Netflix’s Latest Original Show Is Scary Bad," in which I review Netflix's newest original series, Hemlock Grove , which is not only nonsensical and almost unwatchable, but also could signal a misstep for the streaming video platform. (A sample quote: "Roman’s mother, Olivia, played by Famke Janssen as though she is channeling Madeleine Stowe’s Victoria Grayson through a hazy, upside-down kaleidoscope, is some sort of supernatural creature as well, her darkness symbolized by her haughty indifference, cut-glass English accent, and penchant for wearing black lingerie.") Netflix has recently had a rather simple mandate: to fund their own original series under the auspices of well-known creative talent and use their stream...

Sundance Channel’s ‘Rectify,’ which begins on Monday, is a weighty meditation on crime, punishment, beauty, and solitude. It is also insanely riveting television. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Sundance Channel’s Rectify is the Best New Show of 2013," in which I review Sundance Channel's Rectify , which begins Monday and which I name the best new show of 2013: "With Rectify , McKinnon creates a world of light and darkness, and of heaven and hell, one that exerts a powerful gravity from which it is impossible to escape." Sundance Channel, the indie-centric network that is closely aligned with corporate sibling AMC, is quickly ascending to a place of prominence in an increasingly fragmented television landscape. For the longest time, the network was identifiable as the home of independent films, repeats of Lisa Kudrow’s short-lived HBO mockumentary The Comeback , and some forgettable reality fare. It lacked a cohesive programming i...

Windy sex scenes! Dumpster diving! Imaginary mommy meltdowns! Or as it says at the site: "A conflicted Jace Lacob and a hooked Anna Klassen debate the merits and flaws of A&E’s Psycho prequel, Bates Motel ." Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Great Bates Motel Debate: Sex Scenes, Mother Issues & Implausible Twists," in which Anna Klassen and I debate the merits and flaws of A&E's Bates Mote , which was recently renewed for a second season and approaches Season One's halfway point tonight. A&E’s Bates Motel , the Psycho prequel overseen by Carlton Cuse ( Lost ) and Kerry Ehrin ( Friday Night Lights ), hasn’t just attracted an audience—4.5 million viewers tuned into the pilot. It has already been renewed for a second season of Oedipal strife between Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) and his overbearing mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga), set against the backdrop of a seemingly idyllic Pacific Northwest logging town th...

Hawaii, hell, and heart attacks! Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner discusses Sunday’s sixth-season opener (‘The Doorway’), Don’s quest for paradise, Betty’s transformation, and more. Warning: spoilers abound! Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Mad Men Season Premiere: Matthew Weiner on the ‘The Doorway,' and More," in which I talk to Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner about the sixth season opener ("The Doorway") and some of the themes, questions, and characters within. “Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.” Mad Men ’s sixth season started with a bang, with the season opener (”The Doorway”) offering us a look into the psyche of Don Draper (Jon Hamm), flitting between a doorman’s near brush with death, the weight of mortality, and the bliss of paradise, in this case the hot, white light of Hawaii. Throughout the two-hour opener, a jumping-off point for issues of...

Can’t remember what happened to Don, Peggy, and Joan? Ahead of its sixth season premiere on Sunday, I bring you up to speed on what happened last season on AMC’s Mad Men . Plus, read our review of the Season Six premiere . Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Mad Men Returns: A Recap of Season Five," in which I round up all of the important plot points of Season Five of Mad Men in order to get you ready for Sunday's premiere. Season Six of Mad Men begins Sunday evening at 9 p.m. with a stellar two-hour premiere, 10 long months since we last traveled back in time with AMC’s devastatingly elegant period drama. In that time, your brain may have erased precious details about what happened to Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in the dentist’s chair, whether he and “Zou Bisou Bisou” chanteuse Megan (Jessica Paré) repaired their marriage or ended it, and just what Joan (Christina Hendricks) did in order to secure herself a seat at the partners’ table. What ha...

Netflix has finally announced a launch date for Season 4 of Arrested Development , the beloved cult comedy which the streaming platform has brought back to life. Over at The Daily Beast, I've got a brief post up, " Arrested Development Finally Gets a Release Date," about the fact that Netflix has finally announced the launch of Season Four of Arrested Development . (Thank god.) Back up the stair car, there’s no need to be blue: Netflix has finally announced a return date for Arrested Development. Mitch Hurwitz’s oddball comedy, which aired on Fox between 2003 and 2006 and revolved around the Bluth clan of Orange County, was resurrected last year by the streaming video provider, which announced today that it will release the fourth season of Arrested Development to subscribers on Sunday, May 26. (That’s right, you can mark your calendars now: May 26 will be the day that the Internet will break in half.) All 15 episodes of Arrested Development will be available...

Mad Men ’s Don Draper returns for his penultimate season on AMC Sunday—and he’s as down in the dumps as ever. I write about the dark mood hovering over the show’s brilliant sixth season. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Mad Men Season 6 Review: Triumphant, Lyrical, and Way Existential," in which I review the fantastic sixth season premiere of AMC's Mad Men , which returns on Sunday at 9 p.m. for its penultimate season: "Don isn’t so much a person as a reflection, a shadow, the wet ring left on a bar by a glass of Scotch." Spoilers are funny things. It’s tricky enough to write about a show without delving into the plot mechanics, and even more so when you can’t even touch upon certain aspects of the plot in even a cursory way. But that’s always been the case with AMC’s Mad Men , which returns for its sixth—and penultimate—season on Sunday at 9 p.m. Creator Matthew Weiner wants to ensure that even the most quotidian of details a...

Food Network’s Chopped returns for its fifteenth season. I write about why sea cucumbers, speculoos, and lacinato kale--on the surface, ingredients which many of us have never heard of--matter. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Chopped : Why I’m Obsessed with Food Network’s Reality Competition Show," in which I I write about my insatiable obsession with Food Network's Chopped , and how the competition show brings a deeper and richer awareness of food and culinary diversity to the public at large. When the Food Network, the culinary-themed cable network available in approximately 99 million American homes and 150 countries around the globe, launched Chopped in 2009, no one could have imagined the eventual impact the show would have. And by no one, I mean me. I was initially less than enthusiastic about Chopped—a culinary competition show featuring four chefs squaring off by cooking an appetizer, entrée, and dessert from various mystery basket...