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It's never easy to end a TV show, especially a long-running, beloved show like Mom . "My Kinda People and the Big To-Do," the last episode of Mom that aired May 13 on CBS, was a good episode. It was maybe even a great episode. But was it a satisfying series conclusion? No, not really. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Before we talk about what didn't happen in the episode, let's talk about what did happen.  The episode begins at an AA meeting, as many episodes have. The ladies - Bonnie, Tammy, Jill, Marjorie, & Wendy - all share. They're all happy and in good places in their lives, much to the annoyance of newcomer Shannon (played by Melanie Lynskey, independent film mainstay whose sitcom credits include Chuck Lorre's Two and a Half Men ). Bonnie wants to help Shannon, as she had been helped by others when she too was new to the program, and even chases Shannon in the rain when she leaves the meeting. Later in the episode, we see Shannon...

There are few actors working today who I consider to be more talented than Annaleigh Ashford. If the name isn't familiar, let me enlighten you. Annaleigh Ashford has been in several Broadway musicals, including Kinky Boots . She won a Tony Award for playing a wannabe ballerina in You Can't Take It With You . She deserved another Tony for an entirely different but also very funny display of physicality as the titular canine in Sylvia . She proved her dramatic chops with a moving performance as Dot and Marie in a 2017 Broadway revival of Sunday in the Park with George . She broke up all of Helena's lines in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream in Central Park and refitted them into a brilliant comedic mosaic that had the audience in stitches. Apart from her extensive stage work, she appeared for four seasons of the Showtime series Masters of Sex . She had a terrific supporting part in the excellent recent movie Bad Education . And she was reported to be in talks for t...

When Muppets Now was first announced, I thought the concept seemed safe, uninspired, too kiddie, and boring. The original idea, for the Muppets to star in short-form videos parodying Internet culture, seems to have been revised between now and then, since the videos have been stitched together into six half-hour episodes, the first of which premiered on Disney+ on July 31. Connective tissue between the segments appears to have been filmed after the pandemic started, or else I assume that's why Kermit and Scooter are videochatting each other. While it's nowhere the disaster I initially suspected it would be, I still thought it was a pretty uninspired use of everyone's favorite felt comedy troupe.  Because of the apparent change in direction, Muppets Now is considerably light on the kinds of backstage antics that were often the highlight of any given episode of The Muppet Show . The absence of that putting-on-a-show chaotic energy puts a lot of pressure on the sketches to b...

TV Review:  Younger  Season Four When Younger premiered on TV Land in 2015, its premise mimicked the situation the network was in at the time. The show was about a 40 year old masquerading as a 26 year old in order to be more attractive to potential employers. The network, then known for showing mainly reruns of classic series like Gunsmoke and The Andy Griffith Show , was in the midst of rebranding to a much younger, digitally engaged audience. The intent of the rebranding was to better compete with the hundreds of different cable networks out there, but ironically had the effect of making TV Land indistinguishable from all those other networks vying for the young people demographic. Their original scripted programming went from delightful throwback fare like Hot in Cleveland , to quirky, comparatively edgy single camera sitcoms like Impastor and Teachers . Never heard of either of those shows? I'm not surprised. The only show since the rebranding that could reasonabl...

TV Review: Bloodline Season Three It's no secret that Bloodline is one of my favorite shows. Created by  Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman, the Netflix drama's final season was released on May 27. One of the main reasons I recommend that everybody watch this terrific show is for its killer cast, including Kyle Chandler, Linda Cardellini, Norbert Leo Butz, and Sissy Spacek. I enjoyed season one, even if it was too long and used too many flash forwards (which were also used to similarly-annoying effect on the creators' earlier show, Damages ). Season two, on the other hand, was the  absolute best thing on all of television in 2016 . Season three falls somewhere in the middle. While not as heart-stopping as season two, the new season serves as a satisfying conclusion for the series, an epilogue of sorts.

TV Review: "Twin Peaks: The Return" Disclaimer: This review contains major spoilers for the original Twin Peaks and minor spoilers for Twin Peaks: The Return. The original Twin Peaks , created by Mark Frost and David Lynch, is one of the most beloved and iconic television series of all time, despite only running for 30 episodes on ABC in 1990 and 1991.  Heavily influenced by daytime soap operas, it featured several hallmarks of that genre: a sleepy town, an ensemble of wacky characters, an ongoing mystery, and the illicit and adulterous underside of the facade of a wholesome American small town. Of course it was also more that, and as the series went on it became more of a supernatural exploration of good and evil, but the soapy trappings gave the series a shape and a structure. The highly anticipated revival miniseries, now airing on Showtime, eschews shape and structure altogether in favor a more puzzling, maddening creation.

Santa Clarita Diet: TV Review The less you know about the premise of the new Netflix comedy Santa Clarita Diet before you watch it, the better. You'll get a pretty good indication of whether you're going to like or not in the first fifteen minutes. Without revealing too much, Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant play Sheila and Joel Hammond, married suburban realtors whose lives are irrevocably changed after Sheila develops an appetite for human flesh. 

TV Review: Aquarius I watched the entire first season of Aquarius on Thursday, June 16 in anticipation of the commercial free season two premiere event that aired on NBC that night. While I normally do not like to go through shows that fast, it proved to be a fitting way to consume this imperfect but very compelling crime drama. The series in set in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. David Duchovny stars as Detective Sam Kodiak, who at the start of the series is tasked with finding Emma Karn (Emma Dumont), a teenager who joins the Manson Family. The series follows two plot lines that occasionally intersect; Kodiak and his cases (which usually are tied to larger ideas like race or gender) and the exploits of the Manson Family in the years leading up to the infamous Tate-La Bianca murders of August 1969. 

Review: "Veep" Some New Beginnings "Veep" just keeps getting better. The third season, which premiered April 6 on HBO, features Vice President Selina Meyer running a campaign for President. The campaign plot provides many opportunities for more hilarity."Some New Beginnings" is the perfect example of how good "Veep" can be when its firing on all cylinders.

"Trophy Wife" is the Best New Show of the Season "Trophy Wife" is an example of an excellent series, with an unfortunate title. When the show premiered back in September, I was not planning on watching. But after reading some reviews, I decided to give it a try. And am I glad I did.