Work It
Some like it hot, but more like it funny. By either or any standard, ABC's atrocious Work It fails miserably.
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Steve Jones
Happy 2012! This week, we take care of some unfinished business from the first half of the TV season while looking ahead to some midseason hopefuls. Keep sending your questions and opinions to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
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Jessica Lange
What a sick little show American Horror Story turned out to be. Ludicrous from top to bottom, from haunted attic to cellar, from start to finish, as the population of ghosts in the Murder House grew nearly as large as the Downton Abbey estate. In the finale, it was finally ...
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Dexter
They really went there. Showtime's signature thrillers Homeland and Dexter each flipped the metaphorical switch — in Homeland's case, literally; with Dexter, breaking down a wall we'd been waiting to happen for some time — in pivotal finales that leave a big void on Sundays.
Saving the best for last, let's start with Dexter. The finale was 95 percent routine, a charge that could be aimed at the season as a whole, capped by the uninspired end of the ...
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Allison Miller
'Twas the week before Christmas, and I can't remember when so much was stirring on TV this late into the year. Here are some highlights from an unusually busy pre-Christmas week.
MONDAY
DINO-MIGHT? The biggest cliffhanger regarding the two-hour finale of Fox's time-tripping family sci-fi drama Terra Nova (8/7c) isn't so much what happens on the show, which is fairly standard action-adventure mayhem, but whether it will return for a second season next year. (That decision should be ...
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Michelle Dockery and Dan Stevens
1. HOMELAND
The best new series of the year is Showtime's twisty nail-biter of a psychological thriller, an emotionally intense cat-and-mouse game between two damaged souls: Damian Lewis as Nicholas Brody, a Marine POW who may have been turned by terrorists during eight years in Iraqi captivity, and Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, the unstable CIA analyst who breaks all the rules to get under his skin — and at times under the sheets. (Bringing new meaning to undercover agent). The actors are as electrifying as the storytelling in this taut tale of homeland insecurity, which also features a marvelously restrained Mandy Patinkin as Carrie's melancholy mentor and a revelatory Morena Baccarin as Brody's understandably conflicted wife. Homeland comes from the veteran producers of 24, who have lost none of their knack for sustained suspense, but within this more realistic framework have been able to concoct a thoughtful and gripping meditation on the human toll of the war on terror.
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Damian Lewis
Let's cut to the must-see chase, which means jumping ahead to Sunday's big finales, starting with Showtime's Homeland, the series that topped my year-end Top 10 list (currently on display in TV Guide Magazine, soon to be posted, so stay tuned).
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Jeffrey Donovan, Kristanna Loken
Who's getting burned in the eventful season finale of USA Network's Burn Notice (10/9c)? Arch-villain Anson (Jere Burns), who it's now known is trying to rebuild the organization that burned Michael in the first place? Maybe Agent Pearce (Lauren Stamile), Michael's CIA handler? Anson's latest scheme in keeping Michael (Jeffrey Donovan) under his sadistic ...
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Ozzy Lusth, Edna Ma
Some thoughts about what's on tonight, starting with the reality contests. Was CBS' Survivor just teasing us with that trailer that showed Edna the Meek possibly upsetting Ozzy the Cocky in the next Redemption Island challenge? We'll believe it when we see it, but it would be nice for something unexpected to happen. The final Upolu 5 have stayed boringly, rigidly loyal to their game plan the last few weeks, but now that it's down to the next-to-last episode (8/7c) — the finale airs as the usual multi-hour extravaganza on Sunday — all bets presumably are off. Could anything keep Coach from making the finals? And if Ozzy somehow is bounced as well, that would make the climactic tribal council more interesting — which isn't the same as memorable.
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