Anna Silk
Something less than a great escape, Fox's intriguing but formulaic Alcatraz (8/7c), from members of Lost's brain trust, proves a fairly tough "Rock" to crack. Basically a procedural with a 4400-style fantasy gimmick, this twists the America's Most Wanted concept by having its parade ...
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Ricky Gervais
If nothing else, Ricky Gervais is a master at upending our expectations. Last year, he drew blood as host-turned-heckler at the Golden Globes, redeeming his lackluster performance of the year before. Returning to the scene of his crime ...
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The Middle
"Keep TV out of this. We need TV. We got nothing else." Why do I relate to the Hecks of ABC's rollicking The Middle? This is why.
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Fringe
Nobody said loving a show this candid about its Fringe status would be easy.
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The Finder
There's a deadly serious competition brewing this calendar year regarding a peculiar sort of bragging right: Who has the worst new comedy of 2012? Is it ABC, with the clumsy drag farce Work It? NBC, with the shrill swill of Are You There, Chelsea? (Fox doesn't enter the fray until this weekend with the launch of the negligible animated ...
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Face Off
Knock knock. Who's there? Chelsea. Chelsea who?
No, make that Chelsea why? The answer to the question posed in NBC's squalid new sitcom Are You There, Chelsea? (8:30/7:30c) is "not really." Based on late-night spitfire Chelsea Handler's potty-mouthed party-girl memoirs — but dropping the Vodka from the title because that might be, you know, offensive — this smutty but toothless misfire puzzlingly reduces Handler to a supporting role: that of a mousy, whiny born-again sister to the fictional Chelsea, played by That '70s Show's Laura Prepon with a one-note husky-voiced crassness that grows stale long before the first scene (in a women's jail cell) ends with Glee's Dot Marie Jones leering at Chelsea. Which is maybe the only sexual advance Chelsea spurns. As long as she can be on top. Which she mentions a lot.
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So You Think You Can Dance
Send questions to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: I heard somewhere that Fox will be canceling So You Think You Can Dance after this season and that this season will be shaved down a bit. How can this be true? This is one of the very best "reality" shows on TV. It's classy, inspiring, emotional, and I keep being amazed ...
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Revenge
Some thoughts on a few of the shows that got 2012 off to a (mostly) promising start. Which means I've already forgotten that ABC's grotesquely unfunny Work It exists — and if you thought that was bad, wait until you see (or better yet, don't) next week's comedy disasters: CBS' offensively stereotypical Rob and NBC's rancid hangover of a dud Are You There, Chelsea? But for now, let's accentuate the (mostly) positive.
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Downton Abbey
Who says you can't go home again? Not that any of us ever lived in a place as grand and as teeming with character — highborn and low, selfless and treacherous — as Downton Abbey.
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Hot In Cleveland
Unless you're watching the Orange Bowl on ESPN, tonight's best bets are strictly comedy. (And yes, that includes Revenge. More on that in a few.)
It somehow seems fitting that when TV Land's Hot in Cleveland (10/9c) looks back at how it all began for Melanie, Joy and Victoria, we're thrust into an '80s time warp, because if there was ever a show that felt like an artifact from a simpler, sillier time, it's this one. Betty White gets the set-up: "How did you guys meet, anyway?" Elka asks to kill time outside a stadium restroom. "If there were a TV in view, I wouldn't [care]," she barks, self-reflexively acknowledging what a clichéd storyline this is.
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