Jake Johnson, Zooey Deschanel
You can't help but get a deliciously squirmy tingle when the infamous (to the viewer, anyway) Hannibal Lecter quips, "It's nice to have an old friend for dinner" while serving tongue to his guests, including an unctuous and chatty shrink whom Lecter sizes up by coolly noting, "Your tongue is very feisty."
This scenario takes place several episodes into the midseason run of NBC's feverishly twisted, fascinatingly macabre and visually remarkable procedural-with-a-twist Hannibal (Thursday, 10:01/9:01c), by which time I was completely creeped out and thoroughly hooked. In much the same way A&E's Bates Motel introduces a younger version of Norman Bates before he had his crazy mama mummified in the cellar, Bryan Fuller's Hannibal presents the mad Dr. Lecter before his secret identity as a cannibalistic serial killer is known to anyone but his victims. He is caginess personified, taking on the role of advisor and therapist to tormented FBI profiler/consultant Will Graham (from Thomas Harris' Red Dragon). Will has an ability to project "pure empathy" and see grisly crimes from the killer's POV, which Lecter describes quite accurately as "an uncomfortable gift."
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David Tennant
In the spy game, intelligence is the most precious commodity. And in the world of fictional espionage, few authors of historical suspense deliver thrills with the crisp and unsparing intelligence of Alan Furst. BBC America's Spies of Warsaw, a two-part miniseries adaptation (concluding Tuesday, April 10) of his 2008 novel, loses none of its twisty allure and passionate urgency in the translation from page to screen (9/8c). Tension comes with the territory of late-'30s Poland, a country harboring refugees and dissidents in a murky culture of political intrigue, as everyone nervously waits for the jackboot to drop as rumors spread of Nazi aggression.
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Justin Bartha and Andrew Rannells
Too soon. We always feel that way when a season of FX's marvelously entertaining Justified comes to a close. It can't be easy sustaining that high-wire act of violent tension and wry bourbon-smooth humor, while staying true to the voice and tone of Elmore Leonard's creation of the laconic yet steely U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, but they sure make it go down easy. The fourth-season finale (Tuesday, 10/9c) is titled "Ghosts," and it's a haunted hour, all right — haunted by what-ifs, by dreams deferred and hopes crushed by the weight of bad acts and Harlan County's history of bad people — but it's also a truly badass episode when it needs to be, with fateful confrontations and crazy twists, some satisfying and others troubling.
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Nathan Fillion
Usually, Richard Castle's overactive imagination is a good thing — so good that as he helps his NYPD buddies solve scores of murders, you often wonder how they'd ever get along without him. In the set-up for Castle's clever lark of a 100th episode on ABC (Monday, 10:01/9:01c), they're forced to go solo as Castle (Nathan Fillion in rare form) stews in boredom in his apartment, nursing a busted leg. Until he picks up his new birthday binoculars and goes all Jimmy Stewart-in-Rear Window, convinced he's witnessed a murder across the street, eventually drawing his beloved Beckett and intrepid daughter Alexis into the Hitchcockian-homage intrigue. The more agitated Castle gets, the more skeptical everyone else becomes, and as the twists and comically suspenseful close calls pile up, leading to yet another chewing-out by that spoilsport Capt. Gates, we're treated to an entertaining object lesson in the "seeing isn't believing" playbook. Well done, including the timely subplot involving the murder of an IRS agent which, even when chair-bound, Castle can't help inadvertently helping his friends figure out.
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Elisabeth Moss
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Question: Are you as I stumped as I am about what makes the NCIS Red Team unique? In last week's episode of NCIS: LA, there was a moment when they were trying to tell a Mexican gunman to put his weapon down and none of them could speak Spanish. Which is odd given they are suppose to be a very mobile unit that goes anywhere, you would think they would be well versed in multiple languages. I was under the impression they were going to be NCIS' version of Seal Team Six. As for casting, the only one of the team that made an impression on me was the Aussie agent Claire Keats (Gillian Alexy). I still think Kelli Giddish would have been a better choice for the lead. Just my thoughts. — Leon
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Andrew Lincoln
You'd think Easter weekend might be a quiet time for TV. You'd be wrong. Easter Sunday turns out to be one of the most overstuffed nights since February's sweeps-stakes, capped by a face-off between the season finale of cable's hottest horror show and the premiere of pay cable's most deluxe epic fantasy.
AMC did not make the third-season finish of The Walking Dead (Sunday, 9/8c) available for preview, but we're already fearing the worst as the climactic showdown approaches between the Governor's troops and TV's most heroic prison gang, while failed peacekeeper Andrea swelters in the torture dungeon back in Woodbury. It's nothing new to wonder who'll live or die in this bleak post-apocalypse. But until this riveting and wrenching season, we were mostly worried about the zombie "walkers," who've taken a back seat lately to the human monsters battling for power and revenge.
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Garret Dillahunt
Oy vey. Or as Virginia Chance (Martha Plimpton) might mangle her Hebrew-isms: "Molotov! (for mazel tov)." Fox sure doesn't make it easy to say goodbye to Raising Hope as it ends its third season on a new night with back-to-back episodes (9/8c), the sort of treatment you'd normally see from a network burning off a show in which it has lost faith. Thankfully, that's not the case here. Hope has already been picked up for a fourth season, and it goes out on a delightfully deranged musical high, with Burt (the sublime Garret Dillahunt) center stage as he frantically preps for his overdue Bar Mitzvah.
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James Roday, Dule Hill
It's all screams and giggles — the screams courtesy of an insistent shrieking doorbell, while the giggles come with the territory — as USA Network's long-running hoot-dunit Psych marks its 100th episode (Wednesday, 10/9c) with a shamelessly wacky murder mystery set in a spooky mansion during a thunderous storm. It's a dark and silly night, indeed, as this Clue-inspired romp gathers colorful characters as suspects (including Lesley Ann Warren as a stuttering Miss Scarlett), while Shawn and Gus panic and mug as usual, running everyone in circles before solving the crime. Which is where the audience comes in this week, as the show goes interactive, urging fans to help decide the outcome by voting live during the episode on psych.usanetwork.com and Twitter.
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Margo Martindale and Jake Johnson
What kind of family must it be where slacker bartender Nick Miller (Jake Johnson) is seen as the responsible one? That answer becomes clear in a sporadically amusing road-trip episode of Fox's New Girl (9/8c) that takes the roomies to Chicago to lay Nick's scoundrel of a dad (former guest star Dennis Farina) to rest. The formidable Margo Martindale (Justified, The Americans) presides over the ridiculous antics as Nick's gruff but needy mom, and cable clown Nick Kroll hams it up as his emotionally volatile brother. As usual, Schmidt (Max Greenberg) hijacks the proceedings with his death neuroses, and while he wonders "What's with this open casket thing?" it's his encounter with said coffin and its contents that provides the episode's biggest laughs.
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Ben McKenzie
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Question: This is more a commentary than a question, but what are your thoughts on Southland? Ben McKenzie and Shawn Hatosy have recently landed new pilots, so it would appear that this will be the last season of the very fine cop show Southland. Yes, the show is an ensemble and could certainly go on without the two characters they portray, but it would be a different Southland without them, even with a cast as strong as one that includes Regina King and C. Thomas Howell.
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