Once is not enough. Sometimes a second look, or a second episode, is necessary to convince a skeptic that a show is worth taking a risk on. So it is with ABC's dazzling but dauntingly precious Once Upon a Time (Sunday, 8/7c), which back when I was considering it for Fall Preview left me wondering: "Is this ambitiously whimsical fantasia the next Pushing Daisies cult fave or the next Eastwick insta-flop? (Either way, it will likely be an uphill climb to happily ever after.) It would be easier to love if it weren't so convoluted and campy."
But then ABC made another episode (the third, airing Nov. 6) available for review, and I started to find myself enchanted and beguiled, ready to curl up with more chapters of this fractured fairy tale. First, though, you have to digest the premise, and the overstuffed and often overripe pilot is a lot to swallow. We begin in a lavishly rendered fairy-tale land ...
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Gettysburg (History, 9/8c, Monday)
Launching a four-year project to commemorate the Civil War, which is marking its 150th anniversary this year, History has commissioned action producers Tony and Ridley Scott to produce a two-hour feature documentary about one of the war's most legendary and costly battles. Airing on the night of Memorial Day, Gettysburg fuses CGI and action footage designed to render the conflict as real as...
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The Chicago Code (Monday, 9/8c, Fox)
As often happens in the best crime dramas, the bad guy often gets some of the meatiest material. And Ronin Gibbons, the Chicago Alderman played so deliciously by Delroy Lindo, is no ordinary adversary. We get a better sense of what makes him tick in this episode, when the powerful politician is confronted by an armed teenage robber, causing Gibbons to look back on his own upbringing, back before he became so cynical about the city's corrupt ways. In another storyline, a bomber blows up a city building and promises more mayhem, putting a ticking clock on Jarek and Caleb's efforts to track down the culprit. This situation is not unlike the dilemma on ABC's Castle an hour later (10/9c), in the conclusion of a tense two-parter that finds Beckett and Castle teaming up with a fed (Adrian Pasdar) to avert a terrorist calamity....
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"Why does fun always have a price?"
These are the words of Poor Sue Heck — I can never refer to this scene-stealing character (played brilliantly by Eden Sher) without adding the word "poor" in front of her name — in another hilarious episode of ABC's underappreciated The Middle. Yes, the show is fun, but with the sting of truth. Living in the shadow of the marvelous Modern Family (which offered up another farcical hoot this week), ABC's Wednesday ...
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The Middle
8/7c ABC
The Heck family have a heck of a lot of problems in this episode. Frankie's predicament is trying to get Mike to stop giving her the cold shoulder after she accidentally spends $200 on a small bottle of eye cream. Axl's cross to bear is taking care of a mechanical infant doll for health class. And Sue and Brick's dilemma is a doozy — trying to figure out a way to fix the hole they caused in Sue's bedroom wall. — Fred Mitchell
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Read on for previews of American Masters, Minute to Win It, Off the Map, I'd Do Anything, Law & Order: SVU and College Basketball.
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