The Daily Beast: "Community: Season 4 of the NBC Comedy Ponders the End"

(Jordin Althaus/NBC/Sony Pictures)

The absurdist comedy returns to NBC on Thursday after a lengthy delay and many behind-the-scenes changes, including the exit of creator Dan Harmon.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Community: Season 4 of the NBC Comedy Ponders the End," in which I review the fourth season of NBC's Community, which returns Thursday evening and after many behind-the-scenes changes. Does the show look and feel as it once did? Or does it feel as though not every came back from summer break?

“What’s the deal, Jessica Biel?”

Community, after an absence of what feels like five years and numerous timeslot and launch date changes, finally unveils its fourth season on Thursday. For the faithful, waiting this long to return to Greendale has been an arduous trial, particularly as curiosity is running high amid the many behind-the-scenes changes made since the show wrapped up its third season way back in May 2012.

For one, series creator Dan Harmon is no longer at the helm, after a well-publicized ouster that saw him as well as showrunners Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan depart the NBC comedy. A handful of others—including writer/producer Chris McKenna (currently writing on Fox’s The Mindy Project), executive producers/directors Anthony and Joe Russo, and actor/writer Dino Stamatopoulos (Starburns)—also exited stage left. In their place are new showrunners David Guarascio and Moses Port, perhaps best known for their work on the multi-camera workplace comedy Just Shoot Me and for creating the short-lived comedy Aliens in America.

Suffice it to say, fans of Community want to know: what does the show feel like without Harmon and Co. steering the plot? On a show so gonzo and absurd and generally out there, what does the loss of its creator mean?

It would be far easier to say if the (new) Community were a disaster or a masterpiece. However, the truth doesn’t fall at either end. Community now feels rather like it did during its first three seasons, with its sense of humor and bizarro-world energies intact. (That sense of sameness might be aided by longtime writer Andy Bobrow scripting the season opener, offering a sense of continuity.)

If there’s anything I noticed during the two episodes provided to press for review (the first and third installments, but not—oddly enough—Megan Ganz’s Halloween episode, which airs on … Valentine’s Day), it’s that perhaps a spark that permeated the very best episodes of Community is missing. Perhaps that sense of mad genius came from Harmon himself or perhaps it can be regained once this new configuration of the Community writers finds their legs. But I can’t point to anything specific after two viewings. It doesn’t feel entirely off, but it feels as if not everyone came back from this prolonged summer break.

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The Daily Beast: "House of Cards: Should You Binge-Watch Netflix’s Political Drama?"

Netflix just released all 13 episodes of its first original show. Having binge-watched all 13 episodes this weekend, I ponder whether the strategy behind House of Cards represents a new narrative format for television—and if it could backfire.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "House of Cards: Should You Binge-Watch Netflix’s Political Drama?" in which I discuss binge-viewing and Netflix's strategy regarding House of Cards. Is this television's new narrative form?

Bet you can’t eat just one.

A lot has been written lately about consumer patterns and television, specifically the rise of what has been coined “binge-watching” or “binge-viewing,” the practice of marathoning an entire season or multiple episodes of a television show in a highly concentrated period of time. It might occur during a single evening or over the course of a weekend, but the notion of consumption is apt. Netflix, the streaming video service that started out as a distributor of DVD rentals by mail, has made this practice far easier than ever before, offering a catalog of full seasons of past television shows. Why wait a week to watch another episode when there are 108 more available and you can sate your hunger by just clicking away?

Binge-watching is not new—IFC’s Portlandia did a sketch about a Battlestar Galactica-obsessed couple whose lives go into freefall after they marathon the entire series—but talk of it has intensified since Friday’s release of House of Cards on Netflix. The streaming-video pioneer released all 13 episodes of Season 1 of House of Cards on the same day, a potentially paradigm-shifting strategy that pokes a sword in the belly of the broadcast networks, who are beholden to advertisers and time slots, and therefore the slow rollout of product.

Netflix doesn’t have these concerns. It features no advertising, is a subscription-based service (like premium cablers HBO and Showtime, original programming exists to drive subscriptions), and doesn’t feel the need to share “ratings” or compete in the same ratings-obsessed pool with the broadcasters. The strategy behind the mass release of House of Cards, the American remake of the seminal 1990 U.K. miniseries of the same name, is that viewers deserve choice. If they want to watch all 13 in a row, more power to them, but the platform isn’t reliant on a single timeframe for viewing. If a consumer decides to watch a few and then pick it up a year from now, it doesn’t matter.

That belief is echoed by Beau Willimon, House of Cards’s showrunner. “It’s fully in the audience’s hands to decide what their own experience is,” Willimon said in an interview with The Daily Beast in January. “The same way that you read a novel. You can read Anna Karenina in two days, or you can read it over a year. And I think that’s better because it personalizes the experience.”

It’s this semblance to the novel that seems particularly apt. The narrative of House of Cards, itself based on a novel by Michael Dobbs, is largely dependent on a novelistic structure. The episodes are even referred to as “chapters” in an effort to underscore this comparison more deeply.

The entire narrative benefits from the close scrutiny of novel-reading, or of similarly ambitious and novelistic shows like Mad Men or Breaking Bad. A paper swan, made of a $20 bill and tossed at Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) in one episode, turns up repeatedly throughout the back half of the season. It represents her own unknowable quality, a tightly bound mystery that’s contorted and bent.

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The Daily Beast: "30 Rock Wraps Up Seven Iconic Seasons"

Blerg. 30 Rock will end its seven-season run later this month, meaning that we'll have to say goodbye to Liz Lemon, Jack Donaghy, and the TGS crew... though the show's creator, Tina Fey, isn't going anywhere just yet.

In this week's Newsweek (and over at The Daily Beast), you can read my latest feature, "30 Rock Wraps Up Seven Iconic Seasons," in which I examine the comedic legacy that the show leaves behind.

Back in 2006, one of the year’s most highly anticipated new shows was a roman à clef set at a Saturday Night Live–style sketch comedy show. No, it wasn’t Tina Fey’s 30 Rock, but Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which also aired on NBC and died in 22 episodes. In fact, 30 Rock was very nearly canceled right out of the gate, with nearly half its 8.2 million viewers fleeing by the fourth week. But instead of being axed, 30 Rock became a sleeper hit. The show that gave us Liz Lemon and launched a thousand catchphrases (“Blerg!”) wraps up a seven-season run at the end of January.

30 Rock made creator-star Tina Fey—a former SNL writer and anchor of its talent springboard “Weekend Update”—a household name, while the show soon became a critical darling, known for its smart, tongue-in-cheek writing and acerbic wit. Beneath the absurdist single-camera comedy trappings of 30 Rock was a hyperliterate cultural magnet, one that exerted a powerful attraction toward the cultural memes of the day, not to mention bipartisan politics, celebrity vanity, corporate mergers, and the eternal struggle faced by working women to have it all.

In Liz Lemon, the harried executive producer and head writer of the comedy show TGS, Fey created an everywoman whose flaws were in fact part of her attractiveness; her persistent fear of exercising and love of junk food refreshing in an era of actresses who would like viewers to forget they have to eat at all. 30 Rock was, in many ways, a bildungsroman depicting the psychological development of Liz as she moved into a semirational adulthood, surrounded by a crowd of unruly eccentrics—such as Jane Krakowski’s Jenna Maroney, Tracy Morgan’s Tracy Jordan, and Jack McBrayer’s Kenneth Parcell—and an unlikely mentor in her boss, Alec Baldwin’s ultraconservative executive, Jack Donaghy.

But rather than make, as most Hollywood projects would, marriage the inevitable conclusion to Liz Lemon’s saga, 30 Rock bucked that long-held trend by marrying off Liz before the ending and downplaying her wedding altogether. There would be no special episode, no electronic invitations on the NBC website, no fuss about reaching yet another milepost on Liz’s uncharacteristic journey. Instead, the show has held out Liz’s ultimate goal—motherhood—as a possible ending for the overworked writer, though it has once again defied expectations. A recent episode suggested that Liz would be adopting an older child, her quest toward motherhood not reliant on biology or medical intervention. In doing so, Fey signaled yet again that 30 Rock was not a traditional comedy defined by traditional sitcom trappings: it was a glorious metareflection of the times we live in.

Fey cohosted the Golden Globes telecast with Amy Poehler this year, the first time two women had done so, well, ever. It was a big night for women in general, between the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Jodie Foster and the wins for Lena Dunham (another multihyphenate, like Fey, it should be noted) and her HBO comedy, Girls. Dunham thanked Fey and Poehler, calling them “inspirations.” And it’s true: Girls gets most often compared to Sex & the City, but without Fey and 30 Rock, it’s possible it might not have existed.

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The Daily Beast: "Parenthood: In Praise of Season 4, Monica Potter, and More"

Following the conclusion of the show’s fourth season, I examine NBC’s underrated Parenthood and offer why television needs a fifth season of this remarkable drama.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Parenthood: In Praise of Season 4, Monica Potter, and More," in which I sum up my feelings about the fourth season of NBC's Parenthood and praise the show's subtlety and bravery.

Dry your eyes: it’s time to celebrate this season of NBC’s Parenthood, not to mourn it.

The show’s fourth season, which concluded Tuesday night, was arguably its best to date, one that captured the emotional highs and lows of family life with bravery, subtlety, and realism. Overall, Season 4 was both somber and uplifting—often at the same time—depicting and playing with the notion of change, as seen through the adults and children of the sprawling Braverman family. Change, as we know, comes in many forms: from the pangs of puberty and the leap into adulthood to the inexorable idea of death, one that hovered over the season.

This was a brilliant 13-episode run on a drama that only gets better with age, one that gave each member of the Braverman clan some substantive and emotional plots to work through, from the cancer diagnosis faced by Kristina (Monica Potter) and the struggle between Julia (Erika Christensen) and adopted son Victor (Xolo Mariduena) to the romantic tug-of-war between Sarah (Lauren Graham), Mark (Jason Ritter), and Hank (Ray Romano), and the tumultuous relationship between Amber (Mae Whitman) and Afghan-war vet Ryan (Matt Lauria).

It is no easy feat to balance the emotional needs of so many characters, but creator Jason Katims and his talented writing staff manage to do just that. Multiple subplots are woven through each episode, resulting in unexpected character configurations and pairings. (Who would have thought that a Crosby/Julia scene would carry such weight, as it did last week?) Yet, despite the presence of a cancer story line, the season never meandered into the territory of the saccharine but lightened any semblance of sentimentality with humor and wit. If you need proof of that, you need look no further than the puberty discussion enacted by Max (Max Burkholder); where other shows would have turned toward the after-school-special approach, Parenthood embraced both Max’s Asperger’s and a frank discussion of the changes the male teenager undergoes during that transformation.

In fact, it’s Kristina and Max’s relationship that yields some of the greatest rewards this season, delivering some stunning scenes between mother and son. Here, the writing staff is wise to depict the slightest movement of Max’s emotional life as something triumphant and huge; a scene in which he asks his ailing mother to teach him how to dance is as huge as a gravity-free space jump.

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The Daily Beast: "Rewind: BBC’s Iconic Political Thriller House of Cards Still Captivates"

Ahead of David Fincher’s American remake of House of Cards, which launches on Netflix in February, I revisit the original British potboiler and find that it still thrusts a steely rapier under the viewer’s skin.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Rewind: BBC’s Iconic Political Thriller House of Cards Still Captivates," in which I reflect upon the legacy and vitality of 1990 British miniseries House of Cards, ahead of Netflix's American remake--premiering Feb 1 and starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Mara, and Robin Wright--from David Fincher and Beau Willimon.

Netflix, the now-ubiquitous digital streaming service, will enter the original programming arena with its upcoming American remake of House of Cards, from writer Beau Willimon (Farragut North) and director/executive producer David Fincher (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). The series, which launches Feb. 1, stars Kevin Spacey, Kate Mara, and Robin Wright in roles that are now as iconic as the British miniseries itself.

In many ways Netflix picked a stellar property to adapt as their first nonacquired original. The American House of Cards is, of course, based on the 1990 BBC political thriller miniseries of the same name—itself adapted by writer Andrew Davies from Michael Dobbs’s novel—which revolved around the Conservative Party’s chief whip, the Machiavellian Francis Urquhart, played to icy perfection by the late Ian Richardson.

More than 20 years after its release, House of Cards still manages to thrust a steely rapier under the viewer’s skin, its view of the hostile British political maneuverings of Urquhart and his kind both riveting and shocking. The overarching plot is simple: Urquhart—who is part spymaster, part enforcer, and wholly unpredictable and dangerous—is passed over for a cabinet position when his candidate for prime minister rises to power. Frustrated and seething, he sets out to destroy everyone in his path as he launches a chesslike battle to ascend to the highest seat in Her Majesty’s Government. Along the way, Urquhart meets an ambitious young journalist, Mattie Storin (Susannah Harker), and together they help each other achieve their ends, their partnership tinged with a particularly creepy psychosexual tension.

In Britain, House of Cards premiered on Nov. 18, 1990, playing out against the backdrop of the final weeks of Margaret Thatcher’s downfall and the succession of fellow Tory John Major to the seat of prime minister. With a clear sense of premonition, Thatcher’s fall from grace is even dealt with in the narrative. “Nothing lasts forever,” Urquhart says to a framed picture of Maggie Thatcher. “Even the longest and most glittering reign must come to an end someday.” (Even more emphatically, Urquhart—with a roguish smile—turns her picture facedown on his desk.)

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The Daily Beast: "Girls: Season 2 of HBO’s Lena Dunham Comedy Soars"

HBO’s Girls returns for a second season on Sunday night. I review the first four episodes of Season 2 of the Lena Dunham-created comedy, which "captures the quicksilver magic of Dunham at her best."

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Girls: Season 2 of HBO’s Lena Dunham Comedy Soars," in which I review the first four episodes of Season 2 of HBO's Girls, the most polarizing television show of 2012.

The most polarizing show of 2012 was HBO’s Girls, which revolves around the lives of four 20-something women orbiting each other in Brooklyn. The Lena Dunham–created comedy elicited a love-hate relationship with premium cable audiences. You either loved the bravery of the show, its incredible sense of voice and time, and its unrepentant navel-gazing attitude ... or you loathed it.

In its first season, the show received various criticisms of racism, elitism, and, er, hipsterism. The amount of ink devoted to tearing down both Dunham and Girls was shocking to me, particularly as much of it emerged from those who hadn’t actually watched the show or from those who failed to see that Dunham’s Hannah Horvath wasn’t meant to be held up as a paragon of virtue, but rather a flawed, sheltered narcissist whose greatest enemy was herself. The girls of Girls aren’t meant to represent all women, or even all 20-something women in Brooklyn. The show represents a very specific snapshot of a very specific cultural subset existing at this very second in time. As such, it is part anthropological record, part comedy, and part tragedy.

The hotly anticipated second season of Girls, which returns to HBO on Sunday, builds on the strengths of its stellar first season and captures the quicksilver magic of Dunham at her best, with the first four episodes supplying a mighty kick to the heart.

[Warning: Minor spoilers ahead!] Yes, the girls and guys of Girls are back, though their relationships, tested by events at the tail end of Season 1, remain tantalizingly fractured: Hannah is no longer with Adam (Adam Driver), her quirky, conflicted, body-conscious boyfriend, though she is caring for him while he recuperates from his car accident. Immobilized and dependent upon Hannah for everything except sex, their dynamic is a pale reflection of the sparks they kicked off last year. Hannah, meanwhile, is involved with a black Republican played by Community’s Donald Glover, and their sexual chemistry manifests itself in a playful, easy way. His inclusion here seems calculated to dispel the charges of racism leveled against the show, depicting a Brooklyn that is less lily white than the canvas shown in Season 1. But I’m glad to see that Dunham doesn’t make Glover’s Sandy a stereotype: he’s sweet but conservative, easygoing but also as rigid in his political thinking as Hannah is.

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The Daily Beast: "Downton Abbey Season 3 Review: A Return to Form"

Downton Abbey is back, and I review the sensational third season—and the highly controversial finale—of the British period drama, which returns to PBS’s Masterpiece on Sunday. WARNING: Minor spoilers ahead!

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Downton Abbey Season 3 Review: A Return to Form," in which I review the third season of PBS's Downton Abbey ahead of its premiere on Sunday evening.

Downton Abbey is back.

For some, that’s incentive enough to tune in to the award-winning British period drama, which returns to PBS’s Masterpiece Classic on Sunday, Jan. 6, for another season of soapy intrigue with the Crawley clan and their servants. Other viewers, who like me were disappointed with last season, will take more convincing. They should take heart: Season 3 of Downton is a return to form for the show, recapturing the dazzling wit and sweeping romance of the now-classic first season.

I was intensely critical of Season 2 of Downton when it aired last year. The sophomore season lacked the deft plotting and nuance of the first year, to say nothing of the disastrous “Patrick Crawley” subplot or the miraculous recovery of paralyzed heir Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens), who nearly leapt from his wheelchair to dance the foxtrot. Such miscues mired the show in histrionic soapiness, upsetting the delicate balance between domestic drama and social change. Downton, after all, functions best when it focuses on small moments—a missing snuffbox, a snow-swept proposal, a knock on a door—not over-the-top plot twists.

Which isn’t to say that Season 3 lacks surprises. Alternately humorous and heartbreaking, Downton’s stunning third season packs several narrative punches into PBS’s seven-week run. Hopes are dashed, losses mount, and the most bitter change comes uninvited to Downton Abbey. That’s to be expected in a serial like this one, where stasis is the enemy of the narrative. Creator Julian Fellowes appears to be aware that the characters must change and grow, and so must their circumstances.

Indeed, Downton’s central conceit, keenly felt this season, seems to be the collision between the traditional and the modern, between those attempting to remain entrenched in the past—such as Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and his ever-vigilant butler, Carson (Jim Carter)—and those looking toward the future. But change always comes at a price, and calamity has a way of forcing drama, after all.

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The Daily Beast: "18 Shows to Watch This Winter"

Stay cozy this New Year: I find the 18 new and returning television shows that will keep you warm this winter, from Girls and Justified to The Staircase, The Americans, and House of Cards.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "18 Shows to Watch This Winter," in which I round up 18 new and returning noteworthy shows that you should be watching between January and March. Some you're looking forward to, some you may not have heard of, and there are a few that you've already drawn a big red circle on the calendar on the day that they return...

Yes, Downton Abbey is back: the beloved British period drama returns to PBS’s Masterpiece for a third season beginning on Jan. 6, but it’s not the only new or noteworthy show heading to television this winter.

Indeed, some of the most intriguing, dynamic, or plain interesting shows are launching in midseason this year, from Fox’s serial killer drama The Following and Sundance Channel’s Jane Campion-created murder mystery Top of the Lake to FX’s Soviet spy period drama The Americans (starring Keri Russell!), Netflix's American remake of political potboiler House of Cards, and the return of both NBC’s subversive comedy Community and HBO’s Girls.

Jace Lacob rounds up 18 new and returning television shows that will help keep you warm during these chilly winter months, from the intriguing to the sensational.

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The Daily Beast: "The 10 Best TV Shows of 2012: Borgen, Girls, Parenthood, Mad Men, and More"

From Borgen to Downton Abbey to Girls, Jace Lacob and Maria Elena Fernandez pick the 10 best TV shows of the year. Warning: may contain spoilers if you are not entirely caught up on the shows discussed here.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature,
"The 10 Best TV Shows of 2012," in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I offer up our individual Top 10 TV Shows lists for 2012. My list, not surprisingly, contains shows like Borgen, Mad Men, The Good Wife, Louie, Parks and Recreation, Shameless, and others. What was on your list this year?

Now is the winter of our (TV) discontent. After a fall season that largely failed to deliver on the promise of new shows—and, in some cases, returning programs as well—it’s time to take a look back at the year in television as a whole, as we try to remove such canceled shows as Partners, The Mob Doctor, and Made in Jersey from our collective memory.


But rather than dwell on the very worst of the year (ABC’s Work It!), let’s celebrate the best of what the medium had to offer us over the last 12 months. Below, our picks for the 10 best shows of 2012, which include a Danish political drama, a sumptuous period drama, a resurrected primetime soap, and a navel-gazing comedy.

A few caveats before proceeding: these are individual lists representing personal opinions; omitting a particular show does not invalidate the rest of the list, nor does including a specific show; and the lists are limited to what aired on U.S. television during the calendar year. Finally, a WARNING: For those of you who aren’t entirely caught up on the shows selected, read on at your own risk—the descriptions contain many spoilers.

He Said: Jace Lacob’s 10 Best
‘Borgen’ (LinkTV)
No other show comes this close to epitomizing the best of television this year as the exquisite Danish political drama Borgen, which depicts the rise to power of Denmark’s first fictional female prime minister, Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) amid the infighting and back-biting that categorizes partisan politics around the world. As Birgitte sacrifices everything for her position—her marriage, her children, and even her sense of self—her journey from naïve crusader to hardened politician is juxtaposed against that of ambitious journalist Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen). The two women deliver two of the best performances on television of the past decade, reveling in, rather than avoiding, the realistic flaws of their respective characters while overcoming the institutionalized misogyny of their respective spheres. Brash spin doctors (including the great Johan Philip “Pilou” Asbæk as Kasper Juul), venal civil servants, and arrogant tabloid magnates spin in orbit around Birgitte, as Borgen delves into the interlocking worlds of politics and the media. The result is nothing less than riveting, insightful, and heartbreaking, not to mention powerfully original.

‘Girls’ (HBO)
Despite its deeply polarizing nature, the first season of Girls—Lena Dunham’s navel-gazing HBO drama—proved itself every bit as witty, sharp, and biting as the promise exhibited in those early episodes, perfectly capturing the insular world of privileged and underemployed 20-somethings in Brooklyn with astute honesty and self-effacing charm. In Hannah Horvath, Dunham has created a character who is so oblivious to her failings, her egotism, and her flaws that it’s impossible to look away from her—whether she’s eating a cupcake in the bath, getting an STD test, or breaking up with her quirky boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver)—or to not fall in love with her don’t-give-a-damn attitude as she bares her body and her soul, even as the show skewers the elitist sensibilities of Hannah and her friends: flighty Jessa (Jemima Kirke), prim Marnie (Allison Williams), and sheltered Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet). Alternately awkward, tender, funny, and depressing, Girls is more than just Hannah and her sisters; it’s a brilliant portrait of disaffected youth on the delayed brink of adulthood.

‘The Good Wife’ (CBS)
Whether you loved or hated the storyline involving kick-ass legal snoop Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) and her psychotic estranged husband, Nick (Marc Warren), this year on The Good Wife had more than enough to offer: its typically intelligent and insightful analysis of politics, the media, technology, and cultural mores, as viewed through the prism of the legal system and the tumultuous marriage between the title character, Julianna Margulies’s Alicia Florrick, and gubernatorial candidate Peter (Chris Noth). Nathan Lane—appearing as the court-appointed trustee after Lockhart/Gardner finds itself moored in bankruptcy proceedings—has been a welcome addition to the show, sowing seeds of distrust among the partners at the firm during an already shaky time. As always, the show excels at dramatizing the internal struggles within Alicia; as her career has advanced, her sense of morality has grown ever more flexible, and her sense of compromise and sacrifice have been tested at work and at home. The slowly thawing dynamic between Alicia and Kalinda provided a measured exploration of trust issues in the wake of betrayal from a friend, while Will (Josh Charles) had his own fortitude tested by a grand-jury investigation and suspension, and Diane (Christine Baranski) fought to keep the firm afloat. Few shows remain as nuanced and smart as this one, regardless of whether they’re on cable or broadcast television, nor do many offer as much grist for thought as each episode does, along with insight, subtlety, and humor. If last season’s sly and hilarious elevator scene didn’t make you chuckle aloud, you have no soul. The Good Wife, as always, isn’t just good; it’s great.

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The Daily Beast: "Is This The Real Carrie Mathison?"

Who is the real Carrie Mathison? I explore the thematic overlaps between two female spies now stealing our collective attention: Claire Danes’s character on Homeland and Jessica Chastain’s Maya in Zero Dark Thirty. WARNING: the following contains plot details from the latest episode of Homeland. If you are not up to date, read at your own peril.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Is This The Real Carrie Mathison?," in which I compare the similarities and thematic overlaps between Homeland's Carrie (Claire Danes) and Jessica Chastain's pseudonymous CIA agent "Maya" in Kathryn Bigelow's upcoming Osama bin Laden manhunt film Zero Dark Thirty, out December 19th in New York and Los Angeles.

“We fight with what we have.”

On the most recent episode of Showtime’s byzantine terrorism thriller Homeland, Carrie Mathison, the damaged, disgraced, bipolar CIA analyst played by Emmy-winner Claire Danes, finally came face-to-face with the terrorist that she had been doggedly pursuing for years, a hunt that put both her career and her sanity in jeopardy.

While the fanatical Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban)—responsible for the death of countless innocents and for brainwashing Marine Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) and transforming him into an instrument of vengeance—had the upper hand in this standoff, the tête-à-tête that followed was remarkable for the fact that Carrie was staring into the face of her adversary, and the words that he spat out at her, hogtied though she was, reflected Carrie’s own indomitable will.

“Do you have the perseverance, the tenacity, the faith?” a seething Nazir asked Carrie, referring to his own will to “exterminate” the American people, even if it takes “three centuries” to do so. His extremism is a distant relative to Carrie’s own, her flawed moral compass guided by the belief that Abu Nazir was planning a major attack on the United States and that Nicholas Brody had been turned.
But what their conversation revealed was that Carrie does have all of those characteristics, embraced on the long road to tracking down Nazir, qualities shared by Carrie Mathison’s sister in arms, Jessica Chastain’s Maya, in Kathryn Bigelow’s sensational Osama bin Laden film, Zero Dark Thirty, which opens Dec. 19 in New York and Los Angeles.

It’s impossible to watch the remarkable Zero Dark Thirty without thinking of Homeland or of Carrie Mathison. Like Abu Nazir, they too fight with what they have: drawing on a wellspring of tenacity and perseverance, and an unerring faith that what they are doing is not only right, but just.


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The Daily Beast: "Why Is No One Watching ABC’s Critically Acclaimed Drama Nashville?"

Nashville is one of the fall season’s few critical sensations. So why is no one watching? I explore the reasons why ABC’s country music drama isn’t a ratings success—yet.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Why Is No One Watching ABC’s Critically Acclaimed Drama Nashville?" in which I offer praise of ABC's Nashville, and ponder why more viewers aren't watching this fantastic drama.

The fall television season has been largely disappointing. Few new shows have captured the passion or imagination of viewers, and the war of comedies on the broadcast networks—with no less than three separate comedy blocks on Tuesday nights!—has turned out to be little more than a minor skirmish.

So it’s all the more disheartening that one of the few bright spots on the fall schedule, ABC’s Nashville—which was picked up for a full season earlier this week—seems to be suffering as much hardship as a heroine in a country song.

Despite overwhelming critical praise—a Metacritic score of 84, signifying “universal acclaim”—and glowing reviews, Nashville launched with an audience of 8.9 million viewers and a 2.8 rating among adults 18–49, numbers that dipped in subsequent weeks. (The Nov. 7 broadcast, however, showed an 11 percent uptick, which brought the show back to hovering around the 2.0 mark.)

The show, from Thelma & Louise writer Callie Khouri and starring Friday Night Lights’ Connie Britton and Heroes’ Hayden Panettiere, revolves around the often cutthroat musical and political scenes of Nashville, Tenn., centering on a troika of talented women during the ebb and flow of their country music careers. Britton’s Rayna James was the reigning queen of country, but she has discovered that consumers’ tastes have changed, and her stardom long ago stopped burning white-hot. Panettiere’s brash young upstart Juliette Barnes is the latest pop sensation, but she yearns for legitimacy and creative freedom. And then there’s Clare Bowen’s naive songwriter Scarlett O’Connor, who is plucked from obscurity when she duets one night with her fellow Bluebird Café waiter Gunnar Scott (Sam Palladio).

Under the watchful eye of Khoury and her writing staff, Nashville is more than just a Glee clone in cowboy boots. The show skillfully explores the cost of living in the public eye, the lengths one has to go to in order to hold onto precarious financial success, the often incestuous Gordian knot of relationships in the country music capital, and the bitter pang of love lost. One subplot has Panettiere’s Juliette dealing with her junkie mother, a meth addict who careens from caterwauling to begging for forgiveness. Indeed, while Britton as always impresses with a lithe naturalism, Panettiere’s performance is surprisingly one of many reasons to watch. She infuses Juliette with a rare sympathetic streak despite her awful behavior, whether she’s trying to steal Rayna’s bandleader (and ex-boyfriend) Deacon Claybourne (Charles Esten) or a bottle of nail polish from a pharmacy. Her caustic exterior and slutty ways belie a wounded soul in need of salvation.

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The Daily Beast: "Top Chef: Seattle Shows Signs of Returning the Culinary Series to Its Strengths"

I review Bravo’s latest culinary iteration, Top Chef: Seattle, which shows signs of improvement after the franchise’s recent rock-bottom season.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Top Chef: Seattle Shows Signs of Returning the Culinary Series to Its Strengths," in which I offer a re-evaluation of Bravo's Top Chef, which returns tonight with a Seattle edition and which shows major improvements from last season.

I was almost done with Top Chef earlier this year, after a season of Texas-sized gimmicks and faux drama that left me nearly reaching for a knife of my own. (Or the remote, at the very least.)

Bravo’s cooking-competition franchise had tumbled sharply from its previous high, following on the heels of an All-Stars season that focused on the culinary know-how of some innately gifted professional chefs, rather than on drunken shenanigans or behavior more worthy of a high-school clique. But last season, which found a group of chefs traveling between three cities in Texas, was shockingly awful.

I wrote about the disaster of a season that ensued, its inane rivalries, and the "mean-girl" antics that put the cooking on the back burner. When the season ended with a biathlon that had the competitors cross-country skiing and shooting "ingredients” before preparing dishes aloft in a speeding gondola, things had really hit rock bottom for a once-superlative series.

So please forgive me: I was tempted not to watch the latest iteration, Top Chef: Seattle, which begins tonight at 10 p.m. on Bravo. In the end, however, curiosity won out. I wanted to see if the producers had learned anything from last season’s failures and missteps. Fortunately, they have—at least if we can judge from this season’s first episode.

As before, this season begins by narrowing down the pool of competitors from a gaggle of 21 to a more manageable number, each of whom must dazzle the judges to earn a Top Chef coat. But where last season stumbled by appropriating the format of Fox’s Masterchef—putting the chefs in a kitchen stadium of sorts—the producers of Top Chef played it smarter this time. Instead, the would-be contestants are assigned to one of four judges—Tom Colicchio, Emeril Lagasse, Hugh Acheson, and Wolfgang Puck—for whom they must perform tasks on the line in the kitchen or cook a layered soup, an inventive salad, or a winning omelet.

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The Daily Beast: "Mockingbird Lane: NBC’s Munsters Remake Offers Eerie Charms"

The Munsters return from the dead. I review the spooky, dark reworking of the TV classic, which is airing tonight, from the brains behind Pushing Daisies and The Usual Suspects.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Mockingbird Lane: NBC’s Munsters Remake Offers Eerie Charms," in which I review the backdoor pilot for NBC's Mockingbird Lane, a remake of classic sitcom The Munsters from Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller, which airs tonight.

The Munsters are back from the dead, though possibly for just one night.

The supernatural clan was the subject of the 1964–1966 sitcom (and its syndicated sequel, The Munsters Today, which ran from 1988–1991), notable for a few things: the show aired at the same time as that other spooky family sitcom, The Addams Family; the original series is still a cultural touchstone despite only lasting 70 episodes; and the show juxtaposed the supernatural—embodied by iconic characters from Universal’s library of horror titles—with the mundane, giving the audience ghouls attempting to assimilate into a world that feared and misunderstood them, even as they recapitulated the status quo of sitcom trappings.

Made up of father-and-daughter vampires, a blue-collar Frankenstein monster, a prepubescent werewolf, and their seemingly normal pink-skinned family relation, the Munsters return in Mockingbird Lane, which will air its pilot episode tonight at 8 p.m. on NBC.

Like the characters themselves, things are complicated: NBC is said to have passed on Mockingbird Lane but could still be deliberating about the fate of the potential series, using tonight’s episode as an attempt to gauge audience interest. Which means that tonight’s broadcast could be either a one-off special or a sneak peek, depending on how the ratings stack up.

Mockingbird Lane owes more to both the visual style and banter of the short-lived ABC drama Pushing Daisies—also from creator Bryan Fuller—than its previous television incarnations. With Mockingbird Lane, Fuller infuses the struggles of the titular monsters with existential angst, setting their plights—whether it be self-acceptance, fitting in, finding love and happiness, or sating an incessant bloodlust—against a gorgeously hyper-real backdrop. The art direction on the pilot is alone worth the price of admission, a fusion of computer-generated images, painstakingly designed sets, and a sense of wonder and whimsy.

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The Daily Beast: "BBC Two’s The Great British Bake Off Is the Best Reality Show on TV"

The Great British Bake Off is a comforting show about baking—and it makes for truly addictive TV. Ahead of Tuesday night’s season finale, I explore the show’s charms and what it can teach the recently lackluster Top Chef.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "BBC Two’s The Great British Bake Off Is the Best Reality Show on TV," in which I explore the deliciousness of BBC Two's culinary competition series The Great British Bake Off, my latest television obsession.

The best reality show on television this year doesn’t involve wannabe singers, “real” housewives, or Honey Boo Boo, but rather a bunch of Brits baking cakes in the countryside.

The insanely addictive culinary competition show The Great British Bake Off, which wraps up its third season tonight in the United Kingdom on BBC Two, isn’t remotely salacious or controversial, and that’s part of its inherent charm. (U.S. viewers, you can get your fix on YouTube for the time being.)

Bravo’s homegrown Top Chef could learn a thing or two from the runaway British television hit, which riveted 5.6 million viewers last week and grabbed a staggering 23.7 percent audience share, nearly trebling its audience from where it began in 2010. It also has been a critical triumph as well. Radio Times’s Jack Seale wrote of last week’s episode, “The French-themed semi-final was a tense affair, about as dramatic and unforgiving as telly can get while still being about cake. Hardcore patisserie.”

Pitting 12 home bakers against each other for the top prize by putting them through their paces with three challenges per week (a signature challenge, a technical challenge, and a showstopper), The Great British Bake Off shouldn’t be nearly as taut and stressful as it is. Yet there’s something intensely nerve-wracking about seeing a vicar’s wife attempt to make a beef Wellington ... and having the pastry casting slide off under the harsh heat of the oven, or a Fair Isle sweater-clad Scottish lad attempting to mix chilies and salt as a topping for a French macaron. And, yes, there is something hardcore about the challenges—produce 12 sweet and 12 savory bagels under pressure!—and the challengers themselves, ambitious amateurs with a breadth of skill and knowledge. They would put many of Top Chef’s or Sweet Genius’s professionals, some of whom seem more desperate for fame than to further their craft, to shame.

Unlike the show’s American culinary competition siblings, The Great British Bake Off, or GBBO for short, is cozy and comforting, the television equivalent of a steaming hot mug of cocoa. It doesn’t concern itself with mining drama out of the interpersonal relationships between the bakers. While Top Chef: Just Desserts tapped into the drama queen madness of its contestants (remember the “Red Hots are for my mommy” breakdown of one competitor?), The Great British Bake Off instead wisely keeps the focus on the baking itself. It helps that the contestants—from diverse backgrounds, ages, races, and genders—are genuinely supportive of each other in the kitchen. There are no verbal explosions, no thrown pots, no punched walls. The drama is left to the rising of a soufflé rather than that of tempers; disappointment is internalized rather than directed outward.

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The Daily Beast: "The Good Wife: Has Season 4’s Kalinda Storyline Gone too Far?"

Has the legal drama’s steamy Kalinda/Nick plot gone too far? Maria Elena Fernandez and I debate the merits and flaws of this season’s most polarizing storyline on The Good Wife.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Good Wife: Has Season 4’s Kalinda Storyline Gone too Far?" in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I offer up a he said/she said-style discussion on the Kalinda/Nick storyline on Season 4 of The Good Wife.

Archie Panjabi’s Emmy-winning turn as Kalinda Sharma has been one of the highlights of CBS’ stellar legal drama, The Good Wife. But something happened on the way to fleshing out the fiercely independent investigator’s storyline—and not everyone is thrilled about it.

Entertainment Weekly’s TV critic Ken Tucker last week criticized the show’s handling of the twisted dynamic between Panjabi’s Kalinda and Marc Warren’s Nick. “The intrusion of Nick, Kalinda’s ex-husband and played by State of Play’s Marc Warren as though he’d wandered in from Trainspotting, has thrown off the balance of the storytelling in the new season’s first two episodes,” wrote Tucker, “… the bickering that followed, along with [Nick] hanging around the law firm to make Kalinda uncomfortable, only served to make the viewer uncomfortable.”

It’s a viewpoint echoed by The A.V. Club’s David Sims, who wrote, “The Good Wife’s writers seem to have introduced her nasty husband Nick just to see how much they can get away with on CBS. The whole thing certainly isn’t dramatically effective, and aside from how gross it can get, it’s not very gripping.”

The Daily Beast’s Jace Lacob and Maria Elena Fernandez are at odds about the storyline and teamed up to discuss the highs and lows of The Good Wife’s Kalinda/Nick plot so far. (WARNING: The conversation below contains plot points from the season’s third episode, “Two Girls, One Code.” If you have yet to watch that episode, read at your own peril.)

He Said: I am taken aback by some of the reactions to this season’s Kalinda storyline, which I’m finding to be really revealing and intriguing. Kalinda has always been a fairly enigmatic, dark character and Season 4 of The Good Wife has begun to strip away the armor she wears in order to reveal why she is so damaged. We’re not meant to like Nick or root for him, but I am utterly captivated by their screwed up dynamic.

She Said: We’ve waited a long time to learn more about Kalinda, why she created another identity, and why she likes to keep a mysterious quality. My main complaint is that there’s no payoff. I don’t buy their relationship or the predicament she finds herself in at all. It has not been set up for us. And while we are not supposed to root for Nick, we are supposed to root for Kalinda. I don’t. I don’t feel anything for her.

He Said: You really don’t feel anything for Kalinda? That surprises me, because I feel a great deal for her during this storyline. The way that she looks at her wrist after her rough sex with Nick speaks volumes about her past as an abused wife who was little more than a possession for her obsessed, Svengali-like husband. The fact that he has tracked her down to Chicago to (A) get her back and reclaim her, and (B) get back the money she stole from him while he was in prison speaks a lot about the relationship here, as does the great skillet scene from last night’s episode. Their struggle—his of proto-traditional husband/wife dominance and submission and hers of freedom and independence—are at cross-purposes. He wants to own her and Kalinda wants to remind him that she can’t be owned. That it plays out in such a domestic setting, in a kitchen and he demands that she make him an omelet, is telling as well. There is real darkness in him and within her: he’s the source of her angst and why she can’t get close to anybody.

She Said: First of all, there’s nothing traditional going on here. This is a completely sadomasochistic, sick relationship.

He Said: Yes, but I only meant traditional in the sense of patriarchy: he wants her to fall in line with his whims and appetites, whether it is public sexual contact or, well, eggs.

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The Daily Beast: "Call the Midwife: Miranda Hart’s Chummy Browne Steals the Show"

Are you watching PBS' Call the Midwife? If not, you're missing out. In an effort to lure you, I explore the charms of the delightful ’50s drama and its breakout character, Miranda Hart’s awkward and hilarious Chummy Browne.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Call the Midwife: Miranda Hart’s Chummy Browne Steals the Show," in which I praise both the British period drama and specifically, fall's breakout TV character, Miranda Hart's Chummy.

Miranda who?

Miranda Hart might not be well known in America, but that is about to change, thanks to her role in PBS’ period drama Call the Midwife, which airs Sundays at 8 p.m. (Check your local listings for details.) In fact, her disarming performance turns clumsy midwife Camilla Fortescue-Cholmondeley-Browne (or Chummy for short) into this season’s breakout character.

Based on the memoirs of the late Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife centers on a group of young midwives and the nuns of nursing convent Nonnatus House in post-war London. The series scored an impressive audience of nearly 10 million viewers when it aired earlier this year in the United Kingdom, coming in second behind the third season of Downton Abbey as the highest rated drama of the year. A Christmas Special will air in December on BBC One, and a second season has been commissioned for 2013.

The 39-year-old Hart, best known for writing and starring in BBC comedy Miranda (itself based on Hart’s BBC Radio 2 show Miranda Hart’s Joke Shop), popped up in bit parts in such well-known comedies as Absolutely Fabulous and The Vicar of Dibley before getting her big break as the female lead in the 2006 sci-fi comedy Hyperdrive, opposite Shaun of the Dead’s Nick Frost.

In her eponymous comedy, which is currently filming a third season, the six-foot, one-inch Hart plays a posh singleton who spends her sizable inheritance on opening a joke shop; her eternal quest for love—egged on by her ridiculously insensitive mother (Patricia Hodge)—is fraught with tragedy. Miranda is, in many ways, a throwback to a comedy style long since fallen out of favor, recalling the British comedies of the 70s and early 80s. But there’s a sense of the show being so utterly unhip that it is actually quite cool.

"It now feels like people are allowed to openly like an uncool show,” Hart told the Guardian in 2010. “I just thought, that’s the kind of comedy I love, so why not embrace the genre wholly and go, guys, this is what I’m doing, and you really will have to like it or lump it.”

It’s an attitude that permeates everything that Hart does. The second episode of Call the Midwife, which aired in the U.S. on Sunday evening, introduced Hart’s Chummy Browne, an inexperienced but impassioned midwife who, over the course of the next four episodes, becomes the series’ de facto romantic lead. That is, when she’s not wobbling dangerously on her bicycle on the streets of 50’s East London and delivering babies into the world.

Part of the character’s appeal is that Hart doesn’t look like your prototypical romantic lead, certainly not one on American television, where female love interests tend to be pert and blonde or look like they stepped out of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Which makes the engaging and kindhearted Chummy all the more remarkable and original. Played with gentle ease and a lack of snobbishness by Hart, the well-off and awkward Chummy emerges as the character the audience is rooting for above all others, effortlessly stealing the show out from under her co-stars as she engages in a chaste flirtation with police constable Peter Noakes (Ben Caplan), with whom Chummy and two other midwives have collided in spectacular fashion.

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The Daily Beast: "Parenthood: In Praise of Ray Romano"

Everybody loves Raymond, after all. I praise Ray Romano’s stunning performance as grumpy photographer Hank Rizzoli on NBC’s Parenthood, and declare myself a fan.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Parenthood: In Praise of Ray Romano," in which I do just that: praise the outstanding performance of Romano on NBC's underrated drama Parenthood, and discover that I am a Romano fan, after all.

I have never been a Ray Romano fan.

That seems like a good place to start. I couldn’t stomach Everybody Loves Raymond, Romano’s long-running CBS sitcom and, despite the coaxing of many critic friends, I never got into his short-lived TNT drama Men of a Certain Age. Romano has always seemed far too nebbishy and whiny for my liking. While that’s worked for him, I had never fallen for the comedian’s charms.

That has changed irrevocably with Romano’s fantastic turn on Parenthood, which airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Thanks to his performance on the Jason Katims-created drama, I now count myself as a member of the Romano faithful.

For those not watching, the brilliant but underrated Parenthood—very loosely based on the 1989 Steve Martin film of the same name—follows the highs and lows of the Berkeley-based Braverman clan. Now in its fourth season, viewers know to watch Parenthood with a box of Kleenex nearby, since engaging with this bittersweet melodrama—a mix of laughter, heartfelt sighs, and outright sobbing—is perhaps the most cathartic experience on television.

No other show (or not since Katims’ previous weepy, Friday Night Lights) produces so many tears, or so much sentiment. By handling its characters with such painstaking realism and earned—rather than manufactured—emotion, Parenthood creates a window into a family that may or may not be like our own, but resonates.

Which is why I initially reacted so strongly to Romano’s casting as grumpy photographer Hank Rizzoli, who would serve as the employer to Lauren Graham’s floundering Sarah Braverman. Hired to photograph the Bravermans for a family photo, Hank reluctantly takes Sarah on as an assistant, despite the fact that she knows nothing about photography, and is clearly intended to drive a wedge between Sarah and her fiancé, Mark (Jason Ritter), this season.

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The Daily Beast: "Review: Season 2 of Homeland and Season 4 of The Good Wife"

Set your DVRs! I review Season Two of Showtime’s Homeland and Season Four of CBS’s The Good Wife, finding common ground in their deft and subtle explorations of identity.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "TV's Kick-Ass Women Return," in which I review Season Two of Homeland and Season Four of The Good Wife, tracing the way that both shows explore their characters' shifting identities.

In the season opener of Homeland, which airs on Sunday, Claire Danes’s Carrie Mathison smiles.

If you’ve been watching Showtime’s Homeland, the newly crowned winner of the Emmy Award for Best Drama, this seems entirely contrary to her character, a bipolar and deeply disgraced CIA officer who underwent electroconvulsive therapy in the first season finale. Carrie isn’t prone to happiness: she has been misunderstood, mocked, and kicked out of the intelligence community. For all of that, Carrie was also right that Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Emmy Award winner Damian Lewis), a former prisoner of war, is not what he appears to be.

Danes—who also won an Emmy on Sunday—inhabits Carrie with a crippling onus placed on her, one that has only widened the cracks in her sanity. Her prescience and her instincts go unheeded, and the damage that she causes threatens to consume her altogether.

CBS’s The Good Wife, also returning on Sunday evening, will deal with its own identity crises this season. On the surface, these two shows don’t seem to share many similarities. One is a tense terrorism thriller on premium cable, the other a contemplative legal drama that explores technology, politics, marriage, and the law with a subtlety that make it a paragon among television dramas. Both, however, tackle issues of self-identification with insight and perspicacity, and this is felt even more keenly in Homeland’s second season and The Good Wife’s fourth.

Within The Good Wife, Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) has played the dutiful wife and the aggrieved spouse with equal vigor, a friction that cuts to the core of The Good Wife. What does it mean to be good? And how does that reflect our own needs and desires outside that of familial responsibility? Having lost everything after the betrayal of her philandering husband, Peter (Chris Noth), Alicia had to, out of necessity, redefine herself through her work, returning to a profession that she had left. Her discovery that she excelled in the field is the first in a series of transformations for the character.

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The Daily Beast: "Homeland Sweeps the Emmys: Why Showtime’s Thriller Exploded"

Mad Men is triumphant no more. I examine Showtime’s superlative terrorist thriller Homeland, which took home the Emmy for best drama Sunday.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Homeland Sweeps the Emmys: Why Showtime’s Thriller Exploded," in which I take a look at Homeland's victory at the Primetime Emmy Awards last night and look at why the premium cable drama toppled Mad Men.

Not only did Mad Men not win the Emmy Award for best drama, the AMC period drama went home empty-handed Sunday, leaving the 64th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards with not a single statuette in its possession.

In the weeks leading up to the awards telecast, Mad Men seemed very much like a sure thing: it had won four of the four times it was eligible for Best Drama, and the odds seemed very much in its favor once more. In fact, Showtime’s Homeland—the taut psychological drama that also nabbed best-actor and -actress awards for Damian Lewis and Claire Danes—had cooled in recent weeks, with Breaking Bad or Downton Abbey poised as far more likely usurpers to Mad Men’s throne.

Yet Homeland did triumph, putting Showtime on the awards map in a very real way and ending the streak maintained by AMC and HBO. It’s not only a victory for showrunners Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, but also for the new regime at Showtime overseen by David Nevins, whose support for the fledgling Homeland has paid off in dividends.

However, those scratching their heads over what happened to the once-Teflon Mad Men are missing the point. Homeland’s victory isn’t much of an upset, if we’re being honest. While the least expected choice of the viable ones, the Emmy is still very much deserved. While I’m a staunch supporter of Mad Men (and will continue to be), Homeland is new and shiny, and Emmy voters, like magpies, are often drawn to the glitter of a fresh show. But Homeland is also a highly provocative drama, fueled by paranoia, patriotism, zealotry, and madness.

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The Daily Beast: "Fall TV 2012 Preview: 7 Shows to Watch, 7 Shows to Skip"

The fall television season is here! But which shows should you be watching and which should you skip? I'm glad you asked.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Fall TV 2012 Preview: 7 Shows to Watch, 7 Shows to Skip," in which I offer my take on the upcoming fall season, with seven shows you should be watching (from ABC's Nashville to PBS' Call the Midwife) and those you should be snubbing (Partners, The Neighbors).

The fall television season is once again upon us, and overall the results are pretty depressing: there’s a decided lack of originality to much of the broadcast networks’ new offerings, as if they were somehow injured by the lack of interest in last year’s riskier programs.

In fact, there is a whole lot of formulaic fare coming to your televisions, and a ton of new (mostly awful) comedies this year. But fret not: it’s not all doom and gloom, as there are at least a few promising new shows on the horizon, from the Connie Britton-led country music drama Nashville to the sweet charms of offbeat comedy Ben & Kate.

Once again, the broadcasters have opted to hold back many of the more interesting new shows until midseason, which means we’ll have to wait until January for the launch of Kevin Williamson’s serial killer thriller The Following against James Purefoy in a murderous game, and Bryan Fuller’s television adaptation of Hannibal, which finds a young FBI agent (Hugh Dancy) meeting the cannibalistic psychopath Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) for the first time. Which isn’t to say that midseason is entirely promising either: the winter will also find ABC offering us the truly terrible Dane Cook comedy (and I use that word loosely), Next Caller.

In the meantime, however, while we’re waiting for the rise of the serial killers on the broadcast nets, here’s a look at the best and worst of the new fall television season.

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