Nic Pizzolatto’s scripts for “True Detective” have their moments but, self-consciously literary, they also are painfully overwritten.
Television
TV/DVD Commentary: Loving “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”
Although there are bumps on the way from the brilliant first season to the uneven fourth season, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” stands as a clever, thought-provoking and joyful creation – a pleasure that’s anything but guilty.
Television Review: “Six by Sondheim” on HBO — A Fabulous Musical Showcase
It’s possible to argue with several of Stephen Sondheim’s selections. Are all of these his best achievements? Yet it hardly matters, because the composer’s tales of his artistic life, culled from probably a dozen interviews, are completely fascinating.
Fuse TV Review: “Breaking Bad” Ends Well — “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
Over the past five years of Breaking Bad, the chemistry of fate has run its course.
Television Review: “Glickman” — A Rousing Sports Biography
Before he was a broadcaster, Mary Glickman was one heck of an athlete, a youthful hero in New York known as “the Jewish Red Grange.”
TV Review: “Ray Donovan” — “Don’t Let The Wolf in the Gate.”
All things considered, “Ray Donovan” is bad and only a Tootsie Pop-class sucker would consider tuning in for the second episode.
TV Feature: Finding “The Inner Light” at the Star Trek Convention
Google the favorite Star Trek episodes of all time and “The Inner Light” is on just about every top ten list.
TV News: “Mad Men” and the Mystique of the Sixties
“Mad Men” gets all manner of undeserved attention. Yet I attend to it.
Fuse TV News: HBO’s “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer”
In Russia, the defenders of Nadia, Masha, and Katia have compared their plight to the victims of the infamous Stalinist “Show Trials” of the ’30s.
Television Review: Christopher Guest’s Humble “Family Tree”
The only way to sort of enjoy “Family Tree” is with modest expectations; and indeed, this is the most modest of series, as Christopher Guest cuts his molars on TV with a program which rarely tries to be more than fairly amusing, mildly ambitious, a kind of bemused apprentice work in a new medium.