[Televisionary]

Over the course of its first season, CBS' legal drama The Good Wife transformed itself from a legal procedural into a strong ensemble drama. Which isn't to say that it jettisoned the cases of the week, because, in the hands of skilled creators Robert and Michelle King, it managed to both deepen the characters without sacrificing the courtroom hook, pulling off the rare legal-focused series that actually manages to make us care about the the accused, the defense counsel, and the kids at home. Inspired by the slew of sexually-charged political scandals, The Good Wife 's first season also held up a mirror to our own society, giving us a female lead in Julianna Margulies' Alicia Florick who was determined, harried, and often second-guessing her own decision to stand by her man. In the process, the series posed questions about the choices we make, the value of honesty and fidelity (both in the bedroom and in the state's attorney's office), the plight of the working

By now, we've all seen the watermelon-to-the-face viral video making the rounds the last few weeks, but the season opener of CBS' The Amazing Race is far more than just than cringe-inducing moment of pain. In fact, the opener to the seventeenth (!!!) season of The Amazing Race ("They Don't Call It the Amazing Race for Nothin'!") might just go down as one of the series' all-time bests, sending the contestants across the pond to England, where they're forced to contend with scaling the walls of a castle, learning the definition of "battlements," discovering what Stonehenge is, and performing a rather difficult balancing act. That is, when they're not getting hopelessly lost driving on the left side of the road, as happens to more than just one hopeful team. As with all great seasons, the success or failure of an individual reality competition cycle rests pretty squarely on the casting and I have to say that they've more than come thro

HBO's deliciously madcap comedy Bored to Death returns Sunday evening for a second season and not a moment too soon. Created by Jonathan Ames, the noir-tinged comedy revolves around another Jonathan Ames, a failed writer moonlighting as an unlicensed private detective, played to perfection by Jason Schwartzman. In an even more improbable meta twist, the real-life Ames guest stars in one of the second season's early episodes as, well, a naked man. If that's not a metaphor for the sort of zany navel-gazing that Bored to Death excels at, I don't know what is. With its return, the series ushers in a hysterical and absurd second season that's far more focused on the triangle of friendship existing between Schwartzman's Jonathan, comic book writer/illustrator Ray (Zach Galifianakis), and pothead magazine publisher George (Ted Danson). While the troika spend the first half of the freshman season split apart, the writers have wisely thrust all three into a group dynam

What did you think of last night's episode of Community ? While I've been raving about the second season opener for weeks now , I also was asked to host AOL Television's Skype Second Opinions, where I connected via Skype and rambled on for a full three minutes about Community 's "Anthropology 101" episode, my thoughts on the fantastic opening sequence (set to Vampire Weekend's "Campus"), the most un-erotic kiss ever on television, urine-swigging June Bauer (Betty White), that sucker-punch to the gut, and Ken Jeong's terrifyingly twisted Ben Chang. You can watch the video in full over here at AOL Television or right below. Next week on Community ("The Psychology of Letting Go"), the study group comforts Pierce after the death of his mother; Professor Duncan tries to take over the anthropology class.

What happens when the glue holding a group of people together takes off for far-flung adventure? What happens to those left behind? And is it ever possible to bring those now distant people back together again? Can you fix what's been broken? Those are the questions hovering over the action on tonight's sixth season premiere of FOX's Bones ("The Mastodon in the Room"), which sees the gang at the Jeffersonian attempt to reform the gang when their individual sabbaticals come to abrupt ends. The cause? An effort to save the career of Cam (Tamara Taylor), undergoing intense scrutiny when she lacks the certainty to identify the skeletal remains of a child in the face of a massive media blitz for a controversial story: the disappearance of a two-year old boy. Is the tiny skeleton in the morgue the boy that everyone's looking for? Or is it an unrelated crime? Up until now, Cam's been in this fight alone, though she's had the support of tough-talking Caroline

And that's how you kick off a brand new season. Last night brought the fourth season premiere of NBC's action-comedy Chuck ("Chuck Versus the Anniversary") and I hope that the episode delivered all of the espionage-tinged goodness that I promised in my advance review of the season opener last week. I had also teased readers via Twitter about the premiere (" Chuck premiere: sexting, skydiving, Seinfeld references, (Harry Dean) Stanton? Sensational. Very fun opener.") and the episode held up extremely well under a second viewing in the time between now and then. For me, anyway, "Chuck Versus the Anniversary" was perhaps the perfect way to begin a new chapter in the life of Chuck Bartowski, a character who has slowly evolved over the course of three seasons from reluctant hero to tragic hero to, well, just plain hero. His decision to take hold of his own destiny, to set out with Morgan on a personal quest to track down his mother may have not lea

It's tricky to write about a new series when you've seen the subsequent five episodes, as is the case with HBO's addictive and gorgeously realized period drama Boardwalk Empire , which kicked off last night. While I had the chance to watch the first six episodes of the Terence Winter/Martin Scorsese drama ahead of time , last night was the first time that I got the chance to see the visually stunning opening sequence, which depicts the bowler-clad Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) on the rocky beach as an ocean of booze bottles comes pouring in. With a tip of the figurative hat to Belgian artist Rene Magritte, it effortlessly captured the scope and tone of the series while reveling in the symbolic implications. Last night's dazzling series premiere ("Boardwalk Empire"), written by Terence Winter and directed by Martin Scorsese, perfectly brought to life the Atlantic City of 1920, a world populated by grifters, flashy politicians, midgets, widows, booze-hounds, an

I don't want to say too much lest I spoil the sheer and utter joy that is watching the second season opener ("Anthropology 101") of NBC's Community , which--like its characters--heads back to Greendale after a summer break. There's a gleeful absurdity deep in the DNA of this winning show but also a lot of emotional resonance, as its characters tackle the larger struggles facing humanity while also managing to get involved in all manner of larger-than-life hijinx. It's a tonal juxtaposition that has worked well for the series in the first season, and Season Two--which begins on Thursday--smartly continues this trend, creating a microcosm in which the heartfelt and supremely weird hold hands on the way to class. Given the way that the first season left off--with Jeff (Joel McHale) and Annie (Alison Brie) locking lips rather than with Britta (Gillian Jacobs)--it's only natural that the writers would deal with this new love triangle permutation early on. And t

When we last left Zachary Levi's Chuck Bartowski, he had received a revelation--or two--that shocked his world to its core. Having buried his father, slain in the line of duty, Chuck learned that his father had maintained a secret underground headquarters beneath the family's Encino home and that his mother, Mary Elizabeth Bartowski, had her own secrets as well... and that his father had devoted his life to finding Chuck and Ellie's errant mother. I can tell you that we see the elusive Mary (played by Terminator 's Linda Hamilton) within the very first seconds of Season Four of NBC's Chuck , which begins on Monday with a fantastic and funny installment ("Chuck Versus the Anniversary") that sets up the overarching plotline for the fourth season while creating a new status quo for our favorite spy. I had the chance last night to watch "Chuck Versus the Anniversary," written by Chris Fedak and directed by Robert Duncan McNeill, and was struck by how

"Who is Don Draper?" It's those very words that are asked at the start of Season Four of AMC's slick and stylish period drama Mad Men but the question isn't just asked of Don Draper himself but posed to the audience as well. Just who is Don Draper? Is he a man so desperate to create a life for himself that he borrowed an identity from someone else? Is he an adulterous family man and distant father? Is he a divorced man attempting to navigate the uncertain waters of dating once more? Is he a modest Midwesterner or is he the public face of the fledgling Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce agency? In the fourth season opener ("Public Relations"), written by Matthew Weiner and directed by Phil Abraham, Don wonders the answers to those questions as well, finding no solace in the quest of self-discovery. Throughout the series, Don Draper has been an enigma, a man whose purpose in life is to sell products, to craft deliciously beautiful creative work, but he's l

USA's slick and stylish crime procedural White Collar returns tonight with an installment that points towards a new direction for the agents of the White Collar Crimes Division of the Manhattan branch of the FBI... and for charismatic consultant Neal Caffrey (Matthew Bomer), the reformed thief/forger at the heart of the series. One of the strengths of White Collar has been the unerring chemistry between series leads Bomer and Tim DeKay, who plays Neal's partner/handler/jailer Peter Burke, the "suit." Despite the circumstances that Neal finds himself in when the second season begins with tonight's season opener ("Withdrawal"), that relationship remains exceedingly strong. Which is a good thing as there are some new challenges facing Neal and Peter, most notably the mystery surrounding the death of Neal's lost love Kate and the whereabouts of that all-important amber music box, the latter of which might just surprise you. But for the moment, the dyna

I already spoke in general terms about the season premiere of Top Chef over in my advance review of the episode , but now that the episode has aired, we can get down to the details of the food that the cheftestants prepared this week. First episodes are always tricky as there are a lot of new contestants and it's often hard to keep track of all of them, particularly when there are seventeen of them being introduced all at once. But this is Top Chef , after all, so it's only typical that the strongest performers would stand out in the first week... along with some of those who might be destined to be packing their knives sooner rather than later. This week's episode of Top Chef ("What's Your Constituency?") found the new crop of contenders heading to Washington D.C., where they were immediately put through their paces in a round-robin Quickfire Challenge--with only four chefs actually getting to create a dish--before heading into their first Elimination

The best laid plans, as they say... Last night's season premiere of True Blood ("Bad Blood"), written by Brian Buckner and directed by Daniel Minahan, kicked off the third season in style, with a riveting installment that was sexy, sultry, and dangerous all at once and which found several of the characters having to make, uh, alternate arrangements as their strategies didn't exactly pay off the way that they had intended. That went for Sookie (Anna Paquin), who decided to accept Bill's marriage proposal, only to learn that he'd been kidnapped, to baby vamp Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) and conscience-suffering Jason (Ryan Kwanten), as well as conspirators Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and Sophie-Anne (Evan Rachel Wood). Taking place just a few seconds after the events of the Season Two finale, "Bad Blood" found the characters reeling from those life-altering collisions of sex and violence. Sookie discovered that Bill had disappeared and was convinced that

It's good to have an iteration of Top Chef back on television, a breath of fresh air--or the enticing aroma of cooking, at least, wafting through my TiVo. Last night's season premiere ("First Date Dinners") found the first week's six master chefs--Ana Sortun, Govind Armstrong, Jerry Traunfeld, Jimmy Bradley, Susan Feniger, and Tony Mantuano--competing for a shot at the next round and a sizable donation to the charity of their choice when they were forced to contend with a flashback Quickfire Challenge from the very first season of Top Chef and an Elimination Challenge that tested not only their skills in the kitchen but also how well they could work with their teammate to conceptualize a duo-plated dish. What's that you say? Teammate? Yes, these masters were paired together throughout the entire episode, making it even more essential that they stopped thinking of themselves as the chief and more as partner chefs if they had any hope of coming out on top. It