[Televisionary]

Over at The Daily Beast, Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice creator Shonda Rhimes opens up about polarizing storylines, repetitive questions from fans on Twitter, and Grey’s creative renaissance in its seventh season. You can read my latest feature, entitled " Grey's Anatomy 's 7th Year Surge," in which I talk to Rhimes about Grey’s Anatomy , Private Practice , and Off the Map (launching January 12th), polarizing storylines, incessant fan questions, Twitter, potential endings, and more. Have you found yourself sucked in once more to Grey's ? Have you noticed a sudden creative resurgence or is it just as good as it always has been? Can there be a Grey's Anatomy without Ellen Pompeo? Head to the comments section to discuss. Grey's Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9 pm ET/PT on ABC.

"State." Throughout the four-plus season run of Friday Night Lights , we've gotten quite a few inspirational speeches from Coach Taylor, spirit-rallying calls to action, soul-stirring St. Crispin's Day speeches intended to join men into a single unit, to merge them together into a single entity before they leap once more into the fray. Sometimes, however, all it takes is a single word scrawled on a dry-erase board. On this week's episode of Friday Night Lights ("On the Outside Looking In"), written by Kerry Ehrin and directed by Michael Waxman, a number of stories about isolation and unity tumbled together in an appealingly loose fashion. There was the nicely rendered parallel stories of Tami and Julie, each adrift in their own way, desperately seeking to fit into an environment that has them ill at ease. Despite the distance between mother and daughter, they're linked here by a taut thematic thread. For Tami, it's an effort to fit into her new

Hmmm, did you see that coming? While I teased some details about this week's fantastically serpentine episode of Chuck ("Chuck Versus the First Fight") in my advance review last week (which you can read over here ), I was especially careful not to spoil that particular bait and switch, lest it ruin what was a rather masterful plot twist this week. Morgan, here thrust into largely the same role that Chuck was way back in Season One, claims that first fights set the tone for the entire relationship and his rubric can be applied to relationships in general. In fact, the way that the final conflict in this episode plays out might hold the key to unlocking--or at least gaining some understanding--about the ways in which Mary Elizabeth Bartowski operates. Her frosty exterior belies a true emotional core, one that's not tied up in whatever elaborate ruse she's involved in at the moment. So now that the episode has aired and I can get more specific with my thoughts with

Here's to hoping you did more on Halloween than just go trick-or-treating. Last night marked the series premiere of AMC's new horror series The Walking Dead . While you already read my advance review of the first three episodes here , now that TWD has premiered, I'm curious to know just what you thought about the zombie apocalypse drama. Were you put off by the gore and violence? Or was it just the right amount of muck and mayhem for you? Did you believe British actor Andrew Lincoln as a Southern cop? Were you on the edge of your seat the entire time? Watch through clenched fingers? Unable to look away? Did the pilot episode linger with you the rest of the evening? Also, were you struck by similarities to both 28 Days Later and Survivors ? Did you feel it advanced zombie mythology or, er, regurgitated it? And, most importantly, will you tune in again to The Walking Dead next week? Talk back here. Next week on The Walking Dead ("Guts"), Rick unknowingly causes

Zombies represent a real nexus of fear for me, something approaching an all-out phobia. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that zombies--unlike, say, other horror-based characters like vampires or werewolves--are brought about by something uncontrollable like a virus. They become a faceless mob, hell-bent on feasting on human flesh, transmitting the virus as it takes over the world. Unlike vampires (whose hunger is based upon something entirely different and inimical), zombies have no intellect. Rather they represent something alien, chaotic, and unstoppable, a walking virus in rags and bones that doesn't realize that it has shed its last vestiges of humanity. One of the most eagerly anticipated new series this fall is AMC's The Walking Dead , a horror drama based on the ongoing comic book series by Robert Kirkman that's executive produced by Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd. The six-episode first season launches on Sunday, bringing a horror series to basic cable fittingly

Mad Men. Breaking Bad. Rubicon. Those titles are intimately familiar to any television devotee and cabler AMC, the home to those groundbreaking series, is about to launch their fourth original series this weekend with The Walking Dead . Over at The Daily Beast, I examine AMC's success, speaking to the channel's top executives--president/general manager Charlie Collier and SVP of original programming Joel Stillerman--as they dive headfirst into the horror genre with Sunday's The Walking Dead . The piece, entitled "AMC: Television's Hottest Network," contains a discussion with Collier and Stillerman covering AMC's brand, their programming decisions, and the future and challenges for the basic cable network as well as topics such as the fate of Rubicon , next year's crime drama The Killing , and much more.

As I said last night on Twitter, I didn't think I could love Community more than I already did and yet last night's episode ("Epidemiology"), written by Karey Dornetto (who previously scripted the "Contemporary American Poultry" episode) and directed by Anthony Hemingway ( True Blood ), proved me wrong entirely. In the hands of the immensely talented cast and crew of Community , this Halloween episode transcended all boundaries, injecting horror tropes into its comedic trappings without sacrificing the ephemeral spirit of what makes this show unique in the first place. Rather than offer up a dream or a similar faux reality, Dan Harmon and Co. found a way to have an actual zombies attack on Greendale Community College... and still keep the emotional integrity of the series. While people succumb to an illness related to a highly classified experimental military compound purchased as "taco meat" by a cheap Dean Pelton and the gang attempts to stay al