Here’s what we’ve been watching on television.
30 Rock: Season 6
- Excerpt: It would be easy to make the argument, and many have, that Tina Fey’s absurdist sitcom was running on creative fumes in year six, coasting on its established characters and audience goodwill. To which I respond, ‘Yes. And?’
Awake: Season One
Stephen Carty @ Flix Capacitor
Boardwalk Empire (Season 2)
- Excerpt: This is a show with the capacity for greatness, and that promise shines through in its best moments and sharpest episodes. If they would just tighten it up a little, this would be one of the best shows on television.
Breaking Bad: Gliding Over All
Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks
Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks
Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: From the moment that the Daleks revealed that they needed The Doctor to go down to the planet they use as an asylum in order to help them destroy it, the episode turned into a pretty great little excursion packed full of twists, surprises and even a few genuinely creepy moments.
Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: I wouldn’t go as far as “disappointed.” There some good stuff here. But the insane Dalek has been done before — and much better…
Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: This year, showrunner Steven Moffat has promised big budget spectacle: there will be no two-parters and, instead, each instalment will feel like a forty-five-minute summer film. Asylum of the Daleks feels like a fairly efficient prototype for that storytelling model, while still perhaps hinting at the things to come as the Doctor enters his fiftieth year on British television.
Fringe: The Complete Fourth Season
John J. Puccio @ Movie Metropolis
- Excerpt: Fringe continues to be the most imaginative, most provocative, most compelling show on television.
The Halloween Tree
- Excerpt: Ray Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree” is a sly work, one that manages to shed a great deal of light on the customs that form the basis of modern celebrations of Halloween. It plays less like a history lesson, though, and more like a very fun and suitably spooky globe-trotting adventure.
On the 2nd Day of Christmas
- Excerpt: Three years before his breakout role as the ne’er-do-well brother of Laura Linney in the Oscar-nominated You Can Count on Me, Mark Ruffalo earned second billing in the Lifetime movie “On the 2nd Day of Christmas.”
Parks and Recreation: Season 4
- Excerpt: As the series continues, it only gets better–the timing gets tighter, the running gags wittier, the moments of sweetness and melancholy well earned. With laughs a-plenty and an enjoyably timely political subtext running throughout, this show’s fourth season is its best to date.
Up All Night: Season 1
- Excerpt: ‘Up All Night’ is still finding its way, and not every episode is a winner, but this is one of the most promising young comedies on the air.
