Becoming Chaz never really gets under its subject's skin.

Showtime’s The Chi floats like a worthy successor to “The Wire” and then descends into the sort of bathos of a Tyler Perry production.

You just have to wade through a landfill of lame camp and gratuitous weirdness to get to the pop center of Gaga's HBO show.

Reba's smile can warm almost anything. But it's not worth sitting through this recycled sitcom for it.

Living Biblically is made in such a way that it won’t offend most anyone. It also won’t make many laugh. That’s splitting the difference in all the wrong ways. The show is exhausting.

The Czech Republic location shoots convincingly suggest medieval France, but the episodes run an unwieldy 75 minutes long. Capaldi is terrific and commands the screen as if he’s on an HBO series while everyone else is in a cartoon.

V is stuck in the past of a 25-year-old show. It needs to shed that skin.

When it comes to Sun Records, the hook is there, but it can’t sustain the beat.

Williamson has crafted a pilot tense and frightening. But in the subsequent three episodes, The Following deteriorates into a serialized version of CBS' "Criminal Minds." ... After four episodes, this viewer was weary of seeing women terrorized.

Scream Queens is just too dumb to be fun.

Shots Fired’s biggest sin is its lack of urgency. For a story this topical, Shots seems constructed like a LEGO model--one scene is pressed onto another.

The fallout, partly because of the size of the sprawling cast, partly because of the tonal shifts, sometimes within the same scene, can be jarring. Orange nails the dramatic moments. It’s the comedy that ranges from banter to slapstick and back that feels out of place, especially as the rioting wears on.

The Last Ship is a naval recruitment ad for the apocalypse, and these waters look shallow. Careful before sticking your toe in.

Tacoma FD needs more than a spark to get going. It needs a tanker full of gasoline and a convenient bolt of lightning.

It's also clear that, with the show now starting its fifth season, the contestants have actually bothered to watch previous installments and have strategized. It may keep them in the game longer, but it makes for more predictable TV.

You'd have more fun watching somebody put up drywall.

Although 'Dad' also was created by [Family Guy's Seth] MacFarlane and has even more outlandish characters - a gay alien, a randy German goldfish - it feels like the more conventional (read: less funny) sitcom. [1 May 2005]

There probably hasn’t been so much talk about sex crammed into one hour since MTV’s “Loveline.” Much of it cannot be repeated here. Instead of being titillating, it’s tedious, the equivalent of three cold showers.

The show flexes its political correctness so hard, it forgets the most important part of TV drama is showing, not telling. That changes, for a few moments next week, when Ashley and Kristen are arrested and suffer far different ordeals from a booking officer. It’s a welcome rarity, and proof Ball can craft compelling drama, when he chooses to. Most of the characters on Here and Now self-medicate. You might feel the same urge after spending some time with this fractured family.

The challenges are right out of “Survivor” and MTV’s much missed “Road Rules”--so much so that loyal fans will be able to scream out the season, if not the episode. Some of the game rules seem arbitrary, even for the genre.

Ultimately, Fleming will leave you neither shaken nor stirred.

Like "Lost," the show is burdened with flashbacks and divides its time between the present and the prison 50 years earlier.

The alleged comedy follows this blended family's attempts to get along. The laugh track works harder than anyone here.

The innuendos would make a seventh-grader giggle. ... Mullally’s Karen remains one of network TV’s greatest comic creations, even when she’s saddled with such lines as “Hasta la homos!” Hayes’ shtick has not aged well. Messing seems to be reading her lines in the pilot. It’s not all bad. The theme song has been given a kick.

The weird, creepy comedy about the world of a struggling copy writer from her dog’s perspective. ... Three episodes of this show and I was fantasizing about dropping this flea bag off at a shelter and speeding away. Oh, some of the bipeds here are endearing, when they get their moments.

When the funniest things about a comedy are the cameos, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Or in the case of NBC’s new sitcom A.P. Bio, back to the chalkboard.

There's still heat to Rescue Me - it just needs something to stoke the drama. [19 June 2005, p.A03]

Locked up in cliches, tedium and barely believable bipeds. ... As far as extinction events go, Zoo is lame and tame.