Entertaining. But is it worth eight hours of your attention? Not unless you’re laid up with a bad flu bug you just can’t seem to shake.

Lindsay pulls us into her space and makes us feel protective. [31 Mar 2014]

It takes a few half-hour episodes before the tone gels. [16 Jan 2012, p.39]

The show's comically choreographed mayhem is a difficult premise to sustain, like trying to stage a big bumper-car pileup again and again. So be sure to watch—and tape—this week's pilot directed by Lynch. It's a doozy.

This new college comedy isn't quite in the same class [as Freaks and Geeks], but it captures the atmosphere of the dormitory as minimum-security madhouse.

Grabs you so forcefully that you won't shake free even when the drama strains credulity.

A solid, well-done series. [19 Jan 2012, p.42]

The one great redemptive asset--and it's significant--is Kiefer Sutherland. [26 Mar 2012, p.41]

This is the best "family" reality series since Honey Boo Boo or even The Osbournes from several centuries ago. [31 Mar 2014]

Rivers scarcely pretends any of the setups are real--it's just more material for her. [7 Feb 2011, p.41]

Though overequipped with distracting extras—-flashes of fantasy, slapstick sound effects—-this dark comedy definitely grows on you.

Flowers, both the book and the new movie, is completely absurd--if you want to gauge the absurdity, just know that one of the darkest secrets in the narrative involves a doughnut--but somehow also psychologically coherent. It has a grip.

Anderson gives the character an irresistible goofy charm, and it's nice to see a western that doesn't take the genre too seriously.

Garner has an appeal that transcends implausibility.

The show needs to guard against the cutesies ... and allow both principals to do more than talk about their sex lives.

This TLC series has hit a cultural nerve, partly because it offers practical, price-cutting tips in an era in which people are jittery about inflation. Also because it's bonkers. [26 May 2011, p.46]

So cheeky, sexy and alive that you can't help enjoying it.

I found 1 vs. 100 much more enjoyable [than Deal Or No Deal]. [23 Oct 2006, p.37]

The show is gentle, winning and sympathetic. [7 May 2012, p.48]

Jack is back, and he's still a lot of fun. [12 May 2014]

We're betting that with experience, this inconsistent show can find a way to win.

Hot Properties has a loose, engaging silliness. [31 Oct 2005, p.39]

Luckily the characters are so fully formed, and so fully inhabited by the cast, that the whole mess staggers up out of the trenches and keeps going. [9 Jan 2012, p.39]

Dream On doesn't seem quite as inventive as it used to be. Still, it is superior to most of the dreck on the networks.

Not too original, but the cast makes this King more than a commoner.

It's tense, engrossing, mildly ludicrous--and worth checking out before the Cold War melts. [11 Feb 2013]

We'll see how season 10 holds up once the chosen contestants move on to Hollywood, but for now Idol remains firmly on its pedestal. [14 Feb 2011, p.39]

In her enjoyably ridiculous reality show, she's self-consciously restrained, perhaps trying to project old-fashioned noblesse oblige-even while goosing her Google profile with this project in self-exposure. She just ends up neutralizing herself. The show is dominated instead by a supporting group of rich kids who take the reverse tactic of whole-hog shamelessness.