Push Girls is not as edifying as it might be, but it's not sanctimonious either.

Students of Marshall's life and times won't find any new information here, but the personal shadings are crucial because they humanize what might otherwise have been dry textbook details. Stevens and Fishburne find a strong emotional through-line for Marshall's greatest triumphs: the desire to right injustices visited upon Marshall, his family and his people.

Combining the breakneck comedy and sly farce of "Arrested Development" with the pop-savvy wit of "Ugly Betty" and the twisted humor, odd soundtrack and deadpan voice-overs of one of the greatest movies about high school of all time, "Election," Glee is bold, silly, demonic and addictive--one full hour of very good (but not very clean) fun.

What Rescue Me has shined and polished to a high gloss, though, is those scenes of aggressive camaraderie between men. They're smart, funny and utterly realistic in terms of the ways that men relate to each other.

The Americans is delightfully cunning, exactly the quality, along with fight scenes and ridiculous disguises, one desires in a spy show.

Mad Men is smart, funny, eye-opening, and probably 10 times better than anything you'll see this fall, so don't miss it.

while there is always another clip or song of interest, there's a lot lost in the middle.

Aliens in America is packed with actual jokes and the story lines are tight and funny.

For all of its charms, Nurse Jackie needs to offer a little more than an enigmatic nurse and a parade of clever grouches.

Has there ever been a TV show that's at once more delightful and cringe-inducing at the exact same time than Glee? Ever since it returned for its second season, this off-kilter dramedy has been nailing its high notes while still flaunting its many flaws with even more bravado than before.

It remains the most ambitious show on TV with nothing to say at all.

Each week the show is both intriguing and satisfying, as we watch Alicia piece together little victories while comforting her kids and confronting lurking demons from her old life. Despite the usual familiar courtroom shenanigans, the show's full, multilayered episodes keep us interested.

Not only does Angel make sense as an extension of the "Buffy" mythology, it makes Angel seem more alive than he's been in about, oh, 240 years

Hunter is just so good and the writing is subtle enough that we're willing to go along for the ride, from those looming-tornado opening credits to the last scene of each episode, in which a new heartstrings-plucking tragedy is neatly and satisfyingly resolved.

Thankfully, while the reckoning of "The Memory Loss Tapes" is probably necessary, the other documentaries in the series are a little more hopeful.

The show is not just about the struggle between the good and the mediocre, it is itself a struggle between the good and the mediocre.

Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt as the dumb dad's parents really make this one impossible to ignore completely. And even though we've already got "Oh no the ugly chick likes me" jokes and "You're right, the baby's limbs could get amputated this way" jokes and other material that might make you smile but never laugh, there's also a slightly disturbed tone here that's hard to match on sitcoms about yuppies having bad hair days.

Even as we're prompted to be horrified by Hewes, her unrepentant nastiness, when paired with her immense power, leaves us very little to hope for here.

"Brotherhood" is definitely worth the effort: The acting is solid; the situations are, for the most part, new and unknown; and there are enough twists and plot devices to keep us interested in the short term. Over the long haul, though, I'd like to understand more about these characters.

Skilled chefs, great dishes, a few doomed nervous Nellies and lots of petty squabbles ahead? What more could a loyal Top Chef fan ask for?

Scorsese's documentary offers us a long overdue taste of her unique, queasily accurate perspectives on our culture--always right, never fair and never disappointing.

Sorkin may be self-important, but he's certainly not mediocre.

What keeps these threads tight and advances the action is the input of Michael Mann, who directed the pilot and set the tone for the rest of the nine-episode first season.

The results contain both fart jokes and erudition, but not so much heart. Family Tree is colder and flatter than Guest’s best work, missing its inspired kookery and high energy strangeness.

Living in the Material World foregrounds [George Harrison's] qualities so pointedly that it seems to be channeling the personality of its subject. It's a problematic, at times off-putting, but ultimately fascinating work, moving through George's life with its own mysterious internal logic.

There's great energy and real laughs, and with any support at all from the network, this could mint as many new catchphrases as Chappelle.

While the unguarded moments and eclectic musical performances --typically Costello collaborating with a guest on one of his or her lesser-known hits--make Spectacle well worth a closer look, the show occasionally feels like a songwriter's version of "Inside the Actor's Studio," with all of the qualities and the faults that implies.

Veep remains one of the most rapid-fire and linguistically playful shows on TV— neologisms created in just the first episodes include “exhuastipated,” “procrasturbate” and “gestictionary.” But in the new season, the physical comedy is just as strong.