Weeds does manage to maintain the dry humor that made it a hit to begin with, and this isn't the brand of listless cynicism we get from lesser comedy writers content to appear savvy and hip.

While the show's certainly grown more tightly plotted in the last several seasons, especially after cutting the number of episodes down to 10 and reducing (often via murder) the number of secondary characters, Damages is still suffering from some seemingly needless bloat.

Though the series has its share of larger-than-life moments that ring hollow, its knack for extracting quiet beauty from all the mayhem lends Boss's best scenes the precision and artistry of a monstrous ballet.

Flush with vivid characters, immaculate set design, and increasingly fluid storytelling, Boardwalk Empire keeps getting better, but still feels a few distinct steps short of greatness.

It's sleek, smart, but doesn't take itself too seriously, managing to present what could have been a mere caricature wrapped up in the mythos of the Holmes character as a singular personality in his own right.

Many will still watch and wonder, "Is that all you got?" But those who get down in the groove with Treme's own unique rhythms may be surprised to find it's got more than enough.

The series manages to be both entertaining and self-reflexive, populist and purposeful, and that's a rare thing in and of itself.

Even when the spy-thriller plot gears are audibly grinding, the acting remains expertly calibrated.

The most interesting thing here is the show's willingness to take risks: killing off major characters, running about 18 different plot lines at once, incorporating racy psycho-sexual and religious undertones, asking more questions than it intends to answer.

The Girl doesn't aim to match Hitchcock's thrills or entertainment value, and its psychological insights are never truly cathartic. As a solidly well-measured portrait of a caged and ambitious young actress, however, it has a way of staying with you, especially the parts you'd rather erase.

Downton Abbey thrives when tackling plotlines that are confined to the personal and social conflicts of the estate, both upstairs and downstairs.

Community has always been a series that wears its badge of snappy creativity proud, and it's fourth season doesn't shy away from that.

If Game of Thrones still feels like it's just a bit weighed down by the sheer heft of its narrative strands, to say nothing of the seemingly endless backstories and mythologies, the series at least now feels like it has some firm footing and a newfound sense of certain direction that was lacking intermittently in the second season.

The cast's highly attuned instincts for knowing when to press complicated dialogue into kinetic banter and when to dial back to find the subtlety in a one-liner joke is what keeps Veep's humor vital.

While Rectify's slow-burn progression may lessen the impact of its sparse anecdotal twists, the series is nevertheless peppered with an array of beautiful wide shots of rural Georgia.

Though its narrative structure and atmosphere take a markedly different tack, Maron presents itself as a fair complement to Louie in that both shows concern themselves with refreshingly substantive masculine types.

Like the characters who occupy Guest's best work, particularly A Mighty Wind, Tom and his friends have real stature, and the jokes often gracefully comment on their yearning to puncture the bubbles of their own self-concern to connect to others.

A good drama but an average psychological study.

The all-star cast, which includes Hector Elizondo as the patriarch of the Duque family and Jimmy Smits as the adopted son who inherits principal control of the old man's sugar cane business in a contentious handover, bring authenticity to what is otherwise a hysterical, Dynasty-style vision of Cuban-American experience set in and around kitschy Miami.

This is hour-long material forced into a 30-minute timeslot, though some of its plots are strung together--at times held up by--Piper's silent, meaningful looks at the camera.

Fringe attempts something similar [to "Lost"] (with an opening scene involving a plane, no less) but can't quite match the primal thrill of vehicular destruction.

It's "Ghost Whisperer" for adults, the equivalent of a movie you're happy you didn't pay to see at the theater, but content enough to have rented--amiable, distracting, and professionally crafted.

Staying largely on track as a dramedy rather than a sober drama with light laughs, Castle's plot holes can be forgiven more easily when they're at the expense of a good gag.

Sensitive and well acted as this new Grey Gardens is, it feels like a wish-fulfillment fantasy that gives Little Edie a happy ending; the truth of this woman's life must have been much grimmer and messier.

Despite the increasingly incredulous scenarios, Weeds's writers have nevertheless managed to maintain a compelling tone that makes up for all the outrageousness.

Even with its quirky charm, though, the show's formula begins to wear thin.

As the season progresses, it is very possible that Fringe will find its footing. But right now there is far too much padding in the form of substandard plotlines.

Appearing to Dexter in one of many visions, Harry (James Remar) tells his son that he has entirely too many plates spinning at once, and the same can be said of the show itself.

Regardless of whichever cathartic moment wins out this season), no intervention at the level of systemic injustice will have transpired, even allegorically. In such a thoroughly and inescapably capitalist vision of the world, structural injustice is not only profitable, but necessary to the maintenance of the system of the series.

Ultimately, what a series like this aims to do is to pay homage to the marines who sacrificed their lives. The Pacific succeeds at that task, asking its audience to imagine what those battles must have been like from the ground level, and for that alone, it's worth watching. But The Pacific fails by trying to wrest big emotional moments from its already compelling narrative.

In the Gregson family she celebrates an individualist, nonconformist spirit in a decidedly orthodox way, ending up with a diverting rather than affecting product.

The jarring, awkward humor is similarly facilitated in the pilot as well. It's now just a waiting game to see if this patchy episodic specimen can gradually move past its Office-inspired roots and trudge toward developing its own individual, winning skin.

The series too often relies on oddly placed broad humor, which entirely deflates the weightier moments.

While the cast delivers solid, funny performances, they're mostly just playing caricatures of themselves, and the rest of the supporting players range from forgettable to obnoxious, especially Danny Pudi, whose rambling Abed is about as endearing as stepping on a nail.

Toning down Jules's freakouts, [and] we have the makings of a truly enjoyable sitcom.

With run-of-the-mill storylines and likeable doctors, Three Rivers is neither adrenaline-pumping, like NBC's Trauma, nor genre-busting, like House. Instead, the show appears to be a friendly study in hard work and good manners.

Despite the concept of Visitors infiltrating the ranks of humans feeling uncomfortably similar to that other successful sci-fi reboot, Battlestar Galactica, the terrorism angle boasts some of the update's most enticing intrigue.

As a portrait of struggling Manhattanites, How to Make It effectively hones in on that hope-filled effervescence historically associated with the idealized American dream.

Nurse Jackie no longer feels realistic.

While it's nowhere close to brilliant, Happy Town's unpredictability makes it watchable--at least for now.

There's something pleasing about the old-fashioned drawn-from-farce quality of Hot in Cleveland. It fits in perfectly on TV Land since it already feels like a relic, a show from an alternate reality where Seinfeld never happened, let alone the likes of single-camera mockumentary-style sitcoms like The Office and Arrested Development.

For all the talk about the expense of recreating the boardwalk for the show, Atlantic City isn't a character the way it could or should be; most of the action takes place in back alleys and hotel rooms.

The pilot offers up the promising and the bland in about equal measure. With its accomplished adult cast, and writers from Chuck and Smallville, the show could go on to make for a pretty fun adventure series, but the looming threat of boring teenage gloom and the hints of a convoluted plot involving Stephanie Powell's sinister employer could sink whatever potential there is.

When it's at the top of its game, Dexter brings True Blood to mind, subverting conventions of horror and violence to mock the various accoutrements of "normal" suburban life. With stepchildren Astor (Christina Robinson) and Cody (Preston Bailey) relegated to their grandparents' house, and with an Irish maid, Sonya (Maria Doyle Kennedy), caring for Harrison, the show loses some of its charm.

The narrative structure of the series is not at all as ambitious as its price tag may suggest. Benioff and Weiss have chosen the easiest way to tell this story, and the show suffers from it. Following from that stunning close-up that opens the show, Game of Thrones does its best work in the close-up mode. The reason to keep watching this show lies in a handful of intricately drawn, engagingly performed characters.

Looks notwithstanding, these TV and movie vets fashion thoughtful, flesh-and-blood individuals whose efforts at achieving happiness seem locked in a perpetual reach for self-awareness. Too bad they're nearly wasted in this hour and a half of paint-by-colors television.

Unsurprisingly, HBO's Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden raises more questions about Stefani Germanotta than it answers, which is probably as it should be.

While squirrel-eating jokes are all well and good for now, if Wilfred is going to make it, Wood and Gann will have to develop some real chemistry and comic rhythm, especially if the show's writers continue to be so reliant on the inherent novelty of their premise.

It remains to be seen whether this season's Nancy will be more Daphne or Thelma, more damsel in distress or more protective mama bear, but by the end of the first episode, it's clear she's back to her old tricks.

Even as tropes arrive in full force, exceptions to boilerplate good-versus-evil scenarios make occasional appearances.

It has the advantage of a veritable galaxy of stars at its disposal, but all that sparkle too often comes together as a gaudy mess.

Each season of Dexter has started slow before building momentum, and this season is no exception. Hall continues to impress with his sly comic skills and unreadable face, while Carpenter continues to enrich a character whose emotions--contrary to Dexter's--are completely transparent.

As stunning, seamless, and well-curated as this particular mixtape is, the viewer is haunted by the constant anxiety that, in the end, there's nothing holding it all together other than good taste.

The series isn't very original (at one point, it even steals Lost's now-iconic eye-opening shot), but that doesn't stop it from being relatively satisfying on its own terms.

Despite growing out of a plot conceit that involves Craigslist, New Girl--from its characters to the Felix the Cat-like predicaments in which they land--doesn't seem rooted in reality of any kind.

The second season of Showtime's aptly titled Shameless often feels less like a new season and more like a sequel, in which the major players remain the same, but the volume is amplified and the ante doubled.

[A] starry-eyed, badly acted, occasionally stirring series.

The series manages to serve up a legitimate fright or two, but it needs to slow down.

If last season was The Empire Strikes Back, though, season three is slightly more Revenge of the Sith than Return of the Jedi.

Nurse Jackie's pleasures lie in the smaller moments and interactions that are buried in a morass of contrived narrative threads.

The newer additions to the cast don't have much of a presence beyond their plot roles, yet somehow manage to occupy a majority of the screen time. As a result, the new Dallas acquires the brashness of an impostor laying claim to a vast family fortune.

Episodes continues to tread much of the same ground it covered last season, serving mainly as a satire of Hollywood liars who can't act and actors who don't know how to lie.

Whether or not the creators of Web Therapy intended the series as anything resembling a cohesive statement, they seem to have made one thing clear: We're all just a little bit insane.

Suits seems perfectly tailored to make its characters all look good, which is simultaneously its most attractive asset and its most discomfiting drawback.

If you found the parallel universe in Lost perplexing, Political Animals's sheer optimism might leave you utterly baffled. Yet Weaver's grounding performance goes beyond maternal warmth and shrewdness, because Barrish doesn't just see the best in people; she demands it.

The second season revealed artistic ambition, reaching for a certain amount of depth in characterization and storytelling. Assessed on that level, the last two seasons have fallen far short of the mark and it seems season five will only repeat the pattern.

Unfortunately, the season's primary threat is an unimaginatively depicted Ukrainian mob faction.... Still, there's enough potentially promising material in the evolution of Debra and Dexter's relationship, and the first few episodes of the season contain glimpses of the morbid playfulness that animated the show's initial seasons.

While plenty of Nashville is compelling, detailed, and beautifully acted, plenty of it feels boilerplate.

While it's not as consistently cheeky as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show does provide enough self-satirizing jabs to satiate cynics.

In spite of Ben and Kate's charms, its propensity for subduing the idiosyncrasies of its characters in the service of a simple emotional payoff makes it disappointing.

It'll take every ounce of writer/creator Joe Weisberg's strength to keep this from seeming like a watered-down Homeland, or, worse, a film idea stretched across 13 hours.

The series loses some of its drive by its dreary fourth episode, when a labored love triangle between Carroll's disciples mars the overall flow of the central arc. ... Until that point, though, The Following is mostly engaging, even if it never truly substantiates its antagonist's godlike stature in the eyes of his worshipers.

While it's easy to forget the show's shortcomings whenever McPhee or Hilty belt out one of Bombshell's stellar original songs or Jimmy croons a heartfelt power ballad, that's ultimately not enough to absolve the series from failing to let its most tenable narrative take center stage.

When Da Vinci's Demons is barreling at top speed, unapologetically defiling history with its macabre absurdity, as in the surprisingly exciting second episode, "The Serpent," which ditches the disconnected structure of the pilot for a full-on detective yarn with an unexpected last-minute twist (think Sherlock Holmes set in the Renaissance), the show's faults, however obvious they may be, gradually fall by the wayside.

Jordan favors intimacy in his shooting; he prefers discussions behind closed doors or hidden in plain sight and affairs built on whispers of secrets. This visual tendency blunts the sharp edge of the series, as does his understandable but limiting focus on the eponymous family.

If the producers of Smith could have chosen to focus on character development instead of a revolving door of action scenes, they might have had a top-notch show on their hands. As it stands, however, it looks as though Smith will be another victim of a good idea given a poor execution.

Dirt's not just dirty, it's messy.

If only the creators sought fit to put as much detail into their character development as their history, the show might have earned itself a third season.

Despite lacking the trashy allure of "House" or "24," its sporadic inventiveness within the realm of the Terminator universe makes it agonizingly interesting--moderately brilliant in spurts before reverting to the same old clichés.

There's certainly enough story here to develop into a strong series were it centered around interesting characters, but Ball has populated it with one stereotype after another.

What The Beast most clearly has going for it is its main ingredient: Swayze....[Because] it's as though the writers don't trust their audience to understand what's going on or they don't trust their own ability to convey it. In either case, it's sloppy.

The series is set in a world that praises the lie, and if the creators can mine that vein for inspiration and avoid falling for the conventional TV drama traps, they could have a better show to sell to their advertisers.

When a TV show is going to run the length of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, these people have to be more than expendable, and this "All-Non-Star Cast" doesn't have the instant audience identification required to fill in the blanks.

Lacking the poetic and poignant touch that might help make the ridiculous sublime or the sublime ridiculous, HBO, under cover of a dangerous and racy premise, has created a middlebrow comedy that, like its main character, looks good but has little to say.

It's now little more than a puppet act bouncing through history to get to its end.

With an abundance of pre-taped video segments and satellite interviews, Jay Leno wraps a very old-fashioned sensibility within a modern package. It's an interesting presentation.

In its current attempt to capture the meandering lifestyle and mindset of thirtysomething losers, Bored squanders its noir framework and aesthetic prospects, consequently inducing yawns.

The Middle is just a show about a quirky family, and their quirks simply aren't that interesting.

With such a talented writer on board, Parenthood deserves a few more episodes to iron out some of its more trite, movie-of-the-week storylines, allowing its multifaceted characters, and all their routine tribulations, to organically manifest as life consequently unravels.

The show's dry humor, mixed with a rather troubling visual style where everything is stiff and vaguely deformed, mostly just makes you feel uneasy.

Despite occasional moments of solid acting on the part of Peregrym and Okuma, Rookie Blue sinks under the weight of its cheesy montages, references to the rookies as "fresh paint," and the lack of chemistry between the main characters.

With all of the main characters and supporting players involved in more and more peripheral pursuits, there is little time for the four friends to get together to shoot the breeze, meet some babes, or just have some fun.

The result is both good and bad: On the one hand, Weeds feels fresh again. On the other, the writers still don't know what sort of show they're making, and the supporting cast keeps getting shoehorned into new roles.

Hopefully the hyperactive series will mellow into a slightly less frenetic version of itself--out of budget necessity, if nothing else.

The characters are gently sarcastic with one another, clearly in love, and exhibit great respect for their unique skills. What's missing is a stronger supporting cast and the right narrative vehicle for their adventures.

To reduce talents as large as Gervais and Merchant to caricatures seems absurd. The vitality and enthusiasm that passes between them, and the unfettered joy implicit in that, demands a human face, and without that, HBO is missing the point, creating a show that's easy to listen to, but actually hard to watch.

Skins is, alas, many types of teen drama to many types of teens--a raunchy good time and an Afterschool Special on The Way Youth Live Now rolled into one. It's a viewing experience akin to going to a coke party only to be given a lecture. Where's the fun in that?

The Borgias is merely the network's most recent, shallow exploration into precisely how murderous, horny, and fabulously costumed the wealthy were at the turn of the 16th century.