By John Keegan and Edmund Boys

One of my all-time favorite films is “The Stunt Man”, Richard Rush's defiantly independent paean to film-making and the blurry line between fantasy and reality (hmmm, sound familiar?). So, the announcement that Barbara Hershey, that film's female lead, would play Regina's mother, Cora, was one I greeted with great relish and anticipation. What I didn't anticipate was an episode where the show's creators, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, step in and take a major corrective yank on the show's tiller. After the mid-season doldrums, there's promise of much smoother, swifter sailing ahead.

By John Keegan

It looks like the writers for “Grimm” are trying to step back and reintegrate concepts and plot threads from earlier in the season, and the result is a largely stand-alone episode that doesn’t quite have the same punch as more recent offerings. There are some signs that Adalind’s presence will finally amount to something, but this is very much a transitional episode, rather than a payoff.

By John Keegan and Henry Tran

Fear of the unknown drives nearly every character in this episode. It's entitled "Tea Leaves," which I think is a clever way for Matthew Weiner and his writers to give out the message that everyone in the Mad Men world cannot accurately predict the future. The people in charge at the agency are slow on the uptake to change, with the young guard always eager to replace the old, and keep the struggling company from going under. Change is coming for them, and if they don't adapt, they will die.

By John Keegan and Gregg Wright

The first season of "Game of Thrones" was a triumph. I can think of no better word for it. "Game of Thrones" took a genre that was poorly represented on television and gave it the A-grade treatment in virtually every respect. That's another key word here: "respect". The show's respect for the source material won over fans of the books and gave the uninitiated a fantasy experience that was, essentially, a more adult successor to the "Lord of the Ring" trilogy. Comparisons between the two franchises could, and have been, made. But whether you're a fan of the books, or just the TV series, it's clear that simply calling George R. R. Martin's "the next Lord of the Rings" would be a gross oversimplification.

By John Keegan and Edmund Boys

“Person of Interest” has had a busy season. It's had to juggle many things: victims, perps, cops, feds, shadowy spooks, criminal masterminds. So, it's no surprise they might need a breather, a chance to relax and let their hair down. Courtesy of an enterprising drug dealer, that's just what they get, along with an indelible image we never knew we needed to see until now: Finch on Ecstasy.

By John Keegan

As the penultimate episode of the season, it makes sense that this installment would deliver a few punches, while setting the stage for a killer finale. As usual, the writers exceed my expectations by dragging the characters, and by extension the audience, through the wringer. It’s a bit exhausting, but it’s also one of the best shows on television right now.

By John Keegan

I made the case, in my reviews for the first two episodes, that this show was going to succeed or fail on the merits of the writers’ ability to avoid hand-waving in terms of the connections being made between total strangers. Internal consistency was always going to be a huge factor, and with Tim Kring at the helm, that was always going to be a struggle. And sure enough, it took all of three episodes for the show to fumble.

By John Keegan and Paul Pearson

Not for the first time, the "Lost Girl" writers have jumped the gun on one of their core story elements and muddled what might've been an otherwise very solid episode. It takes, perfectly in keeping with a show about a succubus, a big climax to keep this episode feeling worthwhile, but nothing quite detracts from the decision to put a big character misstep front-and-centre.

By John Keegan and Henry Tran

Based on the few episodes that have aired after the pilot, there seems to be more interest in the events of the Rex world more than the Hannah world. I really wouldn't have noticed until this episode, when the police worked the serial killer case in the Rex world, while the primary conflict in the Hannah world was if she was going to move to Portland, Oregon. I don't want to underestimate the importance of that decision, but the amount of focus on the police cases in the Rex world may suggest that it is the correct reality and that the Hannah world is Michael's dream. His job as a police detective may also become untenable if he and Hannah move away from Los Angeles. There is just no telling what will happen to the realities when or if that big decision is made.