Criminal Minds season 8

Criminal Minds debuted in the fall of 2005, as CBS was riding a wave of popular procedurals. The first of these, of course, had been CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which had premiered five years earlier to surprisingly little fanfare. It had been slotted behind a remake of The Fugitive, which CBS was pinning its hopes on — but The Fugitive never delivered on that promise, whereas CSI, week after week, built on its lead-in. So when CBS, after debuting the reality show Survivor to gargantuan ratings in the summer of 2000, decided to launch a second season the following February, they chose CSI, their most popular new series of the season, to follow it — and the pairing proved felicitous. Within a year, CSI had risen to become the #1 show on network television. Spin-offs and similar procedurals — that combined old-fashioned detective work with newfangled forensics — quickly followed: Without a Trace and CSI: Miami in 2002, Cold Case in 2003 and CSI: NY in 2004. And hot on their heels came Criminal Minds.

Letting Go: notes on The Flash and Arrow

How bad does a show have to get before you bail? I'm 56 now. My earliest television memory is an episode of Lost in Space called "The Keeper" from January of 1966 (the day after it aired, all the kids in the neighborhood took turns walking around as if hypnotized, repeating "I'm being summoned," as Dr. Smith had the night before) -- so I guess I've been a devoted TV viewer for half a century now. In the old days, if a show you loved got rotten, you kept watching; there were only three channels, and unless there was something compelling on one of the other two, you stuck with your show through even the dreariest lows. But today, chances are, there are more shows that interest you than hours in the day: not just those airing weekly on network television, but streaming series with dozens of episodes instantly available. How do you stick with a show through the dry patches when you know your viewing time could be put to better use: when there's that show on iPlayer or On Demand that's going to be disappearing soon, or that series from thirty years ago that you'd always heard about, that someone just uploaded to YouTube and might vanish any day due to copyright infringement?

The Flash and Arrow return to the air this week, after a four-week hiatus, and I'll no longer be watching. I made up my mind after their last airings that it was time to let go: over time, they'd managed to both bore me and offend me. (You'd think indifference would numb you to feeling actively insulted, but no.) And watching another comic-book adaptation, Agent Carter, which aired from January through March and basically got everything right, only further reminded me how much The Flash and Arrow were suffering creatively.

Vicar-ious Thrills: 2014 in review

Last spring, CBS and I had an ugly break-up. You probably read about it; it made all the tabloids. First I grew disillusioned with Survivor, and quit watching after 14 years; at Entertainment Weekly, Dalton Ross called it the best cast of all-new players since the first season, but I found most of them clueless and/or odious, and where's the fun in that? (If it's clueless and odious I'm after, I'll turn on truTV.) Then Jeanne Tripplehorn was written off Criminal Minds, only to be replaced by the less talented -- but younger-skewing -- Jennifer Love Hewitt; no reason was given for Tripplehorn's departure, but her air time been shrinking for months, so you had to figure it was a network decision, dictated by the almighty demo dollar. And finally, CBS announced they were again holding Mike & Molly till midseason. You know, a loyal viewer can only take so much.