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    Maureen Ryan

    Maureen Ryan

    TV critic, The Huffington Post

  • 'Strike Back,' Nostalgia And Knowing When To Tap Out

    There was a minor hue and cry the other day when it emerged that the fourth season of “Banshee” would be the show’s last. It was a pretty tiny ripple in the space-time continuum, given that “Banshee” is a cult action show on Cinemax. Not having seen a single frame of the final season of “Banshee," I applaud the show’s producers and Cinemax for knowing when it makes sense to end things.

  • Trevor Noah, Twitter And The Uses Of Social-Media Outrage

    As the heir apparent at “The Daily Show,” every day must be a whirlwind for Trevor Noah. Having to deal with the media at the Television Critics Association press tour, where he took the stage at a press conference Wednesday, is just one more chore to check off the list, but he largely conducted himself with aplomb during the relatively light press grilling. The set didn’t ignore the unfortunate racial realities of modern America, but it would have gone over just fine at a Giggle Shack anywhere in Ohio.

  • New 'Daily Show' Host Trevor Noah: 'I'm A Connoisseur Of Racism'

    “Charming American racism,” Ebola panic and what it’s like to be a black man who fears the police: These topics were on the agenda when Trevor Noah, the new host of “The Daily Show,” offered the world a glimpse of what he’ll do when he takes over for Jon Stewart. Noah, who begins his stint as the host of the Comedy Central program Sept. 28, performed an hourlong standup set for a handpicked crowd of TV critics and other media types in Santa Monica, California, on Tuesday. At one point, Noah, who grew up in Soweto in South Africa, called himself a “connoisseur” of racism.

  • Spend Your Summer In HBO's 'Hell'

    The premise of “7 Days,” which debuted July 11 and is available via all the usual platforms, is simple: Andy Samberg plays Aaron Williams, a bad-boy tennis star who faces down Charles Poole (Kit Harington), a preposterously dumb prodigy, in a legendary 2001 Wimbledon final. To the disgruntlement of the sports commentators who have to narrate the grinding battle, the championship match lasts an incredible seven days. Given how cliched, predictable and cloying they can be, aspirational sports documentaries are ripe targets, and writer/producer Murray Miller and his extremely game cast take aim at some of the juiciest ones.

  • Please Stand By; Back After The Break

    Every year for the past five years, I’ve had the honor of serving on the jury of the Peabody Awards. As it happens, about five years ago, my mother was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, a progressive and fatal neurological and physical disorder.

  • What The 'Mad Men' Finale Can Teach Us About Enlightenment

    Two days after the “Mad Men” finale aired, what more is there to say? My view of “The Sopranos” has evolved a lot since that famous cut to black, and there are moments and ideas from a dozen other long-dead shows that still percolate in my brain to this day. When it comes to the closing images of “Mad Men,” I just want to add my voice to the chorus of those who have said that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a binary choice when it comes to how to view Don Draper’s smile and the famous Coca-Cola ad.

  • 'Wayward Pines,' David Duchovny's 'Aquarius' And New Dramas To Watch (And Avoid)

    “Wayward Pines,” Fox, 9 p.m. ET, May 14: TV keeps churning out so many high-concept, conspiracy-theory mysteries that these shows have congealed into a not-very-impressive sub-genre. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a gimmick! “Orphan Black” has a massive one, and the first season of that show was one of the most enjoyable TV runs in many a moon. Cast members like Carla Gugino, Toby Jones, Reed Diamond and Matt Dillon do their level best with the clunky material, but you have to wonder whether their primary thought process related to this show involved how many bills they could pay with their “Pines” paychecks.

  • Eight Awesome Things About the 'Jane The Virgin' Finale

    Where to begin with the “Jane the Virgin” Season 1 finale? Just over a year ago, members of the media began getting copies of the pilot for “Jane the Virgin.” By August, there was hardly a TV reporter or critic who didn’t have a mild or major crush on the show. The "Jane the Virgin" pilot was simply light-years better than most of the turgid, forced pilots the broadcast networks aired last year.

  • 'Mad Men' Shocker: Nobody Saw This Coming

    I'm not the only one who was expecting a major character on “Mad Men” to die before the end. Speculation about Pete and even Don has been rampant for years, and I wrote last week that I expected Roger to die, given how much he's abused his body over the years. Weiner even slipped in a reference to Roger's heart condition last week, and the man's alcohol consumption hasn't let up for a minute.

  • 10 Shows That Changed The Way We Look At TV

    Many of us probably thought the TV scene couldn't get any better. Television gives us ideas what we’re capable of, and even “Breaking Bad,” the story of a man who finds out just how awful he can be, inspired countless tributes to its artistry, moral complexity and intensely realized vision. It’s merely a roster of shows that helped us think differently about the medium and see new possibilities, in distribution, in form, in content, in theme, in the kind of characters that are entrusted with a difficult duty: Embodying our dreams, hopes and fears.

  • Rage, Nostalgia And A Classic Draper Move On 'Mad Men'

    It’s only fitting that “Mad Men” is spending so much time saying goodbye and letting us spend so much quality time with these people before they go (and quality time = Glen-free time). Think back to the great Season 1 finale, “The Wheel.” Talk about full circle: Now think about Drunk Peggy, traveling around and around the office on roller skates as Drunk Roger played the organ (no jests about Roger and organs, I’m trying to share a Serious Thought here). Peggy traveled in circles in the place she was known and recognized, inside the shell of the the ad hoc family that had always found a place for her.

  • Why Erlich On 'Silicon Valley' Is The Best And The Worst

    Good thing a worthy successor has arrived in the form of Erlich Bachman. On paper, Erlich (T.J. Miller) of “Silicon Valley” is awful. Erlich made some money in tech a few years ago -- not much, by the preposterous standards of the Valley -- so to keep his ego fully inflated, he has surrounded himself with people who’d be lost without him.

  • 'Penny Dreadful' Is Back And Still Highly Addictive

    Before I get to the reasons you should watch the second season of Showtime's "Penny Dreadful," a recommendation: Watch the show's bracing first season. It's not a binge that requires an excessive amount of time. Season 1, which ended up on my 2014 Top 10 list, is a mere eight hours long, and this year's batch of episodes will be even more rich and entertaining if you know the histories of the players in the game.

  • 'Outlander' Did Something Radical Again

    Now, I don't think “Outlander” is a great show -- I think its radical simplicity in a number areas works both for and against it -- but I will defend it to the death as one of the most important shows on TV at the moment. In its first season, it has given pride of place to a sincere and joyful exploration of the female gaze, and it's willing to take on ideas about dominance, submission, social and political power, sexuality, violence against children, sexual assault and fertility. Next week's episode has a woman talking about sexuality as it intersects with her experience of pregnancy.

  • 'Mad Men' Turns Up The Heat As The End Nears

    The message throughout this hour, which was filled with visual and thematic callbacks to the history of the show, was that Don Draper and his cronies were dinosaurs. Nothing is more fun than “Mad Men” when it's firing on all cylinders, and as we’ve seen in the past, the best episodes are often the ones that involve maximum office intrigue and secret work shenanigans. “Mad Men,” you are a wonderful, frustrating demon of a television program. The last couple of episodes made me wonder if the show had gone on at least a season too long.

  • 7 Reasons 'The Americans' Was So Addictive This Year

    It’s too bad about that mysterious and fatal car accident Pastor Tim is going to have in Season 4, isn’t it? Back at the end of the first season, young Paige Jennings (Holly Taylor) hung out for a few moments in the family laundry room, a place that her parents spent a lot of time -- a suspicious amount of time, actually. All season long, since Season 2’s fabulous close, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings have wrestled with the idea of letting Paige in on their enormous secret: the fact that they are high-level Soviet agents posing as average suburbanites.

  • Was That The Weirdest 'Mad Men' Scene Yet?

    Do not read on unless you've seen "The Forecast," the tenth episode of "Mad Men's" final season. You come to me for analysis of “Mad Men” that is, ideally, cogent, entertaining and thoughtful, so I feel the need to inform you that the show may have broken my brain tonight. “The Forecast” may have contained the weirdest scene in “Mad Men” history, and this is a show that cut a guy’s foot off just for grins.

  • 'Orphan Black' Returns With Boy Clones And More Mysteries

    “Orphan Black” hasn’t been around long, but there are a few certainties we can count on when it comes to the clone-intensive show starring Tatiana Maslany. Ryan McGee and I discussed "Orphan Black" and the series finale of "Justified" in the most recent Talking TV podcast, which is here, on iTunes and below.

  • Six Reasons We'll Miss 'Justified'

    “Justified” was always about transcending something, which makes it appropriate that the show's ending transcended my expectations. It zigged when I sort of expected it to zag, and yet the whole thing was very satisfying and even -- lawman Raylan Givens would roll his eyes at this word -- sweet. The expected confrontations arrived, of course, and produced moments of excitement: Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) throwing dynamite down a mountain at pursuing law enforcement was, well, dynamite.

  • 'Mad Men' And So Many Sad Brunettes

    Do not read on unless you have seen "New Business," the ninth episode of "Mad Men's" final season. This plodding hour isn’t on the level of “Across the Sea,” which was, for my money, the worst-ever episode of “Lost.” “New Business” was mostly tiresome, not particularly enraging. This episode of “Mad Men” just left me with a very tired feeling -- that feeling you get when you’ve spent too much time traveling down the same roads over and over.