Billed as a 10-episode limited series, Gracepoint is the American adaptation of the UK series Broadchurch. It comes with a strong pedigree as the director of the original British series, James Strong, also directs this remake. He has assembled an eclectic cast of Emmy winners (Breaking Bad’s Anna Gunn) and Oscar nominees (Nick Nolte, Jacki Weaver). It’s impressive that Fox is investing this much effort in the series as this treatment is the sort of thing you’d expect coming more from cable television and not the home of America’s Sleepy Hollow.

And, so far, the efforts seem to have paid off.

Perhaps my very positive reaction to the pilot episode is due to my never having seen the original. I’ve read that the American version is a near-copy of the British version down to replicating specific camera shots. If that’s the case, then I can see why American critics have mixed early reactions. There could be a “been there done that” thing going on here.

But for the uninitiated, the series plays like gangbusters.

The series is a traditional small town murder mystery: a young boy, Danny Solano, is found dead on a rocky beach near Gracepoint, a small town just north of San Francisco. The family (Michael Pena and Virginia Kull play the parents) is naturally devastated by the seemingly inexplicable crime and spends much of the pilot grieving and blaming themselves/each other.

Enter new Detective Emmett Carver (David Tennant) to investigate along with Detective Ellie Miller (Gunn). Having just returned from vacation, Miller was shocked to discover that Carver received a promotion she expected. Their styles are polar opposites: he is cold and hiding some sort of trauma in his past, she is warm and emotional, an integral part of the local community.

Tennant and Gunn’s acting styles play off each other well. Gunn, fresh off the success of Breaking Bad, has done well to capitalize on her newfound prominence and has found the right role that blends her natural intelligence and warm demeanor. I am less familiar with Tennant, an actor who served time as Doctor Who, but he occupies the more traditional role of the damaged police detective with a past.

The rest of the pilot spends its time rushing through character introduction, something of a rogue’s gallery of likely suspects. These include a grizzled wildlife expert (Nolte, delivering his dialogue in garbled, raspy bursts) and, as the show’s website describes her, Resident of Gracepoint Susan Wright (Weaver, taking on the kind of role Kathy Bates would have played if this were a film). Given the abbreviated network running time, we are given a montage of the remaining suspects as Carver delivers a press briefing. It’s a good time that I’m curious as to who these people are and how they figure into the story.

But nothing was as curiosity peaking as the scene after Miller shares the devastating news with her young son, Tom, who was the murder victim’s best friend. After his mother leaves his room, his initial reaction was to delete all text messages from his phone and erase his hard drive. Definitely not the expected reaction…

The series starts on assured footing with director Strong using a long take to establish the small town location and connections between the major players. The rest of the episode is appropriately atmospheric without feeling too Twin Peaks-y, its obvious American ancestor. It will be interesting to see how this compares to FX Network’s own limited run series, Fargo, although I suspect the parallels will be few and far between. The tone of that show is firmly in the black comedy arena. Gracepoint is playing this for traditional tragedy and mystery.

Honestly, the show took me completely by surprise as I wasn’t anticipating connecting with it as much as I have. The small town atmosphere and the lived-in characters make for an appealing mystery setting.

I’m in for the ride.

Last week, people (myself included) went crazy over the premiere of ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder. It was easily the most solid premiere of a lackluster fall television season, and it certainly helped that Academy Award nominee Viola Davis was steering the ship. Can it sustain its mystery and intrigue for the entire stretch (not to mention subsequent seasons—a point brought up by fellow ADTV contributor Megan on her own blog)? With last night’s episode, it only appears that we are beginning to scratch the surface in a larger mystery.

The second episode continually flashes back to the four law students burying the body of Annalise’s husband, Sam, in the woods. Just when you think you can trust adorable Wes (seriously, I can’t get over how doe-eyed and cute Alfred Enoch is), we discover that he lied to Laurel, Connor, and Michaela when he flipped the coin to decide whether or not to bury the body. He also buys a disposable cell phone and secretly tells someone on the line that “we will protect you.”

Annalise’s latest client, Max St. Vincent, is a hunter who is accused of slaughtering his second wife in bed. When the law students go to talk to Max, they also get to see the crime scene almost fully intact. There are blood splatters all over the room, and Max is able to recreate the prosecution’s accusations with an effortless verve (with Connor playing his wife in a creepy re-enactment). Steven Webber plays Max with an unsettling looseness that would surely make the casting directors over at Law and Order: SVU squeal with glee.

As Annalise’s team tries to come up with a defense for Max, she becomes more and more suspicious of her husband’s relationship with Lila Stanguard, the sorority sister whose body was discovered in the pilot episode. While her husband is in the shower, she checks his cell phone and finds an email exchange between the two of them. Annalise checks his phone a second time later in the episode, and she discovers that the messages have been deleted. She begs her cop boyfriend, Nate, to check out her husband’s alibi.

Laurel wants to prove herself to Annalise (everyone knows that she slept with Frank, and that might be the only reason she’s on the team), and she comes up with a defense for Max when it appears that they have nowhere to go. It’s revealed that Max actually killed his first wife, and he admits it on the stand without batting an eye (again, SVU is a-calling). The precision in which he killed his first wife makes it very apparent that he is not responsible for the sloppiness of his second wife’s murder.

Just when you think you can trust Wes, How to Get Away complicates the relationship between him and his neighbor, Rebecca. She comes over to use his shower late at night, and it appears there might be a flirtation between them. Rebecca gets arrested for possible involvement in Lila’s murder along with Lila’s jock boyfriend (“It’s always the boyfriend,” Annalise said in the pilot), but then we are thrown for a loop when Wes joins Rebecca in a motel room at the end of the episode. He assures her that he won’t leave her “alone like that” ever again, and they kiss as the episode draws to a close.

It’s clear that How to Get Away is starting at the beginning (with the start of Annalise’s classes) and at the end (the students burying the body). It keeps the tension taut but giving us only a piece of the middle one episode at a time. Loyalties are being questioned and relationships are revealed to be a lot more complicated and interwoven than originally though. Is Sam responsible for Lila’s murder? Surely it’s not that simple, and it won’t be a season of red herrings, right?

It’s only two episodes in, but How to Get Away with Murder is already one of the most talked about shows of the fall. It’s bloody and sexy (Sam and Annalise have a steamy scene in the episode, and Connor and Oliver should have scenes together all the time), and every time it ends I throw my hands up and yell, “what the HELL is going on?!”

Kevin Williamson is best known for penning the Scream franchise, as well as I Know What You Did Last Summer. And given the opening scene of “Stalker,” his new CBS drama, he’s still up to his same old trick: scaring the bejesus out of audiences.

Let’s just say the opening scene of “Stalker” does for being doused in gasoline what Jaws did for sharks.

A woman, on her way home from the gym, craving some guacamole, gets burned alive by a masked stalker reminiscent of the one that ruined Drew Barrymore’s movie night back in the ‘90s. He even dangles her car keys playfully once she realizes she’s trapped in her own car with nowhere to go (he may as well have said, “What’s your favorite scary movie, Sidney?). And who was this masked person? A stalker.

After this opening scene, this show lets you know EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about stalking, almost like it’s orientation. Maggie Q’s Beth speaks at a college campus, spouting off stats like she’s friggin’ Wikipedia.

“Social media is the No. 1 reason stalking has tripled.” No shit. Going on Facebook IS stalking, after all.

But oh there’s a twist! The new stalker investigator Jack (Dylan McDermott) is also a stalker, spying on a blond woman—that’s not Scarlet Johansson, despite his jokey confession that she was the reason he got into the business. He had an affair with this woman, which produced a child  (so some stalkers have good intentions).

What’s interesting is that this show appears to be a take on the #YesAllWomen campaign that grew in popularity back in May, following the shooting near UC Santa Barbara. The campaign was meant to raise awareness of misogyny and violence against women, especially when many men took to Twitter to scold women for not pity-dating the shooter which in turn would have prevented the tragedy from taking place.

This show feels like a strange reaction to that. The whole show has an air of discomfort when it comes to being a woman. Watch out who you meet at the gym because he could end up coming up from the floorboards in your bedroom. Despite the message being that these stalkers are crazy, all women on the show are mistreated. The female characters introduced become victims for not wanting to date the men who would go on to stalk them. Even Maggie Q’s Beth gets admonished by Jack (McDermott) for treating him poorly because he looked at her breasts. While stalking affects women more than men, “Stalker” rarely shows the good guys out there. Everyone is a suspect and kind of a dick—even the guys going after the stalkers.

Kate Edwards, the guacamole-loving lady who died in the opening scene, couldn’t seem to get a break from meeting creeps, as her trips to the gym introduced her to a ring of stalkers, including a middle-aged married man who was so not in her league and a personal trainer who did soft-core porn when he first came to California. (If you are moving to the West Coast, avoid joining the Urban Burn gym at all costs.)

While there’s a subplot in this episode involving two dueling male roommates (who may or may not have done each other—jury’s still out on that one), this show is definitely geared toward portraying women as the victims both in the stalking and professional world.

The good news for the show is that there are probably an infinite amount of stalker stories out there, so the places this show could go is limitless, even more than—dare I say—“How to Get Away with Murder.” Sure, it may not be Shonda Rhimes quality, but it’s something to watch in between scrolling through your ex’s Facebook page.

Have I told you how much I get a kick I get out of seeing Jada Pinkett-Smith playing mobstress Fish Mooney? One minute she’s ordering hits on nosey, idealistic beat detective Jim Gordon and his partner, grizzled and weary detective Harvey Bullock; the next, she’s inviting the pair to her club, as if nothing’s happened and flirting with the young, future Commissioner of the GPD for good measure. Hell, I half expected her to channel her inner Sicilian gangster and tell the pair, “Whadya gonna do? This is the business that we’re in!” Like Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones, Fish will take what’s hers through bullets, beatings and blood, consequences be dammed. You almost want to root for her in her attempt to knock off Carmine Falcone and take over the crime syndicate in Gotham. Speaking of Don Falcone, he wasn’t too pleased at her stunt of trying to off two beat detectives, and to voice his displeasure, he has her boytoy beaten as a warning to not pull a stunt like that again. The scene between her and John Doman’s Falcone is a great moment because it’s Falcone flexing his muscle and asserting that his grip on the crime family is still strong, and he won’t give it up so willingly, and Fish realizing she’s not quite the hot-shot power player as she believes she is.

The reason I’ve dedicated an entire paragraph to Jada is because the rest of the episode is nearly dull without the subplot of the power balance resting still with the aging crime lord. There’s a duo of sociopaths kidnapping homeless youths off the streets of Gotham, and Bullock and Gordon are assigned to investigate. The man-woman duo turns out to be minions for someone called the Dollmaker, and they’re stopped by the two detectives, until they are recaptured and shipped overseas, posing as bus drivers taking the at-risk youth to juvenile hall, with the exception of one kid escaping: Selena “Cat” Kyle, the girl who spent the pilot episode lurking around Wayne Manor and the streets of Gotham. Carmen Bicondova is about how I imagined the future Catwoman to be: spunky, street smart and a bit of a wise ass. Her interpretation reminds me of Anne Hathaway’s turn as the cat burglar in The Dark Knight Rises, as this woman who does what she needs to do to survive, but does it in style. She’s one of the bright spots in this episode, along with Robin Lord Taylor as the future Penguin, Oswald Cobblepot, the former lackey to Mooney. His appearance isn’t as darkly humors and tragic as Danny DeVito’s in Batman Returns, but what lacks in empathy, Taylor makes up for in madness. He’s seen as this freakshow to the rest of the crime syndicate, and this taunting at his near-penguin like appearance further fuels him to return to Gotham to take over, along with getting his revenge at Mooney for leaving him for dead.

Otherwise, episode 2 of Gotham was just really dull, in contrast to the engaging and exciting pilot episode. It’s a standard police case, with an ending that wraps up quickly near the end. I wish it had gone back to the bits were Fish Mooney was trying to figure out how she was going to one-up Falcone after her setback with trying to kill Gordon and Bullock, but we wouldn’t have gotten to know Catwoman better, or see how deranged Penguin is, so two out of three isn’t that bad, I guess.

I hate nothing more than a television show that peters out in its season finale. There is some unwritten theory that some showrunners seem to follow where the major plotlines/story arcs are largely resolved in the penultimate episode, leaving the final episode of the season as something of an epilogue.

But, too often, our expectations of the language of finales – the grand gestures, the bold statements, the big surprises – led us to expect the same of every show when, in reality, some finales just wrap things up and hint at a direction for their next season.

Disappointingly, in my opinion, Masters of Sex did just that in its second season close.

The major drama of the episode involved the emotional destruction of Virginia Johnson. First, her ex-husband, George, finally makes a move to obtain full custody of their children after discovering she never had him sign their previous custody agreement. Using her status as a sex researcher as leverage, George cons her into completely reversing their agreement. Now, Virginia is the every-other-weekend parent.

The irony behind all of this is that she readily agreed to the change to protect the sex study and benefit from the eventual publicity that the filmed CBS interview would offer her. All of this happened just as Masters and Johnson’s main competition in sex research first aired an interview, publicizing their own study as supported by Virginia’s ex Ethan, based on a tip planted by Bill Masters himself. Bill wanted to sabotage the airing of the CBS interview that he never liked, and, at that, he succeeded.

Coupled with all of this was the comically awkward love life of Lester and Barbara, two wrongs trying to make a right. Due to his impotence, Lester has given up on the sexual component of a romantic relationship, and Barbara appears satisfied lying in bed next to him. But, given Bill’s renewed vigor (ahem) and Virginia’s lack of options, Masters and Johnson refocus their efforts on attempting to cure sexual disorders at the end of the episode with Lester and Barbara as prime candidates.

Libby 2.0 also coupled with Robert again, finally admitting that she has known and ignored for years the sexual relationship between Bill and Virginia. She has found a new purpose and love/lust for Robert and his civil rights cause, and I’m very interested to see where this goes for Libby 2.0 in season three. Libby 3.0 anyone?

Bizarrely and somewhat out of left field, Masters takes a political slant where it hadn’t in previous episodes save the occasional references to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and staged much of the episode against the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, Jr. It’s a page ripped straight out of the Mad Men textbook, and, frankly, Mad Men did it better.

That’s sort of been my whole take on season two, to be honest. Even in the best of the season, and there were many great moments, stands in the shade of what Mad Men was able to achieve at its peak. Particularly strong are the comparisons between the “Fight” Masters episode and “The Suitcase” from Mad Men.

By dipping into socio-political concerns over season two, Masters has done little to distinguish itself from AMC’s great show. I don’t regret the path Masters took, but I do wish they’d handled it more gracefully and more uniquely, leaving out massive blemishes like Libby, Coral, and head lice.

After all, multiple shows have given us vantage points on the racial conflicts of the 50s and 60s, but only Masters of Sex has given us the Masters and Johnson story. It’s what we’ve tuned in for and what’s piqued our interest.

Pretending to be anything else just gives us blue balls, frankly.

And that’s not what we’re coming for.

Saturday Night Live kicked off its 40^th year the right way by opening with host Chris Pratt. A comic actor previously best known for his inspired lunacy on Parks and Recreation until his star-making lead performance in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Pratt knows his way around silliness with impeccable comic timing and a willingness to go for broke on the dumbest of jokes.

That, folks, is what it takes to excel at SNL these days.

The hands-down funniest sketch of the night was the gentle skewering of Marvel’s recent amazing luck with the Guardians property, a little-known comic book that has to date grossed over $300 million domestically. In the parody, Marvel introduces a new property, Fancy Ghosts, among many other seemingly fruitless ideas that Disney/Marvel could no doubt market into billions.

In a similar vein, Pratt and Emmy-nominee Taran Killam embodied He-Man and Lion-O dolls come to life in something of a Toy Story spoof. The spin here is that the dolls discover the pleasure of genital manipulation.

I do tend to like the more off-kilter SNL bits frequently found in the back half of the show, and Video Game thrilled on that front. The sketch involved beta testing/first impressions of a video game, Puzzle World 6, that featured extremely emotive on-screen characters (Pratt and Vanessa Bayer who really sell this strange material). Favorite line: “Umm, this relationship drama is blocking the puzzle! I can’t play!” I realize I’m probably alone on this one.

There were multiple sketches dedicated to the recent dramas plaguing the NFL, the best of which was the late-show bit introducing NFL players and their various criminal records. The cold open also revolved around the NFL but, as many of their cold opens do, it fell flat. At least it wasn’t a political sketch.

The Weekend Update segment welcomed Daily Show alum Michael Che in supporting head writer Colin Jost behind the desk. Yes, he botched a few jokes early on but improved toward the end when the segment focused more on politics. The best Weekend Update joke revolved around the recent celebrity photo scandal and Apple’s iCloud involvement.

As Jost said, “But if you really don’t want anyone to see your naked photos, you could just hide them in that free U2 album.”

Other sketches ranged from amusing (Aidy Bryant’s triumphant Booty Rap) to weird (Chris Pratt’s Bad Boys, funny because it rightfully equates Pratt’s mental state to that of a 10 year old) to downright awful (the inexplicably recurring Animal Hospital sketch). The dichotomy, though, is something we’re accustomed to from SNL’s “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” approach.

On notable side notes, Ariana Grande performed as musical guest, which I have nothing to say about, and former cast member Darrell Hammond premiered as voice-over host, replacing Don Pardo who passed away in August. Unfortunately, Hammond felt muted and washed out, proving that Pardo’s contributions to SNL were near irreplaceable.

This will not be a standard recap of last night’s The Knick. Sometimes, an episode of a television show is so well executed that no words can do it justice, and any real fans of the show wouldn’t want the experience ruined. Sometimes, these episodes have to be seen to be believed.

Last night’s episode, ominously titled “Get the Rope,” was one of these episodes.

It begins innocently enough with a flashback. Drs. Christiansen and Thackery perfect what appears to be the first appendix removal thanks to Thackery’s new method of finding the organ, dubbed by Christiansen as the “Thackery Point” (based on the real-life “McBurney Point”). We discover that the flashback is actually a Thackery dream as a Chinatown opium den prostitute awakens him suddenly. Her boss is unsuccessfully gasping for air, and Thackery performs a very impromptu tracheotomy using a butter knife.

The scene illustrates the depths to which Thackery has sunken, but it’s also clearly calling out the need some good old-fashioned Dr. Thackery redemption.

Redemption comes in the unfortunate shape of a brutal race riot. A white policeman approaches a black woman standing alone on the street and offers to connect her with a pimp, similar to last week’s indoctrination. Trick is, the woman is actually not a prostitute and is waiting for someone else – in this case, a very large black man who, incensed at the effrontery shown to his lady, stabs the policeman repeatedly.

The policeman is taken to The Knick for emergency surgery where he later dies, setting into motion a massive riot where any and all black citizens are beaten mercilessly by angry, and often drunk, whites. That is the setup for the bulk of the episode, and I will go no further in describing its contents. It demands to be seen on its own.

This episode, still directed by Steven Soderbergh, is a master class in suspense and timing. The pacing is lightning fast, and scenes are staged with an immediacy and energy seldom seen in the series. The blood of the victims and the dirt in the streets and the sawed-off limbs all make the viewer feel intimately integrated with the story, as if the camera were truly a third party witnessing the graphic actions unfold.

The episode closes with two not-entirely-unexpected couplings, only one of which I will spoil because I have to rave about the brilliant filmmaking on display. Not only does Soderbergh excel in depicting the suspense and danger during the riot scenes, but he also provides a delicate hand showing the deflowering of Nurse Elkins at the hands of Dr. Thackery.

After inviting him into her boarding house room, Elkins lights a kerosene lamp, effectively illuminating only herself and casting Thackery completely in the dark. When asked by Elkins if sex will hurt, Thackery creepily replies, “I can make it painless… and perfect,” delivering a remedy for the natural pain through his endless supply of narcotics.

We cut to Elkins the next morning as she dresses silently and alone in her room. She flashes back to the previous night, as anyone would, and smiles to herself. When her roommate comes home, Elkins cannot stifle the childlike glee she feels, clasping her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. It is a simple, innocent reflex, but the audience is all the sadder knowing that it came at the hands of the soulless Thackery. As with the double nature of Dr. Thackery, his earlier redemption by saving so many lives during the riot is undercut by the way he introduces drugs to Nurse Elkins.

The episode is so filled with equally powerful moments that it immediately ranks as the best The Knick outing to date. The roller coaster ride continues, and it’s a corker. A brilliant corker.