Daniel Goldberg

The cast deserves praise for finding small moments of comedy in a glance or gesture even amid the show's frantically paced dialogue.

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.

That Enlightened's propagandist and activist message is tinged with irony only makes it more perfectly tooled to our times.

The writers, for their part, certainly inspire confidence when it comes to the sturdiness of their vehicle, and that's no small feat. It's the intervals between the intrigue, however, that feel regrettably squandered, and the characters' rare moments alone reveal little more than the actors' lack of direction.

It's less intensely fixated on the city from which the series derives its name, and Armisen and Brownstein's willingness to expand the scope of its satire has ultimately led to something more sustainable, if a little less local.

For a comedy whose bag of tricks is so transparent, it's gratifying to see that Fey hasn't written herself into a box.

While it's impossible not to love the competent and principled new Leslie, the character is at her funniest when she breaks from the show's easygoing pace and frenetically attempts to discharge her own anxieties by talking at the camera and protesting too much that her idealism is intact.

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

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.

The clash of myriad supernatural powers and symbols isn't willfully dissonant or postmodern. Instead it feels vague and occasionally lazy.