What began as a slightly soapy portrait of an affluent coastal town transformed into a really gripping, moving character drama about trauma, toxic relationships, and the challenges in being a “good parent.” The murder mystery / greek chorus thread was easily the weakest, but that did little to take away from the really strong performances from Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, or the hilarious little Darby Camp.

Oh man, what an odd season. I just LOVED the first half. It was threatening to finish at #1 at about mid-September. All our characters were in drastically changed places in their lives, and it was fun and tense and great seeing everyone handling their new circumstances. So much potential for cool storylines. Then just as my actual #1 started trending upward, You’re the Worst belly-flopped. They decided Edgar wasn’t being “the worst” enough, and forced him down a road I didn’t quite buy. They couldn’t find interesting things to do with Lindsay’s new direction, and ended up teaching her the same boring lesson multiple times. The finale ALMOST ended in a pretty cool place, then I guess the show lost its nerve and cheaped out. I’m not sure what to hope for in the upcoming final season, since it kinda left off in a boring place.

Michael Scott Foster was a brilliant addition in the second half of Season 2. His energy fits in perfectly with the rest of the cast, and his chemistry with Rachel Bloom is fantastic. The songs don’t hit at a 100% rate, but there are still gems, and the characters continue to go through believable and at times hilarious evolutions. Rebecca in particular is able to change in real ways, but continue to find new ways to be flawed and hilarious. Trent. The comparison with Breaking Bad has been made multiple times, but the cliffhanger end of S2 E12 is up there with Walter White growling “Run!”

Season 3 so far has been a lot more hit-and-miss. It doesn’t know what to do with Josh, which makes sense because he really was only there as a device for Rebecca. Some of their takes on genres didn’t feel warranted, and just took me out of the show. But Rebecca’s arc has been really compelling and moving and pushes even further into this latest trend in TV to give mental health a real serious look and hopefully move the needle in de-stigmatizing those types of issues.

In some ways, this show is a lot more simplistic and less grounded than the rest of the top shows, but it was just such a delightful journey that I didn’t care. It was funny, idealistic, and full of wacky caricatures. I’ve only seen a small bit of Gilmore Girls, but Miriam is clearly drawn similarly to Lorelai Gilmore, in how she runs circles around all the idiots around her, but is marvelously entertaining in doing so. Shit, Marvelous is in the title. Not taking it back. And Rachel Bosnahan, who was serviceable in House of Cards and Manhattan, is shockingly good in this. No offense to her other roles, but they didn’t give me an indication she had this fast-paced dynamism in her. The secret weapon though is Alex Borstein, who has a marvelous (fuck!) chemistry with Mrs. Maisel as her tough but vulnerable manager who comes alive as much as her comedy protege. And finally, Tony Shalhoub plays another “type” I’ve seen before, but has this pitch-perfect delivery that frequently made me spit out my soup. (Okay, you caught me, I don’t eat soup. But I had to clean something off my TV.) While many of the moments could potentially be described as cheap, they were still thrilling and fun and there was just a lot of joy to be found in this marvelous (@#$%) show.

While the recent discoveries about Louis CK have tarnished anything with his name on it these days, I can’t help but hope that Pamela Adlon’s Better Things was more her than him. While certainly having the same haphazard, unstructured feel of its predecessor, Things is more mature and self-assured. Pamela isn’t the put-upon sad sack spectator that Louie frequently was. She is flawed, in different ways, but takes responsibility for everything she does. It is unfortunate to me that this brutally honest, melancholy, moving season has to come with that asterisk, but Adlon’s (who directed every episode) fresh voice I feel has to be recognized, and I’m going to give her credit despite all the nonsense.

Alright, sure, Planet Earth sticks out a bit compared to the usual fictional, scripted TV I normally include. But I’d argue that a lot of the appeal is in the carefully crafted stories pulled from the thousands of hours of gorgeous nature footage compiled. The first Planet Earth was jaw-dropping and made me look at nature in a fresh, new way, and the most recent incarnation was no different. Just watch the Ibex sidling an inch from death every day along the steep cliffs, or a bat fight a scorpion… all narrated with weight and class by David Attenborough. if this show doesn’t make you want to splurge on an ill-advised 4k TV, I don’t know what will. Just a monumental achievement in TV and a joy to experience.

While Season 1 was mostly a quirky oddity with moments of catharsis, Season 2 completely redefined itself with a much deeper empathy toward its characters and a focus on personal discovery and growth. In the first few episodes, this centered mainly on Chip (the central, less irritating Zack Galifinakis twin brother), picking up where the first season left him, running away from his life to live on the road. This adventure tempered his egotistical personality from the first season and made him feel more human in fun and compelling ways. However, the remainder of the season was really focused on Chip’s mother Christine (Louie Anderson), whose health scare last season acted as a wake-up call, and pushed her to focus on herself and her well-being and her life, which was one of the more touching characters arcs of the year. I was once again struck by how Louie Anderson disappears into the part, and paints this heartbreakingly genuine portrait of a character you can’t help but cheer for.

You’ve seen this already. It won the Emmy, won the Golden Globe. It’s been established as a very good, extremely timely show. The flashbacks of the leadup were chilling in how familiar they felt, in a world where what was normal or acceptable changed overnight. A world where fear makes people act against their own best interests, like Serena (classic Trump voter) does. I found myself comparing the show to the Negan arc on The Walking Dead. Both were bleak, heavy, violent… but Handmaid’s wasn’t relentless, and took no perverse joy in torturing its characters. It didn’t kind of fetishize its villains with an “iconic” instrument of brutality or cool swagger. We got to live in Offred’s head and get a measure of satisfaction hearing her tell her captors to go fuck themselves. We got the occasional glimpse of humanity and hope sprinkled in with the gloom. I loved how we were just thrown into this world with just enough to follow the beats we needed, and we slowly get fed the complexities of the parties involved and how we got to where we were. Most of the characters that seemed like one thing at the start turned out to have their own conflict, and weren’t so easily distilled. It didn’t quite keep the full momentum through to the very end, but I was impressed by how much mileage there was in this dystopian world, and how it ended up being much more than the dark mood introduced in the strong pilot.

It was a tall task to top the stellar second season of The Leftovers (my favorite show of 2015), and while Lindelof and Perrotta didn’t quite manage it, they still put together a hell of a send-off. Where season 2 felt like a huge departure (PUN INTENDED!) from the first, the 3rd and final season felt a bit like a retread in places. It also felt a bit more disjoint, like it was a series of strong one-off stories, rather than the more cohesive arc of season 2. The biggest disappointment for me was Episode 7, which was essentially an attempt to one-up the already flawless “International Assassin” episode from S2, and seemed to miss the point of what made that so amazing in the first place. Yes, it was certainly wackier. However, those few nits aside, there was still a good deal of new stuff to unpack here, and those disjoint stories did add a lot, especially for some of the characters who hadn’t gotten much attention previously, in particular Kevin Sr and Laurie. While the finale was a bit divisive, it gained additional levels in subsequent viewing, and I thought it was a really beautiful and unexpected way to end the series.

“Computers aren’t the thing… they’re the thing that gets us to the thing.” It’s the frustratingly vague pearl of inspirational wisdom dropped by slick snake oil salesman Joe McMillan early on in season 1. Over the course of 4 seasons, that central theme holds true in numerous different and often unexpected ways for our central characters, no more so than in the stirring final chapters.

You may have read my impassioned plea from before the season started to get you all on board the Halt Train™. I wanted to make sure you were patient with the slimy Joe, the overlooked Gordon, the punk-hacker Cameron, and the underutilized Donna, to see what they would all become with the training wheels off.

Halt and Catch Fire started out of the gate tackling a fairly unique space, as a show about a group of people building something. No sexy murder mysteries, no gunfights, no mobsters, no robots trying to discover how to be human. In other words, the stakes couldn’t be lower. As much as I adore the show, it’s not too hard to see it being a tough sell for their marketing team. “It’s the 80s. Three young unlikeable professionals are trying to build a slightly faster computer.” Now, their actual preview for the series premiere was actually pretty cool, and set to Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams”, so when I saw it, as computer professional and a child of the 80s, I was on board. Disappointingly, the first episode was not the sexy, fast-paced, exciting heist I expected from the trailer, but rather a Don Draper type dude blackmailing his way into a job building a pretty boring-sounding computer, so that’s where I stopped.

While constructing the “Giant” of the first season wasn’t necessarily peak TV drama, over the next few seasons, the show would find ways to mine drama out of a group of people creating something together. Different personalities clash over the future direction, or between art and commerce, or how to balance family with an all-consuming fledgling startup. Halt for me was at its best (and most tragic) when it positioned characters I loved against each other, but each side really had a valid point, and goddamnit, just stop fighting, okay??

In addition to being about building something, it was as much a show about how to deal with failure. Characters were constantly recovering from that fatal mistep and figuring out “what’s next.” Characters reinvented themselves, and so did the show. Over the course of the series, it shifted the focus to a new venture and a new team, a new setting, and even a time jump or two.

I struggle a bit to find words for why the final season struck me so deeply. I suppose the show had made me extremely invested in these characters and relationships, and their final arcs felt both surprising and perfect in just about every case. Not everything was a happily ever after, but when I think back on where everyone was left off, I smile. When I think of the final two lines of the series, I smile. The ending hearkened back to where the series started in a number of ways and reminded us of how much everyone had grown and changed through the fights, betrayals, forgiveness, and moments of putting ego aside. Some characters grew apart, and others found a way to get over past hurts and reunite. An awkward teenage girl finds a place she is appreciated and understood building software with weirdo grownups, in one of my favorite unexpected arcs of the series.

At risk of belaboring this point, this season was headlined by three prominent female characters who were REALLY good with computers. While the focus on female tech geniuses isn’t new this season, film and TV could certainly use more representation like it to normalize the idea that women can be good at science too. This is one reason the story with the young girl felt so important as well, that the adults in her life were encouraging of her interests and gave her the opportunity to excel at what she loved. Hopefully these examples will inspire some of the literally hundreds of viewers of this critically acclaimed series to get into math and science. *sly wink*

Finally, I just want to give a shout out to the music of Halt and Catch Fire. A great soundtrack can really enhance the connection you make with movies and TV, like they’d grabbed me with their trailer, and their soundtrack was pretty special. Obviously they had some 80’s selections, since that was the setting of the show, but they weren’t generally the obvious picks like you’d find in Stranger Things. There were some deeper cuts from some artists you know, a lot of tracks that had that 80’s feel, but were actually indie tracks from the last decade. The original score was a subtle, smooth set of instrumental tracks that felt both modern and a callback to the synths of the 80’s. The few older tracks I knew before the show are now forever imbued with more weight from the meaty scene they played over, and the new ones I downloaded because of the show will only ever make me think of Donna and Cam.

It’s amazing to me how commonplace it is starting to feel to get a final season of a great show leaving at its peak, and on its own terms. Two years ago, Justified went out on a high note, last year it was the introspective Rectify (NOT the same show), then this year we got a near-flawless resolution for Halt and Catch Fire, a show that, to my bewilderment, no one has seen, ever. I have a feeling this might grow more commonplace with the expanding landscape of TV, and the lowered pressure on a show to appeal to a wide audience and bring in more revenue for Charmin. Artists seem to be getting a bit more free rein to build (and finish) things according to their vision. This means sometimes you’ll get a LOST, but other times you might get a Halt and Catch Fire.

I didn’t get to the first season of this 2016 BBC America original until earlier this year, and found it to be a delightful, charming sci-fi romp that opened up an insane number of threads and actually tied most of them together in a really satisfying way. Season 2 picked up where it left off without the same frantic ambition as the first, and instead chose to ease into the story in a way that felt frustrating and less exciting. However, by mid-season it found a way to reproduce some of that same fun energy with an entirely different flavor, which was both creative and fun. On top of that, they took some needed time to evolve the characters and relationships in moving and cool ways. The overall experience may haven’t quite lived up to the sprawling puzzle of the first season, but it had enough really cool moments to still be a strong chapter in the (hopefully continuing?) (officially canceled) saga.

This year contained the last four episodes of the first season, including the jaw-dropping finale that turned my head upside-down, and seared that Ted Danson face into my brain, as well as 7 episodes from Season 2. My first thought when I started this show was “How are they gonna sustain this premise for one or even more seasons?” Well, remind me to have more faith in Michael Schur (of himself), because man, he delivered! Not only is the show consistently hilarious with its inventive characters and afterlife “rules”, but it’s continually re-inventing itself, as it has now 4 or 5 times. It also, oddly, has the best character development from Janet, its anthropomorphic Siri, who doesn’t mind if you power her down, but is programmed to scream for mercy if you try.

After a confused and disappointing second season, Mr. Robot came crashing back this year with probably its best content to date. The building conflict between Elliott and Mr. Robot was a great framework for a more focused story arc, even if it occasionally hearkened back to my least favorite elements from that movie that shan’t be named. Bobby Cannivale was a fun addition, even though he eventually reverted back to his “type” which I initially thought he’d subverted. The midseason had an incredibly cool “one-shot” episode: Yes, it’s starting to feel a bit more like a prestige drama checkmark than a technological feat at this point, but it really worked for the tension-filled and pivotal day in the series. While the finale felt a bit paint-by-numbers, it was good enough, and satisfyingly teased what’s to come in the next (final?) season. Really quite enjoyable and impressive show again.

To be honest, this season felt like a bit of a step back for me. Last season felt like it took more risks, dug deeper into characters, and was wink-funny without knocking you over the head with it. This season’s jokes took what felt like easy shots at politics and manipulating the short attention spans of stupid voters. Granted, it’s especially relevant now, but it didn’t feel like it was adding much to the conversation. The relationship between Bojack and Hollyhock felt like only a slightly different shade of his relationship with Sarah Lynn from the first 3 seasons. That said, they did some very interesting things with BoJack’s mother, and her various flashbacks. Some really strong storylines with Princess Carolyn. And of course, Felicity Huffman’s Booty Court! So despite not living up to last season’s promise, it remains a strongly unique show with still a lot to say.

It’s a shame that Rick and Morty have some really shitty fans, because this may have been the most contemplative season yet, with a big focus on looking inward even as the insanity continues to mount on the outside worlds. The focus on family has always been at the core of the show, but this season has felt the most insightful and even hopeful in regards to the many frayed relationships among the family and how the characters might find middle ground in repairing them. No show I can think of bounces so deftly between cynical and optimistic, all the while creating the craziest and more creative scifi trappings and hilarious situations. Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon were reportedly stressed out by the pressure to top themselves after the fantastic second season. I hope they can take a moment to relax with pride before giving us another even better season. (And some goddamn Szechuan Sauce plz!!)

Season 2 of The Missing played around more with the structure introduced in the relatively separate Season 1. Like the first season, we bounce back and forth between two time periods, and two separate investigations into a kidnapping. In its own way, it is also about the obsessive behavior that leads to the investigation continuing after a number of years of the case being closed. The nuances are different, and this time around there are many more moving parts. It was a tapestry of characters and motivations and connections that were actually pretty impressive in how they actually came together in a satisfying way at the end. At the same time, it made it at times hard to follow, as we had to track and remember so much about what characters knew what at the current time period we were in. This may lend itself better to a binge style viewing, or repeated viewing, but it was challenging on a week-to-week basis. In addition, one of the charms of the first season was the relatively narrow scope and relatively relaxed pace. It more favored digging into the characters and the nature of their experiences over an extremely complex plot and mystery piece. That said, there were a lot of cool “a-ha” moments, and the twists were doled out at a pretty nice pace, by having a number of other mysteries surrounding the main “whodunit” one. These twists and turns were fun and pretty smart. It was just a bit more “by the book” than the very unconventional ending to season 1. And that’s okay, it just didn’t push the format in the same way.

The show definitely has a different feel now, but it is still packed with enjoyable moments. The sense of danger is almost completely gone: ill-advised suicide missions are completed with little in the way of character casualty. While the first half of the series was about fractured family struggling to survive, now reunions are standard fare, and instead of constant tension, our character can mostly relax on the day-to-day danger and worry about making the right big-picture decisions instead. Cersei, while still talking a strong game, felt mostly toothless this season. The Night King and his horde, while talked about a good deal, remained still a remote threat, except for toward the very end of the season. On the whole time-jumping issue, I’m not nearly as bothered as some, but it again, makes the show feel different. In Season 1, it would take 4 episodes for Tyrion to get from Winterfell to Castle Black, but now people are zipping from the southern most part of the continent to the northern most and back in a single episode. I don’t care much from an “is that realistic?” perspective, but it does make those decisions to travel those long distances feel like they have substantially less weight to them. If they can “yada yada” two weeks of travel, then, sure, let’s go visit every house in the north and rally them to our cause, grab a wight, go back to Essos, visit Khal Drogo’s grave, say hi to Daario Naharis (remember him?), and get back in time for supper! Our players felt more constrained and in need of finding creative solutions in the past seasons, and now it feels like they’re cheating a bit. Send a text to Danaerys and she’ll pop over in a few minutes to bail us out of this stupid thing! No worries. However! The finale was a great change of pace, and set up a lot of interesting dynamics for the final six (!!!!) episodes.

It’s rare these days that I discover a top-tier show by recommendation. I mean, what show haven’t I tried already? But thanks to my good friend Fiona’s insistence, I pushed past my prejudice against pirate stories to give Black Sails a try this year. A celebration of plunder, murder and whorehouses held no appeal to me, and I was pleased to discover that wasn’t this show, as I plowed through the first three seasons. Okay, the first couple episodes didn’t completely dissuade that notion, but as the series went on, it became clear that these characters, while certainly flawed, saw themselves as Robin Hood type heroes, in defiance of the tyrannical British Empire, and on many occasions, it was difficult to argue. This was a conflict I could get behind. Season 4, the final season, comes crashing out of the gate as that conflict comes to a head, with one of the most massive battle scenes I’ve seen outside of Westeros. As had been teased in the prior seasons, it was also about the core relationship between poster-pirate Captain Flint and Long John Silver, and their scenes this season were some of the most powerful in the series. And they topped it off with a finale that was both moving and surprising. Just a shame I took so long to give it a shot, or it would’ve found its way into the top spots of my last two lists as well.

A bit of a step back this season, especially over the first two-thirds. I’m very conflicted once again by wishing this highly non-standard spy show would try to be a bit more standard. What do I mean by that? One of the interesting (in theory) aspects is the examination of the less glamorous bits of being a spy. Juggling multiple operations, maintaining relationships, doing the grunt work. So I appreciate that unusual angle. But the downside to that experimental mentality is that it’s sometimes BORING. I hate using the word “boring” when referring to art, because I think it’s overly general, and not very useful. In the case of the Americans, I think that boredom comes from a lack of focus. We don’t get to follow the thread of a single operation as a whole, instead having it spread over one, two, sometimes even three seasons. So Kimmy shows up again, and you’re like “it’s been 8 episodes since we’ve seen her. What was going on with that one again?” And it’s not just a memory thing (though that doesn’t help), it’s mainly an investment thing. We’re not given the opportunity to really dig in and care. Now, in the most recent seasons, this ongoing issue has been overcome by much more interesting conflicts between characters that we care about. These conflicts don’t have the same luxury of the extremely slow burn, and also are more inherently personal and compelling. But this season, they kinda pumped the brakes on the whole Paige situation for a while, which I think hurt the great momentum they’d been building in the series. A few good scenes were interspersed, but for the most part wheat took the front seat. That being said, the last four hours pulled it back together, and really dove back into the characters, which is where all the meat is. (Meat > Wheat!!) And they also found a way to give us those character beats (Beats > Meat > Wheat!!) wrapped in extremely gripping tension and natural but unexpected turns. It almost felt like Breaking Bad in the masterful way it wove the two together. So while it both ended and peaked high, I can’t quite write off the slog of the first 9 episodes. Please, no more Oleg.

The pilot of Legion was one of the freshest, most original, most intriguing TV experiences I’ve ever had. And at times over the course of the next 7 episodes, it lived up to that. Dan Stevens gives one of the most eminently watchable performances in a while, weaving deftly between nervous ticks, dark impulses, confidence, and romantic lead with unpredictable precision. As the series goes on though, it’s really Syd, the female lead, played by Rachel Keller, who takes up the reins and kills it as the strong heroine who needs to step up to save the dude in distress. The show generally feels more clunky when it tries to fall back into a more standard super-team mode. That’s clearly not Noah Hawley’s wheelhouse, and it clicks far more when diving through David’s psyche, or spending time in other dimensions. And while I could have used three times what they gave us, the few Jemaine Clement scenes were just a confluence of perfect casting and direction (speaking of wheelhouses.) While it didn’t QUITE live up to the grand promise of the first episode, there were enough moments of utter joy and amazement in what was easily the most ambitious Marvel property to date.

I generally liked that they decided to shake up the formula a bit with a new long-term relationship arc. The dating life metaphors were starting to thin out, and adding the new dynamic opened up a few new ideas. Unfortunately it felt like it took a while to get a sense of Lucy as a character, and she never really seemed fully formed, even though she eventually did get some solid comedy bits.

I didn’t really get what the message was supposed to be, but I never really felt like the whole setup paid off. There was some stuff about subjectivity of the story teller, but the ambiguity of what actually happened didn’t really feel like it served any larger goals, and I was mostly left feeling kinda empty. Zachary Levi was fun tho.

Disclaimer: I have not read the book, but have some familiarity with the differences in the show. It sounded like it was strongest when it was inventing rather than adapting. Easily the two most compelling episodes were the ones that focused on Laura, who, from what I’ve heard wasn’t as prominent in the Gaiman novel. Shadow felt like an underdeveloped character, and frankly, and underdeveloped actor. There were a handful of cute moments between he and Ian McShane’s Wednesday, but much of their adventures felt long and plodding. We didn’t get enough time with the main antagonists, and never really got a sense of what the central conflict was until (kinda) the last few moments of the season. All in all, it was a season with a few cool ideas and few cool moments, but generally uneven execution, though an ending that leaves me curious about what’s to come next season.

The Star Trek episode was pretty cool, and the rest were kinda varied. Crocodile felt brutal without serving any purpose, Black Museum felt like recycling a lot of ideas from previous seasons. Metalhead was kinda cool in its simplicity and strong execution.

Better than the first season, but not able to live up to the more interesting second. Carrie Coon was a bright spot in an otherwise fairly typical stumbling-into-crime story. While Coon’s Chief Burgle had a lot of great character moments, I was a bit disappointed that she never really had much actual impact on the story, as the finale left me a little disappointed.

I’ve already talked about how I thought Master of None felt like an amateur rip-off– err, homage– of Louie. So I won’t go into that, but this season didn’t feel like a substantial step forward in that regard. That said, I appreciate his experimentation, and the fact that he’s unafraid to try new things. Unfortunately, I felt like those things were varied in success. The black and white premiere felt like a lame attempt to add gravitas. But what took me out of the episodes even more were the performances of actors well outside their wheelhouse, especially Aziz himself. The perfect example of him overextending himself was an extended shot at the end of one of the midseason episodes where he is bummed out that he’s falling for his married friend. The camera holds on him for minutes, as he fidgets and looks around awkwardly. A great actor could have crushed this scene; Louie CK would’ve muddled through clumsily, but knows enough tricks to make it passable; Aziz looked like his instruction was “fidget and look around awkwardly.” Aziz is funny, but he just doesn’t have the range to be all he wants his protagonist to be. The two strongest episodes were the ones with the least Aziz in them, especially the brilliant “Thanksgiving,” which chronicles a number of Thanksgivings through the life of one of his close on-screen friends, and how her family slowly comes to terms with her orientation. Sure, it was a bit of a leap that they only talked about that stuff at Thanksgiving each year, but it was a cool narrative device that worked well.

Oh, what it might have been if Bryan Fuller had stayed on board? There were flashes of promise in the first handful of episodes, but it ended up being a bit of a mess overall. I was most disappointed by the time loop episode that was so clunky that it made me angry and want to go back and watch Cause and Effect instead. I was totally okay with the revamped Klingons, but they took a weird left turn in the middle, and then I guess they were supposed to be boring after that? I can’t see this version pulling in viewers to the premium subscription required CBS All Access.

Certainly a lot of notes from 30 Rock. Wacky female executive producing a TV show with even wackier co-workers. The main distinguishing feature is the overprotective mother intern played by the fantastic Andrea Martin. Not all the episodes work, just like was the case with 30 Rock, but the highs were so high that it could be forgiven, with a Noises Off style of spectacularly coordinated failures, and merciless deadpan from John Michael Higgins (Best in Show).

What a roller coaster season of Broad City! Man, there were some great episodes and some SUPER dumb ones. But if nothing else, I hope bleeping out Tr**p becomes a thing.

This season was enjoyable, but felt far less cohesive than the previous two. It felt more like a collection of episodes, some compelling, some slightly less so, but not like a full story. If the first couple seasons were about four troubled people who hurt themselves and others in unintended ways, this season was mostly about the challenges in healing. There were a number of satisfying moments to that effect, as the characters who sometimes frustrated us gained a measure of self-awareness, or those who relied too heavily on others began to find some self-reliance. Sometimes these transitions were great, sometimes they were clunky. But this show is nearly always able to buck expectations, and the extremely unexpected and beautiful season finale was one of the best examples of this. Instead of trying to wrap up all our core characters’ stories, it focused on a peripheral character in a completely different location, and it worked.

Classic Moffat this season, in a number of ways. Firstly, is his compulsion to try and go bigger and more convoluted the deeper into a series he goes. No better example of this than the final episode of the season, whose crazy Saw hijinx felt so little like the grounded Sherlock we were introduced to in Season 1. Someone EVEN SMARTER THAN SHERLOCK OR MYCROFT?? STAKES RAISED!!! As clunky as his plots can be (especially the resolutions), no one can do quick, whip-smart dialogue with roller coaster character beats better. He’s a full subscriber to J.J. Abrams “It doesn’t matter what’s in the box” philosophy of story-telling, creating wondrous and intriguing mysteries, with very rare payoff. The first two episodes were just incredible examples of this, as it felt like he made it further and further into the episode before going completely off the rails, but then inevitably does spectacularly. But I’d argue in each case the journey was worth the disappointment at the end. Unfortunately, the can’t be said about the mess of a finale, which is why it really only earns a mid-80s score this season despite flashes of brilliance.

After being less than amazed by the first season, which I didn’t get to until this year, season 2 felt like a significant step forward in terms of maturity and complexity. Issa’s relationships with her work friend Frieda and her best friend Molly felt more relaxed and interesting, and had some really good chemistry. While there were still a decent number of gratuitous sex-as-drama moments, there was more to the romantic arcs this season than who-cheated-on-whom. The finale in particular had a number of scenes showcasing real growth and self-awareness in the characters that we hadn’t seen before. On top of that, a lot more of the dialogue had great comedic timing and laugh-out-loud moments.

The second season, for quite understandable reasons, felt a lot more bleak and heavy than the first season. It still found moments to be ridiculous between the dread, but it was a different feeling show. Alia Shawkat’s performance was top-notch, though her supporting cast continues to gravitate a bit toward the cartoony for me. The finale was fantastic, yet again, leaving us to wonder what it means for a third season.

It started out somewhat sad and uncomfortable, but it really starts to shine about halfway in, as we get to know the charming cast of misfits trying to put on an unconventional show. Alison Brie was great, in a slightly off-type, but mostly on-type role, but it was her best friend Debbie, played by Betty Gilpin (Nurse Jackie) who had the most moving and compelling character journey. Marc Maron was also entertaining, but was mostly just himself. I was also partial to Wolf Girl. As someone who never gave a crap about wrestling of any kind, this show did a surprisingly good job and getting me invested and excited when they (spoiler) put on a fun wrestling show. But it was mostly about the characters and relationships for me. A lot of fun.

While the series ended on a high note, often times the journey to get there was clunky and/or boring. I’m not sure why they kept relegating Helena to a convent or living on her own in the woods. There is such thing as too much of a good thing, but I don’t think we were there yet, and her character has always had the most potential to be mined, in my opinion. That being said, she was a big part of the endgame, and her pregnancy and relationship to Sarah were core pieces of a really interesting discussion on what it means to be a mother, or a daughter, or a sestra. While the series as a whole probably could have been compressed substantially to eliminate a lot of the repeated plot elements or incoherent villains, it will be the soaring character moments between these fantastic characters, brought to life by an extraordinarily talented Tatiana Maslany, that I will thankfully remember the most.

B.

Pretty much the same formula at this point… they’re not doing anything to change it up too drastically at this point. It always teeters on the edge of being dark and serious, but stays just on this side so we can laugh at everyone’s misfortune. Because of where they positioned things this season, there was less playful banter between them, which was kinda one of the biggest selling points. But the really strong and emotional final episode was made even more so with its usage of Carrie Fisher, which I am not embarrassed to say made me tear up.

In a lot of ways, the second season of Stranger Things felt like more of the same: it was also the same, but more. It certainly felt bigger, both in the threat, and the scope of the world (finally peeking beyond the town limits a bit.) The cast of characters also got two (arguably three, with Will being more of a presence) new additions. The downside to that was also that there wasn’t as much time to dig into all of them at the same level. Most notably Eleven, who really suffered from Gandalf syndrome and had to stay out of the action for most of the season because she’s OP. I also didn’t feel like the two newbies added much aside from a general “let’s shake things up!” vibe. But when the big train got rollin’ about halfway in, there were plenty of thrills and unexpected moments to get me totally on board. Again, the show delivers more on slight twists on old formulas rather than reinventing the wheel, but it executes with a bold confidence that delivers high entertainment value.

This is a frustrating review to write. I watched all 5 seasons this year, and while the final season was enjoyable, it wasn’t at the same level as the fantastic fourth season. It was still good, but it was for obvious reasons just very different, and hard to really connect with anyone in the same way. I guess Dylan is kinda supposed to be that character, but I never connected well with him, in part because of the wonderbread actor who’s never really measured up to the people around him. That said, there were strong moments (no breath-taking ones), and they played out the end game in a satisfying, if somewhat on-the-nose, fashion.

While not quite as cohesive as the excellent 2nd season, there was a lot to like about Season 3. Unfortunately, the grumpy, mean, and just not fun Valerie wasn’t one of those things this season. I guess there was a bit of character growth and self-awareness gained by the end, but it really didn’t feel worth the journey to get there with her, and she just kinda brought the scenes down. There were solid plot twists, an adorable new supporting character in Alex’s cosplayer roommate, and probably the most interesting season for Laura yet. Also, Judy Greer and Alex made an adorable couple. I stand by my overuse of that word.

This was a really strange season to review. And not just because it’s called Review. But because it was three half-hour episodes, with commercials, so effectively just over 60 minutes of content. That’s easily the shortest season I’ve reviewed. But I definitely have to, because I only recently caught up on the first two remarkable seasons, and this is in effect rating the series as a whole. Plus, Forrest MacNeil wouldn’t back down from such a review challenge, so I won’t either. I’ll be honest, I was not initially intrigued by the premise at all, because it is very difficult to explain what the actual premise is. Basically, it’s a dark comedy about a ridiculous man who will tear his life apart for the validation of his faceless audience. It’s hilarious in its ludicrousness, and kind of sad and tragic at the same time. And the ending was just about as perfect an ending I could imagine for it, if a bit rushed. A worthy, short coda, to an extremely unique series.

It’s not only that it lacks the sense of tension and urgency of a Breaking Bad… it also comes short in direction and focus. For every emotionally fraught scene between Jimmy and his judgmental brother is a sequence that takes too long to go nowhere, like reestablishing a well-known rivalry between Gus and Hector, or ten minutes of taking apart a car to find a tracking device. There are too many pans on the stove for us to be invested in any one of them. Sorry, I take that back, I am invested in the relationships between Jimmy and Kim, and the one between Jimmy and Chuck. I’ve said it before: Mike, as cool a character as he is, shouldn’t be a part of this show. There is not enough of interest there to devote 33% of our time there, and it makes the entire venture feel disjoint. That said, there were enough of those good moments to make it still mostly a pleasure to watch this season.

While I might have gained another level of appreciation if I’d had any exposure to the true crime genre, American Vandal was still pretty entertaining in its own right. It had well-drawn characters, and unexpected turns, especially when the documentary in progress became a plot point itself, adding an interesting meta angle to the whole thing. It said some interesting things about justice and public perception, and was a lot more fascinating than it appeared on surface level with “Who drew the dicks?”

I found the second season of The Crown to be far more watchable than the first. It was much more focused on the characters and their relationships, and how those interact with the expectations put on them from their positions. My main quibble was that while there were some standout episodes focused on Elizabeth’s husband Philip and sister Margaret, Elizabeth herself didn’t get the same attention, and was left mainly to react to their misadventures. That said, Claire Foy did get some moments to shine in those interactions, and we would occasionally get extremely disarming moments when she let down her guard.

It’s hard to give a detailed analysis of a comedy that has become not funny, but that’s what New Girl is. The same patterns continue: Schmidt/Nick scenes are magic, the rest is mostly crap. It’s a tricky situation, because you could lean into that strength, but risk running it dry from overuse. I’ll tell you one ingredient that certainly isn’t the cure: Megan Fox. I can maybe see what they were going for? That her expressionless, unemotional “acting” would read as sardonic? And there certainly were a couple moments that worked accidentally for that reason. But she and Nick had no chemistry, and her complication girl purpose was never even remotely believable. Fred Willard’s short cameo toward the end of the season, while amazing, was NOT quite enough to bump New Girl into the “worth watching” category.

And in the end, that means this once-Top-10 show is now in last place, even behind…

In lieu of another review making excuses for my watching this show, a compilation of short quotes from my episode reviews:

“Dear god Leonard is a baby.”

“Raj and Stuart’s adventures in babysitting? Pass.”

“Koothrappali storyline is stupid AF.”

“I laughed a couple times.”

“I really enjoyed that episode.”

“Boring.”

And, yeah, that’s a fairly representative ratio. Frequently the show will come SO CLOSE to a real moment, then get scared and make a dumb racist joke.

First half of the season was boring as balls. Then they shook things up, finally threw in some character progression and cool action, then closed it out with another yawn. Can’t really recommend grinding through the first two seasons of this fairly uninspired alien occupation story that spends most of its time stepping on your neck, just for those few glimpses of fun.

It’s a show that was different and unique and now has run out of those ideas that made it unlike anything else on TV. Okay, I’ll amend that a tad: The success rate is just a LOT lower now. This year had a few absolute gems, like the episode that was focused entirely on a previously unseen character played by Kristen Wiig, with none of the series regulars. It was so bizarre and different from everything in the show up to this point, and was reminiscent of what they did all the time in the first season. But sandwiched between those cool departures are some really dumb and boring storylines, partly because babies don’t make shows MORE interesting, but mostly because the premise is starting to run its course. It’s time to end gracefully, show.

I probably liked this season best of the Capaldi era, but it still suffered badly from the classic symptoms of Moffat: imaginative and intriguing setups, with resolutions that are at-best confusing, and at worst incomprehensible. There were two multi-episode arcs this season, both falling into that latter category, including, unfortunately, the season finale. What a mess and what a waste of a hugely unexpected return of one of my favorite villains. Pearl Mackie as Bill was a bright spot in the season for sure. I had never seen her in anything, but from the previews it looked like she was going to be a one-note comic relief companion. But while she did have some zingers, she brought a great amount of emotional depth and strength to the companion role. She had a fresh take on the Doctor/Companion relationship that livened up the show in a number of places. I am hopeful that Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall will be the fresh take the series needs going forward.

Moffat’s final Christmas Special was pretty solid.

Man did I really want to enjoy this more than I did. I really did like the first three episodes, and how they interwove the characters we knew and tolerated (plus Jessica Jones) in their separate stories until they finally came together in a pretty cool scene. Then they started talking together, and everything went downhill the rest of the way. The Hand was boring when it was just a bunch of nameless ninjas, and it was also boring when it was five cackling villains with names, only the latter never even felt like a threat. I really wish they’d given Sigourney Weaver more to do, because she had the most interesting moments in the series, even if their grand vision never really was clear. Also: Can we have a team-up series with ONLY Matt Murdock and Jessica Jones solving mysteries? They had a good chemistry, when he finally stopped whining about not wanting to be a hero. Danny is the worst.

Imma be honest here… I really didn’t get this show. It felt even more distancing than Jill Soloway’s earlier show, Transparent, in its off-putting, narcissistic characters and bizarre behavior. There were spots where I felt I could appreciate what it was going for, but most of the time I was just confused. Is the key takeaway that artists are full of shit?

This quirky comedy showed some promise with its offbeat buddy duo of hapless advertising producers. Feels a bit like Broad City with dudes, though that was already probably a thing before Broad City. Bosom Buddies? Anyway, their earnest haplessness is charming and cute. The season was pretty inconsistent, with a few gut busters immediately followed by a couple brutal clunkers bordering on offensive. But a fun diversion that has room to grow, if it’s not canceled.

More goofiness from the Wain/Showalter nutjobs. Lack of Jon Hamm made it fall short of the previous year’s “First Day of Camp”. Showalter’s Ronald Reagan from last season is joined by Michael Ian Black’s equally hilariously lame George H. W. Bush. These guys are so weird. It scratches a very specific itch, but it’s not exactly art.

Slightly more interesting than the clunky first season, but still nothing groundbreaking. The show comes close to an insightful exploration of the nature of consciousness and humanity, then bails out when it approaches a cool angle. The idea of Niska’s trial was really cool, then it farted out in favor of some stupid conspiracy plot. Beyond the fact that other sci-fi shows have tread this ground better, Humans just doesn’t really have anything meaningful or new to say to warrant the time invested in these characters and sci-fi trappings.

The latest (final?) season of Broadchurch felt like a fresh direction and idea that kind of got bogged down under the weight of its own red herrings and lack of focus. They really went overboard in giving us so many shithead suspects that in the end I didn’t really care who did it, I wanted to see them all put away. There were some good moments to close out the Latimer family arc, but the season never really gelled for me.

An interesting premise that never really paid off, and ended up being more teen drama than drama. In a time with some really great and insightful de-stigmatization of mental illness, the simplistic and reductive treatment from 13 Reasons Why may have done more harm than good. Sure, bullying is bad, but that is not the only lesson to be gleaned from all of the complicated issues touched upon in this show, which feels self-congratulatory in its message of “let’s all be nice to each other.” Watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend instead.

I found much of this season to be boring as hell. A lot of the jokes are feeling old, and the story is mostly aimless at this point. That said, it did feel like it kicked into another gear in the last three episodes, especially the tightly crafted VR episode. The conflict felt fresh and interesting, and led to an interesting dynamic where Richard starts to lose it and causes his most fervent (and creepy) ally Jared to leave his side. We’ll see how a season without T.J. Miller will fare. I am frankly not optimistic.

Well, after its painful bummer of a Season 7a, Walking Dead is incrementally becoming less sucky each half-season. It’s still nowhere near the levels it was at its peak, but it’ll occasionally get interesting, like meeting the weird trash people, or our cowardly priest trying to save Negan’s soul. But even when the show isn’t grinding us down mercilessly, it’s more often than not re-treading ground it explored more compellingly in previous seasons, and it just feels like it’s mostly out of gas. Time to end?

Man, was I excited to find there was a new show starring the Peep Show boys, David Mitchell and Robert Webb! Unfortunately, it’s not their brainchild, and is a kinda muddled dramedy that didn’t quite go beyond awkward comedy fare. It had flashes of hilarity in between a plot that just kinda floundered. Also, what a fucking stupid title.

It was fine. I laughed at times, but it feels like it’s running out of juice.

It was kinda cool.

Not quite up to the resurgent season last year, but still had some thrilling moments, and Quinn’s arc was pretty good.

The pilot was not encouraging, but the next 5 episodes were actually fairly entertaining. He was definitely #NotMyTick, as his energy was decidedly different than that of the brilliant 90’s cartoon, but Peter Serafinowicz eventually charmed me with his own brand of slightly dim enthusiasm. I was irritated for a couple of episodes by Arthur, another obvious protagonist taking forever to team up with The Tick, but directly addressing that by referencing Joseph Campbell’s call to adventure made me forgive them. This Tick was more violent, but also had slightly more nuanced characters, like the villanous Miss Lint, who only commits crimes to get her adoptive father to accept her, or Arthur’s sister Dot, who begs Arthur not to get involved with The Tick’s quest, while secretly earning some extra cash by patching up mob thugs that The Tick is beating up. It definitely doesn’t work consistently, but the occasional full belly-laugh and oddly moving character relationship made me not regret giving this reboot a chance, despite my initial skepticism.

I sincerely appreciated the unique and experimental vision from this David Fincher offering. The show had a knack for subverting expectations, and making the viewer feel uncertain and occasionally uncomfortable. I think where it succeeded the most was in the tension-filled conversations between our FBI psych squad heroes and the sequence (or later “serial”) killers. One of the points that is driven home (with the help of very strong performances) is that these are people, not some cartoonish fantasy of “evil”. What was fascinating to me as well as to Agent Ford (Jonathan Groff) is what was the thing that went differently for them to make them do the things they did. I know it was impossible to expect all the answers, but I felt like the show had the briefest start of the conversation on it, then bailed to go off in another direction. And while the three leads were all very good, the actress who played Ford’s girlfriend was just terrible. It was actually painful to watch their scenes together. But there were enough character nuggets and story threads to say overall I enjoyed the show, even if it kind of ended the season in a bit of a mess.

A surprisingly solid final season to a show that’s been heavily uneven over the years. While the characters still had their share of infuriating self-absorbed moments, there were at least glimpses of maturity interspersed as well. Structurally, I appreciated the fairly unconventional way they did the finale over the last two episodes. It was kind of finales for the group and Hannah individually. It worked, even if multiple cathartic moments felt coincidentally timed together. I’ll also mention one of my favorite episodes of the series, a bottle episode featuring The American’s Matthew Rhys. While the writing was certainly over par for this installment as well, his performance was just magnetic and fully realized. Some of his speeches were up there with McConaughey in True Detective. Almost made the season for me.

I was pretty happy that Dan Harmon and as-of-between-seasons ex-wife Erin McGathy agreed to work together on the 2nd season of this animated D&D adventure. It brought back good memories of their podcast glory days (which McGathy has not yet returned to), especially when once-frequent-guest-and-now-major-motion-picture-star Kumail Nanjiani made his glorious return for the season finale. As was the case with the first season, the episodes are very uneven, because of the crapshoot nature of the improv ability of celebrity guest stars, plus the kind of random nature of improv in general. Best guests: Patton Oswalt, Janet Varney, Jason Mantzoukas, Elizabeth Olsen, Kumail Nanjiani.

I wanted to be excited about the latest TV project from The Wire creator David Simon, but The Deuce takes a LONG time to gain any momentum, and never really ended up grabbing me in the same way. He uses a lot of devices familiar to fans of The Wire… exploring the systematic aspects of both the criminal enterprise and how it entwines with the police force; creating at times painfully human portraits of people from many angles of the industry. In this case that industry is the prostitution and pornography industry instead of the drug trade, but the legal and moral questions surrounding them are similarly complicated. James Franco served as what is starting to feel like an overplayed TV trope: playing identical twin brothers. This year alone we saw that from FX’s Baskets, FX’s Fargo, and HBO’s The Leftovers (sort of). In none of those shows did it feel like a thematically important conceit, and more a reason to entice an actor, and the same was the case here. While it came slowly, there were interesting story and character arcs in the later few episodes that finally left me feeling invested, but overall it wasn’t the same powerful juggernaut The Wire was in its prime.

I had high hopes for the premise of Season 2 after a somewhat uneven setup in Season 1. Unfortunately, while the first episode paid off the promise of the wacky road trip of the vampire, mind-controlling preacher, and bank robber all in search of God, but then they land in New Orleans and it goes back to being uneven. Honestly, I think the biggest problem with the show is they have no idea what to do with Ruth Negga’s Tulip. Her whole arc in the first season was about getting the boy she likes to come back to her, which narratively just didn’t have enough beats to be interesting at all. She has even less to go on in this season, while the men have their own adventures that give them agency. Conversely, Cassidy the vampire, is the comic relief, and is much better as a supporting character, commenting sarcastically on other people’s problems. So having him deal with his own heavy problems take him away from his strengths as well, which were the big bright spots of Season 1 for me, and were dulled slightly this season. This show takes big swings, and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they miss. Sometimes they work too hard to offend just for the sake of offending a la South Park or Family Guy, which I don’t respond to much, but sometimes their out-there shit works, and those moments are pretty great, like the chemistry between Eugene and Hitler in hell. So, keep watching, if you’re ready to be frequently thrilled but frequently bored. 🙂

I was in a slightly uncomfortable place with Marvel’s Runaways, due to my inclination to rag on all those book readers complaining about how a show adapted one of their favorite things. The Runaways comic book series was one of my favorite things, so I had high hopes for this Hulu production. And it was a serviceable update for TV. The main teenage squad had the right look and tolerable acting skills. The biggest departure was in the deeper treatment of The Pride, the group of shadowy villains that were mostly flat evil in the comics, here presented with more nuance and backstory, which I appreciated. At the front of that group was the complicated James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) character, whose performance was a lot more muted than Spike, but was compelling all the same. The biggest shortcoming for me was just the overall lack of “fun” that was one of the tentpoles of the comic for me. The dialogue isn’t nearly as crisp or witty, and the pacing feels way too sluggish. Sadly this is the one series that is straddling the year boundary, with its final two installments of S1 in January, so I’m judging it without having the whole season’s shape yet, but based on the couple bits of clunky fightin’ action I’ve seen so far, I doubt the climactic showdown will be enough to move the dial too much.

I’ve said it about previous seasons, and it still holds true: the procedural half of this series is the weakest. The difference is becoming more dramatic as the central conceit of that part runs really dry. They are running out of “personalities” for Liv to inhabit. Dungeon Master isn’t a personality. I have a feeling that they might already have decreased proportionally the amount of the episodes that are focused on the murder investigation piece, but that just makes them even more paper-thin and uninteresting. Why not do one every two or three episodes instead? Stick to the more compelling season-arc stories for most of the episodes. It still has its macabre sense of humor, and complex (sometimes overly so) network of players, rivalries, and statuses (who’s currently a Zombie?). Bonus points for completely upending the entire world/mythology, and I’m curious to see where it goes from here.