What an unexpected treat to get another full season of Veronica Mars. With much more narrative runway than a 2-hour Kickstarter film, and without many of the production uncertainties that plagued Season 3, Rob Thomas was able to craft a run, tight 8 hour mystery with his patented wry banter and story twists. Straight-laced Logan continued to disappoint, but the addition of conspiracy theorist Patton Oswalt, and the return of Max Greenfield livened things up to compensate. People will gripe about the ending, and while I would agree there were issues with it, I thought it was effective.

This is how to do nostalgia. The Mandalorian managed to feel like a fresh story that inhabited the same universe as the original trilogy. The world felt grimy and lived in, the ships and aliens both familiar and new. It had the same curt, to the point dialogue with the occasional bits of humor mixed in. Baby Yoda, whom Disney insists we call “The Child”, is adorable, yes, but is the perfect odd couple foil to the hardened, stoic bounty hunter, leading to many of the most delightful moments, yet importantly that well wasn’t pulled from in excess. (Unless you count the internet, which has a way of ruining any beloved thing with its endless meme-ification.)

I cheated a tiny bit for The Good Place. I didn’t want to have to rank the 4 final episodes on their own next year, so I included them in the 2019 ranking.

While not all of the ideas felt like wins (the test subjects storyline fell flat for me), this show was so unique and full of ideas and unlike anything else that has ever been on TV. I didn’t know how they were going to stick the landing after all of those twists and turns, but doggonit they did it.

A grand resurgence after an uneven S3. So glad they were able to end it on their own terms, even though I had no idea until the episode aired, and I was like, “That felt like an ending. Is it ending???” Loved how they balanced Galifinakis’s dry slapstick with deeply moving personal growth and catharsis. A triumph.

Along with Unbelievable, When They See Us is a challenging and heart-breaking portrayal of the failings of our justice system. It does an important job in laying out the pieces of how something so awful could happen in a very human and understandable way. I also loved the gentle reminder that our wonderful current President, at the time, called for these wrongfully accused kids to be killed.

After meandering a bit in S2, Legion came back for a delightfully weird and satisfying final season. They played around with a late-added time travel mechanic in fun new ways, which ended up being a pretty clever way of resolving a corner it seemed like they’d backed into, without it feeling like a cheat. It won’t be for everyone, but if you have patience for some strange, it’s well worth trekking through this unique Marvel property.

While admittedly having a high emotional bar for entry, Unbelievable is an important examination of how the justice system handles assault allegations, as well as just an extremely satisfying serial police drama. The first episode is very challenging. But it also makes the final episodes all the more powerful and satisfying. Plus Toni Collette and Merritt Wever are a detective dream team.

With the obvious parallels to the show Dexter, one thing I feel makes Barry stands out is the show doesn’t go as easy on Barry to couch his choices in “necessary evil” to make us feel better. He’s been in some crappy circumstances, so we can understand these choices, but he’s not as clean cut as Dexter was. The second season carried over hard consequences from the events at the end of season 1, and managed to keep the laughs and shocking moments in the same unique balance. Barry’s relationship with Cousineau (Henry Winkler) evolves in great and layered ways. Can’t wait for Season 3.

Damon Lindelof does it again. He takes a seemingly thankless task, in adapting an ageless comic book beloved by generations of white male fanboys, and creates an intricately crafted visual novel replete with easter eggs, but turns it into a layered examination of race relations in America. Alan Moore turned the established comic book norms on their heads as a lens with which to view issues of war and violence and politics. Lindelof then took that culturally heavy tome, and turned it on its head to point that lens on one of the biggest issues facing the country today. It’s brave, and brilliant, and expertly crafted. It’s weird, and it starts out fragmented, leaving the viewer to wonder if Damon is going to manage to pull all the disparate pieces together. And he does, in a way that feels satisfying, yet not overly clean.

He has said in interviews that he doesn’t have any inspiration at the moment for another season, and HBO seems to not be leaning on him at the moment. I have to say, if he finds something he’s passionate about to explore, I’m on board, and if not, those 9 episodes stand great on their own, and I’m also on board for that being it.

Hilarious. Moving. Brilliant. Messy. Heart-warming. Hot Priest. Spirit fox. Indescribable, other than all the spot-on descriptors I’ve already used. I normally have paragraphs for my #1, but I don’t feel like my thoughts on Fleabag are even that complex. Every moment is a joy. The dialogue is crisp. The timing is masterful. It’s short, but no other show does it like Phoebe does it. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’m confused.

The second (and final?) season took the pretty intriguing premise and mined it for all it was worth. The confusing S1 finale was soon forgiven, and a much more interesting arc kicked off, with great emotional beats.

The setup to this season felt a bit more contrived than the anarchic and haphazard team up of the first season. But it eventually gelled into an engaging story and fine send-off to a dark, clever romantic comedy.

The creator of BoJack Horseman creates a gorgeous animated series that is both dream-like and grounded, both funny and tackling big questions. It in some ways reminds me of a less wacky The Good Place via Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Okay, enough comparisons. It’s really cool, and you probably have Amazon Prime, so watch it.

A strong, delightful, powerful, moving, and funny finish to an unheralded gem.

A short half-season aired in 2019, but with some real gems to close out the year.

I know, I know, another show about a self-destructive white male public figure. It has major parallels with BoJack Horseman, for sure, though I’d say it has less bleak bleakness and less wacky comedy. Sold yet? Well, it’s very funny and moving all the same.

A wild, moody, unexpectedly thought-provoking time travel romp. The fact that it’s European definitely adds some gravitas to a sci-fi show pretty clearly influenced by Lost. And I think influenced is the right word, because it takes some of those ideas and just runs wild with them, building a complex story web that you may need both a flow chart and a second viewing to keep track of. But worth it!

It was harsh, but not as tough to watch as I feared. It was dramatic, interesting, powerful, and the examination of what truth is rings very relevant to today.

After the very briefest wheel-spinning at the back half of S4, my favorite modern-day rom-com finished with a great final season. It may not have been the top season overall (there were a few misses in there), but it found the right time to finish up, and it ended with an ending that felt both earned and not overly sappy or cliche. Loved it.

A fun and emotional Netflix series built for bingeing. Twists and turns galore, and a couple of great lead performers.

Wacky fun in a sibling universe to BoJack Horsemen. A show that, like its predecessory, manages to tackle big truthful issues while being off-the-wall funny in a striking balance.

WTF. This season busted out of the gate as a real contender. Lizzy Caplan creates a fascinating and at times sympathetic portrait of mental illness in her rendition of an early Annie Wilkes (from Misery), and her layered relationship with her daughter forms a really fascinating center of the show. But then, it takes a 90 degree turn and sidelines that whole story for some hokey sci-fi bullshit that is not only less interesting, but makes Annie’s presence feel completely irrelevant. They tried to connect them a bit at the end, but it fell flat for me, and was up there with Rise of Skywalker for biggest mid-story disappointment of the year.

The second season felt at the same time more ambitious AND more safe. It built a strong, satisfying big narrative over 14 episodes that rarely felt like filler or misstep. But at the same time, the narrative was mostly retreading frequently tread Star Trek ground, like AI and time travel. It was impressive, fun, but not super innovative or fresh. Which is fine, but S1 I felt was trying to set a bar that this would not be your dad’s Star Trek show, and this season moved away from that a bit.

I wanted to rate it lower, as a childish reaction to the world’s consensus for how amazing this show is. It’s currently ranked at #2 among critics, which seems way too high to me. They say it’s Shakespearean. Sure, but frequently and VERY CLEARLY referencing Shakespeare does not a great show make. Others say it’s not even a drama, it’s a comedy. Sure, it’s funny, but it’s not THAT funny. And it’s clearly taking itself too seriously to be a comedy. It wants to delight us in the excesses and ghoulishness of its horrible, self-absorbed characters while at the same time _kinda_ making fun of them? It’s weird, because it’s too invested in making us care about the bonds and relationships between these characters to be able to say it’s skewering them. It’s basically like Arrested Development, but less funny, and with a Soderbergh handicam treatment. Anyway, while its point of view is crazy muddled, it is entertaining in a cheesy, soapy way. But so was most of Shakespeare.

Felt like the Vegas trip was a step in the wrong direction after a great second season. They backed off a bit from the strong character work they were doing to focus on more of how they could shake things up. There were still some strong moments, I just didn’t enjoy this season as much.

A cool, fun premise that results in two, at odds, Paul Rudds. The first four eps are classic, binge-worthy, edge of your seat romps that give a fresh take on a lived-in premise. The complications that come after that are hit-and-miss (though I was glad for the much-needed detour in Ep 5), and the ending felt just a bit clunky. But I liked that it was asking the questions it did, that it was smart, and well-paced, and that it exists.

While there was still a lot to love about the second season, the turns didn’t feel as fresh or earned as in the stunning first season.

A fun, painful finale for a fun, painful show.

A great send off for a great show.

Huh! There were some REALLY GREAT episodes in this, the final season. I liked that they tried something different with the finale, even though I didn’t really feel like it completely worked. Dom 4 eva.

I’m a little bit sick of the Hollywood insider humor, but this show managed to surprise. It was at times hilarious, and other times really quite empathetic about the effect Hollywood culture can have on people.

Afraid I have to have another thing about artist vs. art. As problematic as he was, I felt the lack of Louie CK in this season. I think Pamela Adlon has a strong voice, and she creates great slice-of-life tableaus that are raw and real. But Louie often balanced that with these transcendent moments of pathos that felt both unexpected and natural and earned. They were some of the strongest moments of both Louie and Better Things. Now, TV is a collaborative medium, and it is pure speculation to pick out one artist’s contribution to a work, but based on the data, it feels like a correlation to me. That said, it was a good, but not great, season.

A bit of sophomore-itis, but still very moving.

The lies were bigger and littler! Meryl! Not as great as the first season.

Super bingeable, just a couple shaky steps on the landing.

Much like Better Things, this first-half arc of the final season didn’t have those one or two big, risky episodes that made previous seasons stand out. That said, I appreciate the direction of the show, and what it has to say about the complicated nature of trauma and change. One could see the cynicism present in past seasons and predict that it will double-down on it in the final arc next year, but I’m going to go out on a limb and predict it will end on a note of positivity. If not, I’ll come back to this rating and dump its ass.

Bold choices. Wonderful musical numbers. Buttloads of attitude and creativity. Just a lot of fun.

IT’S OVER!!! I AM FREE OF THIS SELF-MADE PRISON OF MEDIOCRITY!!!

(I found the finale’s title fitting: The Stockholm Syndrome)

I wonder if they had to pay Ronald Moore for borrowing his character. A couple interesting ideas surrounded by a sea of sci-fi cliches.

Sigh. Talk about ending with a whimper.

Not as fun as it looked.

It wasn’t terrible, but what a weird meta ending.

Andrew Scott was the lone high point.

I thought the beginning was fun, unique, and full of potential, but then it tanked into a nonsensical mess.

More of the same.

A reaction to Lost. Mystery box show focused on answering the questions quickly. The other edge of that sword is that they keep having to come up with new boxes every 4 episodes, which prevented any feeling of momentum. That said, it is a pretty inventive, family-centered series with likeable characters.

An interesting arc, but the slow pacing continues to prevent the humor from sparking.

There were a few things to like about the final season, despite how horribly rushed it was, and how it failed to stick the landing in any believable way.

It’s silly fun. Best part was singing The Neverending Story.

There is a big, Rick-shaped hole in the show. It feels scattered and unfocused. The Whisperers are cool at times, but the show just falls back on unearned shocks and the thinnest character beats.

Absurdist sketch comedy at its finest.

The show might’ve been better off ending after its superb first season, but this was not a terrible time spent with a cool character. Its highs were not as high, though its lows were not as low (Kilgrave support group). At least it seemed like it knew it would be ending, and didn’t leave us on some cliffhanger.

Felt like a re-tread of Watchmen (the comic), Kickass, and Preacher to start, but started to find its own beat in the second half. Not as clever as it thinks it is.

Past seasons have had better guest stars, but Spencer built a fun, imaginative arc for our heroes this season, and Dan got to play TWO characters.

Enjoyable. The story pivots in the last couple eps in ways that felt rushed and unmotivated, but all-in-all, it’s an interesting world with fun adventures.

While it was an interesting and thought-provoking diversion, the main arc this season was yet ANOTHER diversion from the story it’s been teasing since episode ONE, and I’m growing frustrated. I also found the intimate conversations from Season One to be more compellingly watchable than the investigation of Season Two.

Though it did find some meaty threads toward the end, I found myself frequently wishing for Jemaine and Taika to be in front of the camera instead of behind it.

With the notable exception of a handful of quieter scenes, usually centered on family, I found the dialogue to be painfully flat and perfunctory. In stark contrast to Game of Thrones or this year’s Watchmen, the world-building was often rushed and bludgeoning, and I rarely felt like these were real people inhabiting it. If not for the marvelously paced and written finale, I was just about ready to write this version off entirely, even as a fan of the original books.

A lovable agent of chaos.