TV #31 of 2016: New Girl, season 5 Year-old spoiler alert, but last season of New Girl ended with two characters getting engaged, and this season tracked the length of that engagement, ending with their wedding in the season finale. So that was fun to watch, as someone who’s getting married soon myself, since it’s …
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Book Review: Morning Star by Pierce Brown
Book #41 of 2016: Morning Star by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #3) A thrilling end to a spectacular trilogy. I do think this book was a minor step down from the first two Red Rising volumes, which had more cohesive plot structures than this one. Morning Star sometimes felt more like a sequence of discrete …
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Book Review: Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks
Book #40 of 2016: Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks (Genius #1) This book got better around the halfway mark when the main character finally developed a conscience, but I still didn’t really love it. There were a lot of elements in this book that suggested a heightened comic-booky reality, but it never felt like the …
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TV Review: The Flash, season 2
TV #30 of 2016: The Flash, season 2 Zoom wasn’t quite as compelling a villain as last season’s Reverse Flash, partly because his master plan never really made much sense. But this season still delivered a lot of fun with its new multiverse setting, so on the whole I’d call it a success. I’m not …
TV Review: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, season 1
TV #29 of 2016: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, season 1 I hate to say it, but this latest Arrow spinoff was a complete and utter trainwreck. I kept watching for the shared continuity with the Arrowverse (and, okay, for Caity Lotz and Wentworth Miller), but I’m not sure if I can put up with another …
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TV Review: Fargo, season 2
TV #28 of 2016: Fargo, season 2 Fargo’s second season was even better than the first, another taut examination of how quickly events can spiral out of control once people step outside the protection of the law, all wrapped up in midwestern niceness. It had a great cast in service of some seriously great writing …
TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 6
TV #27 of 2016: Bob’s Burgers, season 6 I feel like Bob’s Burgers is comfortably past its prime at this point. This season was still reliably funny, but I can’t really point to any all-time classic episodes from it. It does seem like the character of Louise got fleshed out a little bit more this …
Book Review: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Book #39 of 2016: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward A heartbreakingly visceral story about a poor black family in rural Mississippi in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. This whole novel feels like one long in-drawn breath, as things keep getting worse for the main character and her family while you, the reader, …
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TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 3
TV #26 of 2016: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 3 This was another solid season on S.H.I.E.L.D., but in hindsight it also seems like something of a palate-cleanser. Original cast member Brett Dalton appears to be leaving the show, as are fan-favorites-in-search-of-a-spinoff Bobbi and Hunter. Plus it seems like the HYDRA plot that had been …
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TV Review: Deadwood, season 2
TV #25 of 2016: Deadwood, season 2 This season is a big improvement over the first, which was already a solid prestige western. More supporting characters get fleshed out this year, and there’s an interesting overarching serialized plot over most of the season. This is probably never gonna be my favorite show — although I …
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