TV #50 of 2022: Happy Endings, season 2 This is probably never going to be one of my favorite shows, but it’s improved so much between seasons that I’m willing to round up my rating accordingly. Every single character feels more sharply defined, and while Penny frequently proclaims this the “year of Penny,” it’s really …
Tag Archives: TV aired in 2012
TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 2
TV #13 of 2022: Bob’s Burgers, season 2 It’s hard to adequately judge a nine-episode run of a half-hour animated comedy, but with the exception of maybe the Goonies-homage premiere I don’t think any of these sophomore installments stands out as a classic of the program, and the writers are clearly still fiddling with the …
TV Review: Fringe, season 4
TV #3 of 2022: Fringe, season 4 I didn’t have much patience for this penultimate run the first time I watched through Fringe, as the literal retcon of the rebooted timeline struck me as a lazy excuse for the writers to stop caring about continuity at all. They keep coy about everything that’s now different …
TV Review: Scandal, season 1
TV #67 of 2021: Scandal, season 1 Initially this drama about a Washington lawyer/fixer seems like it might be clunkier and soapier than I would prefer, but it improves on the former measure as this first year goes along — an achievement, given that that’s just seven episodes in total — and the latter isn’t …
TV Review: Justified, season 3
TV #27 of 2021: Justified, season 3 Structurally, I can admire the way that this season brings its various story threads crashing together at the end, but I’m increasingly thinking that the larger series is just not a great fit for me. Even setting aside the copaganda aspects and the fact that the program continues …
TV Review: Community, season 3
TV #24 of 2021: Community, season 3 This stretch of Community is its most serialized yet (and possibly ever; I don’t recall the later stuff too clearly). That’s always impressive in a sitcom, and it adds a nice sense of momentum to the year as various arcs unfold. Of course, the downside is that fewer …
TV Review: The Office, season 8
TV #54 of 2020: The Office, season 8 The first stretch of this show without original star Steve Carell is a real mess, immediately confirming that the producers had no idea who would be taking over for his character as branch manager when they ended the previous season on that cliffhanger of interviews. And that’s …
TV Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 4
TV #45 of 2020: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 4 I’m glad that this Clone Wars season is presented mostly chronologically, rather than the nonlinear hodgepodge of years before, but the narrative is still more scattered than I think I would prefer, with mini-arcs and standalone episodes that don’t really build on one another …
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TV Review: The Good Wife, season 3
TV #24 of 2020: The Good Wife, season 3 The third year of this law drama is its best one yet, and not only because it finally acts upon the romantic will-they-won’t-they dimension that’s mostly lingered in the background subtext for the first two seasons. There’s also the smart writing decision to bring Eli’s crisis …
TV Review: Shameless, season 2
TV #15 of 2020: Shameless, season 2 I like how this show seems to be following the Friday Night Lights model of jumping forward a few months in between seasons, using the time skip to refresh and reorient the plot by dropping some threads, advancing others, and introducing still more. I also appreciate that this …
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