TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 5

TV #29 of 2022: Bob’s Burgers, season 5 Another strong year of Bob’s Burgers, albeit maybe a slight step down from the one before, if only because I don’t know that I’d include any of these individual episodes on an all-time favorites list. But they generally remain funny and confident explorations of characters, with the …

TV Review: Scandal, season 4

TV #1 of 2022: Scandal, season 4 This series remains compulsively watchable in the ludicrous audacity of its various developments, and it occasionally gives us some powerful character arcs, like the one this year of a shattered First Lady Mellie Grant picking herself back up after personal tragedy. Mostly, though? It’s a whole lot of …

TV Review: Justified, season 6

TV #60 of 2021: Justified, season 6 There are elements in Justified that have kept me from ever wholly embracing the show, but it goes out on perhaps its finest run yet, an operatic movement that delivers poetic justice to most of our major players. True to its roots in the fiction of Elmore Leonard, …

TV Review: Broadchurch, season 2

TV #54 of 2021: Broadchurch, season 2 There are two major plots in the second run of this British crime drama, each building reasonably off the first year, which ended with a surprise arrest for the murder of little Danny Latimer. These intersect to a certain degree simply because some of the same people are …

TV Review: The Americans, season 3

TV #46 of 2021: The Americans, season 3 Another strong year of the deep-cover Cold War drama, albeit without as clear a throughline in thematic material or plot. Season one was largely focused on parallels between the Jennings marriage and its accompanying spy partnership, and the next one turned to the protagonists’ role as parents, …

TV Review: Star Wars Rebels, season 1

TV #32 of 2021: Star Wars Rebels, season 1 This cartoon is definitely kid-friendly, but it offers a lot to older Star Wars fans as well, and largely avoids the sort of slapstick humor and wacky episode premises that could be so grating in The Clone Wars. As the first TV show in the franchise …

TV Review: Community, season 6

TV #31 of 2021: Community, season 6 The mantra for Community fans clamoring for renewal was always, “Six seasons and a movie!” after a hopeful throwaway Abed line about the ultimately short-lived series The Cape. The sitcom too fell shy of that goal — technically I suppose a revival film someday wouldn’t be so surprising, …

TV Review: The Good Wife, season 6

TV #37 of 2020: The Good Wife, season 6 It was perhaps inevitable that The Good Wife would tumble from its near-perfect fifth year, but this following run is still a major disappointment. I actually don’t mind the first part of the season so much, although it’s very plot-driven compared to the program before, with …

TV Review: Shameless, season 5

TV #23 of 2020: Shameless, season 5 After a season of unusual focus and compelling character drama, it is disappointing but I suppose not surprising to see Shameless crashing back into its usual brand of messiness. I don’t mind these characters being self-destructive, but I do mind the lazy writing that too often lets them …

TV Review: Better Call Saul, season 1

TV #36 of 2019: Better Call Saul, season 1 This is my first time rewatching this program from the beginning, on the heels of my first time going back through its parent show. And overall, I really think I prefer this one. Breaking Bad is an amazing piece of television storytelling on any number of …

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