THERE'S TOO MUCH TV - Roundup January 2022

“What are you watching?” is pretty much the automatic question I get when I tell people what I do for a living.

I don’t have time to do full conversations on everything I’m watching but here are some stray thoughts on everything I’ve watched in the last two months. Some mild spoilers for shows that are not in season 1.

Arcane (Season 1)

I didn’t walk into Arcane with high expectations mostly because the track record on video game adaptations is lackluster, at best. Having never played League of Legends, I can’t speak to how accurate an adaptation it was, but the show has some truly beautiful animation and excellent character work. I wrote more about it here, but I was blown away.

Euphoria (Season 2)

To quote friend of the channel Thomas Flight, “This show has the drip.” There are a lot of things to critique about Euphoria, but you can’t take anything away from the show’s visuals. Its cinematography and lighting design are second to none. While I’m not usually someone to praise something just because it’s shot on physical film, it absolutely elevates season 2 of Euphoria, at least visually.

For All Mankind (Season 2)

I crammed season 2 of For All Mankind in December to cover my bases for end of the year purposes, and boy am I glad I did. For All Mankind is one of the best worldbuilding shows on TV right now, imagining a world where the space race heated up instead of tapering out. The second season saw it enrich all of its characters and expand its world, while still maintaining the optimism that the space race once filled humanity with — a hope for a better tomorrow.

Foundation (Season 1)

I liked Foundation, but didn’t love it, which isn’t uncommon for giant, slow-burn, worldbuilding sci-fi. It often takes these shows a season to get off the ground (looking at you, The Expanse), but Foundation’s first season was a solid…foundation (I’m sorry). It is in the running for best production value on TV and it does what you want all great worldbuilding shows to do: feel like we’re just tipping our toes into a vast ocean to explore.

Gilmore Girls (Season 1)

You’d be hard pressed to find a show that starts as strongly as Gilmore Girls. Each of its first five episodes is near-perfectly constructed TV, establishing distinct characters, a rich world, and a unique tone. I’ve commented on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s writing style before and have seen large swaths of Gilmore Girls before, but never in order from the very beginning. It’s truly incredible how quickly she establishes the breakneck pace of her dialogue and pop culture references, and how fully realized it is from the first scene.

How To with John Wilson (Season 2)

When I visited my friends back home in Boston for the holidays, the first thing I did was sit them down and make them watch How To with John Wilson. It is perfect. You can read more about my thoughts on How To, both here and here.

New Girl (Season 1-2)

Conventional sitcoms are the bedrock of television, the most popular genre of the most popular media medium in American history. I don’t have the numbers but that feels right. Nearly every hangout-style comedy needs time to find and establish its dynamic so it’s always interesting to see one that you know succeeds (New Girl ran for 7 seasons and is still enormously popular on Netflix) and watch as it discovers its formula. New Girl is not without its growing pains, but by the end of the second season I can definitely understand its reputation.

Only Murders in the Building (Season 1)

Only Murders is the kind of show you’ll binge over a weekend, a fun romp with charismatic actors. It plays with the genre conventions of true crime podcasts and manages to stay light and fun to hang out with. Is it groundbreaking? No. Is it good? Sure!

Ozark (Season 4.1)

It’s tough to grade the first half of Ozark’s final season, because it feels like only half a season. There’s still a lot left up in the air and things are only starting to heat up by the time the seventh episode ends. I want to say more about the show as I’ve really grown to appreciate it, but it feels like any kind of judgment on new characters or plot developments would be incomplete at best. It’s a good half-season, but it’s only half a season.

Search Party (Season 5)

Search Party is a show that has completely reinvented itself every single season. Not only does it change directions with new storylines each season, but it completely changes tone and genre. The final season was easily its most ambitious, pushing the envelope in brain-breaking ways. Seemingly no idea was too wild to be included, and there’s no other way this show could or should have ended. Farewell to one of the most inventive TV shows of the 21st Century.

Station Eleven (Season 1)

While Station Eleven took a couple episodes to find its stride, its last four episodes earned the hype. A lot of people have told me that it reminds them of The Leftovers and, while I can’t say they’re equals, I definitely understand the comparison. Station Eleven, at its best, is a meditation on grief, trauma, and, most importantly, healing. “Goodbye My Damaged Home” remains the highlight of the season for me, but the penultimate episode is a close second.

Succession (Season 3)

I’ve written so extensively about Succession at this point, so I won’t belabor the point. Succession was my number 1 show of the year. Somehow it wasn’t in every critic’s top 5 for 2021. I don’t get it.

The Bachelor (Clayton’s Season)

Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in. Clayton is in the running for dumbest bachelors this show has ever seen, which can’t be seen as anything but an achievement. Kudos. He took away a rose because she FaceTimed a man before she was on the show. I also can’t help but notice that he looks exactly like Luther from The Umbrella Academy, another meathead of a character. I also think it’s hilarious that the host this season just looks like he’s Clayton from the future, coming back in time to try to stop him from making the same mistakes, but unable to because of the way time loops work.

The Expanse (Season 6)

I’ve been taking my time with the final season of The Expanse because I’m trying to make it last. It is quite possibly the best sci-fi show of the 2010s because of its incredible ability to balance its vast array of characters, factions, and ideologies. In the midst of the Marco Inaros Rebellion, The Expanse always relays to its viewers an internal logic for all of its groups. We can disagree with Marco but we also understand why he was inevitable. We can be on Holden’s side but we also understand his failings. More than any show I’ve seen recently, The Expanse embodies something Innuendo Studios identified in his video essay about Princess Mononoke — characters can be wrong and worthy of empathy at the same time.

The Great (Season 1-2)

A friend described The Great to me this way: Season 1 was Joe Biden’s campaign, Season 2 is Joe Biden’s presidency. That’s not a judgment on the show so much as a judgment of Catherine’s ruling policies. The Great follows Catherine the Great’s rise to prominence in an anachronistic and occasionally true version of 18th Century Russia. The show is created by Tony McNamara (The Favourite) and showcases his trademark witty banter, which I found a little tiring by the end of the second season, but that could also be because I binged season 2 instead of stretching it out.

The Witcher (Season 2)

The Witcher (or Witchman, as I like to call it) doesn’t make a lot of sense. The first season revolved around a concept called The Law of Surprise that isn’t really explained, and while I read up on it, it still doesn’t make much sense. The second season ditched some of the time jumping that made season 1 hard to follow, but I can’t say it made much more sense. I also can’t say that I was paying close attention. Witchman is a fun show to have on in the background, one that you’ll get sucked into occasionally but one that doesn’t require close watching.

Yellowjackets (Season 1)

Yellowjackets is one of the best shows of 2021, a genre-bending tour de force that is some combination of American Horror Story, Lost, Desperate Housewives, and One Tree Hill. I’ve heard some people call it cheesy at times, but I can’t find it in my heart to say anything negative about this show. It’s one of my favorite new shows, one where I’m invested in all of the storylines going on past, present, and future.