The gamesmanship between Marius and Luka’s people isn’t as bouncy as what we got last time, even if a lot of the individual cons are a pleasure to watch unfold. Much more frustrating, though, are all the non-Marius parts, and boy are there a lot of them. The season essentially turns into two separate shows that occasionally intersect.

Star Trek can be whatever it wants. Discovery is Star Trek. Maybe even, in time, a really good merging of past traditions and present television.

It’s significantly better across the board [than season 3]. Brooker and company have a firmer handle on the proper architecture for each story (only one, “Crocodile,” really drags), and if the show is starting to repeat itself a bit (the last episode of this batch, “Black Museum,” is basically Black Mirror’s Greatest Hits), the execution tends to compensate for the spottiness or familiarity of the ideas.

It’s compulsively watchable, emotionally engaging, and almost always one step ahead of where you think it’s going.

7 Days in Hell was an out-of-nowhere delight. If Tour de Pharmacy isn’t quite as great, it’s still reassuring to know this band can come back together every few years for more hilarity that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Creator Davey Holmes (Shameless, In Treatment) was wise to not aim directly at the movie, but his replacement ideas are a mixed bag.

It’s familiar stuff that Kelley could adapt in his sleep--The Practice never seemed to run out of charismatic serial killers who always managed to hoodwink poor stupid Bobby Donnell until after he was suckered into getting them an acquittal--but the details, and the performances, are all well-drawn enough to make it a pleasing rendition of this classic rock tune.

grown-ish is less consistently funny than its parent series, but it’s likable and smart, and has surrounded Shahidi with an appealing cast of new faces, plus one familiar one.

For this to work requires a strong actor playing Cora, and Biel (who also executive produces) delivers.

Ritter is so charismatic, and so good at toggling between sarcasm and outright pain, that a lot of this is more watchable than it should be, given the glacial pace at which the plot moves and the amount of time spent on lesser characters and filler stories.

Marissa brings so much energy and fun into every scene she’s in, she even manages to make Maia seem vaguely interesting through their friendship. The rest of the show is still an entertaining (if uneven) continuation of the original’s world, but her scenes are so much livelier than anything else.

It’s the rare revival that not only justifies its existence, but draws most of its strength from how much time has passed and what’s happened in the interim.

It’s fun in individual moments, but frustrating overall.

So no, this Runaways isn’t a literal recreation of a beloved comic. But it works in its own right, and feels more fun and durable than a lot of its Marvel TV counterparts.

It boldly commits to its campy, overcast aesthetic--and it’s here I’ll note that I’m not naturally inclined toward teen melodrama, but can be drawn in if the execution’s great enough (like The O.C., or Everwood, whose creator Greg Berlanti is an executive producer here)--while struggling at times to turn its characters from archetypes into individuals.

The show’s generally more amiable than it is funny, with most of the overt laughs coming from Mary McCormack as Casey, sarcastic executive from the company that bought Cat Factory. (“Think of me as a sexy Darth Vader,” she tells them.) But the genuine affection the friends have for each other is charming (and in many ways a bigger deviation from Silicon Valley than the size of everyone’s bank accounts), and the better stories find a sweet spot between absurdity and sincerity.

Trust has its own flaws, but it also has that blend of true crime, macabre comedy, the foibles of the rich and famous, and social issues that made The People v. O.J. so addictive.

It’s not peak, season three X-Files, because too much time has passed, too many stories have been told, and the world is too different from the one in which Mulder and Scully first partnered. But, the mythology episode aside, it’s much better than it has any business being, particularly given what we got two years ago.

It is, like First Day of Camp, very hit-or-miss. Some of the newbies never entirely click, while other relative latecomers (particularly Wain and Lake Bell as Hebrew-speaking lovers who rope Ken Marino’s muscular virgin Victor into solving their fertility issues) inject some fresh life into the proceedings given the absence of some characters and the diminishing returns of others.

Taboo is slow, dark (visually as well as tonally) and unrelentingly humorless. Any of those three qualities on its own would be fine, but put together in service of what’s ultimately a trashy, if pretentious, revenge story, it’s an utter slog, and the biggest creative misstep FX has made in a while.

It’s as lively as it is poignant, and at its best when it’s demonstrating how the personal and the political can overlap, and how they can come into conflict.

Orange Is the New Black is a frequently great, occasionally maddening TV show. That’s still the case even in a season that only covers three days in the lives of its many, many, many intricate characters.

Santa Clarita Diet is an unfortunate collection of mismatched parts, and gory humor that quickly becomes numbing.

What might have felt like a novel idea 10 or 15 years ago--middle-aged white anti-hero does something terrible to help his family, and only gets pulled in deeper and deeper--is now so tired that it would require sheer brilliance to come out feeling as fresh and untainted as all the money that Marty cleans. And Ozark isn’t up to that challenge.

There’s a very important, delicate line that a comedy like this can’t cross: the one where it could be seen as inviting viewers to laugh at Sam’s many quirks (his obsession with penguins and all other things Antarctic, for instance). Atypical never crosses it--Gilchrist’s performance is too sincere and vulnerable to allow it--but at times a lot of the whimsy is generated from how exasperated his loved ones are at dealing with him.

Not every Room 104 story worked for me, but I’m glad I kept going long enough to make it to the dance episode, and the best ones were so powerful that I’ll happily gamble a half-hour at a time on the others. This one simple hotel room can become anything, and when it turns into just the right thing, look out.

Altered Carbon could become almost anything. But as with most Netflix series--as well as with most Meths--that limitless potential can too often lead to sedentary self-indulgence.

There’s a potentially great show lurking not far beneath the surface ... But every time the stronger version of the series gets its head above water, it gets shoved back down by a puzzling creative choice that left me wondering if it's worth waiting around to see if Shaw and company can achieve SMILF's full potential.