Glover and friends seem to have hit on a new way to surprise the audience: by making Atlanta, at least for a while, into a more conventional TV show. The three episodes given to critics are by far the most consistent in terms of story and tone of any comparable stretch from season one. ... Atlanta can be great because you never expect what it might do next. But that’s far from the only reason it’s great, as the start of season two so potently demonstrates.

Better Things makes its own leap by getting smaller, more intimate, and more focused. ... This was a great show in that first year. It’s even greater now.

Samurai Jack wasn’t a property I’d been dreaming of ever seeing again, but it’s emerged from its trip through time and space far better than most of the recent TV revivals.

It is still one of the very best shows on television. ... The first [episode] is more of a table-setter than some past Americans premieres have been, but the next two are outstanding, filled with the usual agonizing mix of spy thrills and family drama, and superb performances by Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Noah Emmerich, and the rest of the gang.

Halt and Catch Fire is almost over, yet these early episodes feel like it’s just getting warmed up. Enjoy it while you can.

It’s a stunning performance by Moss. ... The more we get to know Ofglen, the harder Bledel’s performance hits, until a pair of scenes late in the third episode will leave you a puddle on the floor from what she does in them. The cast is excellent overall, particularly Dowd and Strahovski. ... Riveting new drama.

The breadth of season two is much wider, as is the depth. Ansari and Yang are trying so many more things, and succeeding far more often than you might expect even after that wonderful debut.

The new episodes deftly bring its many stories together with as much righteous anger as artistry, I felt a tingle in a part of my brain that has largely laid dormant since my days as a TV tourist in West Baltimore.

There’s a palpable joy throughout, not only in the performances by actors like Thewlis and Winstead who play the more outgoing roles, but in the way that Hawley and his collaborators assemble the pieces. ... If the new season turns out to be a slightly diminished version of what came before, that’s still a pretty good place to be.

It’s startling and impressive how quickly Lucy becomes so central to everything--and how easily Findlay steps into such a prominent role on such a peculiar, funny show.

This isn’t a story taking place in a parallel timeline to Breaking Bad, but one traveling down the same terrible track. And, like Saul Goodman’s most important client once said, nothing stops this train. All we can do is travel along it with these superb actors and the gifted writers, directors, and editors who keep the train moving, trusting that we’ll be wildly entertained even as it takes us someplace we keep hoping it won’t.

It’s still one of the best shows on television.

The good Good Place news: this is still a wonderful show--better, in many ways, now that creator Mike Schur has laid his cards on the table for us all to see. The new installments are livelier and funnier than before, particularly the third and fourth episodes.

The drama’s second season (it debuts Friday; I’ve seen all 10 episodes) unfortunately isn’t at that level [of season one]. It’s peppered with moments, and even whole episodes, that evoke the quality of season one, but overall there are enough decisions to bring it down into “If you like this sort of thing, you’ll probably like this sort of thing” territory, where once it was the sort of show where I always had to preface my remarks with, “I know this doesn’t sound like it’s for you, but…”

The new episodes deftly explore what happens next for June and everyone else in a way that feels true to the source material, while also feeling a bit looser and more sure of itself now that the story is wholly the series’ own. ... In many ways it was even better than The Handmaid's Tale's already impressive debut season.

The new episodes are more nimble and fun without ever undercutting the tragedies at the heart of the story, and as a result it’s a better showcase for the appealing leads.

A new season that’s weirder and more vivid than before. ... The new season is at once more opaque and more direct than the first one. The premiere is so full of digressions that the plot eventually begins to feel like the real digression, yet by the end of it there’s a clear structure in place for how David will be dealing with the Shadow King.

The world and its citizens are so rich that it’s a pleasure to spend time in it at all, as written by this team, as directed by the great Michelle MacLaren and others (including Franco for a couple of episodes), and as performed by this superb cast.

The show doesn’t always hit the very narrow tonal target it’s aiming for, but when it does, it’s both intensely satisfying and feels like nothing else on TV.

Barry’s actions towards the end felt right and honest to me, and elevated the series over the well-executed but familiar and occasionally timid comedy of its first half.

The first four episodes of which are even more self-assured and odd and tragic and ridiculous than anything Galifianakis and company tried a year ago.

It’s a delight, existing so far outside the mold of recent superhero adaptations in the 2010s that it couldn’t see the mold even with telescopic vision. It’s a comic book show likely to be as appealing to people who have no interest in comic books as to those who can name David’s famous relative without Googling, if not more, and it’s easily the most exciting new series this young year in TV has offered so far.

There are so many interlocking agendas and conspiracies and secrets that the show feels more like work than it originally did, no matter how much Esmail tries to pare things back to the basics. Beat to beat, it can still knock me off my chair, but then we get back to keeping track of who’s really loyal to whom, when Angela might or might not be telling the truth, or what Tyrell’s motivations are, and the episodes can start feeling much longer than they actually are.

This final incarnation of Bates Motel still has all the strengths of the earlier years, but now with a real sense of shape and purpose.

It’s big and it’s catty, but it’s also smart and elegant, with the old Hollywood setting toning down some of Murphy’s more scattershot creative impulses.

Within the first five minutes, we get flashbacks to a nine-year-old James sticking his hand in a deep fryer just to feel something, and abundant evidence that he kills small animals. The show actually gets much darker from there. But also, somehow, much more lovable.

GLOW takes its time teaching its characters, and its audience, the tricks of the wrestling trade. ... But that’s okay, because it gets the far more entertaining part of the field--the soap opera, and the over-the-top commitment everyone makes to it--right. It’s an absolute pleasure.

It’s still not perfect, but the questionable viability of the whole thing now feels like part of the design. Gus fears disaster around every turn, and so do I, but when it works, it’s magic.