It’s one of the best made series on TV, in terms of writing, performance, and direction, but it rarely bothers with anything that would immediately call attention to itself.

While the cast is solid enough that it can sell almost anything, taking a third trip to Camp Firewood makes for a reunion that would’ve been best left to our imaginations.

An often thrilling look at what TV can be when it looks to its past and finds ways to update old formats for the future.

Ozark’s insistence on presenting the grimiest version of its story possible stands in the way of explaining why anything within its universe is happening. The presentation and the characters and the smug tone eventually coalesce into something deeply irritating. ... Ozark is offensive and doesn’t understand why it’s offensive.

Insecure season two is more self-assured than ever.

It’s called Will, and its focus lies in its shallow, dull, and unconvincing portrait of Shakespeare. What a waste.

GLOW, both the show and the show within the show, lives and dies by its ferocious women.

Like eating a stale Hydrox cookie when all you want is an Oreo. Combine that lack of inspiration with general Netflix bloat--this thing is 10 hour-long episodes, and its story doesn’t really start until the last five minutes of the whole season--and you have a series that feels like a single-handed indictment of Netflix’s entire creative model.

Snowfall doesn’t get all the way there in season one, but it comes further than you’d expect. And inside its veins runs something vital and alive and different.

This season of Orange gets better and better the longer it goes (though, weirdly, the slasher homage is dropped into the middle of the otherwise very good back half of the season), and the final three episodes go from strength to strength. ... There are a lot of plot holes and missteps along the way. But that doesn’t negate the power of the closing passages of the season.

After five seasons, but especially in 2017, House of Cards’ curdled cynicism feels less and less like weary wisdom and more like a high school student flipping off a civics teacher.

It all chugs along under the basic idea that you don’t need to have too many feelings about what’s actually happening onscreen as long as everything is beautiful to look at--until the final two minutes of the pilot, when two estranged lovers meet in an empty room.

What makes that bigger picture so maddeningly compelling is the way The Keepers explores a pathology of abuse and its effect on victims, chronicles the strange inescapability of trauma, reflects on how society treats the word of women, and reveals the shattering reality that justice can feel so empty.

The new TV series Downward Dog takes on loneliness and fear and all the other gunk that gets caught in your spiritual gutters when you start feeling low. It can be warm, but only once its characters push their way through searing self-doubt to get to the other side.

Given Dee Dee’s continual emphasis on appearance throughout Gypsy’s life, it’s hardly surprising that we’re left with questions about Gypsy’s ultimate level of control over her own narrative; yet what’s really surprising is how easy it is to believe her when she says she misses her mother. It’s one of many contradictions and paradoxes that Carr balances throughout the film, and one of many moments that make Mommy Dead and Dearest a must-watch for any fan of true crime, or any fan of stories from the depths of the troubled South.

This might be the show of the year. ... Even the benefits of giving itself space to experiment, or of having those funny jokes, aren’t what makes Master of None’s second season as good as it is. What really makes it work is its endless faith in the idea that people will take care of each other in the end.

As a TV show, I Love Dick’s makes the smart choice to lean into the book’s aggression, giving Hahn the freedom to fully let loose. The series embraces every sordid, horny detail of Chris’s desire, staring viewers directly (and often literally) in the face and daring us to blink.

The best thing season two does is dig into both how alluring and how dangerous the sensates’ connection is.

With 14 new episodes--the third of which is MST3K’s 200th overall--there are bound to be both hits and misses. And sure enough, once the initial excitement of recognizing the familiar format and bad movies we love has worn off, the differences begin to peek through.

For as fantastically fun as American Gods’ gods can be, the series is at its best when it brings the story a little closer to earth.

Though the film’s writing tends to make too much of Rebecca’s bafflement and culture shock as she peers into the lives of the Lacks family, Wolfe never frames the Lacks as sheer spectacle.

[Girlboss] devotes its early episodes to doing nothing more than proving that Sophia is a surly jerk. But once Sophia finally starts to let go of her self-defeating instincts and make things happen for herself and for Nasty Gal, Girlboss becomes a lot more interesting, and a lot more fun.

Stripping these characters of whatever power they previously had and scattering them to the winds forces everyone into their smallest, meanest selves--which frankly becomes hard to watch, and not in Veep’s usual “cringe because it’s so real” kind of way.

A show operating at the peak of its powers. ... It feel[s] very much like a series that has found its moment in history.

None of this would work without a great performance at its center, and as Offred, Moss is astonishing. ... At every corner, The Handmaid’s Tale brims with invention.

For now, the series functions much the same as the oil the McCullochs desperately seek in the early 1900s storyline: It’s obvious something is there, but nobody has figured out how to get to it.

While not every moment works, Brockmire the TV series offers a world worth visiting, and characters worth rooting for, even when they stumble.

Once it settles in and allows itself to get weird after the premiere gets the setup out of the way, Archer: Dreamland becomes the hilarious ride it should’ve been from the start.