The first five episodes of that third season are as good as anything I’ve seen on TV this year.

This season proves once again that this show’s success is thanks to its incredible visuals just as much as its writing.

As the film finishes, there’s a desire to puzzle out Patrick’s life a little more, to give him the ending you think he deserves. And maybe a small wish that there would be just a bit more Looking left to see.

Stranger Things might be a hodgepodge of lots of other things, but there’s a sincerity to it that’s hard to fake. And in its appropriations of those other things, it somehow becomes something new that rises above its collage-like origins.

Vice Principals could end up being some solid fun to fly through on a lazy Saturday. If it decides to double down on its characters’ grosser instincts, however, it could fade into the list of countless angry-dude-driven comedies that are just angry for the sake of it.

Yes, all of this has been done before. But at every turn, Price’s writerly flourishes give The Night Of’s characters more depth than the usual stock figures. The result is surprisingly invigorating.

Roadies isn’t all there yet, but it’s trying something different.

The new status quo and even more skewed power balances within the prison doesn’t just test every single character. It pushes all of them to their limits, and eventually throws them right the hell off the cliff they’ve been teetering on the edge of.

O.J.: Made in America might be the most essential TV series of the year.

Appleby and Zimmer's chemistry isn't just electric, but acidic, burning through the camera lens so fast you almost forget their characters are doing truly terrible things in the name of ratings.

It's so relentlessly self-serious that it becomes increasingly tough to sit through. There's no levity or break from the insistence that what we're watching is a very important story about a family falling apart. If the characters were more active, or even just funnier, that might make them more palatable to hang out with. As it is, they're all mostly there to glower and worry about what they stand to lose.

It'd be easy for Preacher to operate as a cut-and-dried adaptation; the comic is vibrant, with an incredibly specific tone and complicated backstory. But in reimagining it for television, AMC dug a little deeper, and came up with something more satisfying and complex.

With the confidence of a show that knows exactly what it wants to be--and with the titanic Bamford anchoring every scene with incredible empathy and generosity, Lady Dynamite manages to stand out amid the constantly churning fray of television by being entirely, proudly itself.

There's so much thought put into each scene, the composition of each frame, and the camera angles being used that you could mute the show and still come away with a brilliant, emotional story.

As The Walking Dead began its second season, the characters became mired in an endless storyline at a small farm in rural Georgia, a farm where they stayed for almost the entire season. The comics had done it, so the show did too. Fear the Walking Dead tells what appears to be a similar story, but it's over within an episode. Sometimes not having anybody to copy is the best thing that can happen.

What it wants to be is a surprisingly effective collection of one-act plays that are sprinkled with laughs but mostly dramatic in nature. What it is is an occasionally effective (but always daring) sitcom, filmed before a live studio audience and packed with smutty jokes.

It's a wild, weird blend of influences, and not all of it works. The Path is not a great TV show--not yet--but it's great-adjacent.

Ultimately, Petrie and Ramirez created a season that fully understands Daredevil's strengths and plays to them accordingly. But this second installment is underwritten, and has failed to build on the show's fine first season.

Season four is shot through with some of The Americans' most plaintively touching moments yet.

If you want a solidly executed version of the [cop drama] form--or just enjoy a good detective novel--then Bosch season two should do the trick.

It's a leaden, soggy mess, that only gets messier as it goes.

[And Then There Were None] is enormous fun: a lush, lurid, gothic fantasy of a murder mystery. It also has little in common with its source material.

As of its first four episodes, Underground is in a solid position moving forward, thanks to its breathless momentum and wonderful anchoring performances from Hodge, Smollett-Bell, Vann, and Miller in particular.

Season four's sweep is, in some ways, a little cheap (when you've written off as many characters as this show has, it's easy to buy gravitas by bringing a few back), but it's also entertaining.

If the series ultimately gives in to the kind of structural gimmicks that keep its first episodes from moving forward--like the flashbacks upon flashbacks--it could easily collapse in on itself and settle into being a decent, if unremarkable drama. But if it takes a step back, pares down some of those devices, and lets its compelling characters tell the stories, The Family could become something a whole lot more interesting.

The first episode is packed with juicy moments, in terms of both character and unexpected plot twists. By the end of the pilot, the show's combination of thematic thoughtfulness, buddy criminal character moments, and shocking blood spatter are very much in place.

It feels like just leaving the TV on as rerun after rerun piles up. The laugh lines are predictable. The gags play out exactly as you'd expect.

Love's first four episodes are so overstuffed with bland filler that episodes two, three, and four could've been cut altogether, and the show could've skipped right from the pilot with "The Date" without the plot losing much importance. The show's saving grace is that the far more interesting end of season one is a promising sign for season two, which Netflix ordered months before the show even premiered.