a) "Dead To Me"
Linda Cardellini has certainly worked steadily in the two decades since "Freaks & Geeks," but after such a great start to her career, "Dead To Me" is one of the first things I've seen her in since then that's a comparably meaty role. "Dead To Me" reminds me a bit of last year's "Sorry For Your Loss" in how Christina Applegate's character grieves her husband and grapples with the expectations of being a 'perfect widow,' but there's a whole added suspense element to the show that drives the story forward. I would say that the show almost relies on it too heavily -- at least once an episode and often several times, Cardellini's character and/or the viewer think that her secret is about to be revealed, and the frequent fake-outs become kind of predictably, when really, it's the depth of the characters and their complicated relationships that really makes it so watchable. I didn't think that there was any way to keep that story going for more than one season, but I really liked the way they ended the last episode and set up the next season.
b) "Chernobyl"
An infamous and terrifying event in human history like Chernobyl seems like a good subject for a miniseries on paper. But after a couple episodes, I'm realizing that the whole story is so devoid of potential for moments of levity or joy or thrilling heroism that you might otherwise get in a tragic story that I find it hard to really get wrapped up in it. It also kind of makes you feel like Chernobyl was a pretty drab and unhappy place before the disaster, which, I dunno, maybe that's fair, but again, it doesn't leave a lot of room for the kind of dramatic arc that sustains a few hours of television. But it is really well made, the director Johan Renck has made a lot of really and memorable music videos so he brings a lot of visual flair to a fairly dark and shadowy show.
c) "Warrior"
In 1971, Bruce Lee pitched a wild west martial arts TV series called "The Warrior," and 48 years later, a show loosely based on his idea is on Cinemax. I'm not a big martial arts guy but this is incredibly fun to watch, you don't see this kind choreographed fighting with really artful prestige TV direction very often, it's an exciting combination. Andrew Koji and Olivia Cheng have such great onscreen chemistry.
d) "Bless This Mess"
I really enjoyed actress Lake Bell's directorial debut
In A World... a few years ago, so it's cool to see her co-create a series with "New Girl" creator Elizabeth Meriwether and direct the first episode. "Bless This Mess" is kind of a hoary old fish-out-of-water comedy about an urbanite couple who decides to go live on a farm in Nebraska, it's more light and amiable than funny per se, but that's not to say I don't enjoy watching it, glad to see that it got renewed for a second season.
e) "The Fix"
This ABC drama has already been canceled, and I won't miss it. Marcia Clark created a weird wish fulfillment series about a lawyer who failed to prosecute a black celebrity who committed murder, and then gets another chance when he murders again. Just a terrible idea for a show, frankly. Robin Tunney looks great for her age, though.
f) "Whiskey Cavalier"
This ABC drama has already been canceled, and I think I will actually miss it a little (although apparently the door hasn't closed on another network picking it up). The formulaic "Moonlighting" thing of 2 attractive spies working together and having will-they-or-won't-they chemistry is goofy but it works, Lauren Cohan is a fox and she's a good unsentimental foil to Scott Foley's ridiculously named title character. Bill Lawrence (of "Scrubs" and "Cougar Town" fame) is an exec producer and the show's banter is a little funnier than it needs to be for the show to work, which is fine by me.
g) "The Code"
A very serious military legal drama where every episode seems to build to some kind of climactic
A Few Good Men thing, fine for what it is but not really something I like to watch.
h) "Osmosis"
This French series, dubbed in English on Netflix in America, has a very "Black Mirror" premise about a near-future dating app that predict true love matches with a high degree of accuracy. I feel like this would be a big watercooler show if it was just a straight up American show, it moves a little slow but it's interesting.
i) "Unspeakable"
A miniseries about the AIDS crisis that focuses on how it effected blood banks in Canada and how they unintentionally spread the virus before they understood it. Some really sad stories, a bit dry but well acted.
j) "Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics And Men"
I've only watched 1 of the 4 episodes of this miniseries so far but it's pretty impressive, there are so many stories between these 9 guys that you know they're just scratching the surface, but there's still a lot of new details surfacing.
k) "Selection Day"
One of the kind of fun things about Netflix branching out internationally is that you have access to multiple shows about a topic you never thought you'd see one show about, like cricket in India. In the last few months alone there's been both the documentary series "Cricket Fever: Mumbai Indians" and the scripted "Selection Day."
l) "Made In Heaven"
Amazon's "Made In Heaven" also takes place in India, but the dialogue is in English and it feels like a very polished mainstream rom com kind of thing about wedding planners. It's pretty charming and entertaining.
m) "DC Super Hero Girls"
My 9-year-old son is unfortunately already at the point where he will veer away from shows and movies that have a female protagonist or are in any way outwardly 'girly,' but I'm glad that my other 4-year-old son hasn't gotten any such hangups yet and can really enjoy a show like "DC Super Hero Girls." The series was previewed in a short before
Teen Titans Go! To The Movies last year and it definitely follows a bit in the footsteps of "Teen Titans Go," if a little less over-the-top silly, but still pretty funny.
n) "Ultraman"
A new Netflix anime series of the classic character, I like the animation style but I don't know if it's something I would want to watch a lot.
o) "Mission Declassified"
I feel like there are a lot of cable shows about historical myths and mysteries, but the Travel Channel's "Mission Declassified" feels a little more serious and research-based than a lot of them, with an experienced investigative journalist looking at old cases like D.B. Cooper or the Lindbergh kidnapping and, while not necessary finding any blockbuster new revelations, looking at it all pretty thoroughly and coming up with plausible theories.
p) "Mental Samurai"
As funny as Rob Lowe was on "The Grinder" and "Parks And Recreation," he seems to be kind of a dickhead in real life. So I mostly find it a little sad but mostly funny that his career of perpetually bouncing around from one TV gig to another has finally led him to hosting a ridiculous game show, which reminds me a lot of the fictional game show Matt LeBlanc hosted on "Episodes." "Mental Samurai" is actually kind of cleverly devised, aside from the stupid name. But FOX already has another gig lined up for Rob Lowe, starring in a "9-1-1" spinoff next year.
q) "Single Parents"
Of all the shows that the broadcast networks rolled out last fall, I'm only still watching about 3 of them now at the end of the season, and "Single Parents" is by far my favorite. I think I'm slowly converting my wife to the show too. The really remarkable thing is not that the main cast is funny but that the children in the cast, particularly Tyler Wladis, get some of the biggest laughs.
r) "Killing Eve"
Sandra Oh deservingly got all the awards for the first season of "Killing Eve," but there's no show without Villanelle, and I've really enjoyed Jodie Comer in the second season, where you see her not just as a psychopath but as someone really clever and resourceful about deceiving people and becoming whoever she needs to be for the situation.
s) "Good Girls"
This show has really settled into its 2nd season confidently, thrusting a trio of suburban mothers into the usually male-dominated genre of 'person embarks on a life of crime while trying to maintain some normalcy in their family life' television. As with most of these shows, there's a balancing act of how far their misadventures can go without hitting some point of no return, especially since "Good Girls" is on NBC and is a bit lighter than it would probably be as a cable drama. And they're managing that balancing act pretty well, the Beth and Manny affair is kind of the right perverse twist the show needed to get more interesting.
t) "Happy!"
The novelty of this show kind of wore off for me by the end of the first season, I like it fine but I don't find it as subversive or funny as it seems to think it is. But making Christopher Fitzgerald's role bigger in the second season is a good call, he's an entertaining villain.
u) "Brockmire"
"Brockmire" took its entertaining misanthropy and debauchery to an absolute extreme in the 2nd season, so it seems right for them to reset a bit with Jim Brockmire getting sober and starting over, fun to see Richard Kind and Martha Plimpton and J.K. Simmons added to the proceedings.
v) "The Tick"
It's hysterical that there's a villain on the 2nd season named Edgelord, but I'm starting to wish there was a little more of The Tick in this iteration of "The Tick," I get wanting to center the show on the more three dimensional characters and not overuse him, but Peter Serafinowicz is so great in the role and sometimes I feel like I'm waiting too long for his scenes.
w) "Billions"
It was perhaps inevitable that "Billions" would flip the dynamic between its 2 main characters, but I'm glad that the 4th season finally did it so that we get to see Chuck and Axe as allies against everyone else, instead of just doing the cat-and-mouse thing against each other forever. The writing has been really sharp, I feel like everyone involved in this show is having so much fun with the characters and stories, particularly David Costabile.
x) "Superstore"
This season has been really funny, particularly the blizzard episode. That said, "Superstore" really pissed me off this season with the episode where Amy is forced to go to work the day after giving birth. It's treated as a bad and unfair thing by the characters but it's also kind of tolerated and accepted and played for laughs, and for a show that's generally been pretty good and realistic about the realities of retail work, I felt like that was a huge misfire that made a few characters seem like worse people than they did before.
y) "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"
I'm happy that the show didn't mess a step in the transition from FOX to NBC -- I hated to see Chelsea Peretti exit the show mid-season, but the ensemble is so big that it hasn't made too much of a difference. The episode where Terry Crews shaved off his eyebrows was a particular favorite.
z) "Saturday Night Live"
It was surreal to finally see Adam Sandler come back and host "SNL," almost a quarter century after he was fired. I liked that he did a whole song about getting fired just to kind of stick it to Lorne, there were a couple other fun moments but I kinda hate Sandler so it was more of a curiosity for me than anything else. I think some of my favorite hosts this year were Emma Stone and, surprisingly, Halsey.
