Are the members of the Bureau Underground supposed to be a bunch of goddamn morons?

In the penultimate episode of its first season, Pose pulls out all the stops, harnessing all of the strengths it has developed over the course of its first six episodes—fully realized character development, compelling visual storytelling, and narratives that feel deeply personal while still having larger cultural…

I see what you’re doing this season, The Affair. With our now slightly expanded cast, the show can offer parallel actions and themes across character arcs, with either same or differing motivations. For example, when Cole and Luisa had sex on the kitchen counter right before their business dinner, it was both a…

Serialization can do wonders for TV shows. It can pay off emotional investment in characters, allow writers to tell more complex, nuanced stories, and, when done effectively, can create something incredibly powerful over time. But it can also create problems, and the one we’re stuck in now with Preacher is probably…

“Dirt,” the second episode of Sharp Objects, is a study in contradictions. Those contradictions revolve around beauty and brutality, grief and cruelty, familial love and twisted obsession. These contradictions exist in a tight, sharp symbiosis; they’re like the thin sides of the needle that Camille drives…

Who Is America?, the new Sacha Baron Cohen series that Showtime’s touted as “the most dangerous TV show ever,” opens with video clips that portray a starry-eyed, sepia-toned vision of America before accelerating into a barrage of recent news footage: President Donald Trump mocking a disabled person; adult film…

There is a lot of potential in “Who Is Gizmoduck?” There’s the story of a young intern who has access to power beyond his imagination (power, responsibility, etc.). There’s the story of an even younger duck who believes in the hero who saved him, only to be disappointed in what he sees, but to also inspire said hero…

The Great British Baking Show doesn’t do drama. It’s not interested in last minute saves and surprise turnarounds, in emotional twists and turns and challenges that set the bakers up for failure. That’s one of the show’s chief pleasures, its low-stress, high-empathy emphasis on process, hard work, and the satisfaction…

The first season of Harlots was an unexpected delight: a dialed-to-eleven revenge drama with a stellar cast, featuring historically accurate deshabille, and—perhaps most important—everyone referring to each other using full names whenever possible.

After two seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, many hours of great acting and alternately frustrating and thrilling storytelling, some moments of horror so stark they seem to stop the heart and some so indulgent they seem like punishment for punishment’s sake, the occasional perfect needle-drop and far more imperfect ones,…

Every season of The 100, with the exception of the remarkable, near-perfect second season, goes through a slump. Every season reaches a point in the middle where the story starts to sag, the motivations of the characters become murky, and the episodes become a little less compelling. It’s a pattern that this season…

First, to eat some crow.

Well, if the goal of tonight’s Ghosted was to make me feel a little better about the fact that we’re rapidly running out of time with these characters: Mission accomplished, I guess.

If Preacher’s third season (what little there is of it so far) is struggling to convey the real menace of Angelville, you can consider “Gonna Hurt” as something of a corrective. Last week, Jesse made his big play to get out. It was, and I’m being kind here, a stupid mess. (Jesse’s plan, I mean. The episode wasn’t…

The affair part of The Affair has long since passed, so we really have to wonder what the point of this story is any more. First we had Noah and Alison, then their perspectives branched out to Helen and Cole; now all four of our main characters have different partners or prospective love interests (and all four of…

Toward the end of the first episode of Sharp Objects, a teenage girl tells her half-sister that, “Mama says I’m incorrigible.” Her tone winks with mischief, her words bright with a quicksilver menace. She’s wearing a prim, floral-patterned dress, her mother’s living doll (as she has called herself only moments before)…

It’s been a warm and inviting season thus far, but something has been just a little off with The Great British Baking Show. There’s been a bit of a remove between the hosts, Mel and Sue, and the bakers, and while some of the challenges have worked like gangbusters, others have been underwhelming. This may be airing as…

With this arc, a ton of 150 episodes’ worth of Steven Universe storylines are starting to pay off in real, seemingly final ways—or if not final, then at least something close to it. Bringing long-running stories to a satisfactory conclusion is hard on series with 22- and 42-minute episodes; it’s even harder with 11.…

A wedding is a pretty damn good setting for some Steven Universe comedy. As “Made Of Honor” kicks off, everyone is trying to pull together to plan Ruby and Sapphire’s wedding, working off an enormous binder Steven has been compiling over the course of his whole life. It’s very sweet to see Pearl get excited about the…