The A.V. Club helps you navigate the Streamapocalypse

Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda’s deadpan true-crime parody prompts a specific type of laughter. It’s guttural and rooted in disbelief—a sharp, shallow exhalation that’s shorthand for “I can’t believe someone is getting away with this.” And yet somebody did, and they’ve managed to do it twice now, with American Vandal returning for a second season that manages not only to create a plausible justification for its existence, but also to build upon the emotional and thematic resonance that kept the first season’s mountain of dick jokes aloft. But that’s not the real reason you’re going to want to wade right into the second season, letting every new cliffhanger pull you deeper and deeper. You want an answer to the question “Who is the Turd Burglar?” American Vandal is going to give it to you, as Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam Ecklund (Griffin Gluck) head up the coast to investigate an escalating series of gastrointestinal pranks at a tony Washington prep school, adding some techniques from the Errol Morris toolbox—reenactments and head-on, Interrotron-style interviews—to their repertoire. At St. Bernadine, American Vandal does another surgical dissection of timeless high school social strata and contemporary social media, with new supporting player Travis Tope stealing the show with his embodiment of an extremely specific type of smartest-guy-in-the-room dork. Word to the wise: Keep meal times and American Vandal times separate, especially during the first five minutes when, as the saying goes, shit gets real. [Erik Adams]

Forever, season one (Amazon Prime)

There’s very little we can say about Alan Yang (Master Of None) and Matt Hubbard’s (30 Rock) Forever without completely spoiling it. What we can comment on is its penchant for montage, slow pacing, and awkward (but charming) hyper-realism—much like that in Master Of None—which, through a series of genuinely surprising twists, quickly evolves into something else entirely. Fred Armisen and a particularly excellent Maya Rudolph star as Oscar and June, respectively, a married couple who begin to reevaluate their pleasant but mundane relationship in the face of sudden unforeseen circumstances. While the former Saturday Night Live stars bring a dry humor to their performances, the comedy is secondary at best to the show’s high-concept dramatic plot, which asks a lot of big questions but (ironically) doesn’t have enough time to fully dive into all of them. Among its points of interest are the unfathomable concept of forever, existential boredom and societal entrapment, and the types of things you can put in bowls. If you plan on watching Forever, you should do it quickly before it’s spoiled for you—and it comes in eight perfectly snackable 30-minute episodes, so it certainly won’t take you forever to watch. [Maggie Donahue]

The First, season one (Hulu)

Space is gorgeous. All eight episodes of The First, Hulu’s near-future space-and-family drama from House Of Cards creator Beau Willimon, underline that fact, even in outings more concerned with events on Earth. But hey, Earth, death, recovery, and grief all look beautiful, too. Part of that is surely due to the series’ reported $54.6 million budget, which shows itself in everything from the inevitable giant space machines to the tasteful, modernist homes that its characters inhabit. But it’s hard not to imagine that most of it went to its cast, which includes Natascha McElhone, LisaGay Hamilton, Keiko Agena, James Ransone, and Sean Penn, the last of whom dips deep into the well of tortured-swole he’s got. You may have noticed that there’s not much mention of plot in the description above, because while there’s definitely a story—a tragedy surrounding the first manned voyage to Mars spurs a years-long effort to try again—the top priorities are the characters and the visual world, which makes The First an engaging, if not always a gripping, watch. Unusually, Hulu’s releasing all eight episodes at once, but this is still probably best in small doses. [Allison Shoemaker]