Great start and finish, a lot of kinda average episodes in the middle, with too many recurring jokes. The animal stuff is always great, though.
The last two episodes are amazing but for some reason I expected the whole season to be on that level. But still, it's fun and smart.
Well, it's a Joe Swanberg TV Show.
Great writing, great performances, gripping drama and a tiny hint of humour. Louis CK is one of the great contemporary authors.
Fun, smart, ambitious, maybe a bit pretentious, beautifully shot and crazily over the top, it's most of all a showcase for the great Ian McShane and the very good bunch of character actors that surround him. Sadly, Ricky Whittle is not on their level but I can live with it.
It's not as focused and balanced as season four, sometimes it drags, and the jumping around betweend drama and comedy is messier than usual (even though I generally still love it). But season four was almost perfect, so... That being said, when it works, it's still up there with the best TV around, brave, important, deep and smart. And funny, which in my book is never an issue. Because, you know, life is funny, even stupidly funny, even when it's not. And the final episode, once again, is great.
Another great adaptation (even though I kinda miss the dialogue about penises size between Hap and Florida) and a more emotional story than season one. It's fun, tense, thematically strong, visually interesting (even though Jim Mickle is clearly missed) and very well written. The cast is fabulous and the atmosphere is great. I can't wait for season three.
A great adaptation that gets basically everything that counts right. The cast is perfect, the feel is sweaty, dialogues are spot on and it's a lot of fun.
A wonderful adaptation if you don't care about huge changes from the source material or, even better, if (like myself) that's what you crave. It's smart, funny, full of surprises, visually interesting without becoming pretentious and thematically strong. And it's a lot of fun, which never hurts. Great TV.
Visually it goes from some nice things (mainly in the backgrounds department) to some awful stuff (mainly the characters). The writing is a bit clunky and pretentious, but at the same time the adaptation from the games is well made. It needs a little less silly monologues and a bit more action, possibly with a bigger budget, but the last two episodes show some potential. I kinda think that from season two it could be fun.
They tried to give us everything that made X-Files great. There's a couple of "mythology" episodes, there's the completely silly one (and it's the best one), there's the one with the B movie / slasher feel... it's all there. And they also tried to make it more relevant for this age in terms of themes and with the main storyline creeping up in every episode. On paper, it made sense. The problem is that X-Files is still in the same situation of the last couple of seasons: it's become quite stupid. The mythology episodes are extremely silly even if they don't want to be and the rest only works because there's some dumb fun in it.
It's a pity that the show got canceled, because the upcoming personal and professional failures would have been quite interesting to watch in this fictionalized way (and the Betty storyline deserved more closure). That being said, the series finale is great and the whole season is quite good, a return to form after the disappointing season three, though maybe not as good as the first two years. I'm gonna miss it.
Season 2 feels like the engine has been started and there's less preoccupation with the world building that occupied most of season 1. There are some nice storylines, pretty emotional stuff and a sense of hope against the feeling of impending doom that makes everything nicer to watch. I still have trouble with most of the young actors, but the rest of the cast is quite good.
As usual, more episodes mean more diluted storyline. Also, the whole setup of the finale battle and Sunny's behaviour in that situation are quite stupid. That being said, there's still fun to be had from Marton Csokas and Emily Beecham hamming it up, Daniel Wu and Cung Le jumping around, the nice fighting scenes and the whole bizarre mithology. Plus, Nick Frost.
Not as strong as season 2, this is already starting to feel a bit too formulaic, but there's a couple of really nice episodes and the final stretch is quite good.
It feels more confident than season one, with a better rhythm and more consistent overall quality. It's nice that it does not necessarily look for a fairy tale ending, but episode 5 is the only real standout.
Aziz Ansari pulls out his inner Louie and gives us an amazing, funny, challenging, stylish, deep season of TV. Wow!
Kinda like season two of The Flash, this starts really well, has a great mid season cliffhanger and then loses its momentum in having to fill too many episodes with not enough story. It's still fun, though, more fun than season 3, mainly because of the less crybaby attitude of Oliver Queen and the over the top villain. Actions is always good, the closing stretch of episodes is really engaging and, amazingly, it looks like a couple of deaths will stick. But I have to say the flashbacks are atrocious. It's not a full return to form but it's a fun season.
There's something missing here that was working so well in the previous seasons. The themes are interesting and the whole soapy part is fun, but there are also some misguided ideas (the gorilla!), there's less focus than usual on "the work" and there aren't many surprises, it all feels really predictabile. Also, what happened to Virginia's kids? :D Nice cliffhanger at the end, though.
The first half of the season is really good but then, after a great cliffhanger, it kinda loses its force and it seemes like (as usual) they had too many episodes to tell their story. It's still fun, the multiverse thing is quite entertaining, there's a very effective villain (even though its use is maybe too similar to season one) and when it clicks it's a lot of fun, but it's not as good as season one.
The whole time travel thing is quite fun, the ensemble cast works well and when it doesn't take itself too seriously, it's at the same time really entertaining and, I dare say, a bit moving. Sometimes the melodrama becomes too much, though, but by now that's to be expected from the Arrowverse series. And Vandal Savage is a fun villain, but that's also to be expected: the Arrowverse rarely misses the target with his big bad guys. Overall it's an entertaining show.
The usual Arrowverse formula is starting to feel a bit stale, but this is a good first season. The writing is consistedly fun, the melodrama is not overwhelming, the cast is generally quite effective, the feminist/inclusivity themes give it some freshness and make it an important show for teenagers, kind of in the spirit of Buffy. Melissa Benoist is adorable and really good in the title role. The low point: Mehcad Brooks is an atrocious actor, but maybe it's partially fault of his dumb character.
All the Watchdogs stuff was still extremely boring and hopefully it is now out of the way, but the rest of the season was great. I don't know how it's possible, but Ghost Rider worked quite fine. The separation in three different blocks united by a common storyline was really smart and helped to avoid fillers. The LMD storyline was thrilling and the Agents of Hydra bit was honestly amazing. I like how it made the characters evolve and all the drama it generated, even though Mack has the issue of a really bad actor. And I'm pretty curious about next season: is the space thing related to the new Avengers movie?
That little hand at the end of episode five.
Fuck House of Cards and all the other Netflix series, this is the one. And this season, jesus, is more amazing, deep, tense and moving than ever. Wow.
Quite good when they do not speak.
The first half of the season is kind of a mess, maybe too ambitious from a plot standpoint, clearly lacking the rythm and the inventions of the first two years. But then it comes together, the fun comes back and the last few episodes are really great, with an amazing season finale and a great cliffhanger.
A great season opener followed by a disappointing first half of a season. But I did have fun with the second half, with some over the top stuff (the cable between cars, the kinda Mad Max tribe, the flying sword... it felt like they borrowed stuff from Z Nation), a bit more dynamism in going around with the different communities and some nice twists. The final death was very predictable, though the battle was fun, even if not particularly well executed (as always with action in The Walking Dead). Overall a watchable season, with some nice ideas (the Eugene conversion is fun, Daryl and Carol meeting again was cool, Morgan losing it was great, I like the more trashy ideas, Negan is fun but underused), but I hope that next year they really ramp it up with the war. Even though I fear that the "war" will be four episodes of actual fighting and twelve episodes of mediocre actors stumbling on bad dialogues.
How can the best TV show of all get better every year? No idea, but that's what we're witnessing.
A really good second season, that doesn't betray the ideas and the setup by falling into the "will they or will they not?" formula. Instead, it works on telling how a love story between two troubled and fundamentally human persons can evolve. Really, really nice.
