Even better than season one. The level of not giving a fuck and doing whatever it wants is amazing.
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.
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.
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.
How the fuck does this get better and better every year?
The pilot is really amazing and the rest of the series is not on the same level but it's still really, really good, with great characters and a wonderful pair of actors in John Turturro and Riz Ahmed. This is how procedural crime stories should be made.
At times the humour falls a bit flat and I'm not sure that the longer season was a good idea, but overall it's still lots of fun. The "timeline" plot device is kinda confusing but also really fascinating and the whole drama element works beautifully, with great character development.
Funny, sad, deep, tender, thoughtful, imperfect, unmissable.
After the disappointing season 5, this is a return to form and a great ending for one of the best series of recent years.
Poker Face is Natasha Lyonne doing her version of Columbo, with the mannerisms, the “wait, one more thing”, the chilled attitude and the fact that we know the culprit before she/he does. Plus, there’s the usual Lyonne vibe, a pseudo-superpower that makes things more bizarre, and an A-Team-like setup in which se has been framed and she roams around the USA helping people. Also, she kinda is like the comicbook Mickey Mouse, solving crimes while not being a cop. All of this is in a show that starts relatively “tame” but slowly becomes visually and structurally more and more ambitious, with some many homages to different kinds of detective stories and meta elements. It was created by Rian Johnson and it’s lovely.
Most of the time I have no idea what they're doing or talking about and it still is riveting.
Barry's third season seems thought for people who still didn't get (or forgot during the hiatus) that sure, there's comedy here, but it's really about digging in the depth of human souls, in the damage that comes from violence and in the impossibility of running from the consequences of your actions. And it's fearless in how it goes deep into the abyss. Visually more ambitious than ever, with a perfect cast of actors, incredibly written, it crazily dances on the delicate balance between farce, drama, thriller, comedy. It embraces the fascination for the guilty laugh, for making you feel disturbed by your laughs, and it doesn't do that through ridicule and cringe. No, it injects laughs into tragedy, anguish, pain, and always makes it work. It's a masterpiece and I can't wait to see what they are doing with season 4.
It takes a bit to find its rhythm (I honestly found quite boring a few of the first episodes) but then it becomes a fun ride, with lovely ideas, humour, adventure. Characters are great, visually it's lovely and David Tennant is David Tennant.
This is exactly the level of low key darkness I needed in my life.
A great cast (I particularly love Dave Franco and Ilana Glazer but they're all great), a good detective story built on small details and deceptions, a great concept with the "movie genres" idea (which I've seen before - it reminded me of some episodes from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - but never in such an extensive way), lots of laughs and some of the crazy moments you would expect from Phil Lord and Chris Miller. It takes a couple of episodes to really start working but then it becomes a very good show.
A smart and surprising adaptation, that widens the scope, adds interesting storylines and plays with structure, opting to narrate the story by alternating different periods of time. I didn't like all the differences and I'm particularly perplexed by some choices they made with the Eighties stuff, but then again, they had to change a lot there, because of the structural changes. Also, it's to be expected when you watch something based on a novel you read. Overall, if you can live with the tipically eastern love for melodrama, this is a great show, with amazing production values, that beautifully recreates so many different time periods and locations, populates them with cray good actors (the three Sunja are out of this world but everybody is really, really good) and tackles in such a deep a smart ways all its themes and the idea of time changing a lot but also thing always staying the same. Plus, I love how deep it dives in eating food, preparing it and all the fish market dynamics, and the whole mix of languages, with korean, japanes and english, is really fascinating. I hope it gets renewed.
I didn't love the first couple of episodes but then it found its rhythm and it became quite good. The final stretch is emotional, funny, smart and overall it's a very good companion to Big Mouth.
The first couple of episodes didn't completely work for me but by the end I was fully in love with the cast and characters, the tone, the overall mood, the plt and the action. This is way better than any MCU show, apart maybe from Loki.
What a great ending for a lovely show. It's a pity some of the actors couldn't return (I didn't miss the therapist though) but the writing, acting and directing is better than ever. And that final image...
This starts really out of whack, the first three episodes really don't work in terms of gags and drama. Too much. But then it finds a balance and it becames a really good final season, funny, heartfelt and with nice closure for all characters.
What an amazing show! Visually stunning, full of ideas, easter egg, homages, and so frigging funny. I loved watching it with my daughter.
Like season 1, this takes a couple of episodes to really become good and I have to say after the beautiful ending of season 1 that was a bit hard to swallow. But then it gets back on track and delivers some great moments. I cannot stand the therapist, though. I don't think he's that funny and it's the only character with no real development or usefulness in the overarching story.
It takes a couple of (quite good nonetheless) episodes to really get on track but then it becomes a very, very, very good show, extremely funny, sad, deep and light at the same time. Really lovely. Plus, it could have absolutely worked as a single season, with a very nice ending, so I'm curious to see what he did in season 2.
They should have squeezed the first three episodes in a bottle episode during The Mandalorian season 2 and then they should have used the storyline of the last three episodes as The Mandalorian Christmas Special. Maybe, that way, it wouldn't be boring as shit. Instead, we got the usual, well produced, moderately fun, moderately boring, kinda wasted opportunity we tend to get from Star Wars/MCU TV shows, just a little more boring than usual.
Do not get me wrong: there's some good stuff and some fun stuff in here and I'm kinda fascinated by the idea they are basically making one big "Tatooine Tales" TV Show with different titles in different seasons, but really, this was tolerable only because I decided to watch it while doing laundry.
A return to form from first to last episode.
Friday Night Lights but silly, optimistic and fun.
It ties up a lot of storylines from previous seasons in a great way, while also introducing a whole new universe (the politics stuff) and some new characters and plotlines for the following seasons. The Stringer Bell/Avon Barksdale plot is really great but I also loved all the arcs for the cops. One of the best things? McNulty arrived in season 1 looking like (and thinking he was) the great white saviour but in the end he's the most messed up of all of them.
This is where it goes from great to amazing. The whole docks storyline is incredibly well written and acted and the way it also works on moving everything around for the overarching plot that will go on in the following years is great stuff.
It's got that amazing quality of being great without being obnoxious about it.
Having finished adapting the books, the series goes on without missing a beat and adding a bit more horizontal storytelling. All the great things from season one are still here and it remains a lovely watch, full of inventions and with the right amount of spookiness. The variation in episodes length works surprisingly and there's at least four standout episodes that are worth the watch. But the season as a whole is really good.