I also struggled with the perfect TV show prompt because I find my favorite shows are never the shows I think of as perfect. Like I really enjoyed Bones which had plenty of bad episodes but was pure pleasure to watch. Whereas I don’t see myself revisiting the shows most view as great. Once is enough viewing Breaking Bad, for example. Friday Night Lights is a great example as a favorite show with an unfortunate second season. I think your point on the messiness of TV being a feature, not a bug, is apt.
Very much looking forward to the recaps of What We Do in the Shadows! I also am slowly catching up on other shows being recapped here. That brings me to a question: is there any way to create an index of all the shows receiving reviews on this Substack? I started a show and couldn’t remember if it was being reviewed here, and I just sort of had to go through every post title. Which as time goes by, is going to become a more difficult task.
As a giant fan of the Expanse books I loved the TV show, but the 1st season is my least favorite. It’s an extremely faithful adaptation with the book authors on staff as producers and script writers, but where the first book is a thrill-ride adventure they decided to slow it down and add a bunch of world building and characters who only appeared in later books. It pays off later in the show, but it also pushes the book 1 climax halfway into season 2 (they later get back to 1 book per season but it’s a bit squishy early on).
The pilot at least moves along at a decent clip and introduces the people and the concepts fairly well, it’s not one of those “wait until episode x” shows. You’ll know at the end if you want to keep going. I do absolutely love For All Mankind but I also have to tell everyone I’ve forced to watch it to keep going through episode 3 before stopping 😂
It's a UK show that has no US distribution, so this is a very limited recommendation, but I watched and really enjoyed The Lazarus Project, a show about a shadowy organisation with the ability to reset the timeline to the previous July 1st in order to prevent world-ending events. It's created by Joe Barton, who also did the excellent Giri/Haji a few years ago.
It does a good job of mixing a main season-long storyline with individual episode stories, a bunch of which use Lost-style flashbacks to give backstories to the various team members. It makes good use of the specific version of time travel rules the show sets out, and it's the first time in ages I've gotten to end of the first season of a new show and felt like I'd be pissed off if it gets cancelled.
The lead is Paapa Essiedu from I May Destroy You, and the series' main antagonist is Tom Burke, but I didn't know the rest of the cast (aside from Caroline Quentin as the group's boss), all of whom I liked.
Sky's shows rarely get much attention (the only other one I watch is Gangs of London), but I hope that this one can break through, if only among SF fans.
"The thing about episodic criticism is that it does often lean into exploring what’s not working as opposed to what is, because the latter is often an accepted strength of a given show."
I think about this all the time. I really love talking about what works and what doesn't work - it's part of how I show my love for TV as a medium - but I am sometimes told that I am ruining a thing by pointing out its flaws. But the beauty is in how it works despite those flaws, or how those flaws are instructive for what it eventually does better, or how those flaws are also interesting things I enjoy, etc.
In a super abstract way, I also think a lot about how this could apply to cultural reception of certain works - and what we emphasize in criticism. For example, I don't think anyone was really tearing 2.5 Men apart in specific weekly reviews because it was expected to be exactly what it was - broad, stupid, misogynistic, etc (sorry to 2.5 Men fans). At the exact same time, people were tearing Girls apart for much more nuanced reasons - perhaps because we expected more from a self-proclaimed feminist show compared to shows like 2.5 Men. So we had all of this (extremely fair) episodic (and non-episodic) criticism of Girls looking at, say, poor representation of people of colour in New York in S1... and also no one really talking about how the same or similar problems are much worse in other TV contexts. Probably because, as you said, certain strengths may be accepted as a given and now we need to talk about *problems*.
I'm looking forward to reading Noel's coverage of WWDITS and I appreciate the heads about Players; American Vandal is one of my favorite shows of the last decade.
The two shows that I think are closest to being perfect are Freaks and Geeks and The Good Place. Freaks and Geeks is really close "Moshing and Noshing" and "The Little Things" are the only two episodes I think are even slightly flawed. The Good Place was broader and had more time for ups and downs but I can still say I was wowed by almost every episode and "Jeremy Bearimy" is legitimately perfect.
I do recognize the role of risk and accidents in creating TV, but I really don't understand why so many shows with long arcs make things up as they go along. My ur-example here is 24; apparently they only wrote that a few episodes ahead, meaning that by the end of the season the early episodes were basically reduced to nothing but plot holes. I get that expecting your writers to have 24 scripts completed before you start filming the first episode might be unreasonable, but surely somebody can write a 100ish page novella version of the story to serve as a blueprint for the season.
I was really excited about Players, since I loved American Vandal, but I ended up bailing on it after three episodes. I assume it would work for people who have watched and enjoyed sports docuseries, but for me there just wasn't anything interesting or funny happening. Too bad.
As for perfect TV shows... I dunno, Dr. Katz? Can't really improve on Dr. Katz.
But yeah, that aside, I am not looking for perfection. I much prefer TV shows written as a weekly thing trying to keep people engage than the meticulously preplanned 8-hour or 10-hour movie model.
Ooof is about right for Flight Attendant. That finale was comically bad. Like, a North Korean spy gets stuffed in a trunk and decides: “Okay, better leave this lady alone.” It really stretched the suspension of disbelief, and there is about zero reason for a third season.
If the metric you're looking for is "perfect" than the answer is pretty obvious to me: it's the two Vince Gilligan/Peter Gould Albuquerque shows. These are as close to "perfect" as you get i.e. no pointless or abandoned subplots (except for Betsy Brandt's kleptomania!) everything making perfect sense and seeming intentional, every episode building perfectly to the finale, every major plot "paid off". I'm not saying these are the best. Some might prefer the more ambiguous style of "mad Men" or "The Sopranos" but they're as close to perfect as you'll get
I also struggled with the perfect TV show prompt because I find my favorite shows are never the shows I think of as perfect. Like I really enjoyed Bones which had plenty of bad episodes but was pure pleasure to watch. Whereas I don’t see myself revisiting the shows most view as great. Once is enough viewing Breaking Bad, for example. Friday Night Lights is a great example as a favorite show with an unfortunate second season. I think your point on the messiness of TV being a feature, not a bug, is apt.
Very much looking forward to the recaps of What We Do in the Shadows! I also am slowly catching up on other shows being recapped here. That brings me to a question: is there any way to create an index of all the shows receiving reviews on this Substack? I started a show and couldn’t remember if it was being reviewed here, and I just sort of had to go through every post title. Which as time goes by, is going to become a more difficult task.
As a giant fan of the Expanse books I loved the TV show, but the 1st season is my least favorite. It’s an extremely faithful adaptation with the book authors on staff as producers and script writers, but where the first book is a thrill-ride adventure they decided to slow it down and add a bunch of world building and characters who only appeared in later books. It pays off later in the show, but it also pushes the book 1 climax halfway into season 2 (they later get back to 1 book per season but it’s a bit squishy early on).
The pilot at least moves along at a decent clip and introduces the people and the concepts fairly well, it’s not one of those “wait until episode x” shows. You’ll know at the end if you want to keep going. I do absolutely love For All Mankind but I also have to tell everyone I’ve forced to watch it to keep going through episode 3 before stopping 😂
It's a UK show that has no US distribution, so this is a very limited recommendation, but I watched and really enjoyed The Lazarus Project, a show about a shadowy organisation with the ability to reset the timeline to the previous July 1st in order to prevent world-ending events. It's created by Joe Barton, who also did the excellent Giri/Haji a few years ago.
It does a good job of mixing a main season-long storyline with individual episode stories, a bunch of which use Lost-style flashbacks to give backstories to the various team members. It makes good use of the specific version of time travel rules the show sets out, and it's the first time in ages I've gotten to end of the first season of a new show and felt like I'd be pissed off if it gets cancelled.
The lead is Paapa Essiedu from I May Destroy You, and the series' main antagonist is Tom Burke, but I didn't know the rest of the cast (aside from Caroline Quentin as the group's boss), all of whom I liked.
Sky's shows rarely get much attention (the only other one I watch is Gangs of London), but I hope that this one can break through, if only among SF fans.
"The thing about episodic criticism is that it does often lean into exploring what’s not working as opposed to what is, because the latter is often an accepted strength of a given show."
I think about this all the time. I really love talking about what works and what doesn't work - it's part of how I show my love for TV as a medium - but I am sometimes told that I am ruining a thing by pointing out its flaws. But the beauty is in how it works despite those flaws, or how those flaws are instructive for what it eventually does better, or how those flaws are also interesting things I enjoy, etc.
In a super abstract way, I also think a lot about how this could apply to cultural reception of certain works - and what we emphasize in criticism. For example, I don't think anyone was really tearing 2.5 Men apart in specific weekly reviews because it was expected to be exactly what it was - broad, stupid, misogynistic, etc (sorry to 2.5 Men fans). At the exact same time, people were tearing Girls apart for much more nuanced reasons - perhaps because we expected more from a self-proclaimed feminist show compared to shows like 2.5 Men. So we had all of this (extremely fair) episodic (and non-episodic) criticism of Girls looking at, say, poor representation of people of colour in New York in S1... and also no one really talking about how the same or similar problems are much worse in other TV contexts. Probably because, as you said, certain strengths may be accepted as a given and now we need to talk about *problems*.
Welcome, Noel! As a long time reader (those Buffy/Angel reviews are essential), happy you’re discussing a show I’ve just caught up on.
I'm looking forward to reading Noel's coverage of WWDITS and I appreciate the heads about Players; American Vandal is one of my favorite shows of the last decade.
The two shows that I think are closest to being perfect are Freaks and Geeks and The Good Place. Freaks and Geeks is really close "Moshing and Noshing" and "The Little Things" are the only two episodes I think are even slightly flawed. The Good Place was broader and had more time for ups and downs but I can still say I was wowed by almost every episode and "Jeremy Bearimy" is legitimately perfect.
I do recognize the role of risk and accidents in creating TV, but I really don't understand why so many shows with long arcs make things up as they go along. My ur-example here is 24; apparently they only wrote that a few episodes ahead, meaning that by the end of the season the early episodes were basically reduced to nothing but plot holes. I get that expecting your writers to have 24 scripts completed before you start filming the first episode might be unreasonable, but surely somebody can write a 100ish page novella version of the story to serve as a blueprint for the season.
I was really excited about Players, since I loved American Vandal, but I ended up bailing on it after three episodes. I assume it would work for people who have watched and enjoyed sports docuseries, but for me there just wasn't anything interesting or funny happening. Too bad.
As for perfect TV shows... I dunno, Dr. Katz? Can't really improve on Dr. Katz.
But yeah, that aside, I am not looking for perfection. I much prefer TV shows written as a weekly thing trying to keep people engage than the meticulously preplanned 8-hour or 10-hour movie model.
Ooof is about right for Flight Attendant. That finale was comically bad. Like, a North Korean spy gets stuffed in a trunk and decides: “Okay, better leave this lady alone.” It really stretched the suspension of disbelief, and there is about zero reason for a third season.
If the metric you're looking for is "perfect" than the answer is pretty obvious to me: it's the two Vince Gilligan/Peter Gould Albuquerque shows. These are as close to "perfect" as you get i.e. no pointless or abandoned subplots (except for Betsy Brandt's kleptomania!) everything making perfect sense and seeming intentional, every episode building perfectly to the finale, every major plot "paid off". I'm not saying these are the best. Some might prefer the more ambiguous style of "mad Men" or "The Sopranos" but they're as close to perfect as you'll get
Nothing is perfect. Perfection is a goal to be approached asymptotically at best.
I have been seeing those adds for Players and with "Creamcheese" I kind of assumed it was a joke, but I had no idea what the point was.
To speak of something current, up until the end I thought of The Bear as a nice little jewel box. But the resolution made no sense.