Year-to-Year: Episodic Medium's 2023 Highlights
Our contributors' favorite reviews of the year are our gift to free subscribers
I say this often, but the best days at Episodic Medium for me are the ones where the homepage is filled with names other than my own (see above). Although this newsletter began as a space for me to continue doing something that I love, and I’m honored that so many of you have signed up to receive weekly-ish musings on television and media writ large, the greatest privilege of accidentally becoming editor of a thriving space for television criticism has been supporting the work of others I admire.
To be honest, in the years leading up to starting the newsletter, I had drifted away from reading episodic criticism. When I started writing for The A.V. Club back in 2010, it felt like television criticism was an ongoing and thriving dialogue, with each review and reviewer speaking to a much larger conversation. Over a decade later, the problem wasn’t that those reviewers or their reviews had become less cogent: it was that the communities around those reviews had all but disappeared, either due on corporate malfeasance or the general deterioration of internet discourse around pop culture.
But once I was forced back into reading episodic criticism as the editor of Episodic Medium—yes, I read and edit every review—I realized how much I had missed that dialogue, and how thrilled I am that we’ve been able to build such a strong community around it. While not every show has generated huge discussions over the past year, they’ve all created spaces where constructive discourse is both possible and encouraged. It’s been so rewarding to see new subscribers leave comments about how they’ve missed having a space like this, just as it’s been thrilling to see writers who have dealt with toxic comment sections and disconnected from the community at the core of this form of writing rediscover the joy of week-to-week conversations here at the newsletter.
However, thrilling as this might be, it (literally) comes with a price. Because while we may be creating a thriving dialogue within the reviews on this newsletter, that’s only possible with a paywall that keeps our reviews from becoming part of a larger discourse around the series we cover. The paywall is a necessary evil: it allows me to fairly compensate our contributors, who wrote 229 of this year’s 328 reviews, while also ensuring a commenting community of people invested in the site and its future. But I can’t deny that it also means that all of the smart observations our critics make aren’t able to be in dialogue with those of other critics, and those who can’t afford $5 a month also don’t get to be a part of it. And as much as I know my writers appreciate being financially compensated for their work, I still struggle with the fact that when they write something they’re really proud of, there’s a limit to who’ll get to engage with their insights based on the site’s business model.
So, in honor of the end of the year and the amazing work of our contributors, I asked each of them for the piece they’re most proud of from this year, many of which come from behind Episodic Medium’s paywall. And in the spirit of the season, and to honor the work they’ve done, I’ve made all of these reviews publicly available and collected them here, with the hopes that you’ll take the time to read their work and share it with others who you think would want to engage with it. You’ll find them linked below alongside their explanation for why it reflects their favorite contribution to the newsletter this year.
And yes, ultimately, I do hope that some of you who read this might sample these reviews and decide that investing in a subscription to Episodic Medium—or gifting one to a friend or loved one—is something you’d be interested in. But now and always, this is only so that I can continue to do what I’ve done this past year: support my fellow critics, and create a space that brings readers and critics together to discuss the TV we care about. Thanks to everyone who’ve been a part of Episodic Medium’s 2023, and I’ll be back to lay out our plans for 2024 before the new year.
Erik Adams
Succession, “Living+”
2023 was a roller coaster for me, and its most harrowing stretch took place the week of "Living+": in the midst of reviewing The Dad's Dying Show, my dad died. I wrote at the time that completing the review was a testament to Dad's anti-Logan Roy impact on my life, but it was also fulfilling a promise to the Episodic Medium community, whose warmth and support is all over the comments on this review. My time as a contributor to the newsletter was brief, but I have a feeling I'll be revisiting your kind words and condolences for a long time. Thanks, y'all.
Donna Bowman
The Righteous Gemstones, “For Out of the Heart Comes Evil Thoughts"
I took on the task of reviewing The Righteous Gemstones in the hope that I’d be able to marry my vocation (theology) with my avocation (writing about television). This episode gave me the chance to connect a theological topic I’m passionate about—Christian justifications for violence—with an appreciation for this show’s depiction of Southern megachurch culture.
Les Chappell
Our Flag Means Death, “Act of Grace” & “Wherever You Go, There You Are”
Coming back to TV criticism after a couple years away was a highlight of my 2023, and it was great to have the opportunity to review both seasons of OFMD, a show that seems to reinvent itself every other episode. The first season finale is where the show truly clicked, abandoning any pretense and diving completely into its identity as a gay pirate rom-com, and it was highly satisfying to evaluate its journey to that point. Now that’s a fuckery, indeed.
LaToya Ferguson
Justified: City Primeval, “The Question”
One thing Episodic Medium has allowed me to do is finally write about shows I’ve long wanted to formally cover. Now, it’s The O.C. in Episodic Classic coverage, but earlier this year, it was Justified. Like many longtime Justified fans, I went into the revival limited series with high hopes, extremely curious to see how Justified would look through a 2023 lens. As I ended up discussing a lot throughout my coverage of the series (including this episode, the finale), Justified: City Primeval was really more of “a Raylan Givens story” than “a Justified story” (until the epilogue, that is), which was a necessary distinction to make. Having the opportunity, on a weekly basis, to try and unpack just what was off about this particular Raylan Givens story or what exactly made this Raylan Givens story tick is exactly what I love about television criticism.
Zack Handlen
Barry, “wow”
The final season of Barry didn't hold together all that well, in part because the show was never really that interested in coherence. In writing this piece, I did my best to celebrate that quality while still discussing my reservations with it as a narrative, and I'm happy with the result.
Alex McLevy
A Murder At The End Of The World, "Chapter 1: Homme Fatale," and "Chapter 2: The Silver Doe"
One of the more enjoyable parts of this job is watching artists grow and change, stretching their creative muscles and seeing where it takes them. Having followed and written about the work of Brit Marling for more than a decade now—especially her team-ups with creative partner Zal Batmanglij—the arrival of her new limited series was a chance to delve back into the wonderful, weird, often quite fey universes she creates, and see what's new.
Myles McNutt
Ted Lasso, “So Long, Farewell”
Finishing out my reviews of Ted Lasso was one of my primary motivators for starting this experiment in the first place, although it was honestly probably for the best that my reviews were behind a paywall given my frustrations with the third season’s choices. But I was thrilled to see some tremendous dialogue within the community around the divisive finale, and I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to rage against that Nate storyline alongside our subscribers.
Noel Murray
What We Do in the Shadows, “A Weekend at the Morrigan Manor” & “Exit Interview”
The fifth season of Shadows wasn’t as consistently great as the show had been in previous years, but the two-part finale ended this run on a high note, with two episodes each featuring distinctively clever conceits and an impressive commitment to neatly tying off all the season’s loose ends. It’s always fun to write about this show when it’s clicking. With this review I also got to talk about one of my favorite concepts: “Kentucky.”
Dennis Perkins
Enlightened, “Not Good Enough Mothers” & “Sandy”
Part of the reason I was so delighted to get an invitation to join up with some of my A.V. Club colleagues in Myles’ new critical clubhouse was Episodic Medium’s commitment to letting us dust off the unjustly forgotten. And nothing was more unjustly so than Mike White Enlightened, even if Laura Dern’s incandescent turn as the deeply screwed-up Amy Jellicoe was seemingly designed to turn off all but the most adventurous viewers. In this pair of episodes, Amy’s blinkered crusading is at its most gut-wrenchingly awkward, even as White and Dern mine their protagonist’s journey for unexpected hope and flashes of grace.
Ben Rosenstock
Yellowjackets, “Storytelling”
Writing this review of the Yellowjackets season two finale helped me crystallize my feelings about a season that thrilled and frustrated me in equal measure. It’s a show that always excels at portraying “the slow march to a tragic inevitability,” but the character work and pacing this time around was much less consistent.
Caroline Siede
Doctor Who, “The Giggle”
The special thing about TV is how long its stories can exist in our lives. For Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary specials, I got to return to a show I’ve been reviewing since 2017 and watching since 2012, as it wrapped up a storyline it first kicked off way back in 2006. And it was both a challenge and a privilege to try to encompass all that history in one review.
Josh Spiegel
Poker Face, “Escape from Shit Mountain”
Though I can't wait for a new season of Poker Face, episodes like “Escape from Shit Mountain” are the most challenging and fun to review. This episode upended the series' formula in tense, unexpected ways, making it so I tried to push my review beyond breathless excitement at not knowing what would come next.
Lisa Weidenfeld
“Willow's whirlwind world-building worked...most of the time”
Writing about Willow was a great reminder of how fun TV criticism can be—it satisfied that desire to point at something and say "you should watch this!" The show exemplified a lot about the current era of TV: a revival no one asked for that got unceremoniously booted off its streaming service. Explaining that it was actually quite charming was enjoyable; the fact that star Ruby Cruz went on to a scene-stealing turn in Bottoms last summer only proves I was right that the show had potential.
Thanks again to our amazing contributors for all the fantastic work they’ve done this year, and I look forward to what they’ll bring to the table in the new year. If you’re not yet a subscriber and want to keep updated on what we’re covering in 2024, a free subscription helps keep you in the loop.
Thank you for doing this!
Thanks Myles and all the contributors for a great 2023!