Category: Television Reviews

(This review begins without spoilers, before delving into some of the finer details of the season below. There is a spoiler warning midway through, so feel free to read the beginning of this article without any worries)

Halfway through season 2 of The Leftovers, I wrote this article detailing the improvements that the series writers had made over the initial season. At the time, I wrote that “The Leftovers has proven to be one of the most fascinating shows on television,” but that “those who want a clear, concise, central narrative, or who desire answers to all of their questions, should stay far away from The Leftovers.” Since then, HBO has aired the remaining five installments of the season, and my opinion on the season as a whole has only risen. Not only is this still a fascinating series, but its second season may be one of the all-time great seasons of television.

It’s also worth noting that my comment about a “clear, concise central narrative” is only a half-truth now. One of the biggest surprises this year is how brilliantly all of the various plot-threads DID manage to come together. Stories that would have been just fine staying mysterious or disconnected have actual purposes that tie into a greater whole and are paid off beautifully at the end of the year. Somehow Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta, and their team of writers manage to pull this off despite sticking to a singular character POV for nine of the ten episodes, keeping us wholly engaged in the moment while building a more serialized arc in the background. It’s a structural miracle, giving the viewer several complete, immensely satisfying story arcs while still leaving The Departure itself as a mystery.

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Despite its first season ratings success, Gotham had trouble finding itself in the first year. Its tone was all over the place, oscillating between campy and wacky humor aimed at younger viewers and a more seedy, violent nature that would seemingly prevent those same viewers from watching the show. The initial pacing bored, as well, leading to a midseason finale that wrapped up arcs that were seemingly intended to continue throughout the season. This left poor Jada Pinkett Smith stranded on a show as a “regular,” despite her character being so completely finished with her narrative that the writers literally shipped her off to a remote island for the majority of the second half.

Fox knew that the show had lost some of its audience, so they branded season two as something of a reboot. Hence the beginning of “Gotham: Villains,” a tag that was frequently used in the marketing but never actually appeared on the show. Despite a seeming gulf between marketing and the actual writers, Gotham did begin to show some growth this year, even if it’s marginal.

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(This review contains no explicit spoilers)

Last year, The Leftovers was an interesting show with a terrific premise, which featured moments (and full episodes) of brilliance amongst a sea of depression and tonal monotony. The concept, in which 2% of the world’s population disappeared without a trace, is engaging enough to let it coast for a number of episodes, but it ultimately grew stale by the last stretch of episodes. Without any indication of who the characters were BEFORE “the departure” until the penultimate episode of the season, their behavior became redundant rather than illuminating, and a number of the subplots, including Kevin Garvey’s dangerous sleepwalking and the appeal of the white-clad chain-smoking Guilty Remnant cult, were never given enough clarity to become meaningful.

There was a sense during the season that, with just a few tweaks, The Leftovers could have been transcendent television. If only we had understood the central characters sooner, or had more focused narratives (like the two best episodes of the season, “Two Boats and a Helicopter” and “Guest”), or a more diverse and unpredictable tone. Then news came out that not only was The Leftovers getting a second season, but it was leaving behind its source material (Tom Perrotta’s book, which was fully adapted in the first season) AND its central location to start anew. Was this a desperate gamble to remain relevant in a second season, or a creative opportunity to recenter on the elements that worked the best in season one?

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(The following review contains spoilers for Rick and Morty, if such things exist)

It’s rare to see a show hit the ground running in quite the way Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty did. While ostensibly a spoof of the Doc-Marty Back of the Future relationship, the series quickly outgrew its premise. Creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon began with a solid proof-of-concept pilot, but delivered a true classic episode of television in their second outing, “Lawnmower Dog.” From there, they grew bolder and bolder, wiping out the entire town and bringing the characters into a parallel universe in “Rick Potion #9.” They further emphasized the existence of infinite universes with “Rixty Minutes,” involving a cable box with channels from alternate realities, and “Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind,” in which a whole society of Ricks and Morties from other universes were revealed.

Moving into season two, it was hard to know what to expect. Given the expansion of the mythology as the first season moved on, one could have predicted that season two would delve deeper into the multi-verse, emphasizing a more serialized method of storytelling. But Rick and Morty had never been predictable, and Roiland and Harmon instead stuck to just the primary universe this time around, focusing on developing the Smiths (Morty’s family) into a cohesive family unit and creating conflicts within our own space-time continuum.

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(This post contains spoilers for Homeland)

As great as the first season of Homeland was, its ending was a difficult hurdle for the writers to overcome. Brody’s story was essentially complete: his relationship with Carrie felt like it had run its course, and he had decided not to go through with the suicide bombing. For the next two seasons, fans and critics cried out for the writers to remove Brody once and for all, to kill him and move on with the story.

The problem was that, in all honesty, Brody and his relationship with Carrie wasn’t just a disposable plotline, it was the actual narrative engine of the first three seasons. While many of the accolades thrown at Homeland were concerning its complex, thoughtful ruminations on the war on terror, that was always more subtextual than surface-level. On an emotional level, where I would argue the show connected the most powerfully, people connected with Carrie, and her complicated feelings toward Brody and her conflicted desires to both be with him and see through his lies anchored the series.

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