These shows prove the marathon-watching juggernaut’s concern for both quantity and quality.
Like much of this season of Girl, the episode focuses on the gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us.
The surfeit of subplots might be seen as a series of speed bumps or potholes, slowing a ferociously entertaining two-hander at every turn.
The Returned works best in its quieter, more contemplative moments, as the living struggle with how to reintegrate the returned into their lives.
The second half of “Born Again” features a number of tautly composed images that jostle against each other as if conflicting emotions.
The show’s writing feels wrapped up in hitting plot points and story beats rather than seeking out moments of violent personal revelation.
The episode’s title reflects the caution felt by the show’s heroes in trying to adapt to life before the biters, and, of course, Woodbury.
Though Looking is a series rightly known for its rather frank discussions and depictions of sex, it’s also finely attuned to the rhythms of friendship.
“Ask Me My Name” traces the course of a single night that spirals unpredictably out of control.
“Salang Pass” deploys its constellation of ruses and false identities to examine the question at the heart of The Americans.
“The Distance” feels like one of the more repetitive and dramatically light episodes of this season.
Patrick’s self-immolation is no suicide, and the episode is no Mrs. Dalloway.
“Close-Up” begins with a tender portrait of romantic devotion that the episode slowly, cunningly upends.
Professionals in the art of reading people are most vulnerable to misapprehension when their judgment is clouded by the personal.
Up until the final 10 minutes of the episode, what’s most remarkable about “Them” is its sense of quiet.
It has the feeling of a first date, but ends with a reckoning, run through with the conviction that we can never really leave the past behind us.
Picking up immediately where last week’s episode left off, “Sit-In” an impeccably constructed tour de force.
A master class in suspense, not only of spies caught in a tightening net, but also of characters whose choices begin to feel less like liberty and more like entrapment.
Many ghosts come to tell Tyreese why he died, but none of them are quite as convincing as the nasally voice on the radio.
In what amounts to something of a departure for Looking, the episode picks up where “Looking Top to Bottom” left off.
As it fixates on a set of characters languishing in their current situations, the episode locates the genuine comfort that clichés can offer us.