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The Last of Us already peaked in Season 2. It was in the penultimate episode where some minor storytelling changes improbably improved the original version.

I’m one of those insufferable fans of The Last of Us Part II who thinks it’s a work of towering genius, and I’ve done nothing throughout these recaps but moan about all the ways in which Season 2 of the HBO adaptation has made changes to it.

It was always going to be difficult to adapt The Last of Us Part II, which is a game that relies on the fundamental expectations of video games as a medium to tell a pretty complex story about grief, revenge, and various other attendant matters, none of them particularly positive.

The Last of Us, as a game and a TV show, is bleak to an extent that borders on parodical, like a social experiment designed to psychologically break huge swathes of people with their so-called entertainment.

There's usually a calm before a storm, but The Last of Us Season 2 provided enough storm in its previous outing that everyone spends Episode 3 reeling from it.

Only rarely will you see pre-release hype for a single hour of television as vigorous as what HBO was pushing for "Through the Valley".

The reason why The Last of Us worked as a live-action video game adaptation is largely because it knew it couldn’t just adapt the game directly.

The White Lotus doesn’t do happy endings, which is by design. Each season begins with the promise of death and ends by delivering it.

We’re almost at the end of our third stay at The White Lotus, and we’ve reached the point in Season 3 where everything is knitting together and we’re right on the cusp of all-out disaster.

I have a personal theory that no boat trip in the history of mankind has ever been an especially good idea, and this is truer in the world of The White Lotus than anywhere else.

Buddhism is snaking through The White Lotus Season 3 like a vein, pumping life-giving thematic resonance through arteries and organs and back again.

The White Lotus is always about a murder. Season 3 is potentially about several; we know this because the premiere featured a bunch of gunshots and at least one floating corpse.

At a pinch, you could quite easily forget that The White Lotus is still a murder mystery in Season 3. It’s the only show that can devote an episode to characters lounging around poolside and doing basically nothing and still be considered prestige TV.

With the introductions out of the way, “Special Treatments” is another quintessential episode of The White Lotus.

The White Lotus isn’t getting predictable, but it is getting more familiar, which you can tell writer/director Mike White is playing with intentionally in Season 3.

The word of the day is “death”. This is largely true of any episode of any medical drama, but it’s particularly true of Episode 3 of The Pitt, which opens and closes with death.

The premiere of The Pitt covers 07:00-08:00 and 08:00-09:00 of a single continuous shift at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

James Gunn isn’t pulling any punches in the finale of Creature Commandos. Season 1, Episode 7, “A Very Funny Monster”, has everything you’d expect from...