TV Recaps

Call me naïve, but I thought Poppa’s House was onto something. After finally introducing a halfway-compelling new element, it regresses into its default state in Episode 15.

It’s genuinely impressive how The Hunting Party keeps adapting its formula each week. Episode 9 continues a run of great form by finding another novel take on the procedural format while also making ground in the macro plot and Shane’s personal backstory.

I was surprised to learn that Suits LA still has another four episodes to go, since it really felt like it ended in Episode 6.

Here’s a potentially controversial statement, but I much prefer Watson when it’s playing down the Sherlock Holmes association. Given I also prefer it when it isn’t about John Watson, I can admit that I’m setting the show some perhaps unreasonably strict parameters.

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.

As suspected, Episode 10 of The Potato Lab is indeed the obligatory one where problems between the leads threaten to upend their entire relationship.

MobLand has such a great cast that Episode 1 didn’t need to do anything to be compelling out of the gate. Luckily, “Stick or Twist” did some things anyway.

Major character deaths in 1923 have been like buses in Season 2; you wait for ages without seeing one, and then a whole bunch come along at once.

How a show navigates its pesky middle episodes usually says a lot about it. You expect a captivating opening, and you expect an ending to provide all the payoff you’re looking for. But it’s rare that your average show has a really stand-out Episode 9.

It’s very much a cliché that the journey is more important than the destination, but it seems pretty true in 1923 because the journey never ends.

Surface Season 2 has been very strange, but with the way Episode 6 plays out, you can sort of see what it was all building towards.

One of the meta mysteries of Yellowjackets Season 3 has been who Hilary Swank is playing, and if nothing else, Episode 8, “A Normal, Boring Life”, answers that question.

The first two episodes of Happy Face were okay, but suffered from a bit of an identity crisis, and Episode 3, “Was It Worth It?”, doesn’t make the existing problems any better.

The last ten minutes of “Excessive Force”, in particular, felt like everything long-time fans of the Netflix shows want from these characters.

At one point in Episode 1 of Apple TV+’s Seth Rogen-helmed Hollywood satire The Studio, the former head of Continental Studios, Patty (Catherine O’Hara), gives the protégé who inherited her job a pep talk about how Hollywood will trample his dreams, stress him out, and possibly even ruin his life.

After a week or two off, the return of Poppa's House doesn't exactly feel like a tantalizing proposition.

The Hunting Party is getting rather good, isn't it? I love watching the trajectory of a show in real-time; the so-so episodes when it's figuring out what works (and what doesn't), and then the better ones when it finds its feet and focus.

I’ve been pretty up-front about the fact that Watson doesn’t work as well when it’s focusing on Watson himself, so Episode 7 is a bit annoying in the respect that it proves me wrong.