Recently I've been interested in that point where a work of art finally breaks through its confines and becomes truly great. "Breaking through" requires creatives who constantly strive to create something better than their best, but there are any number of methods with which they achieve something great. It can be as easy as finding a single ( Read more... )

Enlightened in its second season has become the rare show where every element of its presentation is working perfectly. Mike White's writing ably captures stories both big and small. Episodes are directed with a light touch, but the cinematography is as daring as any show on TV today. Mark Mothersbaugh's minimalist score is subtly beautiful whether ( Read more... )

In its first season, Girls, like any forward-thinking show, introduced its characters as archetypes. That act made for easy character development, but it also allowed viewers to identify with its characters in a categorical way. I'm not sure if it ever crossed the line into "I'm such a Marnie" or "I'm such a Shoshanna" territory, but it certainly ( Read more... )

I kinda loved "One Man's Trash": I have very few qualms about it, and generally liked every decision made for the episode. But I don't think I'll ever put it on any (inevitable) future "top ten Girls episodes" lists, and I don't even think it'll be one of my favourites of the season. The feeling I had toward it was that distant sort of love you get ( Read more... )

I'm very taken by My Bloody Valentine's new album, the barely-titled MBV. It's certainly not better than Loveless, of course, and probably not better than Isn't Anything either, but it works fantastically as its own entity. Every song is wonderful, even taken out of their contexts. As a whole, however, MBV works even better as a response to its own ( Read more... )

Was "Follow Me" the best Enlightened episode yet? It wasn't quite as stunning as the show's focus shift episodes, and it wasn't as emotionally affecting as the series' best moments, but somehow it brought together elements of everything the show does well and turned them into a seamless whole. Practically every part of the episode was a success, ( Read more... )

For the first half of "It's a Shame About Ray," Girls was a network sitcom. I mean that in the best way possible. I've said before that the show seems to try to be everything to everyone, with about six different types of shows battling for prominence within it at any given time. This week, the one that won out was the snappy, setup-punchline ( Read more... )

For two seasons, I've been waiting for Bob's Burgers to top "Art Crawl." That episode, the seventh of the show's first season, fulfilled all the promise the show displayed when it premiered, and was also one of the funniest episodes of television that whole season. It solidified the blueprint for many of the show's best episodes to come: a grounded ( Read more... )

There's a new FX comedy I've been enjoying a lot recently called Legit. Based around Australian comic Jim Jefferies' standup, it's kind of positioned as an antidote to other nihilistic FX comedies like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The League: it shows what would happen if one of those misanthropic personalities actually took a step back ( Read more... )

Here's the second instalment of my low-effort series, again in no particular order!


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