Although bland and uninspired in spots, Channel Zero mostly satisfies as a surprisingly eerie, restrained, and downright unsettling adaptation of the short form source material from which it originates.
Like many pilots nowadays, American Housewife is bolstered by an energetic lead performance - the wonderful Katy Mixon - but without real bite or insight, the show seeps into an indistinct "quirky" sitcom background pretty quickly.
Without recognizable humor or gratifying emotions, Divorce's melancholic dissection of a loveless marriage fails to deliver on the potential for a black comedy-filled title fight between two clearly game actors.
As confident and ballsy as her character is slowly trying to become, Issa Rae's Insecure is yet another impactful, humorous knockout for HBO, with the added bonus of two ridiculously engaging black women spearheading its stories.
"For better or worse, and in this case worse, this is real history," professor Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer) informs her class in the opening minutes of Timeless. She's giving a lecture on Lyndon B. Johnson, and his obsession with his own genitalia, way before the time travel shenanigans ensue in NBC's new crack at a serialized sci-fi adventure, and her words feel simultaneously appropriate to 2016 and a decent summation of Timeless as a whole.
Important note: I'm a complete fanatic for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and everything even remotely related to it. That's why I was simultaneously distraught when ABC canceled my favorite MCU cable network show, Marvel's Agent Carter, and elated when it kept the divine Hayley Atwell around for one of its new crime shows Conviction, which is a notch above Betrayal and a step below Notorious as far as generically meaningless titles go. Alas, it's a near tragedy to discover that Atwell's role in the series, which she at least prevents from being a complete waste of time with one or two moments of charm, could essentially be played by anyone and elicit the same result.
Sometimes cloying, sometimes moving, and - by the end of the pilot - deceptively clever, This Is Us might be too sappy for some, but anyone who succumbs to its emotional wavelengths will likely be satisfied.
There isn't much hand-holding in the opening hours of HBO's insane new epic Westworld. Like the guests in the show's western theme park, there isn't a helpful guide to show you around, or a succinct orientation video with a dancing DNA strand to fill you in on bits and pieces of how the park even started. As one of Westworld's robot "hosts" says to a nervous guest early on, "Figuring out how it works is half the fun."
Being a standout television show in the era of "peak TV" requires a level of effortlessness that a lot of shows fail to achieve. Cliffhangers are forced, character deaths are orchestrated for optimal shock value rather than sensible storytelling, and twists are tacked on faster than their hashtags can trend online. It's exhausting, and essentially impossible to keep up with all at once.
