Daniel Fienberg

It’s a weirdly upbeat, disappointingly bland set-up for an ongoing series about a damaged mercenary and his unlikely, poorly developed Scooby Gang. Accepted on those limitedly aspirational and rarely convincing terms, but few others, it succeeds.

It’s a documentary for people who care about Hulk Hogan — but only truly care in-depth about the admirable parts of Hulk Hogan’s mythic life and will surely be happier with a mediocre documentary that accentuates those parts, rather than a good documentary that offers substance or depth.

I can respect the lines Gadd is drawing between nature and nurture, destiny and self-determination, trauma and healing. I just can’t say I found the unveiling of those truths to be especially enjoyable or revelatory.

The second season of Beef can’t reproduce the sneak-up-on-you brilliance of the first, but without many direct connections this eight-episode story feels very much of a piece.

Big Mistakes has a very good cast, often clever dialogue and (if only because nothing really makes sense) frequent surprises, so it all comes down to how much you’re willing to suspend your disbelief while watching a generally unsubstantial comedy.

Life’s Still Unfair is far from comfort food. It’s bizarrely discomfiting. It’s almost audaciously unpleasant. .... I’m not sure if I was supposed to find Life’s Still Unfair as depressing as I did but can’t rule it out, I’m not sure if other viewers will be able to ignore the depressing aspects and find the joy that I was missing in this cast reunion.

All storylines are not created equal and that’s perhaps even truer of this new season. For much of the time, only Rue’s story has any clear momentum, with Lexi stuck as a total afterthought and Maddy only slightly more relevant.

The Testaments is different enough from The Handmaid’s Tale to be engaging, yet too exhaustingly connected to that series to stand as something truly distinctive and provocative.

If the storytelling were tighter and more successfully focused on its more sociologically provocative elements, Detective Hole could have settled into the overstuffed genre’s top tier rather than taking a place in the acceptable middle.

Most of the flaws in the premiere were, in fact, entirely part of the SNL DNA. .... There were no disasters, though, which can’t always be said for episodes of traditional-flavor Saturday Night Live. .... For me, the cast was good enough that I’ll watch the next few weeks, if only to justify facile jokes about how it USED to be funny.