Lili Loofbourow

"The Muppet Show" has never been about being great. It's been about feeling good. And on that front, boy does this silly little special deliver.

The second season proves that the show (helmed by Wyle, creator R. Scott Gemmill, John Wells and Joe Sachs) understands its strengths - and its limits. .... It's a testament to "The Pitt's" workaday competence that the show feels like a well-oiled machine - watchable and rewarding - even without one [a crisis].

Having seen four of the final season’s nine episodes, I can attest that there’s a lot of gratifying new material, particularly for fellow fans of author Madeleine L’Engle and Schnapp, and one very weird subplot. But the flashbacks are what interest me most; they feel anxious. There’s an urgency to them, a workmanlike sense of rigor that feels slightly at odds with the show’s mission and tone. Put simply: It feels, suddenly, like “Stranger Things” wants to explain itself. It wants to provide answers — and connections — that I both long for and fear the show can’t plausibly deliver.

It’s an astonishing, exhausting, totally immersive [first] episode of television. Then there’s the rest of the show. Look: The skill and speed on display in that pilot prove that the slowness with which the rest of the season unfolds is not mistake but a choice. Whether the slow burn pays off will depend on the viewer.

“Death by Lightning” is a pleasantly weird show that cheerfully upends much that we’ve come to expect from presidential biopics.

There are many strong performances here; Elliott, Peña and Lillis are particularly good. There are weaker ones, too, partly as a function of the writing; a few characters remain one-dimensional. But the pacing is terrific, and the miniseries understands its genre well, deftly deploying the viewer’s own fluency in narrative conventions against them. “All her Fault” is a tense, entertaining watch.

What follows is a well-paced, engaging season of television marred by a finale that feints toward originality but swerves. Still, there’s plenty to like.

"Mr. Scorsese” is, like most documentaries about great artists, a deep, well-researched appreciation, even if it isn’t a mash note. Miller honors her subject by addressing his flaws frankly, cinematically reinforcing them such that they become undeniable and, in the end, withholding judgment.

This is a story with a lot of heart. But the ending comes too soon and leaves so much unresolved that the final beat doesn't quite persuade.

If the season holds back on the fireworks and fights, it compensates with more narrative and comedic and even dramatic justice than the pleasantly pessimistic series typically delivers.