Nicholas Quah

A pedestrian comedy that’s good for an occasional chuckle but significantly less interesting than popping an edible and thinking about the sequence of decision-making that led to its creation.

The return of Chad Powers is far more interesting and stimulating than it had any right to be.

The opening volley of this season exhibits the very same problem that plagued the bloated back half of Ted Lasso’s original run: Its unwavering commitment to a morally uncomplicated worldview leaves little room for texture, ambiguity, or any semblance of actual conflict.

Now largely freed from the obligations of its wild twist, Sugar gets to settle in and savor what it is: a charming and goofy genre piece that commits so hard to the bit that, in fleeting moments, it attains emotional transcendence.

In its fifth and final season, The Bear scales back down to its fundamentals and delivers a satisfying farewell to one of the most electrifying television series of the past decade.

Cage isn’t boring to watch here — he’s never boring — but the rest of the eight-episode MGM+/Prime Video series around him certainly is.

If only the show was juicy enough to match the uproar. Love Story, all but the finale of which was provided to critics, turns out to be nothing more than an exquisite diorama: gorgeous to look at and not much more. Worse, it’s fundamentally inert.

Their misadventures spiral into odd, escalating situations that would play better with sharper writing or more adventurous direction. Worse, the show ultimately backs away from its most interesting instincts. Though it sidesteps the usual Marvel crescendo of apocalyptic spectacle, the final stretch still resorts to a superhero-size resolution that flattens the human texture the series has worked to establish.

What’s surprising is not that things get rough, but how effectively the show sublimates that darkness within a broader register of warmth and humor.

Where the first season felt genuinely searching, extending its ideas with the elegance of a team still working to win you over, the second has the arrogance of one that it believes it already has. Such self-assurance brings nagging blind spots. The Pitt extends enormous empathy to its protagonists — it clearly views Dr. Robby as a flawed saint, Jesus Daddy — but its generosity toward patients is more uneven.