Mozart in the Jungle

The thematic base of the fourth season is delivered most directly in the last of the season’s 10 episodes. Four seasons in is when you’d expect a series to jump the shark--or, in this case, the “sharp”--but the writers have been jumping sharks, real and imagined, all along.

Mozart In The Jungle may always just be out of reach of the “Great TV” pantheon, but it’s always watchable being entirely itself.

Mozart continues to check back in with the New York players until we return to them in earnest, and like Hailey and Rodrigo’s road trip in Season 2, these episodes work as a kind of extended reverie--though one that is not without its trouble and embarrassment, and yet, that makes it all the more charming. Speaking of charm, Kirke and Bernal continue to anchor the series with plucky charisma and passionate creativity.

What sets Mozart apart from MTV shows, though, is that here we have a handful of twentysomethings and a lot of older folks, not vice versa. It plays this fresh turf well, on both sides.

We see the orchestra and its egos through [new oboe player Hailey's (Lola Kirke)] sometimes incredulous eyes.... Mozart in the Jungle” made me laugh, although I have no idea whether it will make musicians or insiders with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra crack a smile.

I would encourage you to keep watching "Mozart in the Jungle" ... past its so-so, sometimes off-putting pilot. It gets good thereafter — very good.

The show seems to have ambitions and glimmerings of quality, and the acting, outside of the toe-curlingly awful dialogue, is not bad at all.