Vida

Excellent. ... It’s the rare show about family, identity and community that captures the complexity of how we perceive ourselves and others. ... The same insights help to power its pleasures—of which there are many. Despite the show’s seriousness, and the grief that forms its emotional core, Saracho and her writers season each script with moments of beauty and bliss. ... Wise, empathetic, exhilarating show.

“Vida” is an important series — for representation, for diversity, for women — but it’s also an entrancing and enjoyable bar story. Whatever you’re looking for, “Vida” has it.

The characters on Vida often behave stupidly, but this is a smart, smart show, one that looks at culture on high and low levels, from debates about the flavor and significance of Valentina hot sauce to a point-by-point breakdown of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.

At typical drama length, this series might have been bogged down with plot digressions and expansions. As it is, it sometimes slips into melodrama, but the lapses pass quickly. Life may be too short, but Vida is just right.

Despite the hardly surprising plotting, Vida excels as a series with a notably different look and feel.

The third season, while enjoyable, feels like a bookend on a story that wasn’t ready to end. Even though it ends with a slightly forced button, “Vida” is never buttoned up.

Alas, Saracho, whose previous credits include “How To Get Away With Murder” and Lifetime’s Latina-driven “Devious Maids,” doesn’t offer much new or surprising about what motivates people who find themselves in such predicaments. The characters’ personal basic troubles and quandaries are simply stretched out and reiterated, and rarely affectingly probed.