THERE'S TOO MUCH TV - Roundup April 2025 (Patreon)

“What are you watching?” is pretty much the automatic question I get when I tell people what I do for a living. Usually I lie to people so I don’t get into a massive debate about the police while I’m trying to hang out. But to you, dear patron, I shall never lie!

Putting the spoilery sections at the bottom so you don’t have to scroll past them. Don’t say I never did nothing for ya.

The Pitt (Season 1) — MaxCW: medical gore, very intense, death

Best show of the year so far, I will be making a longer video essay about this one before the second season premieres next year. For now, I’ll just say that it’s rare to have a TV show where every character feels like a person with a full life beyond the page. The show never lingers too long on character traits that other shows would make entire storylines about (like a doctor’s prosthetic leg), but instead shows us just a glimpse into the world beyond the hospital.

If you haven’t seen this show yet—and you can handle it—you should.

Yellowjackets (Season 3) — ShowtimeCW: violence, light cannibalism

The third season of Yellowjackets was a bit slow to get started, but felt like it really regained some of its first season magic midway through, as the show found ways to reintroduce mystery and suspense in a story that was starting to feel a bit stagnant. Even though we largely know how the wilderness storyline will play out (the show began with cannibalism and we know a good chunk of the characters who would be rescued), I’ve been impressed with the twists and turns the show has been able to pull off to thicken the plot. 

The present-day plot is also in a far more compelling place than it was at the beginning of the season as the characters head towards a showdown that feels both unexpected and inevitable. I assume the fourth season will be the last, which should give them just enough time to wrap things up without overstaying their welcome.

Andor (Season 2) — Disney+CW: violence, sexual violence

Andor is one of the few shows made by a major streaming service that has been able to retain its anti-establishment roots past the first season. It is as anti-fascist as ever, both detailing the bureaucracy and the legitimacy it gives totalitarian governments while depicting a violent insurgent struggle against it. This feels special in our current political climate—a show boldly refusing to water down its message the way so many others have in the past couple years (in my opinion, Severance, Succession, and The Bear all come to mind). The show deserves major credit for pissing off fans with its portrayal of space-ICE as absolute monsters.

Perhaps more importantly, it is a forum to think about the nature of revolutionary and status quo violence. I talked about this a bit after the first Trump assassination attempt last year, but philosopher Slavoj Zizek has spoken and written quite extensively about the different kinds of violence. It’s easy to see the violence of an insurgent movement like the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars, but much harder to spot the violence that the status quo enacts to maintain itself. 

While revolutionary violence is incredibly messy (see Say Nothing), Andor doesn’t flinch from it, recognizing that violence is happening whether we fight back or not.

You (Season 5) — NetflixCW: violence, misogyny

I’ve probably been higher on the show You than most other critics over the years, having come to appreciate its absurdity, humor, and romance as a method for defanging its objectively terrifying protagonist. It’s a lot like Dexter, except that its protagonist is in denial that he’s a serial killer, instead constructing an elaborate fantasy about his romantic heroism. While Dexter imagined hunting serial killers as the only acceptable product of his need to kill, Joe truly believes at some level that he has only ever killed for love, even when his romantic partners have been his victims.

You has always been a “Difficult Man” show about those other shows, asking its audience what it is about these objectively awful men that they keep tuning in—and occasionally rooting—for. The final season, while imperfect and cheesy at times, is what I would consider a good ending for the series, taking its metacommentary to a logical and direct conclusion, confronting its fans with some important and uncomfortable questions about the genre. Does building up the fantasy of a supervillain make the ordinary villains of real life go down easier? Is there some perverse pleasure we get out of watching the punishment of people we deem deserving? And why are we drawn to the most toxic qualities of masculinity, ready to find any reason to look for excuses and extend forgiveness?

The White Lotus (Season 3) — Max*SPOILERS*

CW: language, nudity, cringe, self-harm

There was a lot to like about this season of The White Lotus. I liked the themes of success/accomplishment/resolution and the ways in which they are illusions to some degree. You don’t simply achieve enlightenment or peace, it’s something that must be worked on and comes from within, not from something that’s visible like wealth or the job you want or whatever. I thought Sam Rockwell going back to the temple was a nice little bow on this idea of constantly doing the work.

I liked the concept of collateral damage to our own personal struggles and the ways in which it puts others in danger. Both the Lochlan and Rick storylines put this into stark relief for me. I really liked the kind of melancholy end for Gaitok. He’s got everything he wanted at the beginning of the season, the girl, the job, the respect. But he also sold out his morals and turned off his own feelings. It’s an empty kind of accomplishment, and it’s not like things turned out great for the last guys. I liked the symmetry of Belinda leaving the thai worker hanging on the spa just like Tanya left her in season 1, and just the reinforcement of the ways in which we can conveniently leave a vacation, whereas it’s real life for the people who live there.

But I also think that the show deserves real criticism for the Sam Rockwell monologue because of the way it perpetuates transphobia, promoting the debunked idea of autogynephilia, something that Mike White has gone on far-right podcasts to laugh about.

I did not care for the Rick’s dad twist. Felt cheap, felt unnecessary to me. I don’t think it added anything and felt very movie-like and artificial. Introduced more questions than answers. In previous seasons I had liked how the deaths were borderline accidents. Yes, Tanya was attacked but her death was a result of her slipping and falling. Armond was kind of just in the wrong place at the wrong time. This season, Rick just went full John Wick on the resort.

I remain confused about how we’re supposed to feel about Saxon and his sister. Saxon seems to have done some growing as evidenced by reading the book, but I’m not sure we saw any actual ways he changed other than just talking less, which I suppose is an improvement. The sister seems to have accepted her role as a privileged princess, but obviously that’s about to come crashing down and I’m not sure how that is going to play out—I would have liked some of that fallout. I get that part of the theme of this season is that resolution is a fleeting construct, but I really would have liked to see how the Duke family’s drama played out.