Last week it was music; this week it is TV. Here is a list, in no particular order, of five TV shows I watched in 2025 with a brief (except for the first one) take on them. I'll do my best not to include any major spoilers.
Stranger Things
When Ted Lasso ran its final episode a few years ago, I wrote a post detailing why and to what extent I disliked the last season. My mom read it, and then she said to me, "I agree with everything you said, but I still liked watching the show." This is where I find myself with Stranger Things after consuming the first half of the final season. I don't think the show is very good anymore, and yet I can't wait for the next batch of episodes to drop. I've coined the acronym ABE (Always Bail Early) for TV watching once a shows starts to go downhill, but I think I have to amend that to U BE (Usually Bail Early), because there are a few programs that I want to stick out until the end, even as they founder to the finish line.
Why do I think Stranger Things is bad now? Many reasons, but first and foremost is that there has been a lot of Eleven on the show this season, and she is simply not a good character anymore. She hasn't been for a while. One of my hot takes is that the series would be better if they martyred her off a long time ago. Her story lines when she's not actively fighting evil are incredibly dull, and her powers often serve as a contrived narrative crutch. Throughout the series she's vacillated between normal girl with no supernatural abilities and all-knowing, all-powerful being. Where precisely she is on that spectrum depends almost exclusively on what's needed to advance the plot at that moment. It doesn't help that she's currently spending all her time with Hopper, who has somehow transformed himself from a real person -- a flawed, troubled recluse -- into an indestructible action-hero. He's now a mix between Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando and Predator, taking out paramilitary warriors with one hand and inhuman monsters with the other.
Hopper's arc is emblematic of another big problem with the show: The plot armor of all the main characters. The only people who die are random townspeople/military personale and newly introduced sacrificial lambs -- Bob, Billy, Eddie, etc.* This has two knock-on effects that make the show less intriguing than it could be: 1) The many battles between our heroes and Vecna's minions feel super low-stakes and not very interesting; 2) the cast gets bloated to the point that characters have to be hidden away (sometimes literally) for large swaths of the season to make the scripts manageable. At this point, the show runners are pot committed to El -- they missed their opportunity to write her off -- but there are definitely some characters we (or at least I) could do without: Jonathan (really? the love triangle with Steve and Nancy, again?), Murray (completely superfluous), and Max (good character, but they clearly didn't know what to do with her this season), to name a few.
*And Barb. Remember poor awkward Barb?
The sheer size of the cast means screen time is at a premium, and the writers seem to have dealt with this by having almost all the dialog on the show be comprised of characters taking turns explain convoluted plot points to each other (and thus the audience). First, Will is up to tell us all about how being possessed by Vecna is currently affecting him. Then, Mike will expound upon what it all means. Next, Henderson will lay out why that's a problem they have to solve. Then, Nancy will formulate a plan, and so on and so forth. It's not so much dialog, as it is serial explanatory monologues. Well, it's that and Easter egg reference to things from the '80s (which admittedly I'm a sucker for). There is very little actual character development, and what there is often feels forced and pandering. Also, the plans they make are unrealistically complex to the nth degree. They would be logistically impossible to pull off in one reality, let alone multiple realities. They are also often ethically dubious, to say the least. If your best idea involves drugging, kidnapping, and detaining an innocent family, you might want to go back to the drawing board (this goes for both the characters and the writers).
With all that said, I still want to watch. I still want to spend time with Steve and Robin and Joyce. I want to watch evil Linda Hamilton get her comeuppance and eviller Henry be vanquished once and for all. I'm still intrigued. I'm barely in, but I am, in fact, still in.
Pluribus
I don't know if this show is the masterpiece some say it is, but I do like it quite a bit so far. There are a lot of ethical/philosophical questions that its premise brings to the surface, and I've heard these explored on various podcasts. But something I was thinking about that I haven't heard anybody else dissect is that this show is an excellent critique of modern liberalism. The protagonist is mostly correct -- she has a strong moral position -- but she's so unappealing in how she expresses her views that she can't bring the people whose help she needs over to her side. She's self-righteous and condescending and hypocritical and unwilling to meet people where they are at. Instead of trying to win people over by listening to what they want and finding common ground, she presents her position as if it's gospel, and then acts as if everybody else is morally degenerate when they aren't completely on board with her. I don't think Vince Gilligan consciously wrote Carol Sturka to embody the flaws of liberalism today, but he knocked it out of the park if he did.
The Middle
My family growing up wasn't in disarray to the same degree as the Hecks, but a lot on the show definitely rings true -- the messy house, the overgrown yard, the beater car. We watched this one as a family, and we all really enjoyed it. It goes on a bit too long (nine seasons), but it never really jumps the shark. It's solidly good-not-great pretty much from start to finish. I didn't love Sue's arc, however. She went from being my favorite character in the early seasons to my least favorite in the middle (as it were). They just made her too much of a cringey loser in high school. In college she got better, and we got more Brad, who surpassed her as my favorite character. Actually, now that I think about it, Frankie was my favorite character all along.
White Lotus
The worst of the three seasons, in my opinion, by a large margin. One and two are basically tied (I give a slight nod to two), and then three is way below them. I still liked it, and I'm still in on the series and eagerly awaiting Season 4 (en France), but I can't deny that Season 3 had some major flaws and was far below the high bar Mike White set for himself. I could easily write another 10,000 words on what exactly I didn't like about Season 3, but I don't have time for that right now, and you probably don't either. So, let's move on.
The Chair Company
Weird and hilarious, but I didn't like ending. It was too abrupt. I don't think Tim Robinson knows how to end things. This is something I've noticed in his skits on I Think You Should Leave. I will be watching a sketch by myself, literally laughing out loud, wondering where it's is going next, and then it just ends.
Until next time...
