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Star City

It should be no secret that For All Mankind is one of my all-time favorite TV shows. Star City isn't quite as good, but it's the same showrunners, and I enjoyed the first season despite the overall bleak atmosphere. They paint life in Soviet Russia as an oppressive and hellish dystopia.

I really hope that the second season includes more interaction with the American characters we know from For All Mankind.

Avatar: The Last Airbender, Season 2

After the brilliant first season of the Netflix live-action adaptation of what is probably my favorite animated series of all time, I'd never expected a second season to match the initial brilliance, especially with the lead actor having aged undeniably out of kid status.

Somehow, they did it.

They kept to the initial storyline very well, abridging where necessary while not losing much of value. There were plenty of nods and references to events and characters they'd been forced to cut, and overall I was delighted with the adaptation.

Nobody can be Mako or match that absolutely unmistakable voice, but Paul Sun-Hyung Lee was an excellent casting choice and an amazing actor who crushed it in the role of Uncle Iroh in a way that no other actor could have. Ian Ousley continues to be my favorite, bringing my favorite character to life with a blend of humor and earnestness that I very much appreciate. And Gordon Cormier, despite aging between seasons, somehow pulls it off as Aang. I'd been a doomsayer, but I'm delighted to have been proved wrong. Lastly, Chin Han, whom I know from Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight, was great as Long Feng, leader of the Dai Li, despite looking little like the animated original.

Widow's Bay

At first, I'd been comparing Widow's Bay to The Burroughs, but after seeing the show, I realize that it's tonally very different. I don't have the language or the review expertise to detail the finest aspects of that particular comparison, but I do like Widow's Bay better.

What could have been a monster-of-the-week show somehow dodges that cliche and comes out as a well-acted tongue-in-cheek horror with miss-them-if-you-blink subtle jokes and a weirdness that will have you chuckling days later.

Furious

I was not prepared for how much I enjoyed Furious. I learned about the show from Pop Culture Happy Hour, and

it's now in the running for my favorite show of the year. At its core, it instills that vicarious vigilante thrill you get from seeing a woman who's been taken advantage of take her revenge against priveleged douchebags who undoubtedly deserve all the consequences. In that way, it feels like Promising Young Woman. But the subplots in Furious are where the story shines. In what's likely my favorite episode, wheelchair-bound Steve Way messes with police officers, and the whole situation had me laughing my ass off.

Chad Powers

I like Glenn Powell. And I like Steve Zahn. It was probably the weird-ass prosthetic face Glenn Powell was wearing that drew my attention to a football show which normally wouldn't have been something I'd be interested in. At its core, it's a show about a person pretending to be someone they're not, as a disgraced football player dons a disguise to escape his bad reputation. But the writing is funny, and with six half-hour episodes per season, I blew through the show in a couple days.