Barry: wow (4x08)

I mean... "wow" seems like a pretty good word for it.

Cons:

Footage not found, honestly? This was more or less perfect television. The only shot I didn't like was the fade up on the clapping audience towards the end with Sally directing a high school production of Our Town. I think because we'd had a few very iconic, in-your-face shots leading up to it, and that one felt like it pushed over the edge for me, in openly acknowledging, I guess, the theatre of the whole thing? But that's the tiniest of nitpicks.

Pros:

Where to even begin? I think what I'll do is just run down the ultimate fates of the characters we most care about.

Barry: a nice meal (4x07)

This is one of the funnier episodes of Barry that we've gotten in a while, which is always so weird to say when you think about the literal events going on here.

Cons:

Again, I think the times in this show when they go for the obvious meta stuff, like Gene saying "Barry is a complicated and sympathetic figure" and then the undercover actor agent guy being like "but he killed people though" is kinda like... yeah, okay, I get your point. I don't know. Usually when this show barrels down the camera and says the quiet part out loud, I like it. But every once in a while I wish they'd let us get there on our own, I suppose.

I also still think Jim is the character who makes the least amount of sense to me? That's probably okay, as far as things go, but I thought I'd mention it.

Bob's Burgers: Amelia (13x22)

Aww, this was cute, I liked it!

Cons:

I was waiting for some sort of plot beat to close up the Linda getting a massage story. The culmination of the episode was very much with Louise, as was appropriate, but it made the whole B-plot feel a little aimless by the end. I expected maybe Linda would say she preferred the kids' bad massages and manicures over a semi-professional surprise. Or the masseuse could have been more ridiculous, given us some bigger laughs. I didn't mind what we got, it just felt like there could have been more there.

Pros:

I think the reason Louise is such a stand-out character on this show is that she has this really ruthless, devil-may-care attitude, and it's always extremely effective when she decides to care, when she decides to put in the effort. So at first Louise just stumbles into Amelia Earhart as a topic for her "hero" presentation in class. Then she finds herself super engrossed. Then, upon learning the "twist", that Amelia failed and didn't make it all around the world, she wants to throw in the towel but is told she has to stick with her topic.

Grey's Anatomy: Wedding Bell Blues/Happily Ever After (19x19/20)

Oh goodness. There are a lot of things about this that I really goddamn hate, but... plenty I loved, too!

Cons:

Jo and Link. Look, I'd honestly love to feel differently about this. It sucks to have a character like Link, who I used to greatly enjoy, turn into someone that I just don't want to spend time with anymore. I liked Jo and Alex, and I liked Amelia and Link. I have never once thought these two worked as a romance. And when they had their big love confession and kiss in the rain moment, I honestly felt nothing. Total numbness and boredom. Plus, Link seemed like such an insensitive jerk about Jo flirting with her patient, Sam. Just grow up and get over yourself, dude.

Simone and Lucas is great and I'll compliment the drama later, but I still think Trey should have... existed as a character more leading up to this point. It was such a non-choice, such an obvious conclusion. I would have liked a bit more wedding shenanigans, and a bit more of an understanding of who Trey is as a person, in order to enjoy this more fully.

Bob's Burgers: Mother Author Laser Pointer (13x21)

This was such a cute episode!

Cons:

Honestly, I can't think of much of anything. Maybe I wish we'd seen the kids' school friends? We spent time at the school, but Mr. Frond was the only character we really interacted with. That's just a little thing, though.

Pros:

Starting with Linda's plot, I loved that when it ended, the author didn't soften towards Linda and suddenly realize how much her books meant to people. That was the ending I was expecting, and I do love it when this show goes for a more sentimental vibe sometimes. But it's also super funny and refreshing to have a plot where Linda behaves way out of line, and in the end, she doesn't exactly win any friends because of it. Her obsession with the author of some of her favorite kid's books makes sense, as thinking about her kids going off to college has suddenly made her contemplate a future where she and Bob are empty nesters. My favorite joke of this one is when Linda reacts with skepticism over the concept of "books for adults". That was hilarious!

Barry: the wizard (4x06)

I was legit terrified that kid was dead on the couch. Yikes.

Cons:

I think Jim, Janice's father, is one of the least rounded-out characters on the show. He kind of exists to be this ultimate threat, constantly hiding in the shadows. And that's... fine, I just always like it better when Barry's own actions directly lead him into danger. And I get that that's happening here, because he murdered Jim's daughter, but I still wish there was a tad more meat to his character and his motivations. A father wanting vengeance for his murdered child makes perfect sense, but what else does he have going on?

Pros:

Everything with Sally and John home alone was... pitch perfect in how insane and scary it was. First the chilling ennui of John's sadness at being left alone with his mother, and Sally's attempts at mothering quickly pivoting into drugging her child into a stupor so as to put them both out of their misery temporarily... God, it was just awful to watch. When Sally was trying to wake him up from the couch and he wasn't moving, I was super scared he was going to die of alcohol poisoning or something. Terrifying.

And then even more terrifying, we've got the figure all in black following Sally around, locking her in  her room... I love the way they shot that, because for a split second I thought the figure had slammed the door while inside the room, trapping Sally alone with the mystery person, but then instead it was locking her in. The circumstances of what exactly happened here are completely obscure to me. As John wakes up from his deep stupor on the couch, it's to hear his mother talking on the phone to Barry, leaving a message, asking him where he is. The mysterious assailant could be anything, from a crazy hallucination of Sally's, to vengeance from the guy she choked in the bathroom at the diner, to someone from Barry's past coming to haunt them... it's really not clear, and I love how messy it is. Frankly I was just relieved Sally was unable to figure out how to load a gun properly.

Grey's Anatomy: Ready to Run (19x18)

Man, that patient death got to me.

Cons:

The ADHD plot thread still seems pretty weak to me, very after-school special in the way it's being handled. I just wish there had been a more organic, less textbook path for Lucas to learn this about himself. Nick coming up to him after a patient has died to be like "because of your ADHD, you're going to feel this loss really hard" just felt like the epitome of inappropriate to me. Maybe I'm being sensitive because I would personally hate someone being so presumptuous with me about my mental health. I think Grey's is so great at raising awareness for all sorts of topics, and it's cool to have two main characters on the show with ADHD who can represent that perspective. Conceptually, I'm all for this. I just think the execution is very weak and feels very... rote, and unmotivated. Nick is still super boring so I don't care about his and Lucas's burgeoning mentor/mentee connection.

I actually think Jo and the patient with all the broken bones have cute vibes, and I thought it was interesting that she felt the need to confirm that Link was her "roommate" there at the end. But... I still find the Link/Jo romance plot just kind of tedious all around. I'm not looking forward to him being weird and jealous and hurting Jo's feelings, etc. It's already annoying to me.

Barry: tricky legacies (4x05)

This show makes me wish I was smarter and better at articulation so I could explain what I think is genius about it.

Cons:

I almost wish the episode hadn't included the intrusion from the past at the end, and had instead ended with Barry and Sally and their son just... living their strange lives together. The bit at the end with Cousineau returning from hiding and ready to tell Barry's story, and Barry saying he'd have to kill him, felt like more of a plot gimmick than anything, and I think it would have been cool from a pacing perspective if like... that happened at the start of the next episode, leaving this one in this strange unfamiliar space with nothing to latch onto from the past. It's a small thing, I just thought the very ending of the episode was the weakest part.

Grey's Anatomy: Come Fly With Me (19x17)

Okay, this was a solid middle-of-the-road episode, where some of the plot threads worked really well for me, and others were a miss.

Cons:

This Nick and Lucas thing was kind of baffling. We see that Nick is frustrated with Lucas for dropping the ball on some patient care matters, and he tells him to work out his ADHD meds so he can stay on top of his career. Lucas is baffled, having had no idea he had ADHD, but once he looks into it, he realizes that it fits. He and Nick talk, and Nick says that he does too, and that he thought it might derail his career, but he manages it now like every other part of his life. This is... fine, like, I don't have a problem doing a story around this, but for one thing it verged into after school special territory for me with the cheesiness and neatness of the story. This is the first we've known about this being an issue for Lucas, it just kind of came out of nowhere. And the utter inappropriateness of Nick, Lucas's boss, just... making an assumption about his mental health diagnosis and whether he's on meds or not? I was staggered by how clumsy and inappropriate that moment was, and it just felt very forced and unrealistic. So yeah, the concept seems cool to me; if Nick (the most boring character in the world) is really sticking around, might as well give him a mentorship role for Lucas. It just felt weird how they did it.

Bob's Burgers: Radio No You Didn't (13x20)

I love the storytelling episodes of Bob's Burgers!

Cons:

This isn't a problem with the episode, but I feel like I've been missing some stuff this season that I just hope we get to see again soon. Like, the school gang. Tina-focused episodes. Recently we've had stuff like the episode with the wrestling show, and the one where they all go to buy things at the Walmart-equivalent store, so we haven't had just... a school plot, or a restaurant plot, in a minute.

Pros:

Honestly, I don't really have any actual complaints about this episode, though! It was a lot of fun! The setup is simple. Linda comes across an old radio in the closet as she's cleaning it out, and Bob tells the story of his grandmother uncovering a Nazi spy ring in the '40s. I think what I like about the way the story unfolds is that it didn't have a joke/twist outcome? As I was watching, my initial thought was going to be that as Bob was telling the story, it was going to become obvious that his grandmother wasn't really a hero, the whole thing had been a misunderstanding. Or there would be some humorous reveal where Bob learned that the story had been made up entirely. But no! It really is a story about a mother with a new baby at home, noticing something strange and uncovering enemy spies! An actual piece of family history that a person might have, a small incident that carries great import in within a family, but doesn't make a huge historical splash. I was kind of into how simple it all was.

Barry: it takes a psycho (4x04)

Well. I am sad.

Cons:

One of the things about this show that always takes me just slightly out of the moment is when Sally is "acting". Because the woman playing Sally is a good actress, absolutely. But how good am I, the viewer, meant to think that Sally, the character, is as a performer? I find it frustratingly ambiguous, and maybe that's the point, but I always get taken out of the immediacy of the scene a bit. When Sally examples the monologue to try and help Kristen, am I supposed to be impressed? Or embarrassed for her? A little of both? When it comes to the commentary on Hollywood and acting in general, the show is clearly trying to say something, but I feel like I never quite know what that thing is.

Pros:

It's a brilliant move to keep Barry out of the majority of this episode. He's escaped from prison, we don't know where he is or when he'll pop up. It's like he's a slasher villain, in a way. Super effective way to build tension through every moment in all the scenes, whether with Hank, Cousineau, or Sally. And then when he does turn up, it's to find Sally ready to drop everything and run with him. Which I both did and did not expect to be how it happened. I find it fascinating that Sally's willingness to run with Barry is completely dependent on how poorly her own life is going at the moment. She's on the cusp of opportunities, but she's being overlooked in favor of the taller, more curvy acting student Kristen who doesn't actually have her talent. Then Barry is there, and you can basically see it take over her face: fuck it. Let's go. I loved Barry's reaction, that meek little "really"? As he kind of can't believe the thing he's been wanting but which seemed so improbable, is actually happening.