Atlanta (2016-22)

This one leaves a pretty large hole in the television landscape. Atlanta was a landmark. It was experimental. It spent whole episodes without a glimpse of our main characters. It pulled stories from real life. It was raucous and poignant. It had something to say about the black experience in America. And then in its penultimate season they go to Europe and speak to the black American experience abroad. It bravely portrayed white people in a way no other show dares to. Its bizarre-ness is explained in its final episode with a not wholly original but brilliantly executed meta sensory deprived dream. It went from a black Justin Bieber to a white Teddy Perkins to a trannsracial man being interviewed on a Charlie Rose type talk show.

Donald Glover can do just about anything and everything. Brian Tyree Henry is now a highly sought after actor, who I apparently saw on stage in Book of Mormon years before Atlanta, and who stole the show in the excellent If Beale Street Could Talk. I think Hiro Murai also gets a lot of credit for the look and dreamlike feel of the show. And I don't know who the music supervisor is, but they're first rate.

Devs (2020)

There are some really beautiful things happening in Alex Garland's miniseries Devs. What it has to say about humanity is kind of profound. How it gets there though is a rather heady theoretical physics sci-fi lesson. And I didn't really follow it all the way through. I barely understood enough to get the ending. The show overall is extremely slow. I don't think they really needed 8 episodes. Kenton is really absolutely necessary to the core plot; he's more of a distraction. The acting is also really robotic, probably intentionally so. Nick Offerman is certainly cast against type in a dramatic role; it's didn't quite work for me just because we know Ron Swanson and I can't dissociate him from that character.  It's all really unsettling--the sound design, the set, the giant statue of Amaya that never really plays a part but to show how weird this place is.

The Americans (2013-8)

The Americans is an extremely suspenseful Cold War-era spy thriller, perhaps the best TV has ever seen. Similar to Breaking Bad, The Americans excelled at character development of antiheroes, and at slow-burn long cons unfolding over the course of a whole season. The series follows two "illegals", Soviet sleeper agents posing as travel agents, living in Virginia (though recognizably filmed in New York) at the height of the Cold War with their two American-born children. Though not a true story, it is based in truth. The Soviet Union took espionage very seriously; it is kind of incredible (read: crazy) how integrated they were in American society. That combination of extreme dedication and pettiness is, I think, uniquely Russian, maybe also kind of Chinese. I think the inverse, the Russian version of the Americans, probably didn't work because it's unbelievable that American spies were so nuts.  They characteristically over react a lot, and devise wild over-the-top schemes to achieve small goals.

Philip says it best in Season 6, that they were always worried about what the Americans would do them, but in the end it was other Soviets that would ultimately be their downfall. Meanwhile, Stan (a stand-in for the bureaucracy generally) fails to see why Gorbachev's leadership matters. If he had asked someone at State, Gorbachev's opening up of the Soviet Union would be far more important than his mission to catch illegals--Stan fails to see the forest for the trees or is so focused on winning the battle he can't fathom winning the war. He is blinded by his narrow focus. Similarly, Elizabeth sees her job as a spy as purely ideological, so stone cold that she doesn't even realize the other tactical qualities it takes to be a spy. It's why she thinks Paige could become a spy herself, even though it is so obvious that she could not. 

Some highlights:

• The assassination attempt on Reagan as seen from Russia as a coup in motion was eye-opening
• The bio-weapon plot line is a clear example of defense spiral, the classic IR theory. The Soviets cannot discern the difference between offensive and defensive weapons, so when they discover that the Americans are developing bioweapons, allegedly serums for potential bioweapons, they must escalate their own stockpile, bound to spiral out of control. 
• Spying isn't all just assassinations, it's mostly intelligence gathhering
• Great use of 80s music
• Fantastic costumes and hair styling for the many disguises
  
• Mischa's son never really comes in to play. It's like they had plans for him but then forgot and left him hanging.  
• The first season is very exciting. I think it's the strongest season along with the last.
  
• The ending is brilliant. I called Henry's ending, but did not see Paige's gut-punch ending coming.
  

Mrs. America (2020)

The miniseries from FX on Hulu is quite good on the whole though some episodes in the middle are not as interesting. I think especially powerful is the Shirley Chisholm episode, helmed by an excellent Uzo Aduba. The episode speaks to the power of representation, even symbolic. Chisholm is the first woman and first African-American to make a run for president. And even if she never really stood a chance, seeing her on the stage was incredibly important. The Bella Abzug episode is also very good, helmed by Margo Martindale who tends to play politician-types, always very well; her costumes and accent and gestures are really great. What makes her episode especially powerful is the argument it makes about radical change. Ideas that may sound radical, over time, can and do move into the mainstream. The moment she realizes this while visiting Betty Friedan, known for her own brand of radicalism. Feminism, which once seen as radical, in her own lifetime, moved into the mainstream, and today (at least in the Obama era) are self-evident ideals, that a woman deserves equal pay as a man, for instance.  And then I also thought the Houston episode was very good, which takes place at the 1977 National Women's Conference. The STOP ERA women are at the Convention without their leader, and left on her own, Sarah Paulson's character in her drunkenness starts to see the light. The episode is a trip like something out of The Good Fight.

In a terrific ensemble cast, Cate Blanchett is the crown jewel as the awful Phyllis Schlafly. Even playing such a hypocritical brainwashed witch, Blanchett is typically excellent. I remember learning about Schlafly in school specifically as part of the anti-ERA movement but not as the mother of modern Republicanism. I think the series may give her a little too much credit for birthing Reaganism. Her valuable mailing list becomes the base of the modern Republican party. The irony is Reagan doesn't offer her a place in his administration, supposedly because he is already unpopular enough with female voters. However the line from Schlafly to Trumpism is much darker.