The Bear (FX/Hulu) (2022-6)

At its best, The Bear was the best thing on TV. It was intense to a level TV had never seen before, like watching a Safide Brothers movie about the fine dining scene in Chicago. In an era of binge watching, you couldn't sit through multiple episodes of The Bear. You needed a break from all the yelling and cursing. And in the years since, The Pitt has adopted its style, and perhaps improved upon it by being a little more bingeable. Even when stressful TV has sort of fallen out of fashion otherwise in these stressful times when people are looking for more peaceful optimistic leisure TV like Ted Lasso. 

The heights of The Bear is season 2, namely the standout episode "Fishes" that won Emmys for Jon Bernthal and Jamie Lee Curtis fresh off Everything Everywhere All at Once. Other highlights included the love for Chicago, the supporting character-centric standalone episodes, the needle drops (Can't Hardly Wait in Pop), the spectacular guest spots, the food porn, the editing, and the star-making turns from Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Ayo Edebiri. It lost its way a little bit in Season 3 and 4--less engaging, less demanding, generally less interesting, kind of depressing. But Season 5 brought the series to a fitting, uplifting finale. It has a much smaller focus, taking place all basically in a day, focused on one stressful dinner service. And in the end we get to see these characters on the verge of suicide finally smile again and find some peace. 

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.