TV Watching from Week 13, 2018

Week 13 of 2018 spanned from Monday, March 26th to Sunday, April 1 and even though it was a pretty busy one I did manage to watch enough shows to fill out my top 5 with a few left over.

My top 5 shows of the week:

• Top Show of the Week – Baskets (season 3, episode 10) – New Year’s Eve – While I missed Martha in this episode it was still a great addition to the series and I think it may have been the season finale. In any case, this episode highlights all the reasons I love this show. It’s so human, the acting is so real, and the writing perfectly clicks. After nearly every episode, this one as well, I am so surprised this show is only a half hour long…they manage to cram so much into such a short show. The emotions that are conveyed and evoked each week place this miles ahead of so many good shows on TV today. This is definitely one of my favorite series out right now.
• The Americans (season 6, episode 1) – Dead Hand – This episode sets up what looks to be a complex and intense final season of the series. I have a fear that Elizabeth is going to regret pulling Paige so deeply into a life of espionage.
• X-Files (season 11, episode 7) – Rm9sbG93ZXJz – This was a really cool episode that reminded why I love X-Files. For the most part of the show, there was hardly any dialog and Mulder and Scully were the only people on the screen, but it was well thought out, well put together and acted, and the story was reminiscent of the best Twilight Zone episodes or Steven King movies.
• The Alienist (season 1, episode 10) – Castle in the Sky – The season (and possibly series) finale brought everything together and put an exclamation point on one of the best series I’ve watched this year.
• Santa Clarita Diet (season 2, episode 1) – No Family is Perfect – Season 2 starts and it doesn’t miss a beat, things are just as good as the first. The writers have added some twists for the season that look pretty interesting and I’m glad they introduced a method to keep Sheila from getting any worse – I would have hated to see her decaying all season long.

Honorable mentions:

• The Terror (season 1, episode 1) – Go for Broke
• Krypton (season 1, episode 1) – Pilot
• Trust (season 1, episode 1) – The House of Getty

Each of these shows were pilot episodes of something that I could see developing into a good series. Of course not every show does well in it’s pilot and sometimes things are dramatically altered after the first episode so we’ll see where these programs go, but I enjoyed them enough to continue to watch them. It just happens that this week I watched so many great programs that these pilots weren’t able to crack my top 5.