While the heartbreaking origin story of another Breaking Bad fan favorite, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), was the highpoint of the show's first season, this year's episodes focused on newer characters.
Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould's prequel takes us back to the days when crooked lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) is still Jimmy McGill, a talented, tireless attorney who has the best of intentions but can't resist breaking rules. Tyler Coatesīreaking Bad never seemed like a show that needed a spinoff, but after two excellent seasons, Better Call Saul has done more than justify its existence.
But more importantly, it exposed a larger audience to Blichfield and Sinclair's tender, reverent look at a city full of people going out of their way-sometimes to hilariously disastrous results-to connect with the known and unknown faces that surround them.
Along for the ride are a few familiar faces from the original iteration of the series (Dan Stevens, Max Jenkins, Helene York, Greta Lee, and Michael Cyril Creighton all reprise their roles). How could the show's micro-storytelling-tiny slices of the daily lives of random New Yorkers, all of whom interact in some manner with Sinclair's aloof weed deliveryman known only as "The Guy"-translate into a 30-minute cable comedy series? It worked pretty well, as it turns out, with the HBO version of the series capturing the heart and soul of its online predecessor. The news that the beloved webseries from co-creators Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair would make its debut on HBO may have left some fans scratching their heads. Miller's boorish Erlich and Zach Woods' human non sequitur Jared to Suzanne Cryer's robotic but righteous Laurie Beam and constantly feuding frenemies Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr), it's impossible to pick a favorite character on a show where everyone's a standout. But its real draw is a cast whose chemistry increases with every episode. Season Three finds Richard (Thomas Middleditch) fighting for control of his own invention and highlights the absurdity of the cottage industries that prop up the tech world, from media to overseas click farms. Thankfully, you don't have to understand data compression to follow the three-season saga of Pied Piper, which has slowly become TV's best case study on the conflict between art (in this case, the developers trying to make the best product they can) and commerce (the corporations and financiers trying to cash in on their innovations).
No industry is more ripe for satire than tech, and no creator is better suited to the task than Mike Judge. Love triangles, heartbreaks, and old flames keep the storyline moving, as Casual begins to further differentiate itself from its largely hetero competitors with some of TV's subtlest portrayals of sexual fluidity. The latest batch of episodes finds Valerie, Laura, and Alex-three very different loners-struggling to make and keep friends as they continue courting romance. But the show reached new heights in Season Two. And, of course, the siblings' reunion reveals that the ghosts of their childhood still haunt their current relationships.
The idle, commitment-phobic creator of a dating site, he's gotten rich off of other people's search for love. Michaela Watkins' Valerie Meyers, newly separated from her cheating husband, and her taciturn teenage daughter Laura (Tara Lynne Barr) end up staying with Valerie's younger brother Alex (Tommy Dewey). In a first season that improved with each episode, Zander Lehmann's Jason Reitman-backed Casual distinguished itself from TV's recent glut of LA-set romantic comedies ( You're the Worst, Love, Togetherness) by focusing on family.