Leah Greenblatt

It’s [Shoshanna's] and Jessa’s plot lines--and a surprisingly tender one involving the blossoming romance between Elijah (Andrew Rannells) and an Anderson Cooper-like newsman played by guest star Corey Stoll in a multi-episode arc--that feel like the season’s new emotional center.... It’s still pretty great to watch them flail--in all their messy, misguided, ridiculous glory--towards something like it [womanhood].

A fresh, sharp-edged comedy that swerves past nearly every cliché.

Peter Morgan’s creation works so well as a whole because it’s consistently well written and lushly filmed--so lush it almost shames a small screen--but its greatest strength once again is in the casting.

Downward is shaggy but sweet, a surreal little Scooby snack. [19 May 2017, p.54]

The 2017 reboot is a blithe, fizzy mix of the familiar and new.

Plotwise, OMO is purely silly, but it's also breezy, bitchy fun. [24 Jun 2016, p.53]

Liar piles telenovela traits across six, pulpy logic-defying hours. What's left feel like less than the premise deserves: loopy melodrama classed up with British accents and high production values. [29 Sep, 2017, p.54]

Whether it’s turning its squinty eye on soccer practice or sexting or how to handle your best friend’s useless stoner husband, that real-lifeness, in all its weird, mundane, un-laugh-tracked glory, is the best thing about Better Things.

As much as it can be hobbled by archetypes and cliché, the series also smartly self-corrects, offering something rare in Millennial mass entertainment: A frank, authentically affecting portrait of what it feels like to be young, lost, and too fragile for the world.

Diet's giddy, bloody hyperreality toes an unlikely line between David Lynch and Desperate Housewives...then literally eats that toe, which is pretty fun. [Feb 3/10 2017, p.101]

We've seen it all before, but it's still fluffy fun. [10 Sep 2010, p.82]

Its themes are hardly revelations: Hollywood’s hierarchy is a cruel beast; executives are high-strung divas one tantrum away from a deep vein thrombosis; parking in L.A. is hard. But it’s still decent fun to watch the trio throw pebbles in the Narcissus reflecting pool of fame, and enjoy the tiny splash.

[AnnaSophia Robb is] compelling, and the show has a sweetly corny charm. [18 Jan 2013, p.71]

All kinds of extracurricular twentysomething-dude drama ensue (Nick and Travis are gay, Kyle and Teddy are straight), but it's the actual dancing that most moves Right.

The show has fun stacking its cast of future legends. But next to the soapy melodrama of Nashville or the cocaine-dusted '70 Gomorrah of HBO's doomed Vinyl, Records feels oddly sedate--rolling along, and only moderately rocking. [24 Feb/3 Mar 2017, p.91]