What makes these episodes feel extra-special is the sense of purpose to them. There's a big story being told here--not one that requires you to watch every episode (though your funny bone will thank you if you do), but one that seems to raise the stakes for everyone involved, and which makes the jokes funnier, the characters richer, in the process.

They know how great the show looks, they know how much their actors can give them, and they know just how much they can get away with.

Normal is overrated. Give me whimsy, dreams and Evil Troy and Evil Abed any day. Give me extraordinary. Give me Community.

The premiere suggests that the only other show that belongs with it in the discussion for the best drama on television is the same one we were talking about last season. At the top level, there is "Breaking Bad," and there is also--finally, thankfully, exceptionally--Mad Men, and then there is everything else.

As the follow-up to an incredibly strong debut season, it's even more fun.

It definitely has a voice, and it's a great one: witty and wise and warm and not exactly like anything you've heard before.

Silly or sober, Louie is one of the best shows on television.

While there are many extraordinary moments in the new season, there's still enough inconsistency that I'm still waiting for it to become the classic drama it so clearly has the tools to be.

Homeland functions terrifically as both a thriller and a commentary on our post-post-9/11 world, where the War on Terror and the concept of being constantly under surveillance are both facts of life.

Because the bond between them is so strong, all the show's disparate pieces - the filthy comedy and the desperation, the joy and the depression - hold together just as well.

The sheer number of colorful characters maneuvering keeps things lively.

It's clear and engaging and moving to this novice.

It's not an ambitious show. It doesn't have the historical sweep and dazzling visuals of something like HBO's upcoming "Boardwalk Empire." Yet in trying to tell good old-fashioned detective stories featuring a pair of leads I kept wanting to spend time with, it quickly joined "Boardwalk" as one of my two favorite new shows of this fall.

The darker and more complicated life gets for the Sons, the better the TV show tends to be. And based on the four episodes I've seen, Sons is still at the incredible level it achieved a year ago, when it became one of the best dramas on television.

It's so small and spare and simple, and yet it can be incredibly effective at what it does. Nice to have it back.

Thanks to the sharp writing of Warren Leight and a revelatory lead performance by obscure journeyman actor Holt McCallany, Lights Out is a reminder of why Hollywood keeps making boxing stories. Because when they're done well, they're irresistible.

Darn it if Justified showrunner Graham Yost and company haven't found a way to equal--if not top--that bunch [of opponents], while at the same time building on the lessons they learned in the first season.

The characters are so richly-drawn, and so wonderfully-played, that the exposition ultimately isn't that great a stumbling block. I wanted to know more about these characters, and within an episode or so was eager for any bit of backstory that helped better clarify all the relationships.

In season two, the strengths of Treme remain strengths, while some of the show's weaknesses have been much improved.

It fits the channel's larger brand (in both comedy and drama) about men existing on the edges of acceptable human behavior.

A winning new drama set only a few years before Don Draper would get a new secretary named Peggy Olsen.

If the start of the season feels formulaic, it's a formula that's worked in the past, and one that gives very good material to key members of the ensemble.

It's the best new comedy of the fall season, and the only new show I genuinely enjoyed from start to finish, rather than having to squint real hard and try to picture what it might look like once the producers figure out what to do with their stars.

There's enough sincerity lurking convincingly beneath the snark, and Levy is so good in both aggressive and vulnerable modes, that I have faith the show will find a way to humanize Tessa's new environment while still bringing the laughs.

The exhaustive nature of it, and the intimacy that Scorsese and his collaborators develop with both their subject and those who knew him, makes it into something more than a three-plus hour rehash of an oft-told tale.

Like Rick Grimes, all I can do is focus on what lies directly in front of me, and the here and now of The Walking Dead looks very good.

While Boss is a very promising drama with a great lead performance, it might be better off easing up a bit and just letting viewers appreciate Grammer's career-redefining work.

Beavis and Butt-Head are who they've always been, for ill or (comedically) for good. I'm glad to have them back.