David Simon and his writers... aren't out to change the world; the slippery slope of civilization is already in place on The Wire and Simon is just out to document how each and every person survives. Or doesn't, as this season quite devastatingly proves.

The writers have shown that letting the characters drive the story can make a form as tired as the sitcom new again.

The Wire is as true as television gets.

Not since HBO's "The Wire" has a show juggled so many conflicting and diverse issues like race, money, and class with such staggering insight.

The seeds planted in the earliest episodes of the season promise a narrative as rich and complex as season one.

Ideas became embedded into character and each member of the ensemble was given complex motivations within situations that challenged their natures. As the third season begins, we see that Weiner is committed strongly to going in this same direction with closeted homosexual Salvatore Romano.

Finishing each episode is like closing up a really great, gritty, little crime novel.

Treme puts everything into every scene. The camerawork is rich and the direction squeezes every nuance from the actors. The city's history has been painstakingly researched and effortlessly inserted into the writing. As a result, the moments-or notes-that make up this show are all that much richer, that much livelier.

This is one of the rarest finds on television: a show where cast and character are so perfectly matched by a creator who understands exactly what journey he wants take his audience on.

Well written and acted, almost perfectly paced, and entirely unlike anything else on television, Spartacus isn't just bloody good, it's bloody excellent.

Breaking Bad continues at the same disciplined, regimented pace, fussing over small details and picking at new threads, even with the end looming.

Hunted balances its cheesy dialogue and gratuitous sex and violence with an overarching narrative that dramatizes endemic moral rot and the dark money pulling strings from behind the curtain.

Justified is the strongest, liveliest, and most tonally accurate adaptation of the writer's work to date, and the latest season bracingly suggests that isn't likely to change anytime soon.

That Enlightened's propagandist and activist message is tinged with irony only makes it more perfectly tooled to our times.

Despite the formidable technical mastery applied and the demanding sprawl of the multifaceted narrative, Campion's series has the unmistakable timbre of daring art made naturally.

Not quite The Office II, not quite a wholly different breed, Extras should nevertheless please Gervais aficionados and newcomers alike.

This season holds promise, not lacking in the detail that makes the series so enjoyable.

The duo's knack for a peculiarly modest zaniness is shared with the brilliant supporting cast.

Breaking Bad is at its most entertaining when it's taking us into the drug culture of the street.

It might seem like grilling an A+ student for B- work, but the fact remains that this is among the few times the show has spun its tires.

As in the show's third-season creative peak, the attention to continuity and timely plot devices is well balanced by the focus on character and actual comedy.

On a whole, the new season of Friday Night Lights manages to retain its depth and heart-wrenching warmth despite a sea change in its structure and characters.

The chemistry of every television show should have as rapid a half-life as Breaking Bad, transforming into something new while building off the critical elements of the past.

Only by tuning in on Sundays will we discover if the tone of upheaval herein will define season four; regardless, Mad Men continues to hit its stride most indelibly while rendering the off-kilter uneasiness of transition.

Most of the episodes so far have ended with a simulacrum of a group hug, an acknowledgement that, even though they don't always get along, this family loves one another. So far, these moments have worked on the show, but the formula could get tired.

If FlashForward can keep the momentum it set in its premiere episode, the show's apocalyptic tone and fate-bending intrigue should prove deeply fascinating.

The storytelling gifts of writer-producer Rob Thomas, the creator of another under-seen show, Veronica Mars, prove innumerous, as these wholly original, vital characters practically bleed insecurities, coming off as tenderly funny and human.

Rather than waiting for a future payoff, Fringe is cashing in with every episode, showing us the escalating war between worlds-and with likeable characters and compelling cases to boot. Ironically, it's by branching out in two different directions that the show has become, more than ever, the centerpiece of a hypercompetitive Thursday night lineup.

In the first half of director-screenwriter Frank Darabont's impeccable pilot episode for AMC's new adaptation, you feel the weight of time passing in ways that Kirkman always struggles with. To say that Darabont has kicked his series off with a bang would be a serious understatement.

For every Mrs. Patmore, the cook who wants nothing more than to stay in service the remainder of her life, there is a housemaid such as Gwen (Rose Leslie), who dreams of becoming a secretary in a modern office. It's these dichotomies, and the way they exist within both the Abbey itself (half the rooms have electricity and half don't) and its multifaceted inhabitants that make Downton Abbey not only the best soap opera currently on television, but one of the most relevant as well.

Justified's rich vein of gallows humor, convincing sense of place, and twisty hillbilly-noir narratives are all selling points, but it's Olyphant's devilish grin that seals the deal.

Archer is sleekly animated, has a cool retro design, and writing that manages to be both smart and bawdy all at once, but most of all, it has a fantastic voice cast.

Knowing but not pretentious, snarky but not sneering, Portlandia succeeds both as farce and as faithful representation of a population for whom the dream--of the '90s or anything else, for that matter--is still alive.

Treme gives you the best, then, of dramas and documentaries: a moving snapshot of a city, and its flesh-and-blood people, in transition.

The show, on the model of other epic sci-fi programs like Battlestar Galactica and The X-Files, still has the potential to break ground. But for now, it's telling a gripping, well-made story; it might not be ready to be appreciated as art, but it's impossible not to love it as entertainment.

Louie is smart, cinematic, and bitterly honest, constantly dancing between revelatory moments and hysterical bursts of humor that are both surprising and touching.

It's arresting and criminally entertaining.

[The] disappointment, and the full-hearted yet misguided ways Amy imagines she might transcend it, are the real subjects of the series, and Dern and White have both seemingly spent long careers in preparation for a project exactly as ambivalent, humane, and beautifully contradictory as this.

In lieu of this transcendent attention to detail, however, there's still Brownstein and Armisen's magnetic and mysterious central relationship.

The Mags's-money plotline masterfully brings together Boyd's crew, featuring Raylan's farther, Arlo (Raymond J. Barry), Limehouse's camp, an incarcerated Dickie Bennett (Jeremy Davies), the dimwitted Dewey Crowe (Damon Herriman), and Raylan, along with fellow marshal Rachel Brooks (Erica Tazel) in a string of energetic scenes boasting some tremendous acting and increasingly clever dialogue that truly carries the lively spirit of author Elmore Leonard's original work.

Asking viewers to simply look his characters in the eye, Milch has created an infuriatingly but genuinely moving drama.

There's quite a bit going on underneath the show's deceptively raw, on-the-fly simplicity. It's also often a hilarious, exhilaratingly dangerous mixture of the broad, macabre, and political.

Girls is still undergoing ultimately minor growing pains, but it's frequently poignant and audacious, and actors who made little impression in the first season are allowed to flower.

Archer is a wonder in that its most fiercely flawed characters are its inextinguishable heroes, and their stylized comeuppance arrives in ways that are perpetually unpredictable and altogether resonant within the show's singular, emotionally unhinged universe.

As the tactics of these two characters [Marcus Crassus and Spartacus] grow all but indistinguishable, it becomes clear why this final season is labeled War of the Damned, and all but guarantees that while their fighting will lead to a bitter end, it will lead viewers to the most savory of conclusions.

As always, there's no predicting where all of this is headed, but if one last reference to The Divine Comedy is any sign, this season's journey toward the final act of Mad Men's American epic promises to be its most challenging and rewarding.