The Two Weeks in TV, 1/1/26

Happy New Year! With very little new TV over the last two weeks of 2025, and three college football playoff bowl games today, I was planning to keep the actual writeups quick (as though I’m writing this live and not well in advance). However, I then had an idea for a Monday-style short essay, and that’s going to take up most of the column.

Catching up

We finally took the plunge on PLUR1BUS (I’m not going to keep stylizing it like that), just in time that we could finish catching up just before the finale premiered. So we’ve now seen season one, albeit in a little over a week’s time. I have some thoughts…

I quite enjoyed it, largely. The sci-fi hook makes the show inherently thought-provoking and leaves us with a lot of questions to mull; that said, the basic premise also has its own quirks that make it unique and the storytelling fresh. Rhea Seehorn is unsurprisingly great, as is so much of the cinematography and overall production. I find myself thinking about the show a lot, and what we know and don’t know, and wanting to know what happens next.

And, while there were some stretches that were a little slow and I found myself wondering when they’d get to the fireworks factory, other episodes (particularly the finale) were packed with story action. More to the point, this has helped me clarify some of my thoughts about pacing, “slow burns,” and the like. Of course, a good counter-example here, since I’ve written about it and since Vince Gilligan was involved, is Better Call Saul.¹ To sum what I wrote, the show was consistently and universally praised, even during the stretches that I thought were unsustainably slow and clearly stalling out just to avoid writing the next story beat. (I’ll add that my criticisms in that linked article were largely around season 4 but written before it ended; after the ending, it became even more blatant to me that the writers just wanted to end on that specific “S’all good, man!” moment, and simply didn’t have enough story for ten episodes in the meantime.) I felt like the pace was often concocted as a way to avoid moving the major story, the raison d’etre, of the show forward. I felt like even a lot of the planning and scheming was handled in a way that distanced me from it as a viewer rather than engaged me and put me in the characters’ shoes.

There’s been some chatter about Pluribus‘ pace (some viewers complain it’s too slow, Vince Gilligan says they have TikTok brain), and while it is slower and more deliberately and methodically paced for the most part, I found it well-executed in a way that helped me clarify why the pace didn’t bother me and I still found the show engaging. I’m going to use specific examples here, so this will contain spoilers beyond the bolded sentence of each entry:

1. Any use of slow, methodically-paced storytelling is to a deliberate story purpose. There’s a good example from the seventh episode, where about half the episode is given to Manousos’ journey from Paraguay to meet Carol in Albuquerque. In terms of story beats, this could be summed in a couple of points: Manousos reaches the Darién Gap, continues to refuse the Others’ help; Manousos finally takes enough physical damage that he gives out, so the Others rescue him. But by showing the journey step by step, Gilligan emphasizes just how difficult and perilous that journey is, and how determined Manousos is to make it. (The latter is also emphasized by Manousos practicing and repeating his English-language mantra for when he meets Carol: “My name is Manousos Oviedo. I am not one of them. I wish to save the world.”) Whether or not you think that is necessary, it is at least serving a story purpose and communicating something. By contrast, Better Call Saul season 4 had several episodes where Jimmy and Kim were increasingly distant and non-communicative, a montage jumping forward ten months in time where they continued to be so, and only after then is Jimmy actually even willing to acknowledge that. There is no reason for this; it doesn’t emphasize or communicate anything to us, and indeed, if it were told this way to emphasize just how distant the two have become, then it becomes flatly absurd that they hadn’t tried to work it out or just broken up in all of that time. That’s a representative example of a problem I often had with the show, that the story seemed to move slowly simply for the sake of dragging it out, sometimes to the point of absurdity, and not because the slow pace was being used to communicate or emphasize something.
2. An attention to detail that keeps even the slower scenes entertaining or even funny. The more methodical steps of Carol trying to work out the nature of the hive-mind and what the Others are really up to gets punctuated by at least one good running gag, the overlong answering-machine message the Others leave for Carol when they decide to keep their physical distance from her. There’s the fifth episode, where coyotes try to dig up Helen’s grave; Carol can’t figure out how to get the shotgun out of the police car she’s taken, so she panics and just drives through her fence to scare away the coyotes. She sleeps there to keep watch, and awakens the next morning… when she promptly finds the release mechanism for the shotgun. A little scene that probably wasn’t necessary, but where a thoughtfulness about the scene adds humor and entertainment value in a place a lot of writers wouldn’t have. And similarly, there’s a funny running gag in the finale, with Carol and Manousos using a translation app on Carol’s phone to understand each other— really, two, both with the app continuing on even when Carol and Manousos don’t need it to, or in the app returning “unknown word or phrase” every time Manousos says “Carol Sturka.” If the details of a “slow” scene are entertaining and engaging, then the scene doesn’t feel nearly as slow.
3. Understanding that montages of people thinking are not the same as montages of people methodically working through a problem. Noel Murray said this in his review of the finale: “Look, Gilligan loves process. He loves to create impossible situations for his character, and then to explore the ramifications in full, rather than rushing to a resolution. He likes to watch people think their way through problems—and so do I.” There’s a bit of subtle sleight of hand here that I don’t think is intentional, but speaks to what works and doesn’t work for me: There is a difference between process and thinking. Process is working through a problem, not just thinking about it, though it often involves thinking. When Pluribus is procedural or methodical, it actually shows the process, not just characters thinking about things and then we find out much later what they were thinking about. The Shield is good at showing both Vic and the Strike Team’s fast thinking in a crisis and them working through and planning out schemes when they have time, whereas, say, Better Call Saul would so often just show characters thinking, and if it showed a process, then it wouldn’t let us in on what the characters were doing or what their goal is. It sounds like a minor difference, but it’s the kind of minor difference that makes all the difference as to whether or not these scenes are engaging— showing us step-by-step what our characters are doing or even clueing us in on what problem they’re trying to solve works so much better than showing us step-by-step our characters thinking inscrutably while we don’t know what they’re thinking about or how they’re thinking about it. Pluribus shows us Carol (and Manousos) working through a problem, or the steps of their investigating what’s going on— they’re actually doing something, and we have a general idea of what problem they’re trying to solve, even when we don’t know what their investigations will uncover.

Anyway, I thought the show was quite good. And even on the “slow” analysis, I should mention that there are stretches that are not at all slow— the finale in particular is packed with plot incident and character action. As much as anything, after a decade or so of disappointment with some of the most hyped “Prestige TV” shows of the generation after Mad Men and Breaking Bad, Pluribus is, at the very least, a reminder that Vince Gilligan is very good at making TV, and his shows contain a lot of the details that make them effective that I’ve found lacking in the shows that superficially ape the Prestige form but don’t deliver on the substance.

What’s new?

Elsbeth, “A Hard Nut to Crack” – I guess it’s no surprise Elsbeth would be a big fan of The Nutcracker. Also a big fan of The Nutcracker: Andrew Rannells’ Harris Monroe, who does not like that the avant-garde director the Midtown Ballet Company has hired wants to make an entirely non-traditional production as a metaphor for puberty… and a production with no children, which means Harris’ daughter Noelle will miss her chance to play Clara, as she’ll be too old next year. I think that gives you what you need to know about this episode, though Harris is pretty sharp and nearly covers all his tracks. Also nice to see Teddy back, as he’s looking into Alec Bloom with the help of Captain Wagner, to see if he really is who he says he is… not least of which to protect his mother, who’s obviously become quite fond of him. (Bloom is also at the precinct this week as part of a toy drive.)

Stumble, “The Tell-Tale Slurp” – This episode gives Steven a little more time, as Courteney is becoming overwhelmed with all of her responsibilities and everything the team still needs to compete at Daytona, until Boon inspires her to rely on a time-honored tradition for hiring an assistant: an unpaid internship. Steven immediately screws up everything assigned to him, and then makes things worse by badly misinterpreting his firing. Steven’s still not quite one of the funnier characters yet, but the episode is still funny. That’s helped in part by Courteney’s interactions with Tammy, and Boon getting overprotective of Sally now that she’s dating someone and planning to move into the dorms. The episode’s ending revelation probably won’t be too much of a surprise, but I’m curious how it will change things. Six episodes in, Stumble has been very funny and I hope we get more for a good while.

Bob’s Burgers, “Heist Things Are Heist” – Probably not the first time the show has used a “nice things are nice” pun as the title, but The Belchers head to Kingshead Island because the restaurant has won the local lifestyle magazine’s “Best Dive on the Mainland.” They encounter Vincent, the fellow burger proprietor / alleged heist man from “To Catch a Beef,” and after the family takes their photo with the award, and Bob learns that to get their own trophy, they have to pay $200 for the stone and engraving… the kids plot to swipe the copy being used for the photos. Their first attempt goes badly, but then they rope Vincent into planning a more complex heist with them. Meanwhile, Bob spends his time at his tent serving sliders and rambling about what bullshit this whole thing is. Linda is wearing an old bra that she finds uncomfortable, and finally takes it off and gets paranoid that other people will notice. Pretty fun episode— are heists ever not fun? Ebon Moss-Bacharach returns as Vincent; Patti Harrison guests as Sabrina.

Animal Control won’t be back on the schedule for real until January 15, but Sunday night, Fox ran a sneak preview of season 2. “Bear Cubs and Broncos” somehow gets away with a cold open O.J. joke in the year of our lord 2025 preview of 2026. The department has to cut a branch, which means the most obnoxious division of Animal Control (led, as always, by Gerry Dee’s Templeton) is now sharing office space with our protagonists! This gets mean in a hurry, which I wasn’t terribly thrilled about; ironically, I usually think comedy needs some meanness, but my best guess is that this escalated so quickly and got so personal it rubbed me the wrong way. There’s also Shred-Emily stuff and Patel making extra money Doordashing while out on calls. Not my favorite episode of the show, but I expect there will be better use of the inter-office conflict going forward.

Falling behind

Writing about the 2025 year in TV, I guess.

Old favorites

For some reason over the holiday I’ve been in the mood for classic Beavis and Butt-Head. I’ve been doing some season 4 and 5 lately. There are some classic music video segments here as well as some of my favorite stories. One thing I like about the show is that the times we get perspective on many of the adults in B&B’s life beyond through B&B’s point of view (usually as students), they’re all kind of fucked up in their own way— that can range from the more obvious, like Old Crow-guzzling Principal McVicker, to the more benign, like how Van Driessen’s peers even outside of school regard him as a loser and a wimp. But the funniest for me are usually the guest adults who end up getting some comeuppance, which can range from Rush Limbaugh stand-in Gus Baker’s televised humiliation, to David Spade’s Mr. Manners / Mr. Candy getting his ass kicked for physically accosting the two. Mike Judge has such good skill as an observer of people, and that shines through even in an ugly cartoon about the two dumbest teenagers on the planet who mostly watch music videos, fart, and talk about scoring.

Just ended

Well, Pluribus‘ final episode officially came out Christmas Eve. The other network shows that “just ended” are really just ending for 2025, and will be continuing soon enough in 2026.

Coming up

St. Denis Medical resumes season two on January 5. Best Medicine premieres January 6, with a sneak preview on Sunday. Also resuming January 6, the second season of High Potential.

I’m seeing reports that season two of Going Dutch is running a sneak preview tonight, although, like its Fox comedy-block partner Animal Control, it will officially return January 15.

And you?

Let’s kick off 2026 the right way: Talking about what all we watched in 2025.

1. Worth noting that Gilligan left the day-to-day of BCS early in season 3 and left the showrunning to Peter Gould, given that my article largely focuses on season 4. ↩︎