Some reviews of recent shows.

I'm not going to defend True Detective.  At times it seemed like a satire of the Hard Boiled genre.  But I still liked it.  The action scenes were extremely well done.

Halt and Catch Fire was my favorite show for half the season, but it ended up relying a little too much on the characters never, ever, communicating with each other, which drives me nuts as a plot device.

Humans was well done, but...a little too tidy somehow.  Didn't have any rough edges, any zing.  I could stare at the face of the lead female synth all day long though.  If I were her, I'd wear those green contacts all the time.

I started watching Wet Hot American Summer, the series, as a lark, even though I never saw the original movie.  I kept looking over at Linda expecting her to object at any moment.  She doesn't much care for gross-out humor, and I don't much care for embarrassment humor, but after a couple of episodes, it really caught us.  There was something really good natured about it and I ended up caring for these characters, who were about as unreal as possible (40 year old actors pretending to be 16?).  Also, I think this was the most star-stacked show I've ever seen.  They must have all worked for peanuts.

The plot was unashamedly outrageous, well that was the point, but it still worked emotionally, which is a good lesson to a writer -- that the characters count above all.

Strain is cheesily entertaining, and the writing seems to have gotten better as it goes along, and I actually like where the plot is going.  So about a third is just awful reaches for emotional resonance, and a third is entertaining and well done horror gore, and a third is spritely dialogue among the leads, for an overall win.