The 25 Best TV Bloggers Right Now

They watch television better than you. Embrace it.

Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

So, you watch all the best TV shows. Congratulations.

You've graduated from the belief that the artistic possibilities of the small screen begin and end with Entourage. Breaking Bad and Mad Men have become appointment viewing. Friends come to you for recommendations, and you are too happy to introduce them to the world of Twin Peaks, Freaks and Geeks, or whatever other departed gem you've been streaming obsessively on Netflix.

What do you do now? Just as there is an endless parade of great programming vying for your affections, there are a number of great writers out there who are talking about your favorite shows. Reading critiques, recaps, and concept pieces on your beloved programs can complete the viewing experience. Great criticism can help you see a show in a whole new way.

While everyone and their mother is blogging about television these days, some of the writers stand out from the pack as funnier, smarter, and deeper than the competition.

These are the 25 Best TV Bloggers Right Now.

Written by Brenden Gallagher (@muddycreekU)

25. James Hibberd and Lynette Rice

Twitter Handle: @James_Hibberd, @EWLynette
Writes At: Inside TV at Entertainment Weekly

The "Inside TV" blog gives you exactly what you would want from Entertainment Weekly—more inside baseball than in-depth analysis. Sometimes you need details on ratings, green lit pilots, and whether the The Good Wife's writing team is beefing with Vampire Diaries. Hibberd and Rice provide exactly that.

That isn't to say there isn't substance her; there are plenty of interviews for you to nerd out on, and detailed glimpses into the business side of the industry. If most of the critics on this list belong on the editorial page, these two are the ones dishing out the news.

24. Tim Goodman

Twitter Handle: @BastardMachine
Writes At: "The Bastard Machine" at The Hollywood Reporter

There is a little bit of everything in Tim Goodman's "Bastard Machine." The Hollywood Reporter's TV critic moves deftly between reviews, opinion pieces, and news, never missing a beat, and never losing his unique voice. Among all that Goodman does well, our favorite element of his blog has to be his "Power Rankings."

His pithy blurbs get straight to the point as he weighs in on why some shows have captured our imagination, at least for this week. We'd tell you more, but the man who is behind a series entitled "Shortest Reviews Ever" might be ill-served by anything but brevity.

23. Chris Witherspoon

Twitter Handle: @WitherspoonC
Writes At: "The Dish" for The Grio

This media-heavy blog is your resource for black entertainment news. Witherspoon uses video, slideshows, and analysis to get at the heart of the important issues of the day. He also covers The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air more than anyone else, which is an achievement in itself.

We love Witherspoon when he's on stories that no one else is talking about. His recent piece on the tensions between the Black Church and TLC's The Sisterhood is just one example of the kind of work Witherspoon produces that you won't likely find anywhere else.

22. Rembert Browne

Twitter Handle: @rembert
Writes At: Grantland

As is the case with most of the writers at Grantland, Browne's stuff is all over the map. He covers sports, music, television, and whatever he damn well pleases. Across the board Browne's work is of a very high quality, but sometimes subject meets author in just the right way.

This has been the case with his Pretty Little Liars recaps. Unfortunately, Browne has decided to retire from recapping with the Liars before he gets knee deep in season four. Don't worry though, Browne has started a new series of JPEG and snark-heavy analysis. After the success of his "Rembert Explains the '80s" series, he's back with "Rembert Explains the '90s," and the first stop is Legends of the Hidden Temple .

21. Molly Lambert

Twitter Handle: @mollylambert
Writes At: Grantland

If you're a little bit too old and/or not ironic enough to appreciate Rembert Browne's one-two punch of Legends of the Hidden Temple and Pretty Little Liars writing, Molly Lambert's "Girls Maturity Level Threat Watch" pieces might be the cheeky recap series for you. Lambert's focus is a bit narrower than Rembert's, as she only deviates from the TV and movie beats to bring you the best stories from the tabloids and the best songs from other countries (do yourself a favor and check those pieces, stat).

Many of our favorite Molly Lambert moments come when she joins forces with Emily Yoshida, whether on the "Girls in Hoodies" podcast, or in pieces like their "Autopsy of the Twitter-Ravaged Remains of Liz & Dick." Grantland is your destination for cheeky, mix-and-match pop culture hilarity.

We know it's tempting, but just don't try to hard to get hired there.

20. David Bianculli

Twitter Handle: @TVWORTHWATCHING
Writes At: TV Worth Watching

Though Fresh Air mainstay and college professor David Bianculli has been a television critic for years, his website, TV Worth Watching, only recently celebrated its fifth anniversary.

Founded the day the writer's strike began, TV Worth Watching has had a clear mission from the very beginning. In Bianculli's own words: "The voices and opinions we offer, from both columnists and readers, are more informed, thoughtful, and discerning than much of what you'll find out there on other pop-culture media sites. And just as the silences in symphonies help make a masterpiece, a lot of the beauty in TV Worth Watching lies in what we don't present. No Jersey Shore. No Honey Boo Boo. Our masthead slogan may as well be: 'No Kardashians.' "

In addition to coverage of House of Cards and Homeland on Bianculli's blog, you'll also find coverage of PBS and various miniseries that you won't find on blogs that are more dependent on advertiser dollars. With the principles and dusty puns that you'd expect from a college professor, Bianculli's blog is television criticism worth reading.

19. Daniel Fienberg

Twitter Handle: @HitFixDaniel
Writes At: "The Fien Print" at Hitfix

Sometimes it's best to get your information straight from the horse's mouth. Dan Feinberg puts in his fair share of time recapping, but the bulk of his Hitfix blog, "The Fien Print," is reserved for interviews and coverage of industries events.

Come for the prestige interviews, but stick around for the smaller conversations; the breadth of interviews is impressive. In preperation for the third season of Game of Thrones, he landed interviews with over half-a-dozen actors from the show.

He's done the same for shows as varied as Once Upon a Time and Amazing Race. He can get analytical with the best of them (he co-hosts the "Firewall and Iceberg Podcast" with Alan Sepinwall, and can't resist the chance to write long essays about CW shows), but his blog is chiefly about getting you first-hand knowledge of your favorite shows.

18. Tom and Lorenzo

Twitter Handle: @tomandlorenzo
Writes At: Tom and Lorenzo

At the intersection of television, fashion, and gossip sit Tom and Lorenzo, a self-described "fabulous and opinionated gay couple of a decade-plus" who prove the old adage, "The couple that blogs together, stays together." Their breezy recaps and quippy style extremely entertaining, but Tom and Lorenzo are at their best when they combine their loves of fashion and television.

With Mad Men's premiere date upon us, we should expect new installments of "Mad Style" in which Tom and Lorenzo break down how the carefully curated fashion and design of Mad Men is used to further the storytelling. Not only will you view Mad Men in a whole new way, you might learn a thing or two about dressing yourself for those times you leave the house between Netflix binges.

17. Ryan McGee

Twitter Handle: @tvmcgee
Writes At: Hitfix, A.V. Club, Boob Tube Dude

Ryan McGee's musings about television are on point no matter what form they take. Whether he's fulfilling his duties as Cougartown, Spartacus, and House of Cards recapper for The A.V. Club, producing either of this two stellar podcasts, "Talking TV with Ryan and Ryan," and "The Not Ready for Primetime Podcast," or blogging on his own site, "Boob Tube Dude," his commentary comes correct.

McGee is at his best when he can step away from his close reading commitments and reflect on the larger state of television. His A.V. Club piece from a year ago, "Did The Sopranos do more harm than good?: HBO and the Decline of the Episode" which discussed the rise of "installments" of television, generated hundreds of comments and near-universal reflection from the critical community.

His recent article, "The Long and Short of It: Why the Closed-end Series Will Save the Long Term Health of TV" offers a similarly macrocosmic view of the television landscape, speculating on the impact of a move away from a syndication-hungry model. It's easy for television critics to get caught up in the week-to-week rigors of recapping and live-blogging. McGee can recap Cougartown with the best of them, but his ability to step outside of the discussion du jour and view the larger picture is what makes him required reading.

16. Ellen Gray

Twitter Handle: @elgray
Writes At: philly.com

Philadelphia Daily News television critic Ellen Gray is one of the most thoughtful TV bloggers around. Her meditations on the intersection of television and culture make for thorough and rewarding reading. Her recent piece reflecting on violence in television was one of the most thoughtful of the glut of essays we saw on the topic in the weeks after The Following made its premiere.

Gray even turned her review of the pedestrian Army Wives into an exploration of the distance between what women want and what networks think they want.

Many critics save their cultural perspective for pieces seperate from their recapping and reviewing duties; in Gray's work, her point of view shines through, even in reviews of reality shows that feature "the early appearance of animal excrement" (from Married to the Army: Alaska, in case you were wondering).

15. James Poniewozik

Twitter Handle: @poniewozik
Writes At: "Tuned In" at Time

It's astounding how much mileage James Poniewozik gets out of the terse, galloping house style at Time (when he bucks that style and goes for a "long read," he includes a "dead tree alert," which is a bummer in the grand scheme of things).

His recent review of the season 3 premiere of Game of Thrones is filled with two- and three-line paragraphs, and ends with a collection of bulletpoints—Poniewozik refers to them as a "hail of bullets"—yet manages to flesh out the political world of the show in a satisfying way.

His review of House of Cards was almost entirely written in bullet points, but Poniewozik still got at many of the essential aspects of the show that Matt Zoller Seitz hit in his long, flowing robe of a review. Form doesn't always reflect on the quality of the content, and for those of you who want quick-hitting analysis, you can learn just as much from Poniewozik's lightning rounds as you can anywhere else.

14. The Brilliant But Cancelled Team

Twitter Handle: @ethanalter
Writes At: "Brilliant But Cancelled" at Television Without PIty

Not all great television criticism has to be current. The reigning rulers of TV nostaligia have to be the writers at Television Without Pity's "Brilliant But Cancelled" blog. A number of pitiless critics contribute to the blog, but Ethan Alter and Rachel Stein are responsible for most of the copy in the backward-glancing feed.

Just because the blog doesn't tackle the shows of the day, doesn't mean it's not topical. The most impressive aspect of Stein and Alter's work is that they consistantly find connections between departed shows of yesteryear and the hits of today.

Insights on favorites like Justified, Lord of the Rings, and Political Animals flow naturally from the discourse on shows that bit the dust before we would've liked. This leads us to perhaps the most important lesson that "Brilliant But Cancelled" has to offer: The line betwen a hit and a bomb is thinner than TV fanatics care to admit.

13. David Shoemaker (aka The Masked Man)

Twitter Handle: @AKATheMaskedMan
Writes At: Grantland/Deadspin

Outgrowing professional wrestling is a rite of passage. We bet many of you look back with deep sadness on the day you decided to send your Hulk Hogan Wrestling Buddy and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin bedsheets to Goodwill. Because of that hole in our lives, we're thankful that David Shoemaker never walked away from squared circle fandom.

Shoemaker's work forces you to reconsider professional wrestling; he makes a compelling argument that the WWE might be the best thermometer of the cultural temperature we have. While many of our favorite TV bloggers focus on Girls, Mad Men, and other low-rated premium offerings, Shoemaker writes about a show that is approaching its thirty-fifth season and boasts fourteen million fans worldwide.

He does so with a depth, passion, and thoughtfulness that is hard to match. His recent piece for Grantland, "Survivalist Series: WWE vs. Glenn Beck," grappled with the evolving relationship between wrestling and conservative politics. His ongoing coverage of CMPunk has used the WWE star as a means to examine how pro wrestling has embraced its own artifice as a means of survival in a world that craves authenticity.

For those of you who prefer your Pro Wrestling without a side of heady criticism, Shoemaker proves himself an able historian and rabid fan of the wrestling world with features like his "Dead Wrestler of the Week," and his "Bettors Guide to the WWE Royal Rumble." Just like the WWE is best enjoyed when you stop fretting about whether not it's "real," you'll enjoy Shoemaker most if you take wrestling as seriously as he does.

12. Linda Holmes

Twitter Handle: @nprmonkeysee
Writes At: NPR Monkey See, MSNBC, Vulture, formerly of Television Without Pity

With her "Monkey See" blog and as part of the "Pop Culture Happy Hour," podcast, Linda Holmes brings the wit and intellect to TV coverage at NPR. The former attorney's thoughtful spins on zetgeist-y ideas makes her blog addictive.

Marketing for women has been a popular topic of conversation lately (R.I.P. "Pens for Her"), and her meditation on the female car buying process, "Men are from Mars, Women... Love Cup Holders," is insightful, hilarious, and full of references from someone who has clearly suffered through innumerable sexist commercials.

Though Complex's audience may bristle at her article in defense of Cheers in response to Matthew Zoller Seitz awarding The Simpsons a higher place of honor on sitcom Olympus, her argument that people love The Simpsons because they "speak Simpson,"—that viewers have made The Simpsons quotes into an essential language of comedy nerds, and that objective distance from the show is impossible —is compelling.

11. Ken Tucker

Twitter Handle: @kentucker
Writes At: Freelance (Formely of Entertainment Weekly)

We've loved Ken Tucker ever since we first heard him on NPR's "All Things Considered," back in the day in the back of our parent's station wagon. Like many on the Internet, we were dissapointed to hear he took a buyout and left Entertainment Weekly in February. Tucker has been not only a respected critic, but a vocal champion of many beloved works of art. His support of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Freaks and Geeks has earned him partial credit for helping these programs find an audience.

Since leaving EW, he's been writing for a number of outlets, inlcluding a wonderful post about evolution of the late-night landscape for Grantland. As a man regarded highly for his penchant for championing shows, it's a pleasure to read about the pleasure Ken Tucker takes in great television, as exhibited in this take on Homeland. Hopefuly, he can find a place to continue his work. Until he does, we'll keep listening to NPR and hoping Grantland can find him some more freelance gigs.

10. Myles McNutt

Twitter Handle: @Memles
Writes At: Cultural Learnings, The A.V. Club

Former film studies students will recognize words like "discourse" and "space" in Miles McNutt's work and out him as an academic right away. As a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but also an A.V. Club regular, McNutt bridges the gap between criticism as practiced by Roger Ebert and criticism as practiced by Stanley. This may initially feel like a negative, as dense sentences punctuated by academic jargon aren't exactly what the Buzzfeed-ified Internet is starving for.

Once you get used to feeling like you're back in a lecture hall, you can settle in to the brilliance of McNutt's writing. His work enjoys the wide-ranging freedom of an academic, a refreshing contrast to the recapping, list-making (guilty as charged) web writers that dominate our feeds. McNutt has the freedom to write posts about such wide-ranging topics as the finale of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the cultural capital generated by HBO's next-level critic swag, or issues of class in White Collar.

"Cultural Learnings" may not be your cup of tea, but if it is, you can even read Mcnutt's undergraduate thesis on "the genesis of medieval romance within the 2004 re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica."

Yeah, it might be a while until we get around to that one too.

9. Willa Paskin

Twitter Handle: @willapaskin
Writes At: Salon

One of the most admirable qualities of Paskin's work is her ability to connect the dots across the television landscape. Though she was interning little more more than half a decade ago, Paskin has cultivated an encyclopedic knowledge of current television that informs her work. Pieces like her discussion of The New Girl's handling of "the Moonlighting Curse" and her examination of how Cult puts Matt Weiner's showrunner diefication into perspective illustrates just how in tune she is with the complex relationships television shows have to one another.

Even her more light-hearted pieces, like her love letter to Bunhead's Ginnie,offer reflections on the mechanics of television.

8. Ken Levine

Twitter Handle: @KenLevine
Writes At: ...by Ken Levine

For all of you would-be writers out there, a cushy TV job is the dream. So it's hard to wrap your head around leaving a cherry gig writing for the small screen to become a baseball announcer. And yet that's exactly what Ken Levine did. (Then again, if your TV credits included Cheers, Frasier, and M*A*S*H, you might wonder what else there is for you to write.)

Lucky fo us, Levine hasn't been able to stay away from television entirely. On his blog, he offers his take on all aspects of the medium, with pieces geared towards fans and aspiring writers alike. Levine alternates between sharing stories about life in the writers' room while also offering his take on the state of modern television. Far from a curmudgeonly voice of the old guard, Levine is supportive and often impressed by a number of contemporary shows. He might just be at this best when he doesn't like a show though, as he doesn't hesitate to unleash his sharp, breezy wit on content that comes up short.

7. Andy Greenwald

Twitter Handle: @andygreenwald
Writes At: Grantland

The combination of industry news and mischievous humor that Andy Greenwald brings to his television writing has earned him a spot in our permanent rotation. It also makes him a perfect fit for Grantland.

Sports writing, Grantland's first love, is all about mixing the numbers and the narrative, the story with the statistics. Greenwald does just this: He gives readers the details of pilot season and programming while still finding time to post his opinions on the best television. He's an able and humorous narrator, regardless of whether his story is about the machine or the product.

No matter the angle Greenwald takes, he is always hilarious. For Valentine's Day, he wrote a piece on the state of love on television. He opened with: "Years of rewarding storytelling extremes have left us with a slate of bold, uncompromising shows that, collectively, are about as romantic as a roadside Arby's at 4 a.m. It's a landscape where wives are shrewish scolds and young ingenues end up in the morgue or worse: married to Pete Campbell."

We have no desire to find ourselves in an Arby's parking lot at 4 a.m., but we would pay to read about Greenwald's experiences there.

6. Emily Nussbaum

Twitter Handle: @emilynussbaum
Writes At: The New Yorker

Emily Nussbaum is the delightful mad scientist of television criticism. She presents more theories than physics professors. And they spread on Twitter like Ebola Zaire. Like her "Homeland Conspiracy Theory" last December.

He latest, "Hummingbird Theory," proposes the addition of a new archetype to our TV lexicon. As she put it, "The Hummingbird is a protagonist—an alienating-yet-sympathetic figure whose struggles are taken seriously and considered meaningful. This is not the female analogue of the cable anti-hero, as seen on shows like Damages or the promising new FX drama The Americans; it's not a layered, sympathetic bad girl, like the great Juliette Barnes on Nashville. This is something else, an archetype that is grounded in ideas about compassion, but doesn't strive for likability."

The first read of that piece elicited about a dozen affirming head nods.

Even when she sets herself to the more pedestrian tasks of reviews and recaps, Nussbaum sparkles with a playfully self-conscious style. From time to time, Nussbaum ventures beyond the realm of TV criticism and indulges her penchant for humor, as she did we her "I Hate Top Ten Lists," piece that she wrote for end-of-the-year-list season in 2011. She's as close to a perfect fit for the New Yorker as can be.

5. Todd VanDerWerff

Twitter Handle: @tvoti
Writes At: The A.V. Club

Writing for The A.V. Club must be liberating. There are so few places where analytical nerdery is given such a big platform. This must be why so many writers from other publications jump at the chance to get their geek on as freelancers over there.

The T.V. Club's prolific TV editor, Todd VanDerWerff, embodies the ideals that the site strives for: Despite his massive body of work, he produces nothing but credible, detailed, thoughtful content.

The A.V. Club tackles television from a number of different angles in order to advance their nerd-friendly agenda. Their amazing essays, like VanDerWerff's recent piece analyzing Last Man Standing's odd second season, offer word counts long enough to put you into a pop culture-induced coma. T.V. Clubbers also revisit their favorite past shows (VanDerWerff is currently on a journey back into the wonderful Slings and Arrows) as they integrate cult classics into their already immense list of current recaps. Periodically they punctuate their content with the sometimes nostalgic, sometimes snarky "TV Roundtables."

And then there's "The Walkthrough" with creators and showrunners from great shows. In these pieces, readers are treated to tales of the genesis of their favorite programming by the men and women behind the scenes. We couldn't help but get a bit misty-eyed while reading their look back at Carnivalé, in which creator Daniel Knauf let us in on his best-laid plans for the prematurely cancelled show.

4. Matt Zoller Seitz

Twitter Handle: @mattzollerseitz
Writes At: New York Magazine/Vulture

Matt Zoller Seitz is one of the most name-checked critics on the Internet, at least by his peers. It's not uncommon for noted TV bloggers to quote nuggets of brilliance from Seitz in their own reviews. Todd VanDerWerff attributes his favorite description of Friday Night Lights to Seitz. Seitz's unrelenting earnestness is perhaps the most appealing aspect of his work. Anybody who's ever taken a writing class will likely teachers imploring you to sprinkle humor throughout your work, and many of our favorite critics do. For Seitz, it seems, criticism is serious business, and his passion is beautifully compelling.

Few writers could locate their hyper-specific feelings about House of Cards and muster a full-on defense of The Neighbors with the same vigor, but such feats seem efforless for Seitz. If you're in the mood for something longer, deeper, and more heartfelt than the average review, MZS is your man.

3. Eric Deggans

Twitter Handle: @Deggans
Writes At: Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg Times, NPR, Huffington Post

The television landscape is still just as whitewashed as America's executive boardrooms, from the almost entirely Caucasian casts of Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and Girls, to the dearth of minorities in writers' rooms. Eric Deggans has made it his mission to talk candidly and openly about race through the medium of television.

Most of his posts over at his Tampa Bay Times blog, "The Feed," examine the state of race in media (though, like any great TV blogger, he does take time to just nerd out about his favorite shows, as well). One of the most engaging aspects of Deggans' work is how he takes any instance of prejudice seriously. The smallest pop culture moment might be grounds for pages of analysis and commentary.

He's just as likely to dedicate an entire post to Lisa Lampinelli's infamous Lena Dunham tweet as he is to take a deep-dive into media coverage of the Trayvon Martin case. Deggans mantra is that there's no instance of prejudice that doesn't matter. Just because prejudice isn't overtly ugly or violent, doesn't mean it isn't a problem. As he eloquently stated in his recent piece for The Huffington Post, "Nine Dangerous Words The Media Uses To Talk About Race": "The mistake some people make in identifying prejudice is assuming the average person will find such notions...ugly and repellant. But many prejudices are attractive, because they simplify the world, offering others the chance feel superior. The primary challenge in deflating stereotypes is resisting those ideas we may find tempting ourselves."

If you want to hear more from Deegans, we recommend his book Race-Baiter. After Bill O'Reilly leveled the titular term at him, Deegans was inspired to examine the way that the rise of niche programming has changed racial dynamics in media, in many ways, for the worse.

2. Alan Sepinwall

Twitter Handle: @sepinwall
Writes At: "What's Alan Watching" at Hitfix.com

Before everyone realized that TV was important, Alan Sepinwall was one of the most important television critics around. He's been in that recap game since the heyday of NYPD Blue. His longevity and insight have earned him the respect of critics and artists alike. As Emily Nussbaum put it, "Nearly every time that I've interviewed one of the major TV-makers, they've mentioned Alan, generally saying something awestruck along the lines of 'Sepinwall, that guy knows his stuff,' and thus making me jealous."

"What's Alan Watching" offers insight into major moves in the television world (like his in-depth coverage of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign) and savvy discussion of the material he finds most compelling. His recent piece on the success of The Good Wife's stunt casting is a great example of how he harnesses his years of experience to break down television moments he finds unique.

Sepinwall is also behind what might become the most important text tackling this era of television. He recent book, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever is an authoritative look at an era of television dominated by "Great Male Curmudgeons" (another description courtesy of Emily Nussbaum), from Oz to Breaking Bad, written by a man who was there to review every single one of them. If you take the time to read even the small excerpt of the book that went up on Grantland chronicling the origins of Lost, you will learn that this guy does indeed know his stuff.

1. Maureen "Mo" Ryan

Twitter Handle: @moryan
Writes At: Huffington Post

There's no one talking about television who's as enjoyable to read or listen to as Maureen Ryan. Ryan offers incredibly thoughtful cultural commentary, as she demonstrated in her reaction to David Carr's Twitter defense of The Onion's writers. Few critics have as deep an understanding of the state of television as Ryan. Her recent piece on Duck Dynasty is just one example of her ability to dissect television trends and connect them broadly to the culture.

A dedicated feminist, she often uses her cultural status to foment conversation about the state of women and minorities in television. If you don't like Girls, good luck holding that position after you've read Ryan's take of the show.

Though her cerebral arguments impress, her heart makes her work irresistable. Anyone who devotes their life to sitting in front of that blue glow must love TV, but few critics find a way to channel the joy they experience as a viewer into their criticism as fully as Mo Ryan.

Whether you're reading her on HuffPo, or you're listening to her on "Talking TV with Ryan and Ryan" (along with Ryan McGee), she needs only the smallest excuse to sing the praises of her beloved Battlestar Galactica, Spartacus, and, of course, Dr. Who. Every time she does, you want nothing more than to lose a day to Netflix trying to see the series through her wide-open eyes. It's the combination of intellectual firepower and fandom intensity that make her the most entertaining television critic working today.