Sunday Special: The Best TV of 2025

Transcript

Brought to you by the Capital One Saver Card. With Saver, you earn unlimited 3% cash back on dining, entertainment, and at grocery stores.

That's unlimited cash back on ordering takeout from home or unlimited cash back on tickets to concerts and games. So, grab a bite, grab a seat, and earn unlimited 3% cash back with the Saver card.

Capital One: What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com for details.

Welcome to the Sunday Special. I'm Gilbert Cruz.

We're spending this last several episodes of the year looking back on some of the big cultural moments of 2025. And today we are talking about TV.

Here with me to consider some of the best shows of the year, as well as some of the most popular ones, are two of my colleagues who watch a ton of TV.

Jim Ponowasik is our chief television critic here at The Times. Pleasure to have you back with us, Jim.
It's a pleasure to be back so far.

And Alexis Soloski is one of our culture reporters. Happy to have you also back here with us again, Alexis.
I could not be more delighted. I can tell.

Okay, so let's start out with a little, little fill-in-the-blank exercise, which I'm asking everyone to do. For TV, 2025 was a blank year.
Fill in the blank.

It was a year of mild improvement, I think. Beautiful.
From my standpoint. Okay.

When I put together my, you know, end of the year best list,

most years

it is a wrestling match trying to eliminate the last few things to get the list down to 10 or some approximation of that. I would say last year,

not to crap on 2024 too much, but was was one of the few years where I just I basically had 10 and I was good. And one of them was the Olympics.

You know, this year, I think we were, I'm not going to say that it was just a blow the doors off year for television, but it was a much more normal distribution of going down to the wire and cutting things off the list.

So

that's a positive note for me.

I think it is. I think it is.
Alexis, you do not put together, or you don't publish at least

a best of the year list, but I'm sure in your own mind, you have a sense of how this year was. What would you say?

Fine.

fine.

How many ends in that?

Fine, many. I mean, the rising inflection is key.
It was fine. It was fine.
It was fine. When you

are out and about socializing with people and they say, What should I watch?

I occasionally had some things to tell them, which is really, it's really all I want, you know, as opposed to sort of looking scared and cornered and forgetting my own name, which is a lot of how 2024 felt.

So, both of you have been watching a lot of TV this year, and I know you've observed some trends, and I think we should start by talking about those.

Jim, let's start with you. In your year-end list, you noted that there were a bunch of shows about conspiracies.
What were they? Just rattle off some names here. Oh, there was, where do I start?

Common side effects, severance, the chair company, the lowdown, pluribus.

I'd love for you to talk about one because it feels not only appropriate for TV, but maybe also appropriate for the world,

the country, this year. I mean,

you know,

I don't need to tell our listeners probably all the reasons that conspiracy theories have had great influence in the larger world, conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies.

Conspiracy is a great engine for drama. There's somebody doing something, something is amiss.

But a lot of the best shows that I watched this year

and the more interesting ones in some way or another involved

often a lone or close to lone protagonist

trying to unravel something that went way, way beyond them. And, you know, this was in animation, it was in science fiction, it was in mystery.

There was a lot of it in the water.

One of the biggest shows of the year, and we just touch on this one because I feel like everyone has heard a lot about Severance, is

sort of conspiracy at its core in some way. This was a season that came three years after the first season, a very long time.

And yet there seemed to be, at least at the beginning, a ton of excitement about this one. Yeah, Severance is one of those streaming shows that comes around like Hallie's Comet

and you need to do a refresher course

whenever it comes back around.

I very much liked the second season. I liked it enough to put it on

my top 10 list at the end of the year. I suppose you're Marques.

I'm Mark W.

Who are you, people?

Would you be open to using a different first name to avoid confusion?

Welcome back, Marques.

This, you know, truly is one of the series that's in the great TV tradition of shows like Lost, et cetera, where there is both a

large conspiratorial element organization, in this case, Lumen Industries, and also just a big question of what is the conspiracy about and what is it for?

And why are they pushing these buttons on these computers all days?

So I was, you know, I would say not as stellar as season one,

but like a welcome payoff that made me want more, hopefully, in fewer than three years. Yeah.
Did this stick with you?

If I can be mildly contrarian and only mildly because any show that makes such a place for goats is okay with me. Okay, we see what stuck with you.

I tend to find the mystery box element, at least in the second season, the least compelling thing about it, which is where I often get to with mystery box shows.

I'm so engaged initially, and then I just

look, I'm a person when I read books, I often skip to the end and then go back. So I just, I just want to know, I'm, I'm no longer so interested in the dragging out of what is Lumen Industries?

What are they making? What are they doing? And I wish they would just solve that.

And then we would go back to the tension, the relationships, the comedy, the melon parties, the goats, more goats, more goats. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, not to get all, you know, like TV history 101 on this, but I will agree to the extent that, you know, going back to Lost, if you were watching TV around that time, you recall that what we saw after Lost

were like 5,000 shows that would involve some kind of convoluted mystery and puzzles and weird random details,

but sort of forgot the fact that

This show needs to make you laugh. It needs to have engaging characters.
It needs to like surprise and hit you emotionally.

And for me, Severance is one of the few shows since in that mold that has done that. It is about a mystery, but I enjoy watching it for the relationships between the characters.
And, you know,

to me, at least it did not lose that in the second season.

Jim, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about a show that I was less familiar with. It was a show called Common.
Side Effects.

This was an animated series on Adult Swim that came in part from one of the makers of an animated drama that I loved a couple of years ago called Scavenger's Rain.

But this one is about a mushroom.

There's a mushroom.

I don't have you hooked on mushroom.

You have my attention.

There's a mushroom in the rainforest that is discovered by

this kind of kooky amateur scientist holistic healer

an amateur mycologist uh yes an amateur mycologist that's that's that's a technical

dream the goal everywhere yeah everywhere it's amazing yeah thank you

and it can cure anything

uh which sounds fantastic except and here the conspiracy element comes in except for pharmaceutical companies uh who see a tremendous threat to their business and decide to shut this down.

Okay, Francis, can I

tell you a secret?

Yeah, please. Okay, just go with me for a minute.
What if there were a medicine that could heal like almost anything?

Well, yeah, that would be great, sure.

Yeah, right, but what if they didn't want you to know about it? They?

Sorry, who's they?

They is big pharma. It's the insurance companies, the government.
Think about all the people who make tons of money just from keeping us sick by keeping us unwell.

That's the animating plot of the thriller. What gets me into it is it is simultaneously realistic and sort of hallucinatory.

It also has kind of a quirky, offbeat sense of humor, which, you know, I think series like this really sort of need to avoid getting too stuffed up in their self-seriousness.

And also, I think had a lot of relevant, seemingly timely ideas about how sick our society is and what the condition of modern life has done to us.

And should we all, in some way, be getting back to the garden? Like, it's really kind of a show that, like, you know, sort of had a little bit for Luigi Mangioni and a little bit for RFK Jr.

There was this kind of element of, you know, the sickness of society that I also thought made it intellectually interesting. Alexis, what was a trend that came up for you this year?

A trend I noticed was a lot of shows trying to revive or complicate the idea of the romantic comedy. I think it's hard,

I should say, initially, to make romantic comedy for television.

There have been romantic comedies on television, and of course there have been relationship comedies, but romantic comedies have been filmic because there's an end point, and that end point is typically marriage, right?

The couple get married, they live happily ever after. There's some great TV about what happens after the happily ever after, but it's hard to disrupt the perfection of that arc.

And so it's always a challenge for romantic comedy. I think we're in a place where people are trying again and I love to see it.
Like all I want, I love love.

I want to think it's possible, not for me, but for others.

I think you're, it's possible you're saying too much. Yeah,

I don't want it, but I love to see it.

And I thought that this year there were some really good attempts. I enjoyed Too Much, which is Alina Denham romantic comedy, which was on Netflix.
I love Megan Stalter,

who some of us

the star of that show, who some of us will know from hacks and some of us will know from her

demented, and I mean that in the most positive way comedy videos uh and she plays an american who moves to england with all kinds of crazy romantic ideas of what england is most of which are unrealized but falls in love um i met someone

wow you know this is the only area where you waste no time uh what does he do why is the first question always what does he do how about how does he make you feel what does he value okay jessica i'm your mother mother, not your friend.

Keep that in mind. So he's unemployed?

He's not unemployed. He's an indie musician.
Oh, and where does he live? Well, he lives in an early Indian neighborhood. You wouldn't know it.
You don't know the London area, mom.

And as with contemporary romantic comedies, there aren't problems of

class or

religion or other external exogenous things to keep people apart because it's fine. We're fine.
Anyone can date anyone. And so it's the characters sort of

maybe

dealing a little bit with the baggage that they bring into a relationship and trying to be better partners for each other. It's very sweet.

There were a couple of shows this year that actually sort of did deal with faith in relationships. We're going to talk about one of them later because Jim is a big fan of it.

It's an animated series, but we also had on Netflix the second season of Nobody Wants Wants This.

Yeah,

yeah, we did.

What

nice cameos, right? It's possible that Seth Rogen works too much, but I was very happy to see him and Kate Burlant show up as rabbis. I love you, man.
I love your work so much. Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I saw the sermon you gave at Tubishbutt at Temple Hayeshire.
In fact, it blew my mind. It completely changed the way I warned.
I was mourning all wrong.

We got you on our vision board here. Oh, my goodness.

This is is a show about.

This is a show about

a rabbi played by Adam Brody,

who some of us maybe fell in love with on the OC. How could you not? How could you not?

I think we all did. Yeah.

And then Kristen Bell plays his very much non-Jewish, cool, cool, blonde,

goyesha podcaster girlfriend. And the first season sees them deal with the complexities of that.

And the second season, for better and kind of for worse, also sees them deal with the complexities of that in a way that doesn't really move a lot of things forward, where she has to decide if she is ready for conversion or if they're just going to hang out in this sort of

no man's land where it would be very, very, very difficult for him to be a rabbi with a wife who did not convert. It's not a good look if your wife doesn't.

It's like, oh man, how are you going to sell it to anyone else if you can't even sell it at home? Like, it's not a great look if your wife doesn't convert to Judaism. None of it matters.

You are my soulmate. That's it.

I don't care if you're Jewish. I don't care if you're not Jewish.

I choose you

every time. I love the people in this show.
I really like the vision of Los Angeles, where I am from. It makes me wonder why I left, but I wish that there had been some narrative progress.

Um, and also, um, I think this show, unlike the first season, eased up on its depiction of Jewish women.

But I remember speaking to the creator and the showrunner for the first season, it now has different showrunners, and explaining to her that slutty blonde Jews do exist, you know, like we are a manifold, we are manifold people.

Like, we're not all shrill runats. No, representation is important.
Representation matters. Yeah.
Yeah. There was a lot of freaky stuff going on in the Bible.

Good God.

Jim, you put

a show that was

sort of concerned with sex in a different way on your top 10 list.

Yes. It's Dying for Sex, a limited series that was

about sex and especially about dying.

It was adapted from a story about a woman who has a terminal diagnosis of cancer, played by Michelle Williams in the miniseries, who has a terminal diagnosis of cancer and sets out basically to cross off a big item on her bucket list, which is to finally have an orgasm.

And it becomes both a story of, you know, the journey of the end of life, which I felt was kind of

open and frank about the dying process in a way that as much death as there can be on TV, I've rarely seen. And when you are very close to death,

your breathing goes into a cycle of deep, slow breaths and long pauses.

And then eventually, there is a breath out.

That is not followed by a breath in.

And that's it.

Hey. Yeah.
Yeah.

Can you make sure that my mouth isn't open when I die? Okay.

Just don't bite me.

Why would I bite you? I don't know why I need you to tell me this, but please say that you won't bite me. The final episode, you know, no spoilers, but like you can guess what happens.

The final episode.

But it was fantastic in this respect, dealing with the hospice experience and so on. But also, you know, and I realize that people are like running from this description probably right now,

an incredibly funny show

in a way that, you know, was honest and, you know, cathartic and daring. Michelle Williams is fantastic in it.
Jenny Slade is very good. It was.

An example of something that I think I always look for in television, which is, you know, the idea that

funny is not the opposite of serious

and that you often can and frankly often need to

use humor in the service of kind of deep and powerful ideas. And you know, sex and death doesn't get much more deep and powerful than those.

We have talked about sex and death. I'd love to talk about sex and guns, Alexis.

Great. I think I know where this is going is it

is it going to the hunting wives i think it is i think it is i am so excited to talk about the hunting wives because this pertains to what jim is saying that i think that there is a great problem in much though by no means all of prestige and really sub-prestige television this day

that it forgets that maybe it should be fun.

Like maybe we should have a nice time, which doesn't mean we can't deal with serious issues, but maybe entertainment should be entertaining rather than dour.

And

there was a show on Netflix this year called The Hunting Wives. Would I describe this show as good? Oh, no,

no.

Would I describe this show as fun?

Oh, yes.

This show is about a woman played by Brittany Snow, who is a transplant to East Texas and has to understand the manners and mores of East Texas, many of which involve suburban, wealthy suburban women getting very drunk and shooting guns

and sleeping with each other. What fun!

Actually, I have to go pretty soon because I promised I'd be home for dinner. Oh, come on.
You got it, don't you? Yeah, but it scares me a little bit. Oh, come on, let me see it.

Come on, don't be shy.

Oh, look how cute.

Oh, girl, you haven't even loaded this thing. You think I know how to load a gun? I'll walk you through it.
I don't really... Listen, I'll take you to Target practice later.
Just heal me, okay?

It also stars Malin Ackerman, a wonderful actress who was completely wasted on billions, and she is having a great time. She was terrific on Trophy Wife, by the way, an unfairly rewind show.

I know a one-season tragedy. What a show.
What a show.

And anytime she is on screen, you know that you are going to have a fantastic time because her rapaciousness, her sense of pleasure, her sense of fun, her sense of enjoyment is radical.

And I would love to see more of that. I mean, this was the best of the bunch in terms of a trend which has been a trend for

many years which is rich people with secrets often though not always in coats and I'm sorry in coats yeah for a while the coats were really big in these shows like everyone by which I mean Nicole Kidman would walk around in some really elegant outerwear.

Are you talking about that one she did with Hugh Grant? Yes, but also very coat heavy. the coats on Big Little Lies, which is again like a best-in-class example of the genre.

The coats were also very good. Like it does get cold in California sometimes.
Northern California. It was northern cowards.
At least foggy. Yeah.
You need a layer or two.

It can get a bit damp otherwise. Yeah, but this year we had the better sister.
We had all her fault. We had the girlfriend.
We had the beast in me. And they were very, they were very dour.

The perfect couple, I would say, was a little more fun. The beast in Me was not exactly a laugh riot.
No, no, no. You know, they didn't wear coats in the White Lotus.

They did not wear coats in the White Lotus. Too warm.
Too warm. Too warm in Thailand.

They did wear them in the Gilded Age. They did wear them in the Gilded Age, which are also rich people with secrets

shows. And

I really enjoy the White Lotus.

I don't think that I would argue, I don't think that any reasonable person who I love and trust would argue that this third season, which was set in Thailand, was the best of the series.

It was not. It was not the best of the series.
It was the worst of the series, but it's still enjoyable.

It is nice to see attractive people in beautiful locations behaving badly and being absolutely miserable. I will say I love the first season of White Lotus, and I just, I don't like its trend lines.

You know, I think the second was not as good, and then the third was less than that.

But it does have this sort of love boat aspect to it, where there are multiple stories playing out and different guests.

And there are likely to be elements within that that you can connect to, even in a more sub-par season. And fantastic casting.
Speaking of the love boat, we haven't talked about Dr.

Odyssey, one of the most banana shows of this year. Jim, did you experience

the confusion and wonder? It's a long year. Dr.

Odyssey was the love boat with grotesque medical procedures added on because, of course, this is a Ryan Murphy joint and Ryan Murphy adores the grotesque, but it was so stupid.

It made my brain so soft. Like when you look at the diagrams of the brain, the cauliflower, the nodules, I had none of those.
My brain was a beaten bag chair as I watched Dr.

Odyssey and let the parade of images go by. I've never heard of the show Dr.
Odyssey. You've never heard of the show Dr.
Odyssey? It is possible there's too much TV.

Joshua Jackson, who like Adam Brody is another former teen heartthrob.

Exactly. This one of Dawson's Creek extraction is a doctor on a cruise ship.
And would you believe it? But every episode, there are several medical crises. The guest cast,

Kate Burlant, Amy Sederis, Margaret Cho, I believe those ladies were all in the same episode. Character actress Margot Martindale shows up.

It is a gift. It is a joy.

If you think about it for more,

don't think about it. Don't

do that. Just let it wash over you.

Let's take a little break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about even more shows we love this year.

This podcast is supported by the Defending Our Neighbors Fund.

Across the country, immigrants are facing family separation, wrongful detention, and deportation without due process or access to legal support. The Defending Our Neighbors Fund exists to change that.

Powered by people like you, the Defending Our Neighbors Fund is providing access to life-saving legal aid to families in crisis. But they urgently need your help to meet unprecedented demand.

Together, we can defend our neighbors and keep families together. Donate now at defendingourneighbors.org slash donate.
We all have moments when we could have done better. Like cutting your own hair.

Yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen so now you look like a tomato.
Ouch. Could have done better.
Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab.

Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.
Sometimes the best way to scale is to simplify.

That's why many leading companies trust Deloitte to serve them behind the scenes.

From AI to cybersecurity to intelligent automation, Deloitte's highly specialized teams can step in to help you streamline, standardize, and scale operations.

So your organization can focus on what matters most, building on the promising possibilities that can drive innovation and shape your business's future. Deloitte together makes progress.

So we've talked about a bunch of shows. I think we should really get into the ones that we just absolutely adored.
Jim, you

put a bunch on your best of the year. You talked about if you were ready.
I'd love to take turns between the three of us, but mostly between the two of you, talking about some of our favorites.

Jim, tell us about long story short. Okay, so when I put together my best lists at the end of year, you know, there's a top 10 list.

It's always a little bit of a lie like really any given year, I have like three or four shows that are my real favorites.

And then I'm choosing from a grab bag of, you know, 20 or 30 other shows that could be on there. And generally, you know, of those shows, there is one that is my absolute favorite.

This year, that was long story short.

An animated family dramedy,

comic, drama,

comedy with dramatic elements from the creator of Bojack Horseman. Everyone pick a territory.
I want goats. Never get goats.
Goats are not a territory. This game makes no sense.

Doesn't make sense because you're not listening. No, she's putting the pieces up and down.
I'm not listening. I just don't understand any of this.
And your father doesn't either.

I think I'm understanding. He's being nice.
He doesn't understand. He has the same glazed overlook as when we rented Farewell, My Concubine.
I didn't not understand Farewell, My Concubine.

I just said I preferred Mrs. Dopfier.
I want to be a concubine. For the record, I understand the game perfectly, and I think it's bad.
This is why you don't play games with your family.

Your family are not your friends. Bobby doesn't have to be a bad friend.
It's about a family told

over time, jumping back and forth in their history. You might say that kind of sounds like this is us.

And this was a bit of a this is us approach, but with the difference of having, you know, less reliance on big twists and melodrama. And also,

long story short, is just extremely Jewish. It's about a Jewish family.
It is

detailed and specific. This is so Jewish, Manischewitz could like pickle it and sell it in a jar.

It is the gefilte fish of animated comedies.

You know, I will say, like,

I am Jewish myself.

My family is not super Jewish in the way that the family in this is, but that's not necessarily the appeal of it to me. The appeal is that...

I am really drawn to specificity, particularly in comedies like this, because I think that helps you develop a viewpoint. It helps you know the characters.
It helps you create a world.

You know, I watch TV, I experience art in general to take me into somebody else's experience.

And it's sort of similar to me to the way that I loved Reservation Dogs, the great comedy that was set on an Oklahoma Indian reservation a couple of years ago.

Here, the family that the show depicts, you meet them as they're driving to a funeral. When the kids are younger, you take second exit after exit.
Second exit after exit? What could that possibly be?

So that's a no. We're lost.
I'm an orphan and we're lost. Grief is perplexing, but I don't think one of the perplexing parts should be directions to the center.

He was weaving all over. Is he trying to get us killed? You will later see the kids as middle-aged adults with their own children.
You see people age and get younger and die.

And in the process, you start teasing out all the relationships that develop among, you know, just the web of this family and the slights that emerge in somebody's youth that become, you know, part of their neuroses when they're older.

To me, it was, it was just, it was a beautiful, moving,

often just absurdly funny way of just telling the story of how a group of people came to be who they are. And I would recommend it to just absolutely anyone.

My family is Jewish in the way this family is Jewish. And so initially I had a rough time with the show.

I think I had to start the first episode, which is a little heavier than some of the others a few times before I got through it. But I agree with you.
It is so lovely.

And as it goes on, it gets funnier. I think it allows itself to be funnier.
It gets weirder. Like This Is Us, this is absolutely a show where someone would die in a crock pot fire.

But on this show, that would be hilarious. Yes.
And you're also not going to spend like three years finding a no, no. They would be making brisket for Passover.
Something would go terribly wrong.

It would be amazing. So I came around on this show.
I'm all in. Is that what happened in This Is Us? Someone died in a track.
Someone crockpot killed somebody, yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Slow cooker.
It was devastating for the slow cookering. Slow cookers.
They're dangerous. Oh, my God.
No. I did not stick with that show.
Alexis,

give us one from the year that you loved.

I am here to talk about butts, and I'm here to talk about specific kinds of butts, and those are hockey butts.

There is a show on HBO called Heated Rivalry, and its commitment to the male backside is sincere and unparalleled in recent television. It is about rival hockey players,

one Russian, one Canadian, who

fall not exactly in love, but definitely in lust.

I put you my chicken out. I'm not, I'm not a chicken,

but I think we should talk.

Do you

want to sit?

I don't really.

This is such a bad idea.

And it is the steamiest show. I was trying to think, what was the last show that felt like truly sexy? And I think it was normal people, but

that sex was very Irish

and sad.

And this is not, this is not, I mean, sure, they're anguished because they're closeted hockey players, but this sex is not sad. It's also extremely specific.

I was like, wow, I know exactly who is doing what to whom, like down to the millimeter. I think that is the sign of good action filmmaking.
You just know where everything is located.

You know, at any point. Yes.

Yeah. So why do you like this? I often see shows where the sex feels incredibly gratuitous.
And I would say this is a sexy, sexy show with so much sex.

And the sex does not feel gratuitous because the sex is text. Like it is about sex.
It is about their desire for each other.

It is about how they have sex, how they want each other, how they don't want each other. And like sasufi.
Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, or as we Jews say, dayenu. Like, it's enough.
It's enough.

It's enough to tell a hot, steamy story about sex. I would love to talk about a show that has zero sex and zero butts.

There might be some droid butts, but I can't recall precisely this. These are not the butts you're looking for.

I would love to talk about season two of Andor, which is my favorite show of the year. This is season two of the Disney Plus Star Wars TV show.

It is an odd thing to describe. It's a prequel to a prequel.
It is a prequel to the film Rogue One, which itself is a prequel to the very first Star Wars movie.

And it is essentially a spy show, an espionage show set in the world of Star Wars that is concerned with the rise of the galactic rebellion that we come to see in all these movies.

We have

by walking away.

We fight, you win.

That means we lose.

And lose and lose and lose. Until we're ready.

All you know now is how much you hate.

You bank that, you hide that.

You keep it alive until you know what to do with it.

And when I tell you to move,

you move. It was the pinnacle of something that has dominated the culture for, I don't know, two plus decades at this point, which is IP storytelling, which is franchise storytelling.

And as someone who grew up a Star Wars fan, sorry, this is extremely nerdy. I was obsessed with it when I was a teenager.

And I thought that when I got older, Star Star Wars would age with me, would grow up with me, and it never did.

I felt like this was an actual moment when, for one brief shining moment, Star Wars was a grown-up thing. It was a grown-up story.
There's a show about rebellion and autocracy and sacrifice and death.

It's not about sex, but it's about a lot of adult things. And that, to me, was rare.
I doubt we'll ever see something like it again. And I loved it so much.
I know you did, too.

Yeah, I'm 1,000% on the Andor train. And, you know, I consider just, you know, the reliance on IP to be the curse of television.
We saw it in the movies, and then it's jumped to TV.

And this was a rare case of an IP-based product that was just a great work in its own with its own ideas. One thing I loved about it is that, you know, obviously it's Star Wars.

There's a lot of adventure. There's a lot of daring do.

You know, beyond the politics, and obviously, you know, it's just, you know, it's concerned with how rebellion works, you know, just politically on a nuts and bolts level and fighting against autocracy, you know, feels very current.

But it also just has this beautiful tragedy to it, which is, you know, something it sort of borrows from Rogue One to an extent.

Like, these are the people, you know, these are the stories of the people who do not end up getting a metal draped around them at some point later on once the rebellion has succeeded.

It's about sacrifice and tragedy and, you know,

the people who will sort of toil in anonymity and never see the fruits of their labor achieved.

And there's something kind of beautiful about that, you know, that didn't necessarily get that in like the Mandalorian,

no offense to Baby Yoda. Yeah.

This conversation about Andorra is making me so happy. I could talk about it for another hour, but I think we should move on to another show that also

made me very happy, and that's The Lowdown. This was a show that I was a little late catching up to, but as soon as I watched 20 minutes of it, I fell in love.

It's so funny, and Ethan Hawk is so great in it. Tell us about this one.
So, The Lowdown is, how would I describe it, a political, journalistic, historical noir

about Ethan Hawk's character, Lee Raybon, who is a self-styled, he calls himself a truth storian.

Sorry, say it again. I am a Tulsa truth.

A truth storian? What exactly is a truth storian?

I read stuff.

I research stuff. I drive around and I find stuff.
And then I write about stuff. Some people care, some people don't.

I'm chronically unemployed, always broke, but let's just say that I am obsessed with the truth. It involves an investigation that he makes into a powerful political family whose

Scion, played by Kyle McLaughlin, is running for governor of Oklahoma. It is a thriller and a conspiracy thriller in all the ways that pay off on a dramatic level.

What's really appealing about it is that it just has this great,

it's like it's a caper.

You know, it's this kind of picaresque story about this kind of

wild-eyed guy with a cause

who

does not always make wise decisions and, you know, often gets out over his skis, but

about him and the characters around him who make up this community, you know, kind of trying to make sense of what's going on and what, you know, snakes are under the carpet. It's real.

It's slightly shaggy, but in the most wonderful way.

And it's, you know, picoresque is a great word to use because it also has all these little characters that pop in and out that are sort of immediately memorable.

You know, the lawyer next door to the bookstore that he owns that he keeps going to in order to store stuff in his safe.

The one-eyed editor of a supermarket weekly played by the hip-hop artist Killer Mike, you know, who has his own.

Every character in this show,

I feel like I'm going to remember for a while.

Pete Dinklage shows up for one absolutely perfect, completely bananas episode as

Lee's former partner, and it is indelible. This is a show that is so textured.
You feel like you can taste it, you can smell it, you know what the air would feel like on your skin,

which is something that the creator Sterling Harjo is so good at, that kind of specificity.

And it's so specific also because it's Tulsa-based. Yes, and it doesn't feel like, you know, somebody in New York's idea of Tulsa.
It feels lived in.

It feels like somebody has met versions of these people and captured down.

Everybody has a voice. Everybody has individuality.
And that is a big part of the key to its appeal.

I do feel, you know, you use the word caper. I use the the word shaggy, there is a bit of a hangout feel to this.
You're just following Ethan Hawke's character around Tulsa.

He's getting beat up in, you know, in the classic style of many a movie private investigator. Alexis, I know you watched a ton of stuff this year that also had a hangout feel to it.

I love a hangout show. I love a show where you just want to spend time with the characters.
And

there has been a desire to crack the friendship comedy since friends, since girls.

I don't think a show has emerged that people feel about as strongly. And this year, we had a few contenders: we had I Love LA and we had Adults.

And these are both shows: one set in New York, one set in Los Angeles, that are about

young adults sort of learning to move through the world.

They have different flavors. I Love LA is sexier, it's slicker, Adults is goofier, it's squirmier.

I have a feeling these both of these will be great second season shows as the writers learn to write for these particular performers. But I'm happy to spend time with

these people. And another show, which is not new, which is Returning platonic, starring Roseburn, who is fantastic, and Seth Rogan, who I think we can all agree works too much,

but I love it as old friends who reunite in middle age and

go on some really lame adventures throughout Los Angeles. I love it.
I don't even know. Seth Rogan's actual best comedy on Apple TV.
I know the studio wins all the awards, but I really think it is.

Rose Rose Byrne is freaking fantastic. I mean, you know, absolutely, like, I've seen bridesmaids.
You know, I originally knew her, I think, at first from Damages.

I think it really hits me watching this show

how fantastic, you know, in terms of delivery, in terms often of physical comedy, a comedic actress she is. Like, it's honestly one of my favorite performances on TV right now.

As a woman, I can tell you she is still bugged about it. A woman's plain to me.
I'm a woman explaining to you all right. You should be explaining nothing to nobody.

Listen to me, if you don't let Jenner and I hang out, you know what's gonna happen? She's gonna think you're hiding something, she's gonna hate me, and then you and I aren't gonna be friends again.

Okay, don't you think you're being a little dramatic? No, I don't think so. You're about to be aware of it.
She is so funny.

And as a type A adjacent lady, I am here for all the tightly wound ladies, and I am here for all the tightly wound ladies when they unwind, often in spectacular fashion.

Have either of you seen her movie, If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You? I have not. No, I have not either.
It's on my my list. Sick, sick kid movies.

I can't do it. I can't do it.
I feel like I'm compiling a list in my mind of things you cannot do. You're not going to double feature that in Hamlet.

Yeah,

cancer, sick, and dead kids. Yeah.

Okay, let's talk about one more. Pleuribus.
I was a little late to pleuribus, but after only two episodes,

I think I'm hooked. I think I have to see it through.
Did you, okay? Well, let me ask you a question before I start talking about it. You came to it a little late.

Did you go into pleuribus spoiled or did you manage to be unspoiled? Managed to avoid it. Every time I saw the word pleuribus, I averted my eyes.
I could not look at a dollar bill

for months.

So I did not know what was going on in this show.

God bless you that you managed that. I suppose I should say up front, like, I'm going to need to talk about what the show is about.

So, you know, plug your ears if you're somebody who's, I'm very much of the camp that a

good story is unspoilable. It cannot be ruined by spoilers.
If you feel otherwise, you know, just tune me out for a second. But

Pleuribus was a show that arrived with a great deal of mystery about it because its premise is so wild.

Essentially, an alien RNA virus arrives on Earth by means of an intergalactic radio signal that infects most of humanity and causes them to become united in a joyous collective mind.

A handful of of people are left out of it. One of them is our heroine, Carol Sterka, played by the great Rhea Seahorn, who you might recall from Better Call Saul.

She is an author of romantic fiction and a sort of misanthrope by nature, who ends up being kind of the perfect foil

for

this new collective of alien-juiced, beatific humanity. Are you reading my mind? No, absolutely not.
We couldn't do that if we wanted to. Who is we? Why is everybody suddenly we?

The sort of through line is Carol dealing with this new world, Carol trying to figure out if there is a way to reverse this virus and restore humanity to where it was before.

You know, we could continue this after you've had a good night's sleep. Who is we? We is us, just us.

Part of the thing that I think is interesting is that it's a little bit playing around with the idea

is what we've witnessed an apocalypse? There is suddenly no war on earth.

There's no conflict. There's, you know, a lot of things that we say we aspire to in humanity have been achieved by our brains being taken over.

And underneath this highly entertaining, very funny, extremely well-acted, I mean, it's often like Rhea C.

Horn sort of giving a solo performance, is a very interesting idea about collectivism versus individualism, about what happiness means, about whether it is better to be blissful and have no free will, or to be discontented but an intact individual.

Fascinating. You know, like Severance, I think, just a knock your socks off.
First season. I hope it doesn't take as long coming back.
I really enjoyed it.

This whole premise that the whole world is in the, I'd like to give the world a Coke commercial, and you are somehow on the sidelines with a Pepsi you can't open. The way that Ria Seehorn plays

discomfort, disgust, contempt,

just the range of faces that she has to convey displeasure is really extraordinary. And perhaps because it's only season one, I'm really, I'm really invested in the mystery.
I'm here for it.

I'd love to go to a quick lightning round. There are so many shows that came out this year.

I don't think we're at peak TV anymore, but that doesn't mean that there still aren't hundreds of TV shows that came out in 2025.

We should just very, very briefly talk about The Pit, which is a show that

earlier in the year, a few of us discussed on the Emmys episode. It's coming back very soon.
I'm very excited for The Pit. Its first season was one of the bigger TV shows of the year.
I love The Pit.

I think it's impeccable television. I think that the jury is still out almost literally as to whether or not it is an ER spin-off.
But I think that it, if anything, improves on ER

in its speed, in its economy, in the ease with which it communicates its characters through action.

Yeah, I will say, you know, I love experimentation. I love a wild idea, but there is still pleasure in just a hospital show done well.
So well.

We did not touch on the Netflix series Adolescence, which was one of this summer, if I'm recalling correctly, is sort of big phenomena. I have to admit, I did not

watch it because it seemed like the premise would totally stress me out as the parent of a young male.

You're not wrong.

I think it would stress.

My take on it was that

for parents of kids, particularly male kids of a certain age, this was like the day after. People just watched and discussed it in these sort of like hushed, traumatized terms.

And it's essentially a four-part

mini-series about an adolescent who is arrested on suspicion of murder in a case that turns out to be the result or the consequence of online bullying and social media pressures and kind of just becomes this investigation of

what are the little screens in our pockets doing to all of our kids. So I will say, like, critically, as a whole,

it's quite an achievement. I think we haven't even mentioned that.

I believe it was every episode was shot in a single take, which is kind of an interesting technical experiment that lends it kind of vitality.

It was a bit of like an after-school special vibe to it for me. There's also a fantastic episode three that is just sort of a two-hander dialogue entirely between

the accused young child and a social worker basically in custody that was just like watching a great, well-produced, explosive piece of theater in front of you. Did you watch this one?

Yeah, cancer and sick and dead kids are my no-go areas. So I also have not watched this, but I can tell you, my kids are never getting phones.
They're like, when can I have a phone?

I say, when you are 30.

I totally support that. We are going to take another break, and when we come back, we're going to end this episode as we always do with a little game.
Oh, yay.

Oh, yay. Woohoo!

Ouch. Could have done better.

Say hello to the all-new Alexa Plus and see how Alexa can do so much more for you. Need last-minute concert tickets? Craving your favorite restaurant? Just sit back, relax, and talk naturally.

Alexa's on it. It remembers what you love, anticipates what you need, and makes it all happen.

Whether you're using Echo, Fire TV, or any compatible device, Alexa Plus brings thousands of possibilities to life. Ready whenever inspiration strikes.
Amazon.com/slash new Alexa.

Support for this podcast comes from GoodRX. The holidays are here, but so is cold and flu season.
Find relief for for less with GoodRX.

You could save an average of $53 on flu treatments, plus, save on cold medications, decongestants, and more. Easily compare prescription prices and find discounts up to 80%.

GoodRX is not insurance, but works with or without it and could beat your copay price. Save on cold and flu prescriptions this holiday season at goodrx.com/slash the daily.

Okay, Jim, Alexis, we're going to wrap up this episode as we wrap up every episode with a little game. I'm so nervous.

I have three rounds of TV-related delights here for you. You're going to buzz in when you know the answer.
I don't think I need to remind you that this is as important as it gets.

The stakes could not be higher here. Okay, so are you ready? No.
Are you ready? No.

Great.

But will I ever be?

Round one: Must Sing TV. The television theme song, a fixture of TV for decades, went out of fashion for a time, but it has come roaring back in recent years.

In this round, I'm going to play a theme song, Buzz In with the Name of the Show. I'm tone deaf.
This is going to go great.

Ears open, please.

Is this a good time to tell you I'm song blind, Gilbert?

I did that

TV news theme-like

the pit? I don't know. No.
No, okay. The answer is The Gilded Age.

Oh, it's composed by Harry and Rupert Gregson Williams.

That's apologies. Have to be British.
They're also brothers. Okay, next one.

Oh, I watched this, but I have no idea.

Alexis, what we do with the shadows, but that's off the air, so no. Also, it's called What We Do in the Shadows.
Oh, my God. What we do with the shadows?

What another thing we do? What we do with the shadows.

That is the theme song to Wednesday, composed by Danny Elfman.

All right. Yeah, the two of you are doing great.
I need lyrics. Yeah.
I'm a word person. It's all right, Brain.

Alexis. Is it Righteous Gemstone? It is the Righteous Gemstones.

Composed by Joseph Stevens. I got there with context clues.
All right, next one.

It's a little too late to be on time.

Alexis. Hunting Wives.
This is

from the Hunting Wives. This is the song King of Possibilities by Goldie Boutier.

I think she's from French-speaking Canada. All right, next one.

Clearly, I've been doing a lot of skip credits

this year.

Okay.

Jim, you know this. Tim, we're getting fired.
You know this.

It's been a great run at the Times. I'm sorry it had to end this way.
This is Nicholas Brattell's theme to the series, Andor.

Oh, God. It's no succession theme.
It isn't. It's from a different series.

Definitely Andor. Yeah.

Round two, which we call the Gaslight Zone. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Round one was clearly the Gaslight Zone.

We talked about how TV this year has felt a little paranoid, a little conspiratorial. Well, that's not just on the screen.

The conversation around TV shows can also get a little conspiracy-minded from time to time.

I'm going to give you a real, actual fan theory about a popular show from TV history, and then you try to guess the show. Put your tinfoil hats on, both of you.

First clue.

The entire show is from the perspective of one of the bar's regulars. He's always drunk when he's there, which is why everyone seems so funny.
Jim. Cheers.
Cheers. That is correct.
Next clue.

Despite being bad at his meaningless job, the main character is able to pay for his family's various misadventures because he still gets royalties from the hit barbershop album that he was involved with.

Jim.

The Simpsons. Homer Simpson.

This is correct. Homer Simpson in The Simpsons, the B Sharps.
The main character is the airplane hijacker D.B. Cooper.

Jim. Madman.
Madman.

I'm also here. You know.

You have to butt. You have to press this button.
I did. I did.
You did? I did. Okay.

Next clue. The young cast of this long-running show changes so frequently because they are preyed upon by the vampire who lives in their neighborhood.

Sesame Street.

Oh.

Fun.

That's a great one. I will never watch that the same way again.
Okay, next clue. The Meek HR guy is actually the local serial killer.

Jim. That's the office.
That is the office. Correct.

These two animated shows actually take place at the same time in a society where the rich live in technologically advanced cities in the sky, while the poor live in a primitive post-apocalyptic wasteland on the ground.

Jim.

The Flintstones and the Jetsons.

That is canon. That is now cannon.
I believe that's actually H.G. Wells' The Time Machine.
Yeah, that the Flintstones are Morlocks.

Okay,

last

clue.

Oh, good. This is when I take it all away.

This is when I take it home. You're definitely going to get this one.

Claya is Cassian's sister, or maybe Dendromiro is Cassian's sister.

Jim. Okay, that's the Andor question that I know.
That is from Andor. That is correct.

Round three. Great news.
Round three is theme songs. Oh, good.
No, great news. Round three, the greatest show 2025, is about the series Andor.

This is my show,

and I get to pick what we do. This entire category is about the series Andor.

It was so great to be on this show. Thank you.
I have to go now.

Audiences first met Cassian Andor in the film Rogue One a Star Wars Story, which ends with Andor stealing the plans to what space station.

Jim. I do feel like I should just like get all these creatively wrong for fairness, but the Death Star.
The Death Star. It would be weird if you got that one wrong.

Next clue, Cassian Andor's native language, Canari, is based on Spanish, Portuguese, and what other language? The native tongue of composer Bela Bartok and actor Bella Lugosi.

Hungarian? Oh, Hungarian. Hungarian, that is correct.
Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy was nominated for Academy Awards for both writing and directing What 2007 George Clooney drama? Alexis.

Michael Clayton. Michael Clayton.
Thank God.

One of the best movies of the 21st century. Okay, next clue.

Before he portrayed Cassian Andor, Diego Luna had roles in films including Itumamatambien, Frida, and what 2004 dance musical, a sequel to a classic film.

Dirty Dancing,

Havana Nights, Dirty Dancing Havana Nights, that is correct.

I do so well on the questions that are not actually about Andor. You thought you were not going to be competitive here.
Okay, next clue.

Diego Luna was nominated for a Golden Glow for his performance in Andor Season 2. Who was the last actor to be nominated for a a Golden Glow for his performance in a Star Wars property?

Specifically, for his role in 1977 Star Wars Episode 4, A New Hope, which is the first Star Wars, but actually is now titled Episode 4 because they did the prequels, which are Star Wars episodes 1 through 3.

Those canonically are the first three movies in the Star Wars saga, which now extend over nine films. I'm so glad you had an adolescence that involved being liked and dating girls.

I had no girlfriends.

There was like like a question in there somewhere.

Hold up. Hold up.

She got him.

It's C3PO. Basically, who was the last person in a Star Wars movie to be nominated for a golden blood?

But I'm still saying Harrison Ford. It's for shrinking.
No, specifically for his role in a Star Wars movie. The answer is Alec Giddis.

Of course. Okay.

That is our game. Let us see what the score is.

And the winner is Jim Potawasik.

Hooray. Hooray.
I'm going to open this black bag, which usually holds a mic. It's so sad we've been on this show before, so I know what I'm losing.

Jim, you have won a cheap plastic trophy with my face on it. It's called the Gilby.
Oh, I feel like I've won the second-grade spelling bee all over again. Thank you, Gilbert.

That makes me feel real, real good. Jim Potawasic, thank you so much for coming on to talk about best TV of the year.
Thank you. Alexis, you did wonderfully i wish i'd been here

this episode was produced by tina antalini with help from alex barron who is also our quiz master and kate lopresti it was edited by wendy doar We had production assistance from Dahlia Haddad.

The Sunday special is engineered by Sophia Landman, Landman, original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Bae Tup, and Diane Wong. Thanks for listening, everyone.

See you next week for one final episode.

Ouch. Could've done better.