Television in 2024

03 Jan 2025

While 2024 was a challenging year for me overall, there were some good shows to watch (either new or new to me). Continuing on from my 2023 coverage of television, below you’ll find the shows I watched in 2024 that I want to highlight.

X-Men 97

My daughter and I led up to this by watching all 5 seasons of the original X-Men animated series from the 90s. Which was an uneven experience, but better than I had feared and my daughter really enjoyed it. Most of the classic X-Men storylines are covered here, and this led us to also explore the comics and movies together which was really fun. It was a good time right until the end of the animated series’ run where there were sudden changes to voice actors and a severe degradation of quality. Yikes it ended in a rough way. Thankfully, almost 30 years later the show was picked up to continue with a new season. And it’s great! I have no idea if it’s something you can jump into without the context of everything that preceded it. But being confused about history you missed is part of the comic experience, right? If you like the X-Men in any form, I’d recommend this one.

Watched on Disney+

Invincible

It’s widely agreed that we exist in a time of superhero fatigue. It’s interesting then to go back now and watch the Marvel movies with my daughter and realize that when the movies are good there is no fatigue; good superhero stories are still good. Invincible is absolutely a show I cannot watch with my daughterl it’s an adult take on superhero stories, with moments of acute violence and gore. Which immediately draws comparisons to The Boys, particularly with a “what if Superman is bad?” plotline. I found Invincible to have just so much more heart than The Boys (which was so bleak that I had to tap out) or Robert Kirkman’s other successful comic/television creation The Walking Dead. _Invincible__ knows how to sit in a poignant moment with well-paired music and feel its feelings. It also indulges in “superheroes are wacky” vibes that evoke Rick and Morty or The Venture Bros. It is creatively referential to other famous superhero stories (e.g. “Monster Girl”, who is basically the Hulk but gets younger every time she transforms). It’s playful, it’s heartful, it’s sometimes extremely violent, but it also has something more to say than “let’s celebrate adult nihilism.”

Watched Seasons 1-2 on Amazon Prime

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

This show is so much more interesting than the 2005 movie that spawned it, which was a competent flick of beautiful spies trying to blow each other up. Instead this show has time to explore the strange dynamic of two people thrown together to have a mock relationship while holding a secretive and dangerous job. It’s a great setting to tell what is at its core a grounded relationship story.

Watched on Amazon Prime

The Entire History of Video Games

This isn’t split up into episodes on YouTube, but as a 6 hour monilithic video I don’t think anyone is going to consume this in one sitting so I classify it as “television”. The video walks through key moments in video game history from the very beginning to modern times. If you want to reflect on how we got from Pong to Fortnite, this documentary is for you. I watched it with my daughter and she found it incredibly interesting. The narrator is a bit dry, but the content here is engaging enough to stand on its own. Whether it’s a trip through nostalgia or learning something new, this is a good watch.

Watched on YouTube

The JHS Show

Twisting the definition of a television show even further, this is legit just a YouTube channel. One that covers guitar effects pedals. I found it in my journey to my first pedalboard, but then I continued to absolutely devour the large backlog of content. The primary reason this channel exists is that JHS is a pedal manufacturer, and they promote their own products on the show. But they also just as readily celebrate other manufacturer’s pedals, and particularly the history of evolution of guitar effects. They do this all with humor, enthusiasm, authenticity, and good jams. I’ve learned a ton from the channel. And yes, it has persuaded me to make many more purchases of both JHS pedals and other pedals (leading to a larger pedalboard).

Watched on YouTube

Arcane

Okay, if I’m being honest I’d already watched this back in 2021. But the introduction of a second season (which I haven’t started yet) prompted me to rewatch the first season with my partner. And damn this show is good. The quality of the art direction is phenomenal. The animation, particularly of the character-driven fight scenes, is on its own level. This is one of the best things you can put in your eyeballs. I’m eager to start the second season.

Watched Season 1 on Netflix

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This show tells the story of a man’s inappropriate obsession with a woman, his deception to woo her, and waiting for all the lies to inevitably come crashing down. It’s at times uncomfortable to watch. And at other times I found myself empathizing with this guy who has done horrific things to maneuver into someone’s life. We are conditioned to root for our protagonists, and it becomes easy to forget for a moment that just because they are the focus they do not deserve to “win”. That wiring runs deep and this show really toys with that in a way that I found engaging. There’s more to this show but after 2 seasons I’d had enough intentional discomfort, at least until someone tells me it has somewhere narratively to go from here.

Watched Seasons 1-2 on Netflix

And the Rest

There were many great shows to choose from. Here are some other shows that are also worth a mention.

• Agatha All Along: Of all the Marvel television stories, Wandavision has been the best. Agatha All Along is a show that connects back to that storyline from an unexpected angle and thematically isn’t anywhere near a superhero story. The tale of Agatha putting together a coven and walking the witches road works well when so many of these other Marvel shows have struggled. Also it has an incredibly catchy song that’s narratively important.
• Shrinking: Seasons 1 and 2: Three therapists share a practice together, and this show covers them handling grief and aging and relationships and all that. It’s a comedy, obviously. The cast is great.
• House of the Dragon: Season 2: This Game of Thrones prequel’s intrigue continues to build, and holy crap there are some epic dragon-fueled moments. At this point I can upgrade this show from “maybe this is going to be okay” to “I’m enjoying this.”
• True Detective: Night Country: This murder mystery takes place in a frigid sunless Alaska. Jodie Foster absolutely crushes it as a self-destructive small town sheriff. The mystery feels mystical but stays just this side of realism. Somewhat like shadows feeling more sinister when you’re sleep deprived and cold. It’s good.
• Fallout: By all rights this show should have been terrible, as video game adaptations often are. Fallout isn’t a game series I haven’t managed to bond with, mainly for mehanical reasons we won’t get into here. But this adaptation of the setting into a show works. It successfully captures the quirks of vault dwelling and the sinister anarchy of the post-apocalyptic surface.
• Silo: Season 1: I’m in the middle of reading book 3 of this series. This television adaptation is quite good. It’s a bit funny to have both this and Fallout in the same year, just to make sure we have enough stories about what happens when civilization goes into a bunker for generations. In contrast, Silo is the story of a mystery and rebellion. I enjoyed the first season of it and am eager to so how they adapt the rest.
• The Franchise: Want to watch the behind the scenes dumpster fire of making movies for something very similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? That’s the concept of this show. It’s dry and funny.
• Ted Lasso: Season 3: If I’m being honest, I have a hard time here at the end of the year remembering specifically what happened in this final season of Ted Lasso. Loose ends got wrapped up, probably. But on the whole it continued the Lasso vibe. Positive, heartfelt, funny. What actually happened matters less than that.

Maybe

• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Percy Jackson movies were not great, either as adaptations or movies on their own. But now we get another attempt at bringing this popular book series to the screen, and this show fares so much better. It stays more faithful to the original book and the maintains the right age for the characters, which is important to the overall vibe.
• Avatar: the Last Airbender: I’m not sure who decided that a much beloved animated show needed a live action remake. It’s not even a proper change of form like the universally disliked movie adaptation; this is still an episodic television series. I guess it’s for people who can’t take animation seriously? Why are we catering to such cretins? Because of the piles of money this strategy has made for Disney with its live action remakes? Ugh. Anyway, for what it’s worth this adaptation isn’t bad. It’s cast well, and hits many of the highlights of the original show. It’s not as good as the original, but I also don’t regret watching it and when the rest comes out we’ll watch that too.
• The Fall of the House of Usher: This show follows in the horror series footsteps of the Haunting of Hill House and the Haunting of Bly Manor. The Fall of the House of Usher is competent, but not nearly as good as its excellent predecessors. It starts strong, but its rigid formula leads to predictability as it progresses through the episodes. Nothing quite takes the bite out of the tension like knowing what’s going to happen. And horror needs tension.