I’m not a big fan of Top 10 Lists. Even when there’s this much TV, you end up with a lot of lists that look the same, and they all kind of assume a specific viewer. But there’s a fundamental problem with that task—not everybody watches TV for the same reasons.
Some people watch TV to be transported, some want company while they fold their laundry, and some people are determined to watch the worst trash they can.
People might be turning to lists to contemplate what makes great art, but what they’re really after is a recommendation.
We can all enjoy TV in different ways, so I broke down the year into 8 categories based on different kinds of TV-watchers, think of them as yearbook superlatives:
“I only have time for one show”
“Something New and Fresh™”
“The world is a fucked up place”
“I want to feel good”
“I’m a hipster, nothing mainstream please”
“I’m trying to chill with low effort slop”
“‘Good’ is a social construct”
Let’s get cracking.
1. “I only have time for one show”
The Candidates:
The Pitt (HBO Max)
The Rehearsal (HBO Max)
Pluribus (AppleTV+)
Severance (AppleTV+)
Andor (Disney+)
Every year you’ve got dozens of people saying “oh you should check out X” or “have you seen Y?” But you’re busy and there’s a lot of TV out there. Some may say that there’s TOO MUCH TV. You’ve got bills to pay and mouths to feed, so let’s just narrow it down to one show. What is the one show from 2025 that you should watch?
This category isn’t just a question of quality, it’s about finding something you can talk about with your friends, not just giving you a single good TV show but a show you don’t want to miss out on—one you’ll feel good recommending to others too.
The Pitt is hands down my favorite show of 2025 (more on this later), but I can’t say it’s a super enjoyable watch. While rewatching it for my upcoming video essay, I broke down in uncontrollable sobbing more than once. There is a level of gore and carnage that is tough to really explain without watching (there is a degloving injury in the very first episode). Still, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a show on more Top 10 of 2025 lists. The performances and writing are absolutely top notch, and the show was the breakout hit of the year, with a second season coming in January sure to build on that momentum.
The Rehearsal was the single strangest show I’d ever seen when it came out in 2022, pushing the boundaries of not only what a reality show could do but what “reality” even was at all. The show was as much about the creation of the show, a meta-reality series that confronted us with the layers of simulacra and simulation that form the foundation of the genre. Season 2 took that to new heights, literally. The season saw Nathan Fielder obsess over airplane crashes, learn to fly, and use his trademark social awkwardness to try to successfully fly a plane full of working actors despite his lack of flight time. It was not only a meta-reality series about airplanes but about the first season as well, existing in conversation with all of those questions that surrounded it, and looked at Nathan’s need to see the world through this lens and what it says about him.
Watching Pluribus, the latest TV series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, is like watching a master at work. The show demands your eyeballs since the majority of the story is relayed visually and without dialogue. Every shot is immaculately framed and every cut is deliberate as the story trickles out. While it’s wildly different thematically from Gilligan’s recent famous series—one that is a fresh change of pace—you can see the montages and filmmaking that made those series such technical marvels in every frame. The Albuquerque team they have built looks like the 2014 San Antonio Spurs: having played with each other for years and years, they know exactly how to work together and create something more than the sum of their parts.
I was notably lukewarm on the second season of Severance. Many of my critiques of the show have to do with its story, writing, and becoming a cheerleader for the very same aspects of corporate capitalism that it had been criticizing in that excellent first season. But I will not deny that the show was visually ambitious, filled with incredible performances, and I’m sure there are tons of rooms you could walk into and talk Severance theories with friends.
But my pick for the single show I’d recommend is Andor. While there are ties into the broader Star Wars Universe, the second season more-or-less followed the single story of the Empire’s oppression and eventual ethnic cleansing of the fictional planet of Ghorman. You don’t need to know much of anything about it other than the fact that the Empire builds a Death Star, and the season is a crash course in authoritarianism and how atrocities are planned out in the halls of power. The season is more Shock Doctrine and Manufacturing Consent than Wookiepedia, but by teaching us about these dynamics through Star Wars, I think it’s far more accessible than it has any right to be. The show has become a kind of rallying cry for antifascist movements opposing Trump and the genocide in Gaza, with signs referencing the show all over the No Kings Protests and other memes critical of the government, and with good reason. It’s one of the best and most accurate depictions of fascism ever put to the small screen.
Verdict: Andor
2. “Something New and Fresh™”
The Candidates:
Pluribus (AppleTV+)
Death By Lightning (Netflix)
The Rehearsal (HBO)
Devil May Cry (Netflix)
This is the complete opposite of the first category. No amount of TV is too much for you, and in fact, you are such a junkie that you need something that feels completely different, something New and Fresh™.
It’s difficult to think of a show more unpredictable than The Rehearsal, constantly pushing the boundaries of television, the law, and reality to their limit. If you watch The Rehearsal and feel like you’ve seen this before, I need access to the same drugs you’re on. If you want more of my thoughts scroll up to the previous category.
Death by Lightning is a Netflix 4-episode miniseries about the campaign and election of the most unlikely president in US history (James Garfield) and the man who killed him (Charles Guiteau). While I think it’d be difficult to make the case that either Garfield or his assassination has had that much historical fallout—especially considering the administrations that immediately preceded it—in some ways it signaled the direction of the country. The miniseries draws parallels to modern American politics and the ways in which parasocial relationships can warp minds and the neverending struggle against corruption. It feels like a toned down version of The Great, focused more on accuracy than anachronisms, but with a healthy diet of both.
At first, Devil May Cry feels like a pretty run of the mill video game adaptation (at least for me, having not played the games), but with a heavy dose of nostalgia. But as the series develops, you realize that the show has a lot to say about the era its source material comes from, blending that nostalgia with commentary on the real world political events that played out in the background. I recommend my lil skippy on the show for more detail.
Pluribus has one of the freshest premises I’ve seen on TV in a minute, imagining a world where all but a random 12 people worldwide find themselves connected into a hive mind by a psychic glue. People seem polarized on whether Pluribus was a slowburn masterpiece or an overrated snoozefest, but I find myself somewhere in the middle, probably closer to the masterpiece side. I don't think it was a perfect season of TV, and I definitely agree that it was on the slow side, but I also think that the show being so focused on process, rather than mysteries or twists, makes it a very engaging show.
Verdict: Pluribus
3. “The world is a fucked up place”
The Candidates:
Gen V (Amazon Prime)
The White Lotus (HBO)
Squid Game (Netflix)
Look, 2025 sucked a fat one. It’s hard to look at the state of the world and feel hopeful about humanity, and you just want a TV show to commiserate with. So which dystopian hellscape do I recommend?
Let’s start with Squid Game. I wrote a pretty lengthy post about the end of Squid Game here and here, but the TLDR is that it wasn’t that great. The most interesting thing about Squid Game seasons 2 and 3 was how it became the very thing it had sought to critique, clearly being the inspiration for Beast Games, and with an ending meant to tie into David Fincher’s Squid Game: America set to start filming in February. This is certainly evidence of a dystopian capitalist hellscape, so it obviously gets a mention here, but it’s a bit more meta than you might be looking for.
Gen V’s dark satire of how college campuses have become epicenters of political turmoil—from “cancel culture” to “safe spaces” to student protests—felt as prescient as ever. I don’t think any show captured the attempted ideological capture of American universities by the far right as well or as in-depth as Gen V.
But the best show for this category has to be the excellent third season of The White Lotus. While the ending left me with more than a few questions, I think the season really did give us plenty of shitty humans to hatewatch, one of my favorite memes of the year, and a look into how “accomplishment” does nothing to fill the voids in our souls. It was an interesting examination of the empty promises of commercial success and capitalism, even if we didn’t actually get to see any of the season’s characters actually have to grapple with losing everything.
Verdict: The White Lotus
4. “I want to feel good”
The Candidates:
Stick (AppleTV+)
The Pitt (HBO Max)
You are well aware that the world is a fucked up place, but you’d rather escape from it in your leisure time than be reminded of the horrors outside your home.
To me, there are only 2 real candidates for this category and they come from completely opposite ends of the spectrum.
On the one end we have Stick, the comedy on AppleTV+ following a golf prodigy and his newfound mentor. It is one of the most classic “feel-good” shows I’ve ever seen, combining fairly low stakes with an underdog story. Stick has a deep empathy to it and doesn’t take itself too seriously. I think star Marc Maron said it best on his blog when talking about the show: “Stick may not be art but it might be what we need.”
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is The Pitt, a show that constantly interacts with the very worst aspects of our society. I have a lot more coming in the next week or so about The Pitt’s optimism in my next video essay, but suffice to say that the flip side of seeing the worst aspects of our society is a reminder of the heroism humanity is also capable of, and a resilience to keep fighting no matter what.
Verdict: The Pitt
5. “I’m a hipster, nothing mainstream please”
The Candidates:
Common Side Effects (HBO Max)
The Studio (AppleTV+)
The Chair Company (HBO)
You don’t like the mainstream choices. You want the out-of-the-box choices that will really make people at parties think that you’re a cultural connoisseur. They definitely will like you for that and not just make fun of you behind your back.
Maybe you looked at my candidates and thought, “Wait, The Studio is very mainstream! It just won a bunch of Emmy Awards!” But what is more hipster than Hollywood patting itself on the back for all of the movies they don’t make anymore? The Studio is an ode to a Hollywood age (that probably never existed) where executives cared more about art than profit, before franchise films made up the highest earners at the box office. The entire series is just Seth Rogen’s character trying to be a little quirky hipster who cares about film history and the artform, and how that conflicts with the business of filmmaking.
Likewise, The Chair Company isn’t exactly an under-the-radar hit—it was HBO’s highest rated comedy in years. But I do think that The Chair Company’s sense of humor is a major departure for TV comedies. Sure, I Think You Should Leave has been a hit for Netflix since it debuted, but The Chair Company’s longform structure is a lot different than a sketch show. The absurdist jokes need to last longer than 3-4 minutes, and they need to be weight-bearing for the narrative of the season. With its expansive conspiracy plots and serialized nature, The Chair Company is pretty different even from Detroiters, Tim Robinson’s previous half hour comedy.
Finally, a shoutout to Common Side Effects, an adult animated series about a mushroom that heals all ailments, and a conspiracy by Big Pharma to keep it a secret so that they can continue to profit. I’m not sure I’ve seen a show aimed so explicitly at the greed of pharmaceutical or healthcare companies before, taking all of the best bit of social commentary from King of the Hill and stripping out the Texas of it all.
Still, I think I have to give it to The Chair Company, one of the most unique scripted comedy series I’ve seen in years.
Verdict: The Chair Company
6. “I love slop and what it says about the world we live in.”
The Candidates:
Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (Hulu)
Vanderpump Villa (Hulu)
Bachelor in Paradise (ABC/Hulu)
We’re all familiar with reality TV slop, shows that exist to be passively consumed. But what makes a truly great slop show is the ability to both make you feel dumber for watching AND provide a perverse pleasure in deconstructing what passive messages these shows communicate to us through their constructed reality.
I’m not the biggest reality TV consumer, but I think we might be witnessing a fairly rapid change in the genre. We might be living in a post-reality TV world.
I wrote about Vanderpump Villa way back in May, but I think this show and its counterpart Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (which I wrote about here) signal a new era of reality TV, one in which kayfabe is evaporating. I first noticed this in Vanderpump Villa, which follows the staff of a bougie hotel as they entertain guests. There’s a constant tension between the job the cast is allegedly doing as staff, and the job they are clearly actually doing as cast members on a reality show. What might be bad as a hospitality worker (getting drunk, picking fights, hooking up with guests) is actually great for reality TV, but the show still has to pretend that Lisa Vanderpump is very disappointed in her staff, scolding them for doing the very thing that they were hired to do.
Likewise, Bachelor in Paradise (which has long been a guilty pleasure of mine) complicated their own premise by not just offering its cast the opportunity to date freely on a tropical resort, but adding a cash prize for the winners. Then the show made the final couples choose between that cash or leaving paradise together, although it seemed fairly explicit that at least one couple would probably take the money and then just get together afterwards. Here, the subtext of the show is made into text, as a way of trying to acknowledge the fact that viewers know that the real reason people join these shows is for social media clout and exposure, not “love.”
Secret Lives of Mormon Wives takes this to a completely different level, where much of the third season is quite literally about producing the previously aired second season. The women of the cast talk openly about disagreements in their contracts with Hulu and the business opportunities that are open to them because of the show that they’re on (2 cast members competed on the latest season of Dancing with the Stars, and a third is the star of the upcoming season of The Bachelorette). In other words, the show is literally about them being on the show. This is true for celebrity reality series like The Kardashians or Paul American, but I think Mormon Wives is a different animal. The show actively encourages you to engage with it on the internet, slow-dripping details that it knows you can find online and constantly referencing social media drama and beefs between the cast that were happening in public for all of their fans.
There’s also a fascinating constructed gender element of Mormon Wives, where the financial independence of the women clashes with a highly patriarchal culture and the ways in which the cast pushes back against that (I really recommend the In Bed With The Right podcast episode on the show). The winner here is very easy for me, I’ve thought about Secret Lives of Mormon Wives at least once a week since it came out.
Verdict: Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
7. “Good is a social construct”
The Candidates:
Nobody Wants This (Netflix)
The Hunting Wives (Netflix)
Wayward (Netflix)
Sirens (Netflix)
Your Friends & Neighbors (AppleTV+)
“Good” is an amorphous and subjective idea. What makes a show “better” than another? “Good” and “bad” can’t always be separated. I mean, sometimes it’s so bad it’s good. These shows make me think the most about what kind of mindset and expectations we bring into viewing. Maybe, in the right context, these shows are actually great! Probably not though.
This is lowkey my favorite category every year, and boy oh boy do we have some good contenders this year, almost all of them coming from Netflix lol.
Nobody Wants This? I certainly don’t. Ayooo. This was my least favorite show of the year because of the deeply conservative politics it tried to pass off as liberal, its weird antisemitism, and completely fumbling what is an absolutely loaded cast. It’s one thing for this show to be politically gross, it’s another thing for it to be unfunny despite starring Kristen Bell, Adam Brody, Justine Lupe, Timothy Simons, Jackie Tohn, and Tovah Feldshuh. I’m honestly impressed that they were able to make them all look bad, that’s a high level of difficulty!
The Hunting Wives was a big time guilty pleasure of mine in 2025, somehow making a teen drama about full grown adults (who fuck teens). The show follows a liberal woman and her family as they move to conservative Texas for work and slowly learn that they kind of love it. The show is an interesting critique on the hypocrisy of conservatism (as well as liberalism) and the relationship between men and women as they navigate the reality and performance of their genders. It’s scandalous—filled with sex and debauchery that give it the perfect mix of camp and sincere commentary.
Wayward is two shows rolled up into one. The first show, the one about kids being sent to a juvenile institution for troubled teens, is pretty good and interesting. It dives into the psychology of kids who have experienced tragedy and the ways in which adults can harness and manipulate that insecurity to control and abuse them. The other show, about a transgender cop who learns he’s moved to a cult town with his wife who is determined to reshape that community in her own image, is quite bad. At best, the cop drama is like a combo of The Wicker Man and Rosemary’s Baby, the story of an outsider who loses control of their family and self. At worst, it’s just a really shitty cop shooting children and being forgiven for it. There’s something also so surreal about such an explicit piece of copaganda starring a trans character.
Sirens had one of the strangest tones I’ve seen in a TV show recently. I was never sure when it was trying to be funny or when it was trying to be serious. I wasn’t sure if it was implying the existence of the paranormal or if that was just weird writing. The show has some nice performances from a pretty stacked cast, and I especially found the scenes between Milly Alcock and Meghann Fahy to be pretty powerful at moments, but ultimately is more of a weird nothingburger than a truly entertaining piece of bad TV.
Your Friends & Neighbors rounds out the list of candidates, not because it’s a terrible show but because it exists in a surreal space between sincerity and critique. It wants to mock ostentatious and performative wealth, while also idolizing the same symbols of luxury, like cars, watches, and high art, all while the voice of Don Draper explains to us how valuable these items are as if he’s a salesman and an Amazon QR code is about to pop up in the corner of our screen.
Verdict: The Hunting Wives