Obviously, as someone who has 11 hours of TV theme songs in his iTunes library and who spent much of childhood watching TV Land and Block Party Summer on Nick @ Nite… I was going to have to watch WandaVision at some point.

I mean, goodness, my favorite episodes of half my shows are the ones where they change the opening credits. And WandaVision changes the opening credits every week? In homage??? Yes, this is a program for me.

And WandaVision was, in fact, worth it just for the opening credits.

Here they are, ranked. I tried to keep spoilers out, but it’s impossible to avoid discussing WandaVision’s basic format… and clicking through to actually watch any of these videos will absolutely spoil you. Now, rankings:

#7. Episode 1, “A Newlywed Couple.” The past is a foreign country, and WandaVision tried very very hard but could not quite grab the wholesome energy of the era. It’s a technically and artistically impressive credit sequence, and I love it for that… but it lacks soul, and one of these has to end up ranked in last place. (This, incidentally, doubles as my review of the entire first episode.)

#6. Episode 5, “Making It Up As We Go Along.” This is really, really right for the era. I can’t dispute that. And the artists aren’t struggling to get in the mindset the way they were when trying to handle the 1950s. But… eh, it had all the ingredients, then fizzled. That happens. But these credits aren’t a patch on the credits they were riffing on. (That song, unlike this one, will stick in your ear for days.)

(UPDATE 29 March 2021: I must confess that “Making It Up As We Go Along” did, in fact, end up stuck in my ear for about a week. Also, the absolute perfection of the shots of Vision and Wanda at 1:09-1:11 have grown on me. I’d rate it at #3 today.)

#5. Episode 6, “Let’s Keep It Going.” As far as I know, this is both era-appropriate and beautiful, but I never cared for the sitcoms of this decade and I never much cared for its music, either. But it’s nevertheless catchy enough to land squarely in the middle of the pack.

#4. Episode 7, “W-V 2000.” This one was a gimme, because this time period was so recent and easy to remember and imitate. They put maybe 10% as much work in on this one as they did on Episode 1’s “Newlywed Couple.” But, you know what? It looked good, it sounded good, it felt good, and that’s what we all want, in the end. If you can be more beautiful in a modern idiom than a 60-year-old one, that’s fine and normal.

#3. Episode 7, Act 5, “All Along.” Yes, this is the one that everyone will remember. This is a brilliant twist. It lends itself perfectly to memes. It does a great job visually answering a lot of questions about the series in short visual clips. It’s a charming riff on a classic genre, one we didn’t expect to see at this point in the series. It went to #1 in soundtracks on iTunes, which is pretty impressive for the fake opening of a fake TV show-within-a-show-within-a-show. It’s got a great laugh at the end. But, scrape away the impressive presentation, and it’s pretty shallow. Not a great hummer, pedestrian lyrics — although it will certainly stick in your craw! It’s great work, but it’s not the best work in WandaVision.

#2. Episode 2, “Wan-da-Vision!” This is an excellent tune, and needed to be to get ranked this high… but the obvious standout here is the animation, which is as gorgeous today as it was when the shows it’s riffing on premiered. In fact, more beautiful — our animators are simply able to make this stuff look better than you could back then. Compare to the source material, and it’s really incredible how good they made this look for a one-off.

#1. Episode 3, “We’ve Got Something Cooking.” This is perfection. This era had a lot of terrible sitcoms with fantastic, stylish opening credits. This fits right in. It’s pretty, it’s smack-on for the era without being derivative, it establishes the setting and a surprising number of key characters… and, above all, it slaps. Tell me you aren’t humming that for days. And how about that subtle harpsichord line? Really nice, subtle touch. Sent me straight back to my youth watching “Assignment: Earth” reruns.

BEST EASTER EGG: Episode 1, Vision walking through the chair that Dick Van Dyke used to trip over.

DISHONORABLE MENTION: Episode 8/9, No Title Sequence.

Absolute copout. I let it go when you did it for Episode 4 as a frame-breaking device, but, no, c’mon, this is the series finale. You force to me to watch that interminable, insufferable Marvel logo animation (it’s a 30-second flex that, yes, you built a shared universe, we know, please tell me something about the show I’m actually watching), and you don’t even have the guts to give me a title sequence after as a reward? And you expect me to see these episodes as the so-called “climax” of the series?

Lemme tell you, buckos: it didn’t work for Gravity Falls (one of the great theme songs of the 2010s) when they (temporarily) switched to a 15-second title sequence to fit in more plot, and you don’t even have the excuse of a 22-minute time slot.

You know what Gravity Falls DID do for its final episodes? Made a completely new and EXTREMELY WEIRD AND UNSETTLING opening credits to signify the world falling apart. YOUR OPENING CREDITS FRAME YOUR STORY. They’re not optional! They’re key to the medium! Not that I’d expect a franchise that uses orchestral scores as wallpaper to understand that.

Anyway, still a worthwhile program for at least 7 episodes. If this were one of my Should I Watch? features, I’d rule this a WATCH.

Type of Show: Though it aired on a (cable) network, Mr. Robot is another in the new genre of “binge-watch” shows, in which every episode must be watched in sequence to make any sense, the most exciting story beats happen at the end (rather than the beginning and middle) in order to keep you watching for another hour, and everything from storylines to individual shots are padded to make the show fill an entire season. (see also: The Man in the High Castle)

What It’s About: A Fight Club for the Information Age, full of fury at capitalist society (which it portrays in drab caricature), Mr. Robot has its dysfunctional protagonists channel their energy into hacking and virtual terrorism rather than punching and physical terrorism… but otherwise it pretty much follows the Fight Club aesthetic, from the vague idea that it is the oppression of society that make us miserable (rather than our own defects) to its deep-seated misanthropy (which is odd, given its anarchism), to its many long, self-indulgent, but very entertaining speeches about the State of Society today. Mr. Robot also has its protagonist break the fourth wall in regular narrations, which seems to be a hat-tip to House of Cards, a show with a similarly grim outlook on life.

Where People Watch: USA Network, Amazon Prime (subscription only), The Pirate Bay (illegally)

What James Watched: The first three episodes of the first season, portions of the fourth, and the entire season finale (episode ten).

Best Part: Hacking is virtual breaking-and-entering, so all great hacking movies are, at heart, dolled-up heist movies. Mr. Robot is the story of the greatest “heist” of all time, and, when the show is focused on that, it shines. Lead actor Rami Malek, playing protagonist Elliot Alderman, carries the rest of the show on his back, and does a marvelous job with it.

Worst Part: Mr. Robot does not spend a lot of time focusing on the heists. And, because of its deliberate choice to present a caricature of the modern world, most of the characters that inhabit that world are shallow and uninteresting (though their one-dimensionality is covered up by making them flashy and stylized). Unfortunately, this includes protagonist Elliot, whose name I had to repeatedly look up in the course of writing this review — though Mr. Malek’s good offices at least keep Elliot watchable.

Representative Excerpt:

KRISTA: And what is it about society that disappoints you so much?

ELLIOT: Oh, I don’t know. Is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it’s that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit. The world itself’s just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our burning commentary bullshit masquerading as insight. Our social media faking as intimacy. Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections. But with our things, our property, our money. I’m not saying anything new, we all know we do this, not because Hunger Games books make us happy, but because we want to be sedated. Because it’s painful not to pretend because we’re cowards… f**k society.

Theme Music:

(You learn a lot about any show from its theme music.)

Should I Watch?: 

No.

Mr. Robot is a good movie stretched out over the course of too many episodes. Everything important and interesting it has to say, it says in its pilot. Watch that, then stop.

Type of Show: In the 21st Century, there are two kinds of shows: dark (think Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies) and bright (think Guardians of the Galaxy).  Some straddle the middle, or vacillate between the two.  Utopia is unlike all of them: its plot and characters are pitch-black, darker than anything I’ve seen recently.  But its tone — everything from its color palate to its music to its dialogue — is brighter than anything since Pushing Daisies.  It’s a drama, but often feels like something else.

What It’s About: A powerful conspiracy is determined to get its hands on a manuscript: the second volume of Utopia, a cult-classic comic book.  They’ll kill anyone even tangentially connected to it.  This is bad news for a small group of online Utopia fans, who have managed to get their hands on the manuscript… and they now have to flee for their lives.

Where People Watch: BBC4, DVD, The Pirate Bay (illegally)

What James Watched: The entire first season — six episodes.  There was a second season, also six episode, which aired in 2014.  This short run, though unthinkable in mainstream American television, is perfectly normal for a British show.

Best Part: Watching four completely innocent people from completely different walks of life fall deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole of conspiracies (and conspiracies-within-conspiracies) is fun in any universe, but Utopia‘s bright approach upends the entire conspiracy genre.  I know that’s like saying “the best part of the show is the show,” but that’s kinda true here.

Worst Part: Utopia is incredibly violent, and shockingly graphic about nearly all of it. It gets one or two points back for refusing to show children being graphically murdered… but promptly loses them anyway because it’s perfectly willing to kill children just off-screen, and does so more than twice. If you simply aren’t up for a lot of violence (and a bit of sex), nobody will judge you for skipping Utopia.

Representative Excerpt:

DUGDALE: How did you… get involved in all this?

DONALDSON: Remember SARS? I worked for the Martarla Foundation who discovered it. One of their top scientists, rising star, six figure salary, used their private jet. Ever been on a private jet? It’s nice. I was in Hong Kong when SARS hit. They kept it locked down, but I thought, ‘Fuck that, I’m special’. So I went in, had a look, found out it didn’t exist.

DUGDALE: What? SARS didn’t exist?

DONALDSON: No. Whole thing was just a series of unconnected respiratory problems. Took me under an hour to discover there was no cause or link. So, I filed my report and within a week, I was discredited, research destroyed… fired. I tried speaking out, but everyone thought I’d just gone a bit David Icke.

DUGDALE: But people died. SARS was–

DONALDSON: Started in November 2002, it lasted precisely seven months, by summer 2003 it no longer existed; the ‘pandemic’ affected just eight thousand, four hundred and twenty-two people and killed nine hundred and sixteen. Do you know how many people die each year from random respiratory problems? SARS did not exist. Next question. Why did they do it? Answer? I don’t fucking know. All I know is that in the next few weeks I was embroiled in a sex scandal. Professor Pervert, addicted to coke and prostitutes.

DUGDALE: So, d-did they just set you up?

DONALDSON: Yeah! Well… No, I do like cocaine and prostitutes, but they didn’t have to tell everyone.

Theme Music:

(You learn a lot about any show from its theme music.)

Should I Watch?: 

YES.

Another review put it like this: “Utopia is like Lost without all the irritating parts of Lost.” That’s barely even kind of true, but it’s still the most accurate one-sentence summary of Utopia I’ve found, so I’m reprinting it anyway.  I enjoyed Utopia a great deal, and it told a story that has only occasionally been told before in an entirely fresh way.  And, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say Utopia has clear heroes, it does definitely have people you can cheer for — and who are still worth cheering for by the time the first season ends.

Type of Show: It is unfair to call The Man in the High Castle a heavily-serialized drama. Like many other shows written for the “binge-watching” audience (House of Cards &c.), it is way more serialized than that.  As a series of episodes, it is unintelligible; it can only be understood as a full, season-long story.

What It’s About: In 1947, the Nazi Reich and Japanese Empire conquered America.  Now, in 1963, Juliana Crane and Joe Blake are helping the Resistance smuggle films that depict an impossible world where the Allies won.

Where People Watch: Amazon Prime (subscription only), The Pirate Bay (illegally)

What James Watched: The entire 10-episode first season, which is all that has been released so far.

Best Part: Mad Men won a bunch of awards for its powerful, faithful evocation of the 1960s. The Man in the High Castle goes much further: it powerfully, faithfully evokes a 1960s that never happened: a 1960s America that has been quietly perverted by anti-Semitic propaganda and seppuku.  The world it creates feel real in every detail, from production design to tiny quirks of dialogue, and that world-building is entrancing. Obergruppenführer John Smith (really? that’s the name of a main character?) is singled out in most reviews as a standout, and I must agree: every regime will has its collaborators, and some of them will be true believers. Smith is fascinating.

Worst Part: The Man in the High Castle is, even at this early date, obviously joining Lost’s tradition of asking questions that it has no intention of answering.  The refusal to commit to and advance the broad story drains the show — and apparently its writers — of any sense of urgency.  The story is ten hours long, but has less character development and change in all that time than your average 90-minute B-movie. What’s there is good, but it is soooo slow in coming and involves soooo many long silent shots of people frowning that you start wishing you were watching Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies, which were somehow less overextended than The Man in the High Castle.

Should I Watch?: 

NO.

The Man in the High Castle could work very well, if its first and (probable) second season were smashed together into a tightly-paced six-episode miniseries.  Watch the pilot episode for its gorgeous production values and world-building (the pilot is free on Amazon even to non-subscribers, so, bonus).  The rest of the series just isn’t worth the time it asks for, so bail out and go watch the original Red Dawn, which has far less verisimilitude but a hell of a lot more entertainment value.