I loved Television Without Pity. They pretty much invented TV recapping, and did such an outstanding job that I would read the recaps of shows I watched faithfully just for the pleasure of it. They were the best at really giving you every bit of an episode with just the right level of loving snark, appropriate to the show. (By which I mean they didn’t hesitate to thoroughly eviscerate garbage TV, while finding ways to be funny and snarky about shows that were actually good.
Well, everybody recaps now, so getting the basics of shows you miss or find confusing isn’t hard. But getting meaty, funny, really delicious recaps is a challenge.
So what sites or particular recappers do you recommend? I dream of finding a site or writers worthy of TWOP, but I don’t hold out hope for that. Just a cut above.
Stuff I am familiar with: Sepinwall, Vulture, EW, Huffpo, major papers like NY Times.
Does the AV Club do regular recaps, and are they any good?
(Thread prompted by today’s search for a Homeland recap that will artfully and entertainingly clarify a few points for me…)
Some of the Entertainment Weekly (ew.com) recaps are pretty good, but it depends very much on the recapper and the show. Dalton Ross, who writes on Survivor, is fabulous.
Actually, I think they’re better - the writing quality is excellent, and they actually try to say something intelligent about the shows they review. I migrated to the AV Club long before TWOP closed.
The AV Club’s TV articles are formatted more as reviews than TWOP-style recaps, which can be good or bad depending on the show and the writer. They’re generally less snarky than TWOP, but often provide more thoughtful analysis. Personally, I tend to prefer analysis over recap, especially since the TWOP house style has somewhat taken over internet writing these days. Snarky recaps don’t feel as original when they comprise the majority of modern TV criticism (most of which isn’t nearly clever enough to justify the snarky tone).
Unfortunately, a lot of the better writers have left the AV Club in recent years, but some decent ones are still there. I still have vague hopes that some of the folks who departed for The Dissolve will return to writing about TV on the AV Club, now that The Dissolve has (sadly) dissolved.
Flavorwire’s Taylor Coates’ reviews of Season 1 of HBO’s Looking were excellent, mostly because he hated it.
Similarly, Flavorwire’s [reviews](flavorwire the affair) from last season and The Observer’s reviews of last season and this season of the show The Affair are also very enjoyable.
The AV Club has plenty of excellent snark, if you’re into that kind of thing; it’s just that it’s all in the comments section. But yes, the quality of the writing has dropped a bit recently, although it’s still better than anything else I’ve found online.
I read the AV Club’s recaps. They are generally pretty good, but every once in a while you have the issue where a reviewer really doesn’t like the show s/he’s reviewing (or, even worse, wants the show to be somewhat different than what it actually is). Or the reviewer gets on their high horse about some issue and continue to hammer it over and over, well after people care (I remember “The Good Wife” reviews last season doing this). Commentators will point this out quite frequently when it happens - and that can be quite amusing.
See, what I loved about TWOP was when, say, we were watching Deadwood and couldn’t understand half of it, or on the other side of the equation when Jacob was recapping Battlestar Galactica and was both pretentious and utterly stupid, and I wouldn’t miss a single one.
