"surreal"

2016 · 4 Seasons · FX · Comedy-Drama

Atlanta is one of the most distinctive shows to air in the last decade, a series that carved out its own lane and never once looked back. Four seasons gave it room to grow, experiment, and occasionally frustrate, but the overall body of work is remarkable. The performances are universally strong, the writing swings for the fences more often than almost any other show on television, and its willingness to sit in discomfort makes it stick with you long after each episode ends. Some of its creative choices won't land for every viewer, but that's part of what makes it matter.

2022 · 3 Seasons · Adult Swim · Animation / Comedy / Absurdist

Smiling Friends packed more creative energy into its 11-minute episodes than most shows manage in an hour. The mixed-media animation was constantly surprising, the humor landed with the kind of density that rewards rewatching, and the show never lost the handmade quality that made it feel like nothing else on television. It ended after three seasons by choice rather than decline, which is the rarest kind of exit in animation. For a show about making people smile, it turned out to be pretty good at it.

2010 · 8 Seasons · Cartoon Network · Animation, Comedy, Fantasy

Regular Show took the simplest possible premise and turned it into something brilliantly unpredictable. Two slackers try to avoid work, and somehow every episode escalates into cosmic chaos, supernatural threats, or interdimensional warfare. The 80s and 90s nostalgia gives it a warm, specific personality, the character relationships feel genuine, and the humor lands with remarkable consistency across eight seasons. Some episodes blur together due to a repetitive structure, and the final season's space setting divided fans, but the show's ability to find real emotion inside absurd situations makes it one of Cartoon Network's finest achievements.

1990 · 3 Seasons · ABC, Showtime · Mystery / Drama

Twin Peaks is one of the most original and influential television shows ever made, a place where murder mystery meets surrealist art in ways that still feel startling decades later. Its first season is a near-perfect run of television. The second season's middle stretch is the weakest the show gets, and it gets weak enough to lose a lot of viewers. The Return brought it back with a creative ambition that rivals anything in the medium's history, even if it deliberately alienated as many people as it thrilled. This is a show that rewards commitment and tolerates confusion, and nothing else on television has ever sounded, looked, or felt quite like it.