Daredevil: Born Again S1: I really struggled to get through this, and only the promise of a Frank/Matt team-up made me finish watching.

I didn't always like Matt's friendship with Foggy and Karen in the past and found Foggy's attitude towards Daredevil extremely grating, so I wasn't sad that neither of them was in the spin-off much. But the new supporting cast was terribly written and two-dimensional – they all felt like plot devices rather than characters. So it essentially became the Matt-and-Fisk show, and I really don't care about Fisk. I found the main storyline incredibly dull, and there were almost no noteworthy side storylines to distract me. I really enjoyed the episode with the bank robbery, which felt like a bottle episode in some ways, and had a fun case-of-the-week feeling. That was the sole highlight of the show for me, though,

I did like Karen calling Frank to save Matt, and the three of them bickering for a moment in the season finale, which was a lot of fun, but too little too late, and the fact that there was no ending to the season – not even a proper cliffhanger; It just stopped without any kind of resolution – ruined it for me. I don't think I'll be back for S2 unless it mixes things up a lot. And I hope the Punisher spin-off will be better written.


The Empress S2: They're doing some wild time jumps, but if it makes them able to tell more of Elisabeth's story than the RTL show did, that works for me. I wasn't into Devrim Lingnau's wig this season (what's with the weird bangs?), but her acting remains sublime – her grief over her daughter's death felt so real and painful. I generally liked how they tackled actual historical events and court politics.

Maximilian remains one of my favorite (he's ridiculously handsome this season), though I wasn't impressed with his new wife. Knowing what's to come for him, the ending with him leaving court felt more tragic than Franz deciding to join the war himself. (He'll be fine. Maximilian won't.)

I like what the show is doing with Sophie – how she cold-hearted when she feels she needs to be, and she keeps it all bottled up, but there are moments when she allows herself to be soft (she clearly adored her first-born grandchild!) and moments when she feels too disillusioned to maintain the facade. I liked her weird thing with von Bach – maybe more than I liked von Bach's romance with 'Leontine'. Him sending her away when he found out she was a fraud pissed me off. In general, I wasn't into what the show did with the ladies in waiting this season. Charlotte blackmailing Leontine and keeping her from the Empress was very WTF?! and Margarete only enduring court politics while drunk or high seemed at odds with her role last season.


Netflix announced a third and final season of The Empress (to be released next year), so I'm curious how they'll wrap things up.

In other TV news, Mobland has been renewed for a second season! *\o/*