Telecuse

With the first official day of fall just over a week away, the leaves are beginning to change, the air is getting crisp and TV networks are pushing out a new season of content. 

Network television fans will have plenty to look forward to with the return of old favorites, and cable viewers will get their fix of corpse-driven melodrama when AMC’s The Walking Dead returns in October.

The hour-long series finale of CBS’s hit romantic comedy How I Met Your Mother aired Monday night, ending with a twist that many didn’t see coming. It was a curveball met with howls of frustration on Twitter and downright vitriolic critical outrage. But as the episode concluded, it wasn’t the television screen at which I sat staring, mouth agape, dumbfounded. It was my Twitter feed. 

If a singular theme has emerged in the first installment of True Detective, it is that no one is perfect. We are all angry, we are all flawed, and we are all fundamentally irrational. Even in doing what we believe is right and good for one person (or ourselves), we often hurt someone else (or ourselves) in the process. There is no savior, no true hero - only true life, with all of its horrors. The sins we commit against one another are made less intolerable only by comparison to the shocking offenses of murderers and pedophiles.

In the penultimate episode of Downton Abbey’s fourth season, it seems like everyone is at a crossroads. I guess that’s what happens when you’re setting up for a season finale though, right?

For several characters, the choice that lies ahead will involve a serious step across that proverbial line the Downton crew has been toeing for years: the line that separates their cherished past from the uncertain future.