Lisa Abellera (@Writrgrrl) Noel Fisher as Mickey Milkovich in “Shameless.”
Showtime’s “Shameless” often has its ups and downs—four seasons of drama for the Gallagher clan has produced some stories that matter and too many more that are best forgotten. But this fourth season was quite possibly its best yet—as the American show has grown out of the shadow of its British forebear into something that tells a unique story of American poverty. In the midst of a season that featured patriarch Frank getting a liver transplant and Fiona accidentally poisoning little Liam with cocaine, the quiet MVP was Noel Fisher’s Mickey—a peripheral hoodlum who has been part of the story for years and only this year came into the limelight. Mickey’s story is, unexpectedly, a love story: After years of hiding his sexuality, and his relationship with Ian Gallagher, in this season he not only comes out of the closet but does so publicly, declaring his love for Ian in the middle of a bar to his drunk, abusive dad. The event concludes the only way a touching moment in “Shameless” could: a drunken brawl. Mickey’s swagger in public is matched only by his sweetness in private; Fisher brings astounding depth to a character who was a part-time villain for most of the show’s history.
Humera Afridi (@madsufi)
Mary-Kim Arnold (@mkimarnold)Viola Davis taking off her wig in “How to Get Away With Murder.”
It’s a scene that elevates a fractured murder mystery into a powerful story about race—the moment where Davis’ character, Annalise Keating, broken by her husband’s infidelity, strips off the many layers of artifice she wears daily, while staring at herself in the mirror. Off go her false eyelashes and foundation, her wig, while, as Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya wrote about the episode, “Let’s Get to Scooping”: It’s a moment where Keating is confronting herself, in the mirror, and a moment where Davis the actress is confronting the audience with her reality. “It’s an intimate, powerful moment television doesn’t often show: A black woman removing all the elements white supremacy tells her she has to wear to be beautiful, successful, powerful.
Neelanjana Banerjee (@NeelanjanaB)
Grace Bello (@grace_land)Eva Green’s demon possession in “Penny Dreadful’s” second episode, “Séance.”
“Penny Dreadful” is a remarkable gothic fantasy, a pastiche of Victorian thrillers constructed around a story of a woman who betrayed her best friend and a father searching for the missing daughter he long neglected. Its main flaw is that its ambition leads to muddled storytelling, but over the course of its first season, showrunner John Logan threw his characters—some original, some borrowed from Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker—into a Victorian wonderland that thrills and horrifies as much as it delights. Green plays Vanessa Ives, a woman with a connection to the demimonde—the secret, subconscious spirit world. And during a spontaneous séance in Episode 2, that connection explodes in the form of nasty, malicious possession, a demon possession that is not just fantastic or sexy but uncomfortably intimate. Green’s performance is physical torment and mental possession; she speaks in tongues and rolls her eyes back in her head with abandon. And just as she throws herself into the moment, so too does the camera, which closes in on her tight and listens to the murmur of her voice as she channels something from the beyond. The scene is remarkable, and further so for being long. The possession does not stop when you, the viewer, is ready for it to stop, or when the collected guests are ready for it to stop, and certainly not when Miss Ives wants it to stop. Instead, “Penny Dreadful” lets this moment of possession steal the scene and even the episode; the journey parallels the horrific experience. “Penny Dreadful” features supernatural storytelling the likes of which I’ve never seen before, summed up in this one stunning take.
Ayse Papatya Bucak (@TheFreeMFA)
Elaine Castillo (@_elainecastillo)Allison Tolman as Molly Solverson in “Fargo”
FX’s “Fargo,” the miniseries based on the film of the same name, never quite found its way into my good graces, though the production was undeniably high-quality and well thought out. But despite my issues with the show as a whole, Tolman’s Molly stole my heart from Episode 1. Molly’s a character based on Frances McDormand’s monumental Marge Gunderson from the Coen brothers’ film, so Molly could have been just a pale shadow to Marge’s presence. But in Tolman’s hands, Molly becomes her own person—a thoughtful single woman following in her father’s footsteps who stumbles across the path of a man who seems to be an incarnation of pure evil.
Jessamine Chan