Carly Zinderman

Season 1, Episode 2 – Now in its second episode, it has become pretty obvious that weed doesn’t have much of anything to do with Mary + Jane. The show’s more like Laverne and Shirley, if Laverne and Shirley happened to live in the same apartment and semi-ignored each other and had completely different names.

The Strain is really starting to pick up steam in its third season. From a series of flashbacks to an unexpected death, “First Born” is shockingly action-packed.

Although Tyrant has been promising major blowups all season, the season finale-turned-series-finale wraps things up while still leaving room for new twists and turns to set up a season four we’ll never see.

Season 1, Episode 1 – Immediately after the first few minutes of watching Mary + Jane in their Eastside Los Angeles-hipster apartment, inventing words like “ganjapreneurs,” I decided that the show was basically Portlandia, but set in L.A. The impression continued through the next 30 minutes of the show.

The Strain is already picking up speed as we continue to catch up with old friends and foes, and new alliances and subplots are formed.

“How to Live” opens where the last episode of Tyrant left off, Bassam’s friends are speaking out against him, including Fauzi, once his strongest supporter. Like his brother and father before him, Bassam reacts to Fauzi’s “treachery” by ordering him arrested but not hurt.

The third season of The Strain opens strongly, if softly. Although no drastic changes are taking place, we get to catch up on most of the main characters after the stunning finale of season 2 and get a glimpse of a new conflict on the horizon.

As Tyrant gets ready to go to war with the caliphate, the plot once again slow downs as new complications arise. Hopefully the season will conclude better than it has been going so far.

Don’t give up yet–despite the further unnecessary driving home of the Arab culture’s treatment of women, homosexual and other marginalized groups, the episode finally renews viewer interest in Tyrant because we’re back to the good stuff: good versus evil.

Although Tyrant seems as though it could celebrate Islamic culture and show moderate, contemporary Muslim life, too often it goes for the obvious acts of random violence to really be a complex, layered show that goes a step further than the easy road.

“A Rock and a Hard Place” has little explosive action but promises plenty of future drama as the current season of Tyrant reaches the midway point.

As Tyrant gets further into the third season, the plot continues to lag and characters continue to disappoint, even as more secrets are revealed.

A whole lot of dying sets the stage for the third season of Tyrant as “The Dead and the Living” starts slow but ends with a bang that should have carried more emotional weight than it did.

The second episode of Tyrant moves the storyline forward as Bassam continues to struggle with playing politician and family man at the same time.

In the Season 3 premiere, questions from last season get answered even as new deaths and new problems arise for the new President of Abuddin.