'Reservation Dogs' Was a Miracle

In this depressing and precarious year for television, there have nonetheless been a few small, isolated miracles. Fresh off the disappointment of an expensive Lord of the Rings spin-off whose viewership took a nosedive after its ballyhooed premiere, this summer Amazon somehow managed to produce I’m a Virgo, Boots Riley’s Communist fantasy series about a 13-foot-tall Black teenager going to war against the Oakland police. In May, the screenwriters went on strike, at least in part over the creeping use of artificial intelligence, but, just two weeks before that, Peacock released Mrs. Davis, a brilliant, genuinely unhinged comedy series about a Catholic nun going to war against an omnipotent A.I. Netflix made the stingy move of kicking viewers off accounts they shared with parents and friends, while also producing the lavish, high-concept Beef, a dark road-rage dramedy about Millennial angst that features stand-up comedian Ali Wong masturbating with a gun in its first episode. How these strange and enlivening series ever got made in this particular media environment is a holy mystery.