This spring semester has been full of late nights, half & halfs, and stressful exams, so why not end it with a good tv show! Read on to see Student Life’s reviews about the most exciting new tv shows that have premiered this semester.

Reid Kellermann | Staff Illustrator

“The Pitt” season two

The one place where everyone — from abandoned babies to immigrant children with bleeding hands — passes through as equals is a hospital’s emergency room. And in season two of “The Pitt,” now streaming on HBO Max, that ER is enrapturing. 

While season two might not reach the heights of season one, mostly hampered by clunky expository writing, “The Pitt” still shines as an emotional and compelling drama.

At its core, “The Pitt” is twisting the traditional medical show formula: Every episode takes place during just one day. That means each one-hour episode takes place immediately after its predecessor, allowing viewers to follow the same patients’ and doctors’ journeys across one very eventful day.

Noah Wyle stars as the snarky, encouraging, and knowledgeable Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch. Robby serves as the ER’s de facto boss, but that’s complicated by season two’s first new character, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi). 

Dr. Al-Hashimi is a methodical, rule-following, pro-artificial intelligence physician in perfect contrast to Dr. Robby’s sporadic and traditional instructional style. That conflict forms one of the exciting key struggles in this season of “The Pitt.”

The propulsive pace of this season ensures that each episode contains everything that makes “The Pitt” great: strong performances from its expansive core cast, fascinating patients, and detailed makeup designs, all captured by spinning close-up one-shots. 

“The Pitt” is consistently excellent, and the small burden of some frustrating writing is easy to shoulder when there are so many enthralling stories waiting to be discovered.

Arya Catna | Contributing Illustrator

“Love Story” (limited series)

As “Love Story,” FX’s new limited series, begins, Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon) is just a relatively unknown sales associate at Calvin Klein. But she quickly starts to be pursued by what the series calls the most eligible bachelor of the ‘90s, the charismatic and instantly recognizable John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly).

It’s 1992 in New York City, and Kennedy is America’s golden boy. But despite constant paparazzi attention, a new magazine he’s starting, and the most famous last name in the country, he feels lost. After his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Naomi Watts), pushes him to find a “real” relationship beyond his current entanglement with actress Daryl Hannah (Dree Hemingway), he has a meet-cute with Carolyn Bessette.

But Bessette is more guarded and cautious than any other woman who Kennedy has dated. Pidgeon, in a stellar performance, gradually peels back the layers of Bessette’s personality, showing where her tough exterior and quiet vulnerability come from.

In contrast, Kelly shows little range. Sure, Kennedy is supposed to have some level of aloofness and emotional detachment, but when the same blasé attitude appears in both business meetings and vulnerable moments with Bessette, the viewer inevitably questions if Kelly might just be delivering a poor performance. 

Although “Love Story” has strong writing, excellent sets, and a star-making turn from Pidgeon at the center, Kelly’s shockingly weak and unengaging performance as the late president’s son holds the limited series back from being truly great.

Violet Walsh | Contributing Illustrator

“Big Mistakes” season one

“It’s fully giving kidnap-homicide,” Morgan (Taylor Ortega) squeals as she and her brother, Nicky (Dan Levy), are marched at gunpoint into an unmarked van at their grandmother’s funeral. 

“It’s giving? Those are your last words?” retorts Nicky in Levy’s “Big Mistakes,” a wonderfully unexpected and charming new crime comedy series that just dropped on Netflix. 

The new show shines through its focus on compelling family squabbles and when it features the excellent Laurie Metcalf as Linda, Morgan and Nicky’s mother. But unfortunately, it falls flat when it shifts to what should be its beating heart: the generic and unengaging crime story.

The siblings decide to buy a sentimental necklace for Nonna, but when storeowner Yusuf (Boran Kuzum) refuses to sell it to them, Morgan steals the necklace instead. It turns out that that necklace was a part of a criminal conspiracy! Their little heist prompts a rollercoaster crime storyline where they get caught up in a mysterious Turkish scheme.

Yet the most interesting part of “Big Mistakes” is not its pseudo-mafia plot, but its B-storyline of hilarious and well-written family drama. 

Metcalf as Linda masterfully anchors the family. Her Linda is bitter and sarcastic with many uproarious one-liners, but she has a tender and vulnerable layer, too. Ortega as Morgan is similarly compelling, excellently performing both her tear-stained absurd lies in support of the criminal conspiracy and her vulnerable anger at Nicky for being too distant.

Nothing in the show is particularly bad or uninteresting; “Big Mistakes” at its worst is just predictable, repetitive crime throughout its half-hour runtime. 

But at its best, “Big Mistakes” offers a surprisingly complex and fully engaging family story.

Arya Catna | Contributing Illustrator

“Rooster” season one

Steve Carell, best known for playing Michael Scott on “The Office,” stars as Greg Russo, an aging author renowned for his trashy “Rooster” adventure novels, for which the series is named. Katie (Charly Clive), Greg’s daughter, is newly single after her husband, fellow professor Archie (Phil Dunster), left her for a graduate student named Sunny (Lauren Tsai) at Ludlow College, a generic fictional Northeastern school. 

Greg comes to Ludlow because he cares about his daughter and wants to help Katie put her life back together. However, Katie has little interest in that. After a shocking revelation, she takes smoking back up, questions whether she should start dating again, and sets Archie’s treasured first edition copy of “War and Peace” on fire. After seeing Katie’s condition, Greg takes up a writer-in-residence role to stick around for a few months and help her get back on her feet. 

But despite its intriguing premise, “Rooster” is not a plot-focused comedy. Instead of its characters growing through conflict with one another each episode, “Rooster” has a relaxed, soft tone. It is the television equivalent of small talk with a mutual friend — nothing exciting but nothing offensive, either. 

Even though “Rooster” charmingly portrays a father-daughter relationship with a couple of entertaining side characters, its low stakes and lack of compelling humor ultimately make it amount to little more than a traditional comfort show.