Welcome to Now See This, THR chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg’s weekly viewer guide newsletter dedicated to cutting through the daunting clutter of the broadcast, cable and streaming TV landscape! Comments and suggestions welcome at daniel.fienberg@thr.com.

'Avatar'-get Practice

Before there was Lydia Tár — Tár is now streaming on Amazon — there was Avatar, and not the James Cameron thing with the blue people. Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko's Avatar: The Last Airbender premiered on Nickelodeon in 2005 and the animated fantasy was so good that we placed it on our list of The Best TV Shows of the 21st Century (So Far) . It's streaming on Netflix and Paramount+, and it's fast-moving and delightful. Netflix's new live-action adaptation of Avatar is, alas, much less delightful. It has moments that capture some of the joy of the cartoon and I enjoyed some of the casting, but the pacing is off, the character arcs are rushed and the tone is inconsistent. And I liked it more than our Angie Han did!

Slick Rick

Your guess is as good as mine when The Walking Dead became so generally proficient at spinoffs. After such limp brand expansions as Fear the Walking Dead, The Walking Dead: World Beyond and Tales of the Walking Dead, Scott Gimple and company have rolled out the forgettable-but-decent The Walking Dead: Dead City, the surprisingly enjoyable The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon  and this weekend's  The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. The long-gestating showcase for Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes and Danai Gurira's Michonne has waaaaaay too much exposition to work through, but the two stars are also co-creators and they know their strengths and their characters' strengths well. The fourth episode, which Gurira wrote, is excellent.

General 'Hospital'

Writer Cirocco Dunlap's eclectic assortment of credits includes Russian Doll, Waffles + Mochi and Little Voice, so it isn't surprising that her Amazon animated comedy The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy is a little bit all over the place. At its best, I'd say the series is Grey's Anatomy by way of Futurama by way of Bojack Horseman , and even if it doesn't live up to that hybrid pedigree very often, the first five episodes have an interesting blend of satire, emotional vulnerability and outlandish medical hijinks. The show's depth comes from its core female friendship — Stephanie Hsu and Keke Palmer voicing alien doctors Sleech and Klak — and its zaniness comes from the variety of bodily fluids, unexpected orifices and imaginative extraterrestrials that pop up in the semi-procedural plotlines. 

'SNL' Is Other People

Saturday Night Live-related ignominy is only temporary. Look at Shane Gillis. In 2019, he was cast on SNL and then fired days later for racist, xenophobic and homophobic slurs from his podcasting past. And now, four years later, he's become famous enough that Lorne Michaels no longer cares and Gillis is hosting this week's show! Or, better yet, look at Jenny Slate, who dropped an f-bomb in her very first SNL sketch and was off the show after one season, but has built a career as a versatile actress (Obvious Child is streaming on Kanopy), a superb writer ( Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is on Paramount+) and a fantastic voiceover performer. Slate's new comedy special, Seasoned Professional, is now on Amazon and features generally funny and exuberantly high-energy musings on childbirth, getting asked to screen test for Pennywise, diarrhea and the early days of the pandemic. When will Lorne Michaels let her host SNL? You should check out Mikey O'Connell's interview with Slate and, if you haven't watched Marcel, it's one of my very favorite recent movies.

Winter's TV Tale

If you didn't sense enough enthusiasm for this week's new offerings — I didn't even mention Apple TV+'s Constellation — Angie and I had a back-and-forth conversation about the highs and lows of Winter TV. We talked about all the various murder mysteries saturating the small screen — True Detective: Night Country,  Monsieur Spade, Death and Other Details and many more — and we singled out some under-the-radar standouts including the third season of Max's Sort Of and the first season of Hulu's  Such Brave Girls. We covered lots of ground and I'm sure you can find something to watch in that article. 

The Way You 'Mea'-ke Me Feel

It's a very light weekend for new streaming films. Netflix's has Tyler Perry's Mea Culpa, which stars Kelly Rowland and Trevante Rhodes, there ending the things I know about it. Coming off of a limited theatrical release, Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers  hits Hulu, where viewers can experience Andrew Scott in what our David Rooney called "a shattering turn steeped in melancholy yearning." Viewers can also do scouting for future films to see, watching Netflix break into the live awards space with Saturday's Screen Actors Guild Awards and then YouTube's Sunday coverage of the Film Independent Spirit Awards, hosted by Aidy Bryant.