Six shows today. The number one was the easiest choice I had to make in a long time.

6) Star Trek: Lower Decks (Paramount Plus)

English Audio Description?: Yes

I mean, sure. But, the jokes weren’t earned. Not to spoil the joke, but two have two competing ships and memebers from them working on a common goal project, to have the members of the other ship be rude and dismissive, but then turn around later and say that they weren’t being that, they just think our Lower Decks team is awesome, and legendary, was… illogical, to paraphrase a Vulcan. They were actually written as rude, not just in any sort of way that would indicate that this ending was earned at all.

Episode Grade: B-

5) Maggie (Hulu)

English Audio Description?: Yes

A nice way to close out the season for a show I liked but didn’t love. Maggie really needs to learn to not ghost her mom all day long. Either that, or mom needs to learn to text so she cannot ignore the notification on the front of the screen. Will this get a second season? Probably not.

Episode Grade: B+, Season 1 Grade: B

) The Connors (Hulu/ABC)

English Audio Description?: Yes

Last weeks Halloween episode was fun. This week, the episode centered around Louise and Darlene telling their bosses to take their jobs and shove it. Which led to Louise now working with Jackie, and Darlene going to hibernate and be depressed. Not my favorite episode, and I’m not sure any specific cast member was in rare form.

Episode Grade: B+

3) The Rookie (ABC/Hulu)

English Audio Description?: Yes

Not bothered by its lesser spinoff, this series continues to maintain an excellent ensemble, and had everything from Aaron being unable to pick up digits, to lucy being able to get some Halloween revenge. But more importantly was a deposition, where Wesley watched a lawyer he knows represent Elijah,and while she may think she’s poking holes in the story, he’s trying to convey to her that she doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into.

Episode Grade: A-

2) Devil In Ohio (Netflix)

English Audio Description?: Yes

This is getting to be more interesting. May turns a cross upside down in a house when no one is looking. The new cop (who I am getting a good guy vibe from) reinvestigates the scene where he clearly finds a bloody knife, but also a scarecrow with a decapitated Pig’s head, and we learn more about Emily Deschanel’s past, and why she’s so believing in the redemption of these foster kids.

Episode Grade: A

1) New Amsterdam (NBC/Peacock)

English Audio Description?: Yes

I am going to miss the hell out of this show. This episode tackled Roe and the courts overturning of it in the best of ways. As usual, MAx tried everything to try and solve an unsolvable problem. He learned from his boss, her own personal story, and why this time she promised him she would say Yes to any of his crazy ideas if he could just think outside the box enough to fix it. But the real winning storyline here was one that explored the true meaning of choice. And while Wilder didn’t agree with on a personal level the choice her patient was making, as she advised a woman that needed to start chemotherapy to save her life, that it would also end the life of her fetus, the woman said no. There was a back and forth debate, which her nurses viewed as just politics getting in the way of saving this woman’s life, but at the end of the day, Wilder expressed, in the broadest and most decisive expression of what it means to be pro choice, and let this woman choose to not do the chemotherapy, which she knew would kill her, because she didn’t want to kill the fetus. That’s pro-choice. It’s not being pro-life, or pro-abortion, but in an episode with a lot going on, all of it heavy, New Amsterdam decided to focus on a case with a patient they believed would likely alienate their audience, as the character even says she was just out with friends celebrating the end of Roe. But, it was in Wilder’s acceptance of this woman’s right to choose, that she truly defied the Supreme Court. It wasn’t performing an abortion, it was simply that the chemo would kill the fetus in this specific cancer treatment. And she accepted that this woman would rather die, but allow that fetus to come to term, than change her belief system. A divisive but intelligent way to represent what it is to be truly pro-choice, in spite of it all.

Episode Grade: A+