The Best Binge-worthy TV Shows

by David Kent | staff writer

With school coming to a close, the question of what to do with all of this new-found free time during summer comes up. More specifically, what shows to watch over summer. From Netflix, to Hulu, to Cable, their is a wide variety of television shows to watch and to help quench your thirst for a good story or comedy.

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Lost is a television show that first aired on ABC and it is about the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 trying to survive on a mysterious island. The show itself has very complex characters and plot twists at every turn, making you truly unsure of what is happening in the show and always on the edge of your seat whenever something happens, whether it is good or bad.

The show itself had a very diverse cast of actors of varying talents, the most notable being Matthew Fox who plays Jack Shepard and Terry O’Quinn who plays John Locke, one a man of science, and the other a man of faith respectively. They both become the de-facto leaders of the survivors and their clashing personalities offer a great contrast, especially in the later seasons. Overall, Lost is a great television show with plenty of shocks and surprises along the way to keep you hooked alongside the real-world filming location of Hawaii where the show was filmed.

Score: 8.5/10

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First airing on Nickelodeon (now only viewable on such things as Youtube and Amazon) in 2005 and ending in 2008, Avatar: The Last Airbender is an animated television show about the shapers of the elements, fire, earth, water, and air. The Avatar is one such individual, the only individual in fact, who can control all four and supposedly bring balance and peace to the world.

While at first the show may appear standoffish at first due to it’s visuals, it deals with complex character themes and political drama befitting of a live-action television show, making it stand above it’s peers. The show itself had greatly designed characters with even a few characters switching allegiances in the show in greatly built-up story arcs which will almost always leave the viewer satisfied in the end. Everything from the characters to the drama is great and helps to offer a breath of fresh air to it’s audience.

Score: 7.5/10

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Stranger Things was a TV show that took the mainstream Netflix audience by storm, quickly becoming a popular hit. The show itself starts off with a child going missing which then evolves into something of the supernatural and paranormal mystery as more and more of the story is unveiled to reveal just how the child went missing.

Stranger Things starts off slow, building the story and the characters in the small town of Hawkins, Indiana, where “nothing ever happens.” With a cast of mostly children actors with few adults, the acting abilities of the children shine through, displaying some of the greatest acting that I have ever seen from child actors beforehand. The supernatural mysteries of the show are deep and alluded to but never fully explored, giving a constant air of mystery and tension whenever the “Upside Down,” as the home of the supernatural is called in the tv show, is mentioned. The creatures from the supernatural are terrifying and otherworldly, harkening to concepts of lovecraftian design.

Overall Score: 9/10

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The Umbrella Academy first aired on Netflix and is based off of a comic book series written by Gerard Way and illustrated by Gabriel Ba. Having never heard of this comic book series beforehand, I was shocked by just how strange the television show was. From 43 infants being born by women on the same day in 1989 where they showed no signs of pregnancy beforehand, to a talking monkey butler, and to a robotic nanny, the show has plenty of quirkiness and strangeness about it.

The show offers great visuals for a television show and great cinematography, reaching to levels of cinema quality which is surprising for something on a ‘small-screen’ and not the ‘big-screen.’ The cast of characters is small though greatly developed, showing what happens when kids are given super-powers and are forced to become superheroes at a young age…resenting their powers in some cases while others embrace them, though in the end all of them are dysfunctional and do not work good together despite the actions of their adopted father.

Score: 9/10

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