I rewatched the first season recently, and although the Captain is sometimes played as a bit of a buffoon and says the occasional offensive thing, I can't recall a specific moment that would contradict the idea that he could be a genuinely good person. The flashback, while I admit has a delicious ambiguity to it,…

Just as the Captain reveals himself to be the hero of the Knick, he dies in a fiery inferno, most likely at the hands of his own son. Fuck. Rest Easy August.

It may sound redundant but it still bears repeating: this is the best show on television (and in a while). Too many brilliant and beautiful moments to enumerate from this episode, it was one of the most emotionally affecting hours of anything I've ever seen (while also managing to have one of the funniest in a while,…

I can't stop thinking about this show. I had a shower epiphany connecting the wonderful Mrs. Chickering saying how the Indians were civilized and would never scalp their guests with Thack doing exactly that to his patient multiple times throughout the episode. Upon scrutiny this show gets even better, which is the…

I think some people are trained to think of the traditional dramatic structure for most television (where there is season long build up and payoff) and are watching The Knick with those same expectations and missing out on a lot. This show is a multiple-spinning-plate-highwire-act with frequent falling deaths. There…

Whiplash: Thack going from saving a former love of his life to lobotomizing a voluntary patient. Henry and Lucy dealing with death on a massive scale then courting each other conventional style. The absolute joy of the mirth of the Chickering family to the sickening devastation of the last scene. This season has been…

From the triumphant return of the classic theme as Eleanor walked out the door, to the evocation of Utopia, to the reappearance of the beautiful boat, to the atomic sized boost to Thack's ego, that might be my favorite episode so far. Also kind of had an epiphany that this show is all about order and chaos.

I loved how hands-off the reintroduction of classic Thack was. A speedball in the first scene, and then the show continues on with the Coked-Out-Alpha-Plus Thackery we know and love seamlessly as if he never even left for rehab. I think this was possible because the rest of the episode was so insane and bleak that…

But if you get it right…

Unquestionably the best show on television at the moment. The ending in the boat, with the two powerful men valiantly sailing headstrong back into an unwinnable battle against an incurable affliction was painfully beautiful.

Amazing season of television, and the funniest show of the year (give or take a Wet Hot American Summer). I can't think of a show in recent memory that has given me such consistent out-loud laughs episode to episode (the finale's culprits were Mandvi fruitlessly trying to clear the streets of Islamabad, "I don't know…

The forced Conquistador double team rape fantasy musket and crossbow shooting scene is the hardest I've laughed at a TV show in a long, long time. My viewing party and I were all genuinely doubled over with laughter which was an (all too) rare and amazing sight to behold. So happy this show got picked up for a second…

That last shot was beautiful. We spend a season watching Thack inevitably plummet to Earth only to have a powerful gust of wind sweep him up just before he hits the ground and allow him to start tumbling all over again (except this time probably from even greater heights). This whole season was incredible, and the…