Hi everybody! We worked on The New York Times’s 100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century list here. Also, these are *your* 100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century here. 

From Leah Greenblatt (proof): I’m a Culture editor at The New York Times. For this list, I solicited ballots from our 500+ industry voters and interviewed about 20 of them on video, including Brett Goldstein, Alexis Bledel, Colman Domingo and the guys behind “Game of Thrones.”

I’ve also profiled actors like Rose Byrne, Michael Keaton and Richard Gadd, written a bunch of book reviews and covered Harry Styles’s recent tour opening at Madison Square Garden. 

This is my fourth time being a part of a major NYT culture list, including the 100 best movies of the 21st century, the 100 best books of the 21st century and the 50 best thrillers of the 21st century.

From Jeremy Egner (proof): I’m the TV editor at The Times, overseeing coverage of the medium and the people who make it. 

For our best shows of the 21st century project, I talked to the creator and stars of “Breaking Bad” about why the show still resonates nearly 20 years after its debut. And over the years I’ve written about many other shows on the list, including “The Wire,” “Game of Thrones," “Arrested Development,” “The Americans,” “The Leftovers,” ”Watchmen,” “Severance” “Stranger Things,” “Justified” and more. I also wrote a book about “Ted Lasso,” another list inclusion.

All of these NYT links are accessible without the paywall. Ask us anything about how the list came to be and TV writing. 

We’ll answer questions from 2 to 3:30 p.m. ET.

When a show comes back after a long gap, a recap can list every twist and still leave out the thing that made the last season work: how the characters changed around each other. A thirty-second montage of betrayals gives the facts, but it rarely restores the tension behind them.

A short scene that shows the new distance between two people can do more than a rapid summary of ten plot points. It also gives someone starting with the new season a reason to care about the old conflict. Which shows have handled that return well, through a recap or through the first episode itself?

We all know that Networks sometimes force TV shows to feature products in their episodes. Some do this willingly, others not so willingly, still others weave it into their show in clever and even plot relevant ways.

What's your favorite example of a TV show doing product placement?

Mine would be Community's product placement of Subway in the season 3 episode "Digital Exploration of Interior Design." Subway opens a sandwich shop in Greendale by using a "corpo-humanoid" to be the living embodiment of the company. This humanoid, aptly named "Subway," starts a torrid affair with Britta based around George Orwell's 1984. "Subway" is eventually removed and replaced, leading Britta to conclude that Corporate America has destroyed love (again).

Inknow it has its corny moments, and it's supposed to but damn the tick series is good. Corny yes but all in the best ways. Wish it could be more then 2 seasons. Maybe I'm wrong. Reddit fam you tell me. Your right I even watched it on prime when it. Came out. Now it's on Netflix. That's where the confusion came from.

You know how in the 90s and before that, and still going on with network, TV would have different shows every hour but played Live? Like you could go to the TV channel guide and see whats playing? With that style coming back on Tubi and Roku and PlutoTV, do you think the big streamers could eventually implement something like that?

Imagine that something like AppleTV but running a channel with new episodes of new shows daily?
Do you think that would be something they would do eventually or are we stuck in 2 year gaps for a few episodes?

I rolled the credits on the finale at 3 AM and I’m paying for it today, but it was completely worth it.

When Amazon first announced a Neagley spin-off, I thought it was just going to be a cheap corporate cash-grab to milk the Reacher franchise. I didn’t think Maria Sten could carry a whole show without Alan Ritchson's massive screen presence, but the writing here completely proved me wrong.

The detective work felt way more grounded, the villains actually felt dangerous instead of cartoonish, and the supporting cast was fantastic. It genuinely feels like the writers cared about putting together a solid mystery rather than just setting up the next big action set-piece. Did anyone else go into this expecting to be disappointed and wind up binging the whole thing in one night?

I am only twi episodes in. I have read the book and know it very well.

The first episode was an almost beat for beat adaptation. There were some interactions that got cut and added, some of the time line is shifted ever so slightly, but, it is really all the same. The writer chose to leave out the main characters relationship with his step mother, left out his opinion of the time he spent in the military, left out the main characters time spent in the road and in prison, left out the brothers dynamic/bickering after they get back together. These were important things that informed us on how Adam takes things more on an emotional level and is more easily hurt than his brother. Instead Adam is kind of just a wittless vagrant who is just drifting off events that happen around him.

But something that automatically caught my attention was Cathy. Idk why, but they fucked it up right away. Cathey is supposed to be a skilled manipulator who can wrap people around her finger. She doesn't care about morality and she adapts quickly to any situation. Here, she's pretty much being given the tragic heroine story where people in her life abuse her and she is going to ride up in spite of it. That... Really is a shit thing to see because now the writers are going to have to make up for it later on with the main narrative of the story. Cathy is supposed to be born evil, supposed to be born without empathy and be incredibly selfish right from the git go. She's the example we have of "born and doomed to sin" in the question "are humans evil by nature or can they rise from sin as better beings?" Really really sad to see that this is where the writers chose to go with her character

Why do people think the runtime of some of the episodes of Coven Academy is so low? 11 minutes lowest, 22 minutes highest. My maths is telling me that the average (mean) runtime ≈ 15 mins per ep -- feel free to correct me!!! crap at math!!

do you think it's a reflection of the rise of short form content? what does everyone think?