Based on all of the trend pieces, oversized hype, and fan appreciation it’s amazing to think that Empire isn’t even a year old yet. The first season debuted this January to huge ratings, which only got larger week by week, a trend that hadn’t been seen in decades.  Related: Empire – the kind of smart, addictive show British TV doesn’t know how to make  It wasn’t just a question of scale but also one of quality. Empire, which focuses on the Lyon family and the hip-hop record label founded by patriarch Lucious (Terrence Howard), was the most insane, no-holds-barred, rollercoaster of a show on American television possibly ever. In the pilot episode matriarch Cookie (the truly excellent Taraji P Henson) beats one of her three sons with a broom. It only got more insane after that with alliances formed and broken over the course of an episode, a murder investigation, a mental breakdown, several deaths, and enough pop hits to light up the iTunes charts. There was even a sex-heavy coming out storyline, something that co-creator Lee Daniels hoped would break down homophobia in the rap world.  The best thing about Empire is that it kicked off two trends that we’re going to see manifest themselves in the near future. The first is for soapier content, which, due to the network development cycle, we won’t really see start popping up until the fall. The second is shows focused on the lives of non-white characters and families, a trend that was already on its way but Empire solidified. Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat did well enough to get themselves renewed, but it took the success of Empire to let the suits know that white audiences will watch shows about people of color. Even this fall Dr Ken, about an Korean family, is doing well on ABC as is Quantico, a potboiler with a female Indian lead, maybe the first in TV history. It won’t matter whether or not you think the much slower second season of the show is as good, the diversity it wrought will be with us forever.  Once #TrueDetectiveSeason2 became a viral internet meme, it was obvious that the expectations for HBO’s anthology series were sky high. It wasn’t just that the second season didn’t meet viewers’ high hopes when it debuted this summer, it was that it was almost completely unwatchable.  Related: In praise of ... True Detective season two  Week after week the same people who were wowed by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey chasing the Yellow King tuned in to watch Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, Colin Farrell and Taylor Kitsch chase their tails in a nonsensical plot that it was impossible to discern. It had something to do with a mob boss (Vaughn) who got cheated out of some land and the three cops that were trying to solve a murder by the guy who stole it. But it really had something to do with diamonds that were stolen during the LA riots. I guess? It’s still not entirely clear what was going on, and the oppressively dour machismo of the whole enterprise was enough to make the whole thing completely suffocating.  This comes at a time when the genre of the anthology series is still in question. While shows that recast and tell different stories each season are relatively new and have met with some success, they have been wildly uneven. The past year saw the wrap-up of American Horror Story: Freak Show, the absolutely dreadful fourth season of FX’s blockbuster franchise. There was also Wicked City, a proposed anthology on ABC that was so horrendous it only lasted a few episodes. While American Crime launched to critical success and an Emmy win and Fargo’s second season continued to be excellent both are starved for viewers. HBO has renewed its contract with writer/creator Nic Pizzolatto so season three seems like an inevitability, but the viability of the genre as a long-term strategy seems shaky at best.
This week we asked our critics to pick their best and worst moment from this year’s cultural offerings. Brian Moylan went for Empire’s continuing reign and True Detective’s fall from grace