“Sometimes you see something that feels like it was pulled straight from your imagination. It can almost feel invasive — like someone has aggregated all the things that interest you, that haunt you, that titillate you, that you celebrate or loathe about yourself and others, and put it onscreen. That was True Detective, for me. It had Camel Lights, drugs, and Lone Star; it had Wu-Tang Clan, Lucinda Williams, and Grinderman; it had undercover police work, criminal conspiracies, and the occult; it took place at the intersection of the real world and some kind of purgatory that resembled it … and it had the shot.” In Grantland, Chris Ryan shares an appreciation of the six-minute tracking shot, and the night TV changed.

+ The ten most under-appreciated actors on TV this year. (There were several others, including Marc Pickering who played an incredible young Nucky Thompson on Boardwalk Empire).