The TV Shows That Don’t Solve Their Mysteries

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It’s Friday, and we’ve probably all had enough of political news, so instead I’m going to gripe about the decline of my favorite kind of television: “mystery box” shows that center on a secret or a conspiracy. The conceit has gotten out of control.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

• The earthquake that could shatter Netanyahu’s coalition
• The real lessons of the Alabama IVF ruling
• A civil-war movie with no one worth cheering

Show Us the Monster

This article contains spoilers for True Detective, Lost, Dark, Jericho, Stranger Things, Timeless, and a few other shows that are so old that you already know how they end.

In 1996, the Fox network exploited our worries about the coming of the year 2000 with a show titled , and it was, initially,followed the adventures of a possibly psychic former FBI agent who seemed to be on the trail of a rising tide of mayhem sparked by the approaching new era. But wasn’t a crime procedural: Something was going on in the show, something that involved demons, a shadowy group (maybe Nazis, maybe not) searching for chunks of the cross of Jesus Christ, and deranged killers shouting things like “The thousand years is !”