“Yeah, sure, that sounds pretty good.”

Is that the standard Starz response to shows pitched its way? With the channel trying to stand out in the pay cable arena where HBO and Showtime already dominate, it hasn’t exactly been easy to define. Maybe that’s the point?

Starz: We’ll Figure Out What Works Eventually.

It’s not catchy, but it’s available.

There are so many wonderful elements that played a part in the freshman success of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, which begins its second season on Friday (or midnight, if you wish to start binging).

You can’t stop The Power Rankings! You can only...well, you know, put life in front of it and a real ability to get overwhelmed. Even then — even then! — you can only hope to contain it. Or delay it until a Wednesday. And yes, people, I know all the good SportsCenter callbacks. After a couple of amazing season finales last week, we not only got three episodes back in the rotation, but a bunch of others that wanted to take a breather before their last mad dashes got a bit introspective simultaneously.

As a fan of Luther, which is the brainchild of Neil Cross, the second thing that struck me about Crossbones was that his name was in the title and whether that was some elaborate smirk that might make a great story over a drink in a few years.

The first thing that struck me was that I was disappointed – not just in the quality of Crossbones but in why Cross (you see?) would even be interested in pirate stories, where most good writing goes to die.

What an incredible finishing run for a couple of the best series on television - which resulted in a very difficult, very tense and very tight selection process for this week's Power Rankings! It also allowed for what some might think is a shocker. But hell, you bring your best stuff every week and you leave the weak stuff at home. It's all we ask. This is not a cumulative score here at The Power Rankings! This is week-to-week bloody episodic battling. And anything can happen.

Despite outward appearances, this is a particularly important time in the history of AMC. Yes, it's dominating in the ratings when The Walking Dead is on. Yes, it has two of the greatest dramas in TV history with Breaking Bad and Mad Men.

What an incredible and formidable "midseason" finale "Waterloo" was on Mad Men. Yet it was also a tiny bit flawed at the end (understandably), and it comes in a week where two other series had absolutely magnificent episodes. So what do you say to that?

"We're living in amazing times." That's what you say.

Can I say it one more time for emphasis? OK, here goes: We're living in amazing times. This is a damned solid Elite 11 and it basically leaves no room for hackery (unless it's my own). So many great shows, so little room to allow someone to sneak in on appeal. Of course, we're heading into finale territory for some of these shows, so no doubt the coming weeks will have more flux, But right now, top to bottom, this is muscle on bone, people. Every show here is getting it done.

Let's get this out front right away: Don't read too much into next week's midseason finale of Mad Men. We're only halfway home -- no real conclusions can be reached yet. And if that's true, then it's especially true of Sunday's penultimate episode, "The Strategy."

There were some story-arc movements but nothing that will be as definitively change-inducing as those in the last half of the last seven episodes.

What a strange season of Mad Men it's been so far. Most of the characters haven't been acting like themselves, and this very theme -- beginning with Don and Freddie Rumsen's Cyrano act -- was directly addressed in the first episode. Now, in the fifth episode, we get a shocking but strangely welcome reason for why Ginsberg hasn't been making sense since the very first scene he was in.

He's nuts.