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"The Boys" season 4 will soon be upon us, but we'd be remiss to forget the spin-off series "Gen V." I was skeptical about the college-set superhero show, but it proved to have the same audacious spirit as its parent program ("Gen V" has pluckier leads too).

One of the most memorable "Gen V" scenes is the "puppet massacre" in episode 5, "Welcome to the Monster Club." Sam Riordan (Asa Germann), a super-strong teenager who's been locked in a lab, goes berserk and tears some attacking soldiers apart. But due to his loose grip on reality, he imagines himself and the others as Muppets, leading to a scene where Sam disembowels men but we only see puppet blood and bones. "The Boys" and "Gen V" are not shy about violence, so this altered reality has nothing to do with censorship. Rather, it explores Sam's character and his childish outlook on violence he...

Any comedy that reaches Season 5 has some leeway to get weird, but the definition of “weird” on FX’s “What We Do in the Shadows” is as wonderfully wild as the series itself. The third episode, “Pride Parade,” barely even pretends to be about the vamps helping Sean (Anthony Atamnuik) put on a pride event that will boost his election profile. A not insignificant portion of its runtime is devoted to Nadja’s (Natasha Demetriou) doll’s quest for sex.

No, really.

See, Nadja’s physical body is pure vampire — as opposed to Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), who still seems to be stuck in the transition from put-upon familiar to creature of the night — but Nadja’s human spirit has been trapped inside her beloved doll, creepily animating it and contributing confessionals since Season 2. Doll Nadja hasn’t just been existing inside a plastic shell, either, but also with the fact that she died a virgin.

Guillermo del Toro's "Cabinet of Curiosities" is full of strange, freaky, and delightful treasures. The Netflix anthology series boasts a treasure trove of horrors that range from the otherworldly and Lovecraftian to the deceptively mundane. But for fans of practical effects, one of the cabinet's residents stands tail and shoulders above the rest: the Rat Queen.

The Rat Queen makes her grand entrance in the appropriately named episode "Graveyard Rats," which is directed by Vincenzo Natali ("Splice") and stars David Hewlett as a grave robber trapped in a cycle of bad luck. Hewlett's Masson is in bad shape by the time he meets the Rat Queen, downtrodden and seemingly doomed to never get the money he needs. Also, he's plagued by rats for much of the episode's runtime. Lots and lots of rats. Needless to say, this is an episode of TV you should skip if you're afraid of the creatures.