No matter when it came out, Utopia was always going to be a tough sit - that's what it was engineered to be. At this precise cultural moment, however, it feels like a tasteless one, too.

Utopia suffers from stumbles that are all too typical among ambitious creators, primarily the urge to showcase Lane's formidable heroine and a knotty conspiracy with apocalyptic implications at the expense of story and character development.

Comic-conspiracy series is befuddling and numbingly violent.

Aside from it being a really bad time to give conspiracy nuts hero status, it is strange that while Utopia is based in comics culture, it has a The Big Bang Theory-level of disdain for the community.

The pleasure of Utopia is that, despite all of this grimness, it's still very fun to watch. Flynn keeps the pace brisk, and each episode reveals some new weird facet to the conspiracy that's often quite delightful, even if it's menacing at the same time.

The combination of gore, evil, tenderness, and friendship makes us viewers feel like we're on a janky carnival ride. And yes, we do want to ride again, no matter how we screamed.