If you haven't figured it out by the time you see a young Hitler being fellated by a Viennese sex worker, Love, Death & Robots isn't your average Netflix show.

Of course, if you haven't figured it out, you probably haven't been paying attention: "Alternate Histories," which features said act being performed upon said icon of evil, is the 17th of 18 episodes in the animated anthology. By that point, you'll have seen full frontal nudity (male, female, and demonic); you'll also have seen a zero-G rendition of 127 Hours that deserves every Foley Art award possible, plentiful crushed heads, and even more plentiful arcing ichorous spews, and a sex scene that looks like the result of Cinemax becoming a game developer. You may not want to watch with your youth group leader is all I'm saying.

The anthology, from a team of executive producers that includes David Fincher and Deadpool director Tim Miller, is a viscerally enjoyable (and just plain visceral) conflagration of the senses. It does a great many things very well, a few not so well, and takes absolutely nothing seriously. But most importantly, it signals that Netflix isn't just paying lip service to the spirit of experimentation. The more naked and gleaming the streaming platform is willing to become, the more urgent its programming will be—and the better it will withstand the coming challenges brought by its competitors.

Genre, Genre, Everywhere: the Netflix Effect Spreads Netflix’s pronounced push into science fiction has resulted in a now-common sight: its competitors following suit. Castle Rock, which begins on Hulu today, is only the first King-sized salvo.

Netflix's push into gleeful prurience began in earnest in 2017, with the tweens-in-crisis animated comedy Big Mouth. Masturbation jokes and talking pubic hair were only the beginning: the next year, anime Devilman Crybaby evolved to hentai-inflected hardcore sex and ultraviolence. Yet both were episodic series; if you were in them, you were in them for the long haul. Love, Death & Robots carves out entirely new ground, its aesthetic and tonal diversity offering up a dip-in approach. You can watch from the beginning, certainly—opener "Sonnie's Edge" frames an underground fight club as a conduit for cathartic vengeance, and "Three Robots" cleanses the palate with sardonic droids—or you can choose based on an episode's look and log line.

Because episodes range from six to 17 minutes, you can watch a handful in the time that it would take to watch a single installment of any other show, and there's much to enjoy. Most of the episodes adapt science-fiction and horror short stories from the likes of John Scalzi (three episodes derive from his work, including "Alternate Histories" and "Three Robots") and Joe Lansdale (two episodes). While some marry perfectly with their director—like Oliver Thomas' 2D take on "Good Hunting," Ken Liu's steampunk tale of objectification and redemption, or Jon Yeo's adaptation of Claudine Griggs' "Helping Hand"—others fall into a sea of generic videogame-engine photorealism, turning otherwise compelling source material into an extended cutscene. (Even if, as in "Beyond the Aquila Rift," certain carnal moments are destined to be rewatched more than Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.)

Depending on the order you watch them, you may find yourself frustrated by what feels like an endless parade of stoic supermen and the women who deceive or escape them. Miller has called the show a "love letter to nerds," and at times it feels as though he's aiming at a particularly retrograde subset of genre fans. But sequence the show yourself, and you'll find an endlessly inventive wellspring of ideas and visuals. (One suggested order can be found below.)

Genre television has exploded in recent years, especially on deep-pocketed streaming services, and there's much more to come. This is a world that historically has had to make due with small budgets and smaller expectations, but now success has bred a spirit of abandon—and that abandon can now find outlet beyond midnight movies and animation festivals. It's a relationship that benefits creators and viewers, especially those looking to shake up their prestige TV watching. Not everything needs to be The Crown or Russian Doll.