But ultimately, it’s about Jimmy Keene’s desperation to help the girls’ families Larry murdered. In other words, his discovery of a cause much bigger and more morally meaningful than his own freedom should his mission succeed. That’s why he could no longer sit there and listen as Larry detailed his crimes and gleefully anticipated his own likely release. That’s what made him blow up at Larry, what made him scream for the doctor or the warden or the FBI, what drove him to repeatedly infuriate his guards despite the punishments they doled out to him, what caused him to scrawl all over the cell walls in his own blood like a madman, what made him cry and feel like a failure even after McCauley tells him he’s nailed Larry. Even after he’s free, the judge commutes his sentence while wondering aloud where Jimmy’s overwhelming sense of entitlement went while in that “hell” he went to.

Those girls, their lives, their deaths, the love their families felt for them, and the love they felt for their families: These things are real to Jimmy in a way nothing else, not even his own plight, is.

I reviewed the magnificent finale of Black Bird for Vulture. This was a powerful show that exceeded my expectations.

With this simple act, this insistence on giving Larry Hall’s sole legally accredited victim a voice in her own story, Black Bird earns my undying respect. Why should the killers monopolize the stories of the lives they snuffed out? Why shouldn’t their victims, vibrant and alive and full of their own hopes and fears and dreams, have a say in how they are remembered? If a show about the murder of girls doesn’t treat them as fully human and possessing agency, who will?

I reviewed this week’s episode of Black Bird for Vulture.

None of this would work half so well as it does if not for the fine, carefully contrasted performances of Taron Egerton as Jimmy and Paul Walter Hauser as Larry. Hauser’s showier, if you can call the reedy-voiced Larry showy; his distinctive manner of speech and off-kilter physicality no doubt reflect the careful study of such men. But Egerton is impressive in his own right, always walking in such a way as to emphasize his muscular bulk — as if to impress women and frighten abusers who are no longer there.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Black Bird for Vulture.

Show of hands, and be honest here: Who among you thought this drama about a drug dealer cozying up to a serial killer would feature real-life mafia don Vincent “the Chin” Gigante in a supporting role as that drug dealer’s benefactor on the inside?

No one? Okay then!

Hell, I was taken aback, too. But at the suggestion of a friendly (more on that later) prison guard, our anti-hero Jimmy Keene, cop’s son turned gun- and drug-runner, becomes acquainted with honest-to-god Genovese family boss Gigante (Tony Amendola). Dubbed “the Oddfather” by the always-colorful New York press, Gigante was often found wandering the streets of Greenwich Village in his bathrobe muttering to himself — a ruse meant to keep law enforcement off his back that worked for nearly three decades.

By the time Jimmy meets him, that’s all over with: He’s been convicted and imprisoned, and so he’s now just an old Italian American gentleman who enjoys playing boccie in the prison yard and dislikes being disrespected by anyone, ever. Despite his Irish surname, Jimmy manages to get on the Chin’s good side with three-quarter Italian ancestry, good manners, and not-half-bad boccie playing. (He learned the game from his Irish grandfather, but the Chin doesn’t hold that against him.) If Jimmy really were just the humble Wisconsin gunrunner that his cover story makes him out to be, he just found the best rabbi in perhaps the entire American carceral system.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Black Bird for Vulture.

“Dogs of Lust,” by the The, blares from a stereo somewhere on a college campus in Indiana. A young woman walks through the hubbub and onto a deserted street with lamps that evoke Magritte’s Empire of Light. And all the while, a van has been following her. The van pulls up a bit ahead of her until it’s lost to the camera, tracking the girl’s walk. Eventually, she reaches the van, which has parked. The camera keeps on moving; the girl is gone.

It’s smart cinematic business, using the constant, steady movement of the camera to show us that the woman we’ve been following isn’t there to follow anymore. You feel the shock of her absence in the belly. And it’s just one trick up the sleeve of Black Bird’s second episode. Shrewd writing, expert filmmaking, powerful but understated acting — if you want it, you’ve got it.

I reviewed the second episode (or part two of the premiere if you prefer) of Black Bird for Vulture.

I mean this as a compliment: Black Bird is not a tasteful show. There’s lead character Jimmy Keene, a former high-school football star turned drug dealer with a body chiseled from marble who likes his music loud and his liaisons dirty.

There are the needle drops, smacking you over the head with Guns N’ Roses’ “Mr. Brownstone” and REO Speedwagon’s “Don’t Let Him Go” and Soundgarden’s “Fell on Black Days,” each with lyrics that speak directly to the plight of the protagonist.

There’s Jimmy’s opposite number, suspected killer Larry Hall, a serial confessor to crimes he didn’t commit who likes to cruise around in his Dodge van asking female passers-by about their “boobies.”

There’s the overall sense that we’re watching something sordid and sleazy, even — strike that, especially — when the Feds sweep in with their big offer to Jimmy: Befriend Larry, get him to confess to another murder, and get out of jail free. It’s so grotesquely transactional that you want to pull away from the screen lest you be coated in a thin layer of slime.

To all this, I can only say, great job! I’ve watched several “based on a true story” crime dramas over the past few months, most of which (Tokyo Vice, We Own This City, Under the Banner of Heaven) I liked, and at least one of which (Candy) I adored. But except for Jon Bernthal’s material in We Own This City, none of them had the swaggering bravado of this pilot episode. Credit to writer/creator Dennis Lehane and director Michaël R. Roskam: This one stands out in a crowded field.

I reviewed the premiere of Black Bird for Vulture.

In an update of an earlier Vulture piece, I recommended 40 movies and shows to watch if I liked Stranger Things and are jonesing for more.

The biggest problem with The Wheel of Time isn’t what’s onscreen, but what isn’t. Watching the seemingly endless credits spool out, listing a crew of hundreds if not thousands across multiple European nations, I found myself wondering what all this money and all these resources were being thrown at and drawing a blank. What is The Wheel of Time about in the end? Friendship? Yes, it’s nice to have friends; no, I’m not sure a massive monster war is required to illustrate this. Destiny? What does that even mean? Is anyone watching this show going to become the one single person capable of stemming the onrushing tide of evil? There are no Dragons Reborn IRL, I’m afraid. So what are we watching, exactly?

To draw a couple of comparisons that are sure to annoy a lot of people, TWoT is a lot more Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker than it is Game of Thrones. I hope it’s not tooting my own horn to say that I’ve made my position on the conclusion of Game of Thrones very clear, but the point I’ve always tried to make is that from the start it was a show about something, namely the way that man’s inhumanity to man keeps us from uniting against a massive common threat. (In 2021, that framework is more topical than ever.) The Rise of Skywalker, by contrast, is about how important the grandchildren of the antagonists of the previous trilogy of Star Wars movies turned out to be, which is another way of saying it’s about nothing in particular. I see a lot of Rey in Rand, and that’s not a good thing.

TWoT’s great hope for the future is that Rand’s discomfort with his own status, his drive to protect his friends by removing himself from their orbit, results in a journey of personal growth that’s both engaging and relatable. The chances are that no one reading this review will be the single person responsible for saving American democracy, stopping fascism and climate catastrophe, and generally setting the world to rights. But certainly, some of us reading this review — to say nothing of the person writing it — feel that they have personal traits best kept away from the people they care most about. If Wheel can lean into that aspect of Rand’s narrative, allowing us to relate to his decision to walk away from his friends lest he drag them down into madness and death with him, it can actually be about something, and thus become more than just a pleasant diversion in a fantasy world far, far away.

I reviewed the season finale of The Wheel of Time for Vulture.

The night that follows is kind of a CliffsNotes version of great Game of Thrones calm-before-the-storm moments, like the pre-battle portion of “Blackwater” or the entirety of “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” before the Battle of Winterfell in season eight. Rand gets mad at Egwene for thinking poorly of Mat. Nynaeve gets mad at Rand and Perrin for fighting over Egwene. (Yes, apparently Perrin has it bad for Egwene, a fact that had in no way been communicated by anyone’s dialogue or performances until this episode.) Rand and Egwene make up and have sex off-camera. Nynaeve trails Lan to his adoptive family home, and later on they have sex, also off-camera.

Honestly? Other than some smooches and Moiraine’s terrific delivery of the command “on your knees” last week, the sexual relationships on this show are bizarrely sexless. The actors involved may be hot, but there’s no heat in their chemistry at all. In Lan and Nynaeve’s case, it’s not clear from the episode’s editing that she so much as removed a single garment in pursuit of her partner. It all feels like an embarrassing overreaction to the embarrassing overreaction to Game of Thrones’ use of sex and nudity, a discourse I hope and pray I never see the likes of again.

I reviewed this week’s lackluster calm-before-the-storm episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture.

Moiraine, drinking tea. Moiraine, talking shop with a colleague in a sauna. Moiraine, letting down her hair in front of a mirror at the end of a long day. Moiraine, sneaking off for a late-night assignation with her secret lover and confidante, who’s also her boss. Moiraine, standing on the balcony, admiring the view one last time before she leaves, perhaps forever.

If nothing else — and believe me, there was plenty else — this week’s episode of The Wheel of Time (written by Justine Juel Gillmer and directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield) established the vital but straightforward fact that Moiraine, the powerful sorceress at the heart of the narrative, has a life. She enjoys simple and not-so-simple pleasures. She has co-workers she trusts and some she doesn’t. She has an office romance on the down-low. She’s into sexual power dynamics. She likes tea, and she occasionally spills it to keep her position secure.

In short, Moiraine is a human being, not just a wizard or a plot device. So even when, at the end of the episode, she reunites the five potential Dragons Reborn, you don’t simply have a picture of a questing witch in your mind — you envision a woman, in full. She’s fulfilling a quest, yes, but she’s been a person the whole time.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture.

Minas Tirith. King’s Landing. And now, Tar Valon. Despite its pastoral roots, fantasy filmmaking has long counted upon its practitioners to nail the look and vibe of its fictional capital cities. And so, from Middle-earth to Westeros to the world of The Wheel of Time, these ancient and ornate metropolises have played a major role. So kudos to TWoT’s team for making the city of the Aes Sedai’s White Tower such an intricate and impressive milieu — a staging ground for the human drama taking place within its beautifully patterned columns and corridors.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture. It’s the definition of “if you like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you’ll like,” but guess what—I like this kind of thing.

In a way, storytelling is The Wheel of Time’s biggest storytelling problem.

The world Rafe Judkins has brought to the screen feels boundless, replete with different cultures and subcultures, sects and sub-sects, thousands upon thousands of years of history, of wars won and lost, kingdoms risen and fallen, songs and languages learned and forgotten and learned again. (Dip your toe in the book series’ wiki, I double-dog dare you — you might fall in and never come out again.) From an epic-fantasy perspective, this is an impressive feat.

However, from the perspective of a television drama, it’s almost an obstacle because virtually every new development requires someone to tell someone else a story about it. Every time a character sees another character praying, a conversation must ensue as to what the prayer means and to which deity or ancestor or metaphysical concept it’s directed. Each time a phrase from a lost language is uttered, someone has to explain what it means, who originally said it, and what context it was said. Each new enemy requires one of the heroes to tell one of the others what the enemy is and what its powers might be, and how best to defeat or defend against it. And so on, and so on, and so on, for fifteen novels and however many seasons of those novels’ adaptations Amazon deigns to make.

In short, The Wheel of Time is a show that’s almost all fantasy worldbuilding, at least so far. If you’re a mark for that sort of thing — as, frankly, I am — then hey, great! Worldbuilding out the wazoo!

If you’re not into it, though, hoo boy, I can imagine this is quite a slog. For every recognizable moment of human connection — Rand struggling to communicate to his best friend Mat that he doesn’t need to keep any secrets, Nynaeve’s raised-eyebrow reaction to the polyamorous lifestyle of some of the Aes Sedai — there’s great gobs of exposition about the Way of the Leaf or the Song before the Breaking or the Kingdom of Minethrin or the will of the Amyrlin Seat or what have you.

To paraphrase I Think You Should Leave, suffice to say, The Wheel of Time is a lot.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture.

The Wheel of Time will be compared to Game of Thrones for as long as it lasts, and for good reason: It wouldn’t exist without HBO’s blockbuster serving as a sort of proof of concept for Jeff Bezos’s bottomless pockets. But Wheel is an unapologetic and effects-heavy epic fantasy from the jump. While GoT’s initial cold-open sequence featured a White Walker, that was pretty much it in terms of magical stuff until the dragons hatched in the season finale; Wheel has already shown us more of the admittedly awesome-looking Trollocs than we’d see of the White Walkers in, like, three seasons.

Wheel is also marching us through a lot of exposition about many different lands and cultures in very short order, as opposed to the comparatively easy-to-grasp “Seven Kingdoms governed by Great Houses” world-building of early GoT. The filmmaking follows suit. No sooner are our heroes split up in that shadow city in the last episode than they wind up in three completely different landscapes, facing completely different threats and encountering completely different allies. What it lacks in recognizable human emotions and drives, it makes up for — or tries to, anyway — in sheer storytelling scope. Will this ploy be successful? Only (the Wheel of) time will tell.

I reviewed the third episode of The Wheel of Time—the last in the batch of three that went live today—for Vulture.

It’s not always the case — no piece of Hollywood visual shorthand is truly universal — but in general, a close-up on a character’s mouth as they eat with gusto is shorthand for evil. It’s a way to communicate a character’s acquisitiveness or hedonism. (Sometimes it’s just plain old fatphobia.) In the case of Eamon Valda (Abdul Solis), the Whitecloak “questioner” who gives this episode of The Wheel of Time its cold open, it’s intended to show his indifference to human suffering.

As he tucks into what is, for all intents and purposes, the Billions/Succession/Hannibal forbidden delicacy ortolan, a woman dies in front of him. Her hand has been chopped off, and she’s being slowly burned at the stake. Her crime? Membership in the Aes Sedai, the powerful order of magic-wielding women whose representative Moiraine is leading our heroes off into the unknown. Clearly, they’ve got some dangerous rivals in the do-gooding department; the collection of stolen Aes Sedai rings Eamon wears on his belt indicates that he’s been down this bloody road many times before.

Solis’s chillingly cheery portrayal of this Captain of the Whitecloaks appropriately introduces Wheel’s second episode. Much more so than its predecessor, it’s concerned with the question of what it really means to be one of “the good guys.” In the war against the dark that both the Aes Sedai and the Whitecloaks consider themselves waging, are “good guys” even a thing?

I reviewed the second episode of The Wheel of Time for Vulture.

There’s a Monty Python bit from Holy Grail — and forgive my presumptuousness, but there once was a time where if you were a person familiar with The Wheel of Time, the chances were good that you knew your Monty Python — where a sparkling-clean King Arthur trots past the heavily soiled peasantry.

“Who’s that then?” asks one man.

“I dunno,” responds a collector of dead bodies. “Must be a king.”

“Why?”

“He hasn’t got shit all over him.”

The premiere episode of The Wheel of Time isn’t quite this direct in terms of its visual signifiers. From background extras to leading ladies, everyone gets their hands dirty in this thing. But still, there’s a definite sense that the episode, titled “Leavetaking,” exists primarily to let the main characters know they are, in fact, the main characters. By the end of the hour, written by showrunner Rafe Judkins (who wrote for Agents of SHIELD) and directed by Uta Briesewitz (one of The Wire’s ace cinematographers back in the day), four lowly peasants have been told by a powerful sorceress that one of them is a messianic figure and that they must accompany her on a journey away from home as she tries to figure out which one it is. In essence, the protagonists of the show, adapted from Robert Jordan’s eponymous series of fantasy novels, are also the protagonists of the world it depicts. King Arthur, eat your heart out.

I’ll be covering The Wheel of Time for Vulture, starting with my review of the series premiere.

“As the series was coming together,” Costabile says, “[Koppelman and Levien] were reinventing an entire character, someone who was essential to the whole story.” Perhaps the single most recognizable symbol of that process was Costabile’s own contribution: Wags’s signature mustache.

“We originally said to him, ‘Maybe you shave your head,’” Koppelman recalls. “And he was like, ‘I will if you want, but let me show you another idea.’”

“I really pushed Brian and David to have the twisty mustache,” Costabile says. “I was like, ‘This should be who this person is. He knows what he’s doing. He knows that on some level, if you looked at him, you’d be like, Who is this guy with the twisty mustache? The guy who’s either pretending to be the devil or is the devil? What the fuck is going on? It seemed like such a fun chess move. He’s not somebody who pushes you off balance, he pulls you off balance, pulling you in in order for you to fall.”

“He showed up having organized that mustache,” Koppelman says, “with the wax and the upturn thing, and I remember we were just like, ‘Yep, that’s the guy. That’s Wags.’”

I spoke with the creators, cast, and actor David Costabile himself about the creation of Wags, Billions‘ best character, for Vulture. This piece was a long time in the making and I hope you enjoy it!

All that being said, I think Clarice’s heart was mostly in the right place — that place being the extraordinary lead performance of Rebecca Breeds as the title character. Her Clarice Starling is a rare thing indeed, a cop character with deep psychological wounds who never once uses them as an excuse to cut moral corners. If anything, they drive her to become more stringent, more empathetic, and more compelling as a protagonist. Whatever problems I had with the show’s denouement don’t outweigh my disappointment that we’re unlikely to see more of it.

I reviewed the season, and unfortunately series, finale of Clarice for Vulture. I’m sorry to see it go.

There’s something about the sight of a gaggle of FBI agents standing around looking at a painting like students at an art critique that tickles the funny bone — for me, anyway. Crime-scene photos? Conspiracy walls? Evil Big Pharma execs giving press conferences before getting perp-walked? That’s the kind of stuff you’re used to seeing the Feds gawk at. Somebody’s commissioned modern-art masterpiece? It feels like someone’s pulling a prank. Which, in effect, somebody is.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Clarice for Vulture.

With two episodes to go, and thankfully no more weeks-long breaks between them, Clarice is closer than ever to its core mysteries’ denouements. I don’t know that we’ll get anything as transcendent as The Silence of the Lambs’ riveting closing act. But what we’re getting — especially with Rebecca Breeds’s fantastic performance at the center of it all—is reason enough to keep watching until the case is closed.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Clarice for Vulture.

“Everybody thinks it’s cool or funny,” Catherine Martin says of the serial-killer phenomenon. “These monsters, they leave human beings behind — like you and me.” She’s saying all this to the mother of the serial killer who nearly made her one of his victims, but she could just as well be saying it to the audience of Clarice. From the start, the show has steadily steered away from the sort of supervillain glamour that gets attached to serial murderers in the public consciousness. Buffalo Bill is just an asshole who dies coughing up his own blood on the basement floor in flashback after flashback; Hannibal Lecter isn’t even mentioned by name. That last bit is legally mandated, of course, but from this episode, you almost get the sense that Clarice might have kept him at a distance anyway. This is less a show about the evil that men do than it is about the trauma left in their wake.

I reviewed the tenth episode of Clarice for Vulture.