MIRROR MIRROR II now back in stock
I’m happy to report that Julia Gfrörer and I once again have copies of our horror/erotic/gothic comics and art anthology Mirror Mirror II available for sale at her Etsy shop. It’s an absolute murderer’s row of artists; if you like our sensibilities at all, you’ll like this book.
With work by:
Lala Albert
Clive Barker
Heather Benjamin
Apolo Cacho
Trung Lê Capecchi-Nguyễn
Sean Christensen
Nicole Claveloux
Sean T. Collins
Al Columbia
Dame Darcy
Gretchen Felker-Martin
Noel Freibert
Renee French
Meaghan Garvey
Julia Gfrörer
Simon Hanselmann
Aidan Koch
Laura Lannes
Céline Loup
Uno Moralez
Jonny Negron
V.A.L.I.S. Ortiz
Claude Paradin
Chloe Piene
Josh Simmons
Carol Swain
‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ thoughts, Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Buddies’
For me, the main attraction here is Nick Offerman and Nicole Kidman wrestling, and not just for the obvious reasons, although for those too. This isn’t a perfect representation of how this stuff works — any convention that doesn’t want to be sued into oblivion is not going to let a guy get in the ring and wrestle an impromptu match without being medically cleared, and also you can’t send old wrestling equipment via media mail — but it’s a respectful one. It honors the idea that while this art for may be silly, as silly as taking pictures of your boobs with the word BOOBS written on them for example, it is still an art form, with artists who care about their craft and viewers who derive great happiness from watching their incredible bodies at work. If that doesn’t also describe erotica and pornography, I don’t know what does.
I reviewed this week’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, an improvement, for Decider.
‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ thoughts, Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Jinxed’
“If you are into a certain Type of Guy, Nick Offerman has never been hotter.” When I saw critic Angie Han post these words, I had not yet watched this third and final episode in Margo’s Got Money Trouble’s three-part premiere. I had not yet seen the vision. But it simply cannot be denied: Nick Offerman looks amazing in this show. Jinx, his grizzled ex-wrestler character, brings forth his innate combination of traditional masculinity and avuncular vulnerability like nothing I’ve ever seen him do, and he gets off some incredible aged biker fits in the process. I’ll put it this way: Nick Offerman has scenes with Michelle Pfeiffer and Elle Fanning where you can’t take your eyes off him.
I reviewed episode three of Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider.
‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ thoughts, Season 1, Episode 2: ‘Homecoming’
Fans of professional wrestling and prosthetic breasts, your ship has come in. This episode of Margo’s Got Money Troubles, the second installment in the show’s three-part premiere, officially introduces Nick Offerman as James “Jinx” Millet, a rehabbed and retired wrestler whose character comes from the “Macho Man” Randy Savage school of aesthetics. It also introduces actor Elle Fanning’s The Substance–style fake breasts, which are subjected to the trials of breastfeeding in all their prefab glory, and as such get a lot of airtime. That’s as it should be: Breastfeeding, like every other aspect of single motherhood, is a full-time job.
I reviewed episode two of Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider.
‘Twin Peaks’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 14: ‘Double Play’
Finally, there’s Twin Peaks’ answer to The Omen, Little Nicky. Andy informs Lucy of his and Dick’s theory that their young mentee is a murderer who offed his own parents. “We think he was six at the time of the crime,” Andy says gravely. Royally peeved, Lucy recruits Doc Hayward to tell these two dopes the real story, and boy, is it a tearjerker.
The Doc himself delivered Nicky, whose mother, a poor immigrant chambermaid at the Great Northern who was the victim of sexual assault but carried Nicky to term anyway, died in childbirth. “We buried her in potter’s field and sent the infant to the orphanage,” Doc says, like he’s an Edwardian vicar. Nicky’s tragic life took a turn for the even worse when the loving parents who adopted him died in a car accident. By the time Doc says “Six-year-old Nicky managed to pull his parents from the blazing car,” Dick and Andy are sobbing and I was howling with laughter. Between this storyline and that Jacoby line, this episode features some of the show’s funniest dialogue ever. But right at the end of this deliberately over-the-top moment of sensitivity, Lucy swats a mosquito, and the thing is full of blood. It’s such an odd, unnecessary, uncomfortable, funny, weirdly shocking thing to do. In other words, it’s Twin Peaks.
I reviewed episode 14 of Twin Peaks Season 2 for Pop Heist. Gift link! I continue to find the allegedly terrible Season 2 storylines good.
‘Euphoria’ thoughts, Season 3, Episode 2: ‘America My Dream’
Cal, Faye, and Cassie really get dunked on in particular, but Nate is portrayed as a sweaty loser and Jules as a vaguely sinister femme fatale, while neither Maddy nor Rue’s behavior makes you particularly fond of them. The OnlyFans shoots are horny as hell, the language is laden with bad guy–appropriate slurs, a pig shits live on camera, Chloe Cherry groans about someone’s big cock in front of a swastika flag, on and on it goes.
Is it shock for shock’s sake? Admittedly I’m mostly with Cassie on these things as a matter of principle: When a friend of hers tells her that people are into sick shit, she replies “I know, right??” with audible excitement. Hell yeah, sister! That said, when you remove these characters from the supposedly sacrosanct setting of adolescence, it really does change everything. Rue and her friends are no longer teen tragedies, they’re just adult assholes.
But that’s the point. What’s really shocking in an era when many fans judge the quality of a show by how good it makes their favorite characters look? All these people are assholes. Their experiences didn’t make them wiser, they made them more cunning. They are eager to exploit and willing to be exploited. That sucks. They suck. And that’s good television.
I reviewed this week’s hilariously mean-spirited episode of Euphoria for Decider.
‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 8: ‘Separate Ways’
For the first time all season long, the monsters of Monarch have stolen main-character status from the human beings. Featuring a big appearance by Godzilla himself, some impressively disgusting egg-laying visuals, and a recognizable emotional plight for Titan X to endure, this week’s episode shifts the focus from star-crossed romance to, well, monsters punching each other. In that respect, it’s a fun one.
I reviewed last week’s characteristically spiffy Monarch for Decider.
‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ thoughts, Season 1, Episode 1: ‘The Hungry Ghost’
“The beginning of a story, when you start to read it, is like a first date. You hope that from the opening lines, the magic will happen, and that you will sink into the narrative like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely. That’s what you want: for the author to come right up to you in the dark of your twisted mind and kiss you on the throat.”
Putting narration like this in the opening minutes of your brand new show is either very brave or very foolish. Using the voice of title character Margo Millet — English major, aspiring writer, and (as of the end of this premiere) single mother — writer-creator David E. Kelley is laying out the criteria by which the audience can evaluate the opening of his own show. By the time the closing credits roll, you can think back to Margo’s words and judge the quality of what you’ve watched.
Did it feel like a great first date? Did the magic happen? Did you sink into a hot narrative bath, like Margo herself sinks into an actual bath later on? Did Margo’s Got Money Troubles come up to you in the dark of your twisted mind and kiss you on the throat?
Well, no.
I’m covering Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider, starting with my review of the uneven series premiere, one of three episodes that were released last week. Expect my other reviews up shortly after a back-end backlog!
‘The Pitt’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 15: ‘9:00 P.M.’
When the rooftop watch party for the Fourth of July fireworks finally commences, the day’s darkest events are written all over the faces of McKay, Mohan, Santos, Javadi, Mel and especially Nurse Perlah. She sobs in Dana’s arms while they all watch the city’s big celebratory display. No one is smiling. No one is feeling lifted after a day of death, depositions and deportations. With a patient and a nurse in ICE custody, no one looks proud to be an American, where, to paraphrase lyrics by the MAGA favorite Lee Greenwood, at least they know they’re free.
The multicolored lights of the fireworks shine down on faces uncertain about the future of the country being celebrated. Their uncertainty is sadly familiar, the opposite of the assurance Robby tries to make himself and the baby feel. “Everything’s going to be just fine,” he said. No one can know that for sure.
I did say there was catharsis as well as pain, though, and that’s where final scene comes in. After the action fades out on Robby and the baby, as the credits begin to roll, we hear crowd noises and then voices, singing the opening lines of Alanis Morissette’s poison-pen classic “You Oughta Know.” It’s Santos and Mel, out doing karaoke together and really going for it.
Are they note-perfect? No, but a good karaoke performance isn’t about perfection; it’s about commitment. As Mel and Santos thrash and scream and whip their hair around — Mel even loses the glasses! — they’re giving the most you can ask of anyone, on a karaoke stage or anywhere: their all. They do the same in the hospital, but considering the day these two have had, I hope they are having too much fun to think about it.
I reviewed the season finale of The Pitt for the New York Times. (Gift link!)
‘Twin Peaks’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 13: ‘Checkmate’
It’s been a while since we’ve seen or heard from Twin Peaks’ show within the show. Invitation to Love, the cheesy soap opera many of the townsfolk followed during Season 1, has been completely absent from Season 2, and with it one of the filmmakers’ chief methods of having a little fun at their own expense. They’re fully aware that the only thing that really separates the melodramatic potboiling of the fake show from the real one is execution, so they hung a lampshade on it. It’s all in good fun.
In audio form, anyway, the show makes its triumphant return this episode. We hear it playing in Shelley Johnson’s still half-finished house as Bobby Briggs jilts her in favor of his big opportunity with Ben Horne. (And, presumably, his equally hot prospects with Ben’s daughter Audrey.) The soap has always been an escape for Shelley; now it plays as her prospects narrow and the walls close in.
Sure enough, the inevitable finally occurs, and the monstrous Leo Johnson emerges from his coma. He’s got a party hat on his head, cake smeared all over his face, and if his sinister smile is any indication – murder on his mind. Shelley can only scream like a girl in a horror movie, which is more or less what she is.
Shelley’s survival notwithstanding, Invitation to Love feels like an appropriate accompaniment to this episode, one of the horniest and most violent in the show’s brief history. Couple after couple, including some surprising ones, get it on, while heroes and villains alike employ brute force either to save the day or darken it.
I reviewed episode 13 of Twin Peaks Season 2 for Pop Heist. (Gift link!)
‘Euphoria’ thoughts, Season 3, Episode 1: ‘Ándale’
Euphoria is lurid, overheated, violent, fetishistic, hyper-stylized, cynical, sentimental, melodramatic, druggy dirtbag action trash, so of course I love it. But it’s not hard to see why this has come to be the position of an increasingly beleaguered minority. Even putting aside the show’s lengthy-for-a-million-reasons absence from screens and writer-director-creator Sam Levinson’s “where there’s smoke, there’s…well, there’s smoke” air of disreputability, one need look no further than Stranger Things to see how critical fortunes can shift when the stars of a high-school drama age up. That show still at least pretended to be set during high school. What is Euphoria now?
‘DTF St. Louis’ thoughts, Episode 7: ‘No One’s Normal. It Just Looks That Way from Across the Street’
“Disco deserved a better name, a beautiful name, because it was a beautiful art form. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star.”
Reading these words changed my life. I was a sophomore in college and very much arrayed against any kind of mainstream music when I happened to pick up the loose liner notes for a Barry White best-of compilation one of my roommates had lying around. All my life disco had represented everything cheesy and plastic about popular music — until I read what Barry said.
Suddenly it all clicked for me. What used to come across as phony about disco now felt to me like the utmost sincerity. Love really is that powerful. Dancing really is that wonderful. The night really is that magical. Disco is designed to make you feel good things in as big a way as possible. It makes you beautiful.
This revelation opened up a mind that had been closed to vast swathes of artistic expression. It also made me just about lose my mind when DTF St. Louis writer/director/creator Steven Conrad selected my favorite Barry White song, “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby,” to soundtrack the climactic underwear-only dance party between Clark Forrest and Floyd Smernitch. I’m serious, I threw my hands up in the air so fast I spilled a beverage. I love this music. As it turns out, I think I love these men, too.
‘The Pitt’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 14: ‘8:00 P.M.’
But I keep coming back to Dr. Robby’s statement “I don’t know if I want to be here anymore.” Depression is a dark journey, and passive suicidal ideation is one of the hardest stretches of road you’ll find on it. Yet it is strangely validating to hear sadness this profound come out of the mouth of such a mensch. This is a disease to which no one, not even the Superman of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, is immune.
I reviewed the penultimate episode of The Pitt Season 2 for the New York Times. (Gift link!)
ICE in Hell’s Kitchen: Why ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Can Go Where ‘The Pitt’s ICE Episode Couldn’t
This season of Daredevil: Born Again feels like it plays out in the mind of The Pitt’s ferocious charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherin LaNasa) after watching Jesse get dragged away in zip-ties. The Pitt depicts the frustrating reality; Daredevil: Born Again is the dreamworld version, and as such it’s where dreams of justice can come true. No one here — certainly not me, and I don’t think anyone making either show — is under the impression that television is enough. Nor does the fact that Daredevil can kick the secret police in the teeth while Dr. Robby can’t make Born Again a more radical or more important work. But Daredevil demonstrates that with sufficient talent and courage behind the camera, even corporate superheroes can use their larger-than-life spectacle to express emotions we otherwise can’t. It’s amazing what you can get away with when you wear a mask.
I wrote about how The Pitt and Daredevil: Born Again each handle the ICE Age for Decider.
‘DTF St. Louis’ thoughts, Episode 6: ‘The Denny’s Plan’
DTF St. Louis takes three real goofballs, gives them complicated and unhappy lives, and sits back as they throw themselves at each other in various combinations, hoping that one of them sets off the chain reaction that will free them from their unhappiness. It feels increasingly tragic, knowing that they failed.
I reviewed the penultimate episode of DTF St. Louis for Decider.
‘Twin Peaks’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 12: ‘The Black Widow’
It took a few episodes, but it’s safe to say it now: As of the twelfth episode of Twin Peaks Season 2, Twin Peaks Season 2 has officially begun.
Depending on how new to the show you are, you may or may not know that its second season has a historically poor reputation. By now the whole Twin Peaks saga — the original run, the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Season 3, aka Twin Peaks: The Return — is so beloved, as is its co-creator and primary director David Lynch, that you may hear Season 2 badmouthed less often than it used to be.
Speaking personally, I think people lump together the entire Laura Palmer saga in their heads as “Season 1,” then lump everything after that (plus the “Mr. Tojamura” thing, perhaps) together as “Season 2.” Even then, a lot of the things people love about Twin Peaks happen after Laura’s murder is resolved. You’re never going to hear anyone complain about post-Laura Season 2 because it introduced Denise Bryson or the concept of the Black Lodge, that’s for sure.
Other than that, though? When people use “Season 2” pejoratively, this episode is rooted almost entirely in the storylines they’re talking about. James’s film-noir road trip. Nadine’s high school wrestling career. Andy, Lucy, Dick Tremayne, and the devilish Little Nicky (Joshua Harris). The widow Milford and her siren-like power over every man who lives in a town already inhabited by, well, the female cast of Twin Peaks. Ben Horne becoming a Confederate sympathizer during a psychotic break.
Well, everyone knows these Twin Peaks Season 2 storylines suck. What this review presupposes is…maybe they don’t. Written and directed by one of the series’ A-teams — Harley Peyton, Robert Engels, and Caleb Deschanel — it makes a strong opening case for some of the show’s most maligned material.
I reviewed episode 12 of Twin Peaks Season 2 for Pop Heist. (Gift link!)
‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 6: ‘Requiem’
“I need more Godzilla and King Kong in the Godzilla and King Kong show.” I’ve heard variations of this comment since Monarch debuted, even from people who generally enjoy the series. The romantic sturm und drang, the bureaucratic/technocratic squabbling, the fun flashbacks, the stunt casting of the Russells, a star turn for Anna Sawai, all the other monsters — that stuff’s well and good. Sometimes, however, you just wanna see the big guns.
To paraphrase Valerie Cherish, well, you got it.
I reviewed today’s episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for Decider.
‘The Pitt’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 13: ‘7:00 P.M.’
We have come to it at last. In episode after episode, Dr. Michael Robinavitch has dropped hints, given warning signs and generally worried his friends and colleagues with his increasingly frazzled demeanor. Now, in this episode’s cliffhanger moment, he says what everyone has been thinking: His impending sabbatical might be permanent.
I reviewed this week’s episode of The Pitt for the New York Times. (Gift link!)
‘Paradise’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 8: ‘Exodus’
You can’t say you didn’t see it coming. All throughout its second season, Paradise has been building to a science-fictional scenario that’s frankly preposterous even by Paradise standards. This episode confirms it. Yes, Dan Fogelman is really going there: He’s created a competent billionaire who wants to save the planet. And oh, right, there’s time travel or something.
‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 5: ‘Furusato’
It’s surprisingly emotional to get attacked by a godzilla. That’s more or less the premise of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, a show that has a ton of fun with its creatures but wants to make it clear the experience of coming into contact with kaiju is dangerous and deadly. The trail of physical destruction the monsters leave behind is easy to see. The trail of emotional destruction? Making that debris and detritus as visible as the monsters is Monarch’s main task.
‘DTF St. Louis’ thoughts, Episode 5: ‘Amphezyne’
What Floyd Smernitch, Clark Forrest, and Carol Love-Smernitch had together is a hard thing to categorize, and each new revelation makes it even harder. This episode of DTF St. Louis sees our intrepid investigators Donahue Homer (amazing name) and Jodie Plumb dig deeper into the nature of this unusual arrangement, while flashbacks show us things even the detectives don’t yet know. The result is a portrait of people who grow more interesting to look at by the week.