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“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Eight: “Tell Me the Truth”

March 6, 2019

The dumb handsome dirtbags. The heart-on-sleeve performances by the actors (Alessandro Borghi, Giacomo Ferrara, and Eduardo Valdarnini) who play them. The action, romance, tragedy, and extravagant cynicism. The lush lighting, lavish scenery, aching score, and sharp cinematography. The use of betrayal, backstabbing, and devastating shocks—crime-fiction staples all, for obvious reasons—as ways to explore their polar opposites: love, loyalty, and the natural human desire to be able to depend on others, and to be depended on in turn. Everything good about Suburra: Blood on Rome in general is good about its second season finale in particular.

I reviewed the season finale of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

064. I Thought You’d Be Bigger Vol. 1: Tilghman

March 5, 2019

At the end of their first encounter Frank Tilghman tells Dalton “I thought you’d be bigger.” This is Road House‘s primary recurring joke; you’ll hear it two more times from two other people. It’s probably swiped from everyone telling Snake Plissken “I thought you were dead” in Escape from New York, for what it’s worth. It’s a groaner, and it’s endearing in its groanerness over time.

It is also a weird thing to say to someone you just met. It’s a weird thing to say even if they’re a person whose job is usually associated with being of a certain size. Imagine meeting a professional wrestler or basketball player and saying that: You can picture the mechanical smile and hear the canned response already, right? Because chances are it’s not the first time the person in the job usually performed by a bigger person has been made aware that they are, comparatively speaking, smaller. It’s more likely that they’ve thought about this for literally decades, like since they were in first grade, than that this charming bit of banter will catch them delightfully unawares.

Frank Tilghman is a weird guy, though, whether by design or by Kevin Tighe’s inability to play him any other way. (A reader I’ve since argued with because I think it’s more likely Steven Spielberg has cinema’s best interests at heart than Netflix does suggested he auditioned for the Brad Wesley part, got Tilghman instead, and simply decided to play the role as Brad Wesley anyway, and it’s a damn good theory.) If you could dress a leer up in a bolo tie, that’s Frank Tilghman. He looks like a police sketch based solely on an eyewitness saying “He was some kind of pervert.” If you can watch him during the opening of this movie and not assume he’s the villain of the piece, I think that constitutes a Turing test failure.

Nevertheless he is one of the good guys, he has no ill intent toward Dalton, at no point does he do anything to antagonize or undermine or bamboozle or even overtax Dalton during his employment at the Double Deuce. This only makes “I thought you’d be bigger” even weirder.

Yet the way he says it is the weirdest thing of all, way more than the mere fact of saying it. He’s closes a deal bringing the best young cooler in the nation into the fold for a cool mid-six-figure salary, with no set start date. He does this while watching Dalton a) stitch himself up from a knife wound Tilghman also watched him incur minutes earlier, and b) summarily quit his current job while treating the owner of the bar he’d worked in like dogshit. And what does he do on his way out the door but pause, flash that unmarked-van grin, and say “You know, I thought you’d be…bigger.” The ellipsis represents a pause so pregnant with implication and innuendo its water is breaking, and the emphasis on bigger is definitely in the original, and did I mention he literally looks Dalton’s shirtless body up and down as he says this?

Now then. Do we have reason to believe Tilghman lusts after Dalton? Yes: Dalton is reason enough for anyone to lust after Dalton. Do we have reason beyond that? Yes: My theory that he and Pat McGurn were at one time involved romantically for one thing, or my other theory that the mysterious fortune he’s suddenly come into that allows him to renovate the Double Deuce and hire Dalton to keep the place secure came from an old rich widow he seduced as a closeted gigolo, persuaded to change her will to make him her sole beneficiary, and then tossed over the railing of a cruise ship, like the “Not great, Bob!” storyline from Mad Men, would (if true) indicate he is attracted to men and also makes destructive decisions in that regard. Are we intended to read his “I thought you’d be…bigger” as both a come-on and a sexualized dick joke? Yes: Our eyes and ears are not lying to us.

Do we need to respond with the kind of gross shitty gay-panic laffs we might have expected from movies and audiences alike for decades prior to this film’s release and at least a couple decades after it? No! The proper way to respond is this. First, to paraphrase RiffTrax’s Mike Nelson, the question of whether Kevin Tighe is trying to bed down Patrick Swayze, or the character equivalents of same, is a fascinating one on its face. It’s like when you learn Kate Beckinsale has a kid with Michael Sheen, which many people just learned when they also learned Kate Beckinsale is fucking Pete Davidson, the Saturday Night Live lotto winner who was previously fucking Ariana Grade. “A lot going on here,” I believe is your American expression, yes?

Second, and more importantly, this is a workplace safety issue, because Frank Tilghman absolutely is sexually harassing his new employee here before his first day on the job! Frank Tilghman may be on the side of the angels where the larger war for the soul of Jasper, Missouri is concerned, but he is without question an awful boss. Remember that before Dalton, Tilghman’s hires (that we know of) include two Brad Wesley goons and an extremely surly and obvious coke dealer and a guy who allows teenagers into the bar so he can have sex with them. The fish rots from the head.

Seen in this light, “I thought you’d be…bigger” becomes more than a come-on or a dick joke. It’s a cry for help. Frank Tilghman knows the magnitude of the task ahead of him—not cleaning up the Double Deuce, that’s just a metaphor, but cleaning up Augean stables of his very soul. To Tilghman, that is Dalton’s true task. Beneath the clumsy curiosity about his new hire’s penis lies the real question: Is he man enough to make me whole?

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Seven: “Saints Peter and Paul”

March 5, 2019

In one of the most momentous episodes of Suburra Season 2 to date—an episode in which one member of our core trio is crowned king and another is tortured till he’s a broken man—a little detail in the first minute or two after the opening title sticks with me. It’s morning, and Aureliano and Nadia have slept off their narrow escape of the previous night. She wakes up first, and pads over to the couch where he’s sleeping, seemingly just to get a look at him. She turns and walks toward the window, not realizing that for a brief moment he’s opened his eyes, just to get a look at her too. Storied television romances have been built on much less subtle and solid a foundation.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season Two for Decider.

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Seven: “Saints Peter and Paul”

March 5, 2019

In one of the most momentous episodes of Suburra Season 2 to date—an episode in which one member of our core trio is crowned king and another is tortured till he’s a broken man—a little detail in the first minute or two after the opening title sticks with me. It’s morning, and Aureliano and Nadia have slept off their narrow escape of the previous night. She wakes up first, and pads over to the couch where he’s sleeping, seemingly just to get a look at him. She turns and walks toward the window, not realizing that for a brief moment he’s opened his eyes, just to get a look at her too. Storied television romances have been built on much less subtle and solid a foundation.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

063. Patrick Swayze Beating the Shit out of John Doe from X

March 4, 2019

Road House is a film in which Patrick Swayze beats the shit out of John Doe from X.

It’s simple, really. Sister-son Pat McGurn returns to his former place of employment with his uncle’s most useless enforcers O’Connor and Tinker in tow in order to force proprietor Frank Tilghman to reverse the decision of the bar’s new cooler Dalton and reinstate him to his position of bartender. Dalton takes very mild issue with the plan. Pat whine-gloats like a petulant child who thinks their parents are gonna punish their little brother and not them, then produces a knife the size of a machete and proceeds to simultaneously slash at and gay-panic taunt Dalton. Dalton punches his nose in. While he holds his hands to his broken face and howls in pain, Dalton spin-kicks him through a plate-glass window. He remains incapacitated for the duration of the fight that ensues, after which he is bodily carried out of the bar.

Concerned that Pat McGurn didn’t receive enough punishment? I’ve got you. First it’s important to note that by the end of the film Dalton will murder Pat McGurn, using the body of a dying goon to block Pat’s shotgun blast, then withdrawing the knife he’d inserted into the now dead goon’s gut and throwing it into Pat’s chest, causing him to misfire one last time and then plummet from a second-story landing to the ground below. Second you’ll notice from those screenshots that Pat’s nose was already bleeding before Dalton’s punch connected; you can call this slapdash continuity if you want, but I prefer to believe that either his body anticipated the damage that was about to be done to it and started hemorrhaging spontaneously, or that Dalton caused him to bleed without touching him by sheer force of chi. Or both! I’m not picky.

But here’s the bottom line, friends: Road House is a film in which Patrick Swayze beats the shit out of John Doe from X.

Pain Don’t Hurt: The Patreon

March 4, 2019

The name…is Sean T. Collins. I’m a writer and critic who’s appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Vulture, Decider, Grantland, the AV Club, and more. I’m also the co-founder (with Stefan Sasse) of The Boiled Leather Audio Hour, a podcast about Game of Thrones & A Song of Ice and Fire, and the co-editor (with Julia Gfrörer) of Mirror Mirror II, an anthology of horror/erotic/gothic comics and art published by 2dcloud. I’m The Original Bad Boy of TV Criticism. I gave this nickname to myself as a joke but it stuck so it counts.

Also, I love Road House, the 1989 Patrick Swayze action movie. Road House is the story of Dalton, a famous bouncer whose quest to free a small town from the iron fist of the guy who is on the verge of opening the area’s first JC Penney will lead directly to the deaths of over half a dozen men. I love Road House so much in fact that in late 2018 I decided I would write an essay about Road House every single day for an entire year, that year being 2019—on top of the TV recaps, album reviews, film and television recommendations, and broader essays and deep dives I write for a living.

In the words of Road House, I’d like to make a better life for myself.

By subscribing to my new Patreon you’ll make Pain Don’t Hurt a paying concern. If you’re a fan of my Road House stuff this sells itself. But the beauty of getting paid to write about any one thing is that it makes it possible to write even more about other things. If you’ve ever enjoyed anything I’ve written, subscribing here is the best way to see more of it—both through tiered rewards that give you access to bonus stuff and simply by helping my family and I stay afloat so I can do more of the writing I love. (I love to write even more than I love Road House, though it’s obviously close.)

Friends, it’s time to be nice. Join the Jasper Improvement Society today! Thank you for your support!

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Six: “It’s War”

March 4, 2019

SUBURRA 206 "THIS TIME WE'RE NOT GOING TO FUCK IT UP."

Famous last words, Aureliano.

I reviewed the sixth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season One, Episode Six: “It’s War”

March 4, 2019

“You wanna go to war?!?” Well, kinda. The sixth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 may be called “It’s War,” because that’s the desired outcome of nearly everyone involved: Adelaide Anacleti’s Sinti Roma faction, who want to take Ostia by force; her son Spadino, his wife Angelica, and his friend Aureliano Adami, who want to team up to ambush Adelaide’s men, thus protecting Aureliano’s turf and handing control of the “Gypsys” to Spadino; Amedeo Cinaglia and Sara Monaschi, who want the chaos to scare the Roman people into voting for the Right, a politically advantageous development for them both. Alone among the major characters, only the itinerant mob boss Samurai wants to stop the bloodshed, to facilitate his own political alliances. But when the shooting starts, everyone gets both far more and far less than they bargained for.

I reviewed episode six of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season Two for Decider.

062. Sears

March 3, 2019

Some lines punch above their weight class. You know what I mean? You can feel them searing their way into your brain and then lodging there, as close to permanently as anything can in a world that feels like a blow to the head every day, despite them not being important or funny or even good. One of those quote-tweet audience-response twitter threads went around recently to this effect, asking what obscure movie lines have become a part of your everyday vocabulary or thought patterns. My personal choice, besides the obvious, is a woman at a dinner party in Hellraiser squawking “Doctors!” in this over-the-top, probably dubbed-to-replace-an-English-accent what a world way, and her husband responding with a “That’s right, honey” so patronizing it makes your eyes water.

I can currently feel this happening with poor Jack, that’s him on the right above, trying and failing to prevent his fellow bouncer Horny Steve from allowing two young women below the legal drinking age from entering the Double Deuce with IDs so woefully inadequate to the task of age verification that they aren’t even fake. “This is a Sears credit card” he tells Steve, who’s in the middle of greeting his lady friends Beverly and Agnes and could not possibly care less. I feel it searing, and I swear there was no pun intended. I feel it becoming the way I react to any frustratingly bogus situation or nonsensical explanation, like the pet-shop clerk who tells Parker Posey “This is least like a bee of the ones that we have here” when she’s desperately searching for a replacement Busy Bee for her dog in Best in Show, or Kramer and company shouting “These pretzels are making me thirsty!” in Seinfeld. Car says it’s out of gas even though it previously said there were forty miles left in the tank? This is a Sears credit card! Laptop won’t remember a password I’ve entered in a million times? This is a Sears credit card! Politics??? This is a Sears credit card! I will never see the softer side of Sears again. I accept this.

 

061. The Third Rule, Verse 2

March 2, 2019

“This is the new Double Deuce,” says Frank Tilghman. We are at the start of an all-hands staff meeting, and Tilghman is pointing to the concept art for the bar’s redesign. But standing nearby is his latest hire, Dalton. It is through Dalton, with Dalton, in Dalton that the new Double Deuce will be achieved. Dalton embodies the new Double Deuce. He is its future.

When Dalton takes over as cooler he becomes more than just the chief bouncer. His role is not to handle a series of discrete incidents, but to institute sweeping reforms that will eliminate such incidents forever. “It’s going to change,” he states—not a threat, not a promise, a fact. His bouncers, too, must change for this to take place. As below, so above.

Bouncing on the Dalton Path is a matter of following “three simple rules.”

This, again, is the third.

3. Be nice. (continued)

When first we assayed the Third Rule, I said the following:

It is the shortest rule, and it requires the most explanation. It is the least practically minded rule, and it is illustrated with the most practical applications. It is a rule about being kind to others, on the surface at least, and it is the rule greeted—and at times delivered—with the most open incredulity, even hostility.

When Dalton tells the assembled staff of the Double Deuce to be nice, it is Jack the bouncer who, whether in spite or because of being Dalton’s best student, opens the door for doubt. “Come on,” he says, gently but with unmistakable disbelief. He’s trying to ask his new sensei “Are you out of your mind?” in the politest possible way.

Now comes the yin-yang instructional configuration that should be familiar to us as central to the Giving of the Rules. Dalton leans forward and tells Jack “If somebody gets in your face and calls you a cocksucker, I want you to be nice.” Jack responds with a skeptical “Ohkayy”—and, though he knows it not, passes the test Dalton has just given him in so doing. Dalton got in his face and called him a cocksucker, and he was nice. It takes the doing of the thing to see that it can be done and learn how to do it. If you think this sentence is confusing, then change one pig.

(to be continued)

 

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Five: “Upside Down”

March 2, 2019

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s Suburra!

Suburra 2x05 CRISTIANA AND LELE KISS

When you kiss but feel bad cuz you just killed her dad, that’s Suburra!

Suburra 2x05 NADIA AND AURELIANO KISS

When you free / several refugees / just so there can be / unrest in the streets, that’s Suburra!

Suburra 2x05 "YOU'RE A THUG."

When you roast dudes like ribs then go shopping for cribs, that’s Suburra!

Suburra 2x05 GUYS BURNING TO DEATH

Suburra 2x05 AURELIANO AND SPADINO SHAKING THEIR HEADS ‘NO' WHILE SHOPPING FOR CRIBS

Yes, romance, parenthood, racism, and the smell of burning flesh are all in the air in this episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome. Named “The Crib” after the hilariously gaudy baby furniture Spadino and Aureliano buy for the former’s forthcoming bundle of joy—at the end of a long night during which Aureliano burned the abusive cousins of his new right-hand woman Nadia to death and then dumped the corpses in front of the heads of all the Ostia crime families as a warning never to do business with “gypsies” again—this one is jam packed with everything that makes this show so goddamn good to watch.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Five: “The Crib”

March 2, 2019

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s Suburra!

When you kiss but feel bad cuz you just killed her dad, that’s Suburra!

When you free / several refugees / just so there can be / unrest in the streets, that’s Suburra!

When you roast dudes like ribs then go shopping for cribs, that’s Suburra!

I had a little fun reviewing episode five of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

060. “Hey, you’re paid to play—play!”

March 1, 2019

Here’s a singularly unpleasant chain of events. Wrapping up his latest white-blues scorcher, Cody, the lead singer of the Jeff Healey Band, announces he and the band will be taking a brief break because, quoting here, “gotta drain the main vein.” I go back and forth on this. Not on whether it’s an awful thing to say, because it is; even a film this aggressively stupid that line lands on first-timers like punch in the nose. But in a way I think it’s gutsy to introduce a character by having him use a grotesque euphemism for using his penis to urinate in his first spoken lines of dialogue. And at least it rhymes, unlike “I heard you got balls big enough to come in a dump truck” or “Does a hobbyhorse have a wooden dick” or “I sure ain’t gonna show you my dick” and probably a few other phallocentric howlers I’m forgetting. That’s no doubt one of his proficiencies as a bard.

Then this man—you remember this man, he’s Heckler, played by Charles Hawke, and he’s a non-voting observer nation in The Agreement—then this man says something less unpleasant to read but vastly worse to hear. “Hey, you’re paid to play—play!” he screech-slurs in a hideous Noo Yawk accent that’s practically Piscopovian in its cartoonishness. Rendered phonetically s it’s more like “HAY YA PAID TA PLAY PLAY!, its dulcet outer-borough tones more than a bit anomalous in a film whose language is listed as “Yokel” on the cassette box.

With that he throws a bottle of beer, still half-full, at the chickenwire fencing surrounding the Double Deuce’s stage. The guy’s got a real cannon of a right hand apparently, because it shatters into a million pieces with a sound you might associate with dinner scenes in which a guest says something so shocking that the hostess drops her plate.

The reaction of Jeff Healey Band frontman Cody is inscrutable. Judging from the way he reaches his hand to his bottom lip and growls “Fuck!” I think we’re to take it that a piece of glass made it through the mesh and cut him on the face, but two data points would seem to dispute this. First, he’s not visibly injured in his ensuing conversation with Dalton, and Road House is pretty fastidious about making sure people bleed properly. Second and more puzzling is his reaction in the moment: He simultaneously snaps his head back and flops forward, as if completely poleaxed. Again, the bottle hit the chickenwire, not him.

The logical explanation is that Cody is a sort of “earth spirit” or personification of the Double Deuce, serving a function similar to that of Tom Bombadil vis a vis Middle-earth in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, though with the additional characteristic of suffering when the place through which his existence is defined suffers. As an elemental of this sort he can be expected to react strongly to damage he senses through his metaneural network.  However, at no other point does Cody display this type of symbiosis with the Double Deuce, not even in the cataclysmic brawl that takes place just a few minutes later, so this theory too needs reexamination.

So we turn back to the other participant in this pas de deux, Heckler. Heckler, who lurks on the margins of The Agreement, the dissolution of which nearly destroys the bar. Heckler, who throws a bottle with sufficient force to break it to pieces on a fence. Heckler, who can wound this troubadour with pure mental animus. It seems safe to conclude that he is a black magician, or even a demonic entity himself, warping the world around him with his corrosively evil presence. Witnessing the Coming of Dalton, he wisely chooses to depart rather than test his strength against a servant of the Secret Fire, leaving more ambitious or more foolhardy members of his infernal cohort to fight in his stead. Who knows how many such creatures Dalton has banished by his mere presence.

eo

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Four: “Upside Down”

March 1, 2019

The dream of the ’90s is alive in Suburra. That’s one of the many, many, many things I find endearing about this show, I realize now. Sexy, cool-looking dirtbags cruising around in a late-night city to late-night electronic music, like if The Sopranos starred the cast of Trainspotting. It’s beautiful, man, just beautiful. If I could ensure I wouldn’t get shot, or wouldn’t have to sit someplace crying because someone I love got shot, I’d move there in a heartbeat.

Speaking of the ’90s, a decade during which I did a lot of crying, men cry a lot on Suburra, too. Maybe more than in any other show I’ve watched, when you factor in the small number of episodes to date and the short running time of each? That’s another attractive element. Again, I always call this show “emotional,” and this is why.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Four

March 1, 2019

The dream of the ’90s is alive in Suburra. That’s one of the many, many, many things I find endearing about this show, I realize now. Sexy, cool-looking dirtbags cruising around in a late-night city to late-night electronic music, like if The Sopranosstarred the cast of Trainspotting. It’s beautiful, man, just beautiful. If I could ensure I wouldn’t get shot, or wouldn’t have to sit someplace crying because someone I love got shot, I’d move there in a heartbeat.

Speaking of the ’90s, a decade during which I did a lot of crying, men cry a lot on Suburra, too. Maybe more than in any other show I’ve watched, when you factor in the small number of episodes to date and the short running time of each? That’s another attractive element. Again, I always call this show “emotional,” and this is why.

I reviewed episode four of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider.

059. Men in Black

February 28, 2019

When I wrote about Wade Garrett yesterday, I remembered something about his black t-shirt: He’s not the only cooler in the movie to wear one. The other of course is Dalton—but it’s not like he wears it all the time. The movie shows us he’s molded in Wade’s by deploying black in his wardrobe on three key occasions.

Attentive readers of Pain Don’t Hurt will have guessed the first by now: The Giving of the Rules. This takes place prior to Wade’s introduction, directly linking the older man’s debut to the establishment of his acolyte’s doctrine.

The second is the fight that takes place the night he and Doc have their first date, which is also the first time we see him on the job after we meet Wade. This reinforces the sense of succession while also tying Dalton’s romantic flourishing to the older man’s tutelage.

The third is his impromptu breakfast summit with Brad Wesley, during which Wesley brings up his checkered past and offers to hire him away from the Double Deuce. It’s not a t-shirt here but a collared shirt, as befits this more formal occasion. But the dialogue makes direct reference to an event in Dalton’s past that Wade will also bring up (while wearing a collared black shirt himself) later in the movie, and shows Dalton standing up to an asshole in a way that would do his mentor proud—even if he’d likely suggest getting out of Dodge afterwards.

Clothes make the man. Clothes mate the men.

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Three: “Closer”

February 28, 2019

How confident in its storytelling is Suburra: Blood on Rome at this point? Confident enough to introduce purple as a signature color for Livia Adami during the episode in which she dies, then paint the whole world with it as her brother Aurelio gives her a burial at sea.

Suburra 203 AURELIANO TOUCHING LIVIA'S BODY

Confident enough to reunite its three main characters early in its second season’s run for the express purpose of doing something long overdue: teaming up to kill Samurai, the taciturn Roman crimelord who’s been screwing with all their lives like a capricious deity from the start. Not just planning to do it, either—deciding to do it, tonight.

Suburra 203 THE THREE AMIGOS

And confident enough that even though it seems unlikely that our three amigos would succeed in taking out the show’s number-one villain in episode three of Season Two, the death of Livia in the previous episode (at Samurai’s hands, no less) is enough to make us in the audience believe that anything could happen. In other words, it’s exactly as confident as it deserves to be.

I reviewed the third episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider. 

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Three: “Closer”

February 28, 2019

How confident in its storytelling is Suburra: Blood on Rome at this point?…Exactly as confident as it deserves to be.

I reviewed episode three of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season Two for Decider.

058. The Sentry

February 27, 2019

The shadow lies upon Wade Garrett when first we see him. He stands ramrod straight, stiff lipped, chin up, eyes alert. He rocks back and forth from the intensity of the vigilance thrumming in every sinew and synapse. To his right is a sign of prohibition. To his left, a box controlling the generative energy of the bar itself. Behind him, a doorway, barred by his very body. His hair is grey with the knowledge and peril of the long years, and his raiment is black. Wade Garrett knows the gate. Wade Garrett is the gate. Wade Garrett is the key and guardian of the gate.

At that very moment, here’s what he’s looking at.

Not without professional cause, mind you. Within seconds, a horned-up Marine yells “CHARGE!” and rushes the stage, and Wade must rush into action. He sits the jarhead’s ass back down and defuses the situation with a quip about Rambo and saving the world from the Commies that shows Dalton is not the only cooler for whom Be Nice is a cardinal rule. But his protégé, strong though his game may be, could never match the sly grin Wade flashes at the dancer he rescued, who smiles and winks appreciatively in return. Condoms have been lab-tested with less.

What can we learn of the Way of Wade Garrett from this sequence? Most obviously, the integrity of the Wet T-Shirt G-String CONTEST every NITE! would rightfully be called into question but for his presence. We see that humor, even irony, feature prominently in his bouncing arsenal. We see him through the eyes of a dozen drunk, erection-toting members of the United States Marine Corps, who view him as likeable enough, formidable enough, or most likely both to allow him to lay hands on one of their number and walk away unscathed (and bowlegged). He is himself horny, and hairy, but not handsy. He’s quick to action, but not eager for it; not for him is Dalton’s remonstrance to Morgan about not having “the right temperament for the trade.”

And from that first look at him, standing silent sentry in the half light, we see that he harbors within him a darkness—one that does not belie the revelry with which he surrounds himself and the merry manner in which he polices it, but which informs and complements it. He is only at ease because he knows all there is in the world to worry about. Those things have worried at him, and he has held them at bay. For now, anyway. For now.

“Suburra: Blood on Rome” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Two: “Consequences”

February 27, 2019

One of Suburra‘s many strengths, and the one most responsible for making it such a strangely endearing show regarding its dirtbag characters —other than the fact that they’re all played by incredibly beautiful actors I mean— is how emotional it is. I think I’ve used that word every time I’ve discussed the show at any length, but it’s the only one that fits. There are so many shots of so many people quietly crying about losing other people while that lush, mournful theme hits in the background that you can’t help but feel something like what they’re feeling, you know? It’s the contrast between everyone’s affected tough-guy personas and their tendency to melt into sobbing puddles when they’re rejected or bereaved that makes you care.

“Consequences” (Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2, Episode 2) counts on this. It drills right down into one of the series’ closest and most volatile relationships, and then ends it.

I reviewed the second episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 for Decider.