With a fun script by Nick Towne, and a distinct lack of the orange that has often overwhelmed the image on this show — kudos to director Kevin Bray and cinematographer David Franco for making the night scenes look like they were shot in the night air of a big cold city, just for starters — this episode makes it seem like The Penguin has truly gotten its sea legs. I’m still crossing my fingers it get its (bat-)wings eventually too, that’s all. 

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Penguin for Decider.

Now, this is a Tulsa King worth bending the knee for. With refreshingly nuanced, twisty plotting and sharp dialogue courtesy of writer David Flebotte, the somewhat misleadingly titled “Life Support” (more on that in a second) is, appropriately, the first time in a long time that this show has shown signs of real, creative life.

I reviewed this week’s Tulsa King for Vulture.

Now please forgive me as I say something corny: The real star of the show is the camera. Disclaimer is stupidly lovely to look at, a rejoinder to anyone who says all TV is color-graded digital shit. Watch how the light shifts from grey to gold when Nicholas receives the DM that proves his new friend Jonathan died years ago, echoed several scenes later as Stephen stands in his house pondering what he’s done to the young man. Look at the bright grey rainy afternoon light seeping into Stephen’s house when Catherine comes calling, demanding for him to listen to her side of the story. (For our sake I hope he acquiesces!) For crying out loud, look at how well-lit the dinner scene is. It’s not a big orange glow, there are actual light sources, there’s contrast, there’s shadow…this is basic stuff, but it’s worth calling out. 

I reviewed this week’s Disclaimer for Decider. Maybe next week I’ll review Decider for Disclaimer.

Friends, I flapped my arms like an excited goose when I saw Dan and Emily reunite. This despite the fact that I already knew she was alive — they revealed it at the end of last episode and spent the first third of this one explaining how she pulled it off by killing all her Pavlovich-hired captors, duh — and that their reunion was almost certainly inevitable. I’m just that invested by this point in how much these two characters love each other. 

And why wouldn’t I be? The whole point of the show is about how their love for one another persists despite all the madness and misery. It’s the only constant in either of their lives, through multiple identities and countries and continents and allegiances. You can question whether their love for each other is healthy, you can question whether professional killers feel love the way you and I do, but you can’t question that connection between them, flawed and befouled though it may be. 

I reviewed the strong season finale of The Old Man for Decider.

All of this is set against some of the most astonishing gorgeous ocean cinematography I’ve seen in my life. From Children of Men to Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón has long been a “Where does he get those wonderful toys?” director, pushing the envelope of everything from long takes to IMAX. What I don’t know about how he does what he does could fill a book. But man, all that time with the cameras in the water, lit so brightly by the sun that you want to squint just from looking at it on your television, capturing actual nuanced human expression at the same time as conveying the backbreaking, breath-shortening labor of bringing even a child back to shore through rough seas…it’s a technological marvel is what it is, grim though what it’s showing us may be.

I reviewed episode four of Disclaimer for Decider.

Is Sofia Gigante sexy? Oh, you better believe it. Her huge dark eyes perpetually accentuated with thick black eyeliner, she adopts a dress code of low-cut off-the-shoulder numbers to show off not just her skin, but the countless scars that criss-cross it, some of them fresh. And in an inversion of the Joker/Harley Quinn origin story, she effortlessly — and I mean no effort at all, this was not something she was even thinking about trying to do on purpose — secures a submissive sycophant in the form of Dr. Julian Rush, who abandons his career to serve by her side. (It’s a bit like how Victor became the Penguin’s sidekick the same way the second Robin, Jason Todd, became Batman’s: by trying to steal the rims from his ride.) When he begs to join her, she’s not even wearing pants. 

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Penguin for Decider.

How big will the battle for Tulsa be? Dwight, Cal, Bill, Chickie, Jackie, and Vince all have competing interests they seem willing to achieve through violence. Winter’s skill in building Boardwalk Empire’s sprawling seasons toward stunning, violent season finales was legendary, the kind of thing even the show’s detractors gave him credit for. (It’s one of the best shows ever made, just to be clear.) Here’s hoping moving the action from New Jersey to Oklahoma won’t damage the bloody goods.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Tulsa King for Vulture.

Disclaimer does two very worthwhile things here: It finds the big red button marked SEXUAL AROUSAL and the big black button labeled GRIEF and leans on both of them as hard as it possibly can. This is almost certainly bound to displease the segment of the audience that can handle the tearjerking but not the regular jerking, and vice versa. It’s a big risk, in short. Why else watch television? Why else make television?

I reviewed episode three of Disclaimer for Decider.

I’m sitting here trying to collect my thoughts on the sexual confidence of Catherine Ravenscroft. Young Catherine Ravenscroft, that is, the one played by Leila George on the Italian seaside on a fateful day years ago. I’m trying to capture the confidence with which she approaches, discomfits, flirts with, and effectively seduces smitten young amateur photographer Jonathan Brigstocke before so much as touching him. The best I can come up with is this:

She approaches this young man from the sea with the towering swagger of the invincible.

I reviewed the second episode of Disclaimer for Decider.

It’s a grimy little circle, isn’t it? The best hope any of these people having of leading functional lives is, what, lying forever, after killing enough people to get set up safe somewhere to begin with? So that, what, someone can come crawling out of the past 40 years later to kill you or your loved ones anyway? When does it end? Sooner for some than others, I suppose. 

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Old Man for Decider.

But when we get to that final sequence, where she Saltburns her whole family while dressed like a post-apocalyptic Oscar statuette, most of my complaints fell by the wayside. What we’re looking at, of course, is a gothic, updated for the 2020s — a New Lurid tale of twisted family secrets erupting forth and unmaking the rich and powerful who built their empires upon them. Sofia Falcone is The Penguin’s Poe homage — Madeleine Usher risen from the tomb, the tell-tale heart beating out a reminder of murder, the Masque of the Red Death visiting diseased vengeance on Prince Prospero and his revelers. Spooky Season has come to Gotham City.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Penguin for Decider.

It’s funny: The Old Man, along with The Americans and Better Call Saul, are three of the best shows to ever do it when it comes to the craft of espionage and sabotage. But they’re also three of the quietest shows ever when it comes to the people doing the spycraft. Dan and Zoe and Carson barely raise their voices in this episode. Mike Ehrmantraut and Gus Fring and Nacho Varga rarely spoke above a low purr. Philip and Elizabeth Jennings could be explosively angry, but their jobs involved nearly as much quiet, wordless drudgery as it did honeytrapping; their unintentional Ahab, FBI Agent Stan Beeman, his partne Dennis Aderholt, and his KGB counterpart Oleg Burov talked like they worked in a library. 

Every single actor involved in the above roles (deep breath: Jeff Bridges, Amy Brenneman, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Jonathan Banks, Giancarlo Esposito, Michael Mando, Matthew Rhys, Keri Russell, Noah Emmerich, Brandon J. Dirden, and Costa Ronin) deserves kudos for shying away from the high-decibel, demonstrative acting style we associate with action and adventure. Sure, the spies keep quiet when they don’t wanna get caught, but otherwise they live for the excitement, right? 

Not these guys. Whatever compels them to keep doing what they’re doing has not translated into a bonanza of excess energy for them to spend. It’s rendered them thoughtful, quiet, cautious, careful. As Zoe puts it at one point, doing this means having to be okay with never trusting anybody again. She also says that while she’s always been a person who breaks things, her experiences with Chase and Bote, the things she’s learned how to do, mean she’s now “armed.” You speak softly when every word is a weapon.

I reviewed the latest episode of The Old Man for Decider.

Of course characters don’t speak for their writers, and television shows are not campaign platforms. But as these recaps have argued before, you simply can’t point to any place in Tulsa King where Dwight has acted in a way we’re supposed to find seriously immoral. Shaking down Bodhi, killing some bikers, jokingly humiliating his ex-girlfriend on the witness stand — less than ideal, but nothing you’re not supposed to be able to live with. Nothing you’re not supposed to find outright entertaining, in fact.

So when Dwight says school is turning boys into sissies, when Dwight’s primary interaction with immigrants comes at the end of a baseball bat, you can’t point to some really odious murder that demonstrates the show’s understanding that its main character is a piece of shit the way you could with Tony Soprano or Nucky Thompson. Dwight’s a delight! That’s his whole schtick. What’s the matter? Aren’t you delighted?

I reviewed this week’s Tulsa King for Vulture.

Displaying many of the visual and storytelling strengths brought to his acclaimed and (it’s fair to say) beloved films across an array of genres — coming-of-age, fantasy, autofiction, science fiction, literary adaptation — creator/writer/director Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer grabs your attention right from the outset. I don’t mean because it opens with a sex scene, although yes, that too. I mean that each of these opening scenes is a thing worthwhile in itself — the variety in the tone of the performances and color palettes and emotional tone across the three storylines, all of them executed to a nicety. 

I’m covering the new show Disclaimer on Apple TV+ for Decider, starting with my review of the first episode.

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Gotham. Or a little, anyway. The big question The Penguin has yet to answer — besides “Why is Colin Farrell playing this character when there are dozens of actors who wouldn’t have required Carmine Laguzio levels of prosthetics and padding?” — is why a Batman supervillain is involved in this straightforward gangster story at all. But now things are seeming a little less straightforward, no? 

I reviewed episode three of The Penguin for Decider.

Both Tyson and Bodhi come back around, with Bodhi crunching the numbers to make their wind-powered hydroponic farm a success and Tyson giving the pep talk to the crew that Dwight himself is tired of giving. And like, of course they come back around. The central fantasy of Tulsa King is, “What if you were a 75-year-old guy who a bunch of young people thought was really cool?” If they stop thinking he’s cool, there goes the fantasy!

Dwight is never going to have a meaningful, lasting falling-out with his millennial minions, any more than he’s going to get killed off and the show will suddenly be about Garrett Hedlund instead of Sylvester Stallone. Dwight is surrounded by surrogate kids and grandkids who enjoy his anecdotes about the Fillmore East and find his jokes about their music being noise charming. For some people, that’s the kind of wish fulfillment that puts superheroes to shame.

I reviewed this week’s Tulsa King for Vulture.

It’s an exciting show now, is what I’m saying. It’s a show to get excited about, too. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is a surprise and a success.

I reviewed the fine season finale of The Rings of Power for Decider.

Rings is a truly massive production, and your character is right in the middle of the biggest battle it’s ever shown. But for much of that battle, he and Celebrimbor are off in this little world of their own. You mentioned how much that helped your performance — what was it like stepping from that quiet environment into all-out war?
Even though it was just us on the set, and it was essentially a two-man drama, you feel the resources the show has, even inside, because you’re in a completely interactive forge. You’re standing there and you still get the scale of the production, because they’ve built the forge.

But then you go outside and it really hits home, because things are exploding. When I’m walking along the parapet, I’m trying not to flinch, because things are exploding around me, and Sauron wouldn’t be flinching at explosions. And those explosions are real. The courtyard in the city — that’s all real. It’s just the horizon that’s CGI. It fulfills every dream you’ve ever had as an actor to be able to play in a world like that. It’s easy to get caught up in the budget, or the expectation, or the narrative that comes with being part of a project like this. Particularly this project. You see the number of people who are there to help tell Sauron’s story. But ultimately, we’re children going to play on this set every day. Anytime you get weighed down, whether it’s the pressure or the expectation, all it took was for Charlie and I to look at each other and be like, “Look at your ears! That’s amazing!”

I interviewed Sauron for Vulture. That is to say, I interviewed actor Charlie Vickers from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Vulture.

But there’s a deeper reason to believe that their moments of untrustworthiness are not ultimately to be trusted, one that goes beyond even the testimony of the friends, family, teachers, and coaches who back them up and are ignored. Even in relatively mundane circumstances it can be hard to recall moments of great pain in exact detail, or tempting to strengthen your case by stretching or hiding the truth to back it up. Imagine if you’d had your brain repeatedly pulped against a wall of cruelty and abuse your entire life. 

If Lyle and Erik are liars, if they are weird, if they embellish and prevaricate and try to cover their tracks and their bases, if they are unsympathetic and unpredictable and hard to love, if they are killers, it’s because José and Kitty Menéndez made them that way. They lived in a monster factory, the end-product of which was two young men on a boat with their parents, sharing shotgun secrets, saying “Let’s fucking do it.” The monsters turned on their creators.

I reviewed the finale of the very impressive Monsters for Decider.

Tulsa King doesn’t seem interested in being much more than the “Isn’t it fun for Sylvester Stallone to play a mobster on a TV show” show. I can’t say I’ve made my peace with it, but I at least understand and accept that it’s the case. But we’re wading in this thing; we might as well keep panning for gold. Every now and then, there’s a nugget.

I reviewed this week’s Tulsa King for Vulture.