To be honest, not everything Vinyl does that falls outside the usual prestige-drama purview actually works. The frequent fantasy cutaways to late musical legends performing songs vaguely relevant to the characters’ state of mind — these things are already obvious from what we’ve just seen and stop the show dead in its tracks every time. Musically, they could just as easily be slipped into the soundtrack instead of unconvincingly staged by lookalikes in some celestial nightclub; unbelievable as this sounds, True Detective Season Two did it better. In the case of the many, many black R&B and soul singers these segments have featured: If the show (correctly) thinks they’re so important, maybe it should have been a show about them,and not about the obnoxious white guys who got rich off of their work. As it stands, there’s an uncomfortable touch of the “magical negro” trope to every time an African-American performer pops up to provide musical accompaniment to Richie and company’s innermost feelings.

And simply in terms of rock & roll fandom, there’s just something kind of off about these scenes. Vinyl‘s take on big-time music fans has generally been pretty tight — think of Richie and Zak trading childhood memories by the pool at his party — which makes this fundamentally misconceived device so frustrating. A good song can transport you to another place, but is that place ever an empty room with a lone, blindingly backlit performer? When you really connect to a song, it draws you in, weaves its way into your brain, becomes a part of who you are. It doesn’t leave you in the audience while the singer does their stuff. Maybe that’s why the most effective of these sequences involved Karen Carpenter, of all people: Besides the fact that there’s no icky race stuff in play there, her appearance melted directly into Devon’s life, singing in Mrs. Finestra’s car instead of in Rock Flashback Limbo. (By the way, the show’s respectful and admiring approach to the freaking Carpenters ought to leave people who complain about its supposed “rockism” with a lot of explaining to do. Sigh.)

I reviewed this week’s Vinyl for Rolling Stone. I actually liked it quite a bit, because it’s willing to buck tradition and be crazy rather than grim, but this was an aspect of the show I wanted to hash out.

Devon goes to visit her old friend Andy Warhol, with a silkscreen of herself in tow. As he shoots her with his new video camera, their playful banter turns serious when he realizes he’s being prodded to sign the painting so that she can sell it. The dance company she oversees up in Connecticut, the last vestige of her old bohemian lifestyle, needs the money. “I can get a brush and sign it. That way they’ll buy it,” he tells her as she chokes back tears, before adding a joke to put her at ease: “You want me to sign your dress? They’ll buy that too.”

It’s a killer scene for several reasons. One is John Cameron Mitchell ofHedwig and the Angry Inch fame, who plays the great pop-art painter. His Warhol, as others have pointed out, is an altogether warmer and more charming figure than the shock-topped zombie we’re accustomed to seeing in films. (Wouldn’t he have to be, given that his entire business model as a superstar artist was knowing everyone?) In Mitchell’s hands, the Pop Art godhead is a people person, immediately intuiting the real reason for Devon’s visit and becoming quietly defensive. Then when he senses how desperate she truly is, he responds by helping her out.

But the scene is a standout primarily for how it’s shot. Courtesy of the episode’s director, Mark Romanek — whose influential music videos include Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer,” Johnny Cash’s “Hurt,” and Jay Z’s “99 Problems”— we see Devon primarily through Warhol’s camera, via either a nearby video monitor or POV shots from behind the lens itself. The living, breathing woman is out of focus, as is her silkscreen simulacrum; even the picture on the monitor is grainy. Andy’s questions become more like an interrogation designed to draw the truth out; Devon’s responses read like a performance playing positivity toward the camera. The setup emphasizes the fluidity of what she’s saying, the reduction of a former Factory luminary to a blurry memory of what she used to be. It’s thoughtful, carefully considered work, both verbally complex and visually stunning.

I reviewed this week’s fine episode of Vinyl for Rolling Stone.

Yes, it’s early yet, and maybe there will be more to these women revealed in future episodes. But it’s 2016, folks. Prestige drama’s “wife problem” is an issue of long standing, and giving the females in these bad boys’ lives something interesting to do — even if it’s constrained by the sexism of the time — is hardly asking the a writers’ room to split the atom. This show has enough faith in its musical message to allow us to laugh about it. Hopefully, it will display an equal commitment to its characters by taking all of them seriously.

This week’s Vinyl was a mixed bag, with a welcome sense of humor about Richie’s rock’n’roll salvation and a pro-forma lonely-wife storyline sitting uncomfortably side by side. I wrote about it for Rolling Stone.