Humor aside, the project this episode brings to mind more than any other — and not just because they share a composer, Baltimore musician Dan Deacon — is Unedited Footage of a Bear, the terrifying 2014 Adult Swim Infomercial whose drum I never stop banging. (I’ve probably talked more about this short film than the filmmakers, Alan Resnick and Ben O’Brien, have themselves.) The slow descent from happy parenthood to isolated misery; the emphasis on how mothers in psychological distress often go un- or under-treated; the portrayal of severe mental illness as something so close to the supernatural stuff of horror that it’s a distinction without a difference; the use of both the family and the phone as vectors for fear — it’s all there. I don’t mean to imply this is a rip-off, because it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination. I do mean to imply, however, that this episode is eerie enough to merit comparison to one of the most frightening things I’ve ever seen on television.
As was the case with Unedited Footage, the lead performance is the load-bearing structure here. Like twin actors Kerry and Jacqueline Donelli in that earlier project, Clark Backo transitions so seamlessly from perky, fun mama to glassy-eyed, sallow-faced living zombie. Her paranoia and dread, which either bring on or are brought on by her sleeplessness, have turned her into something less than herself — a being one macabre half-step out of sync with the world around her, like a mirrored reflection that somehow begins moving a brief but unmistakable moment after you do. By episode’s end, you too want to keep this poor person and her poor baby away from each other, for both their sakes.
LaKeith Stanfield’s assignment in this episode is a comparatively easy one: Be normal, be a good dad, be a pretty shitty friend, and be ready willing and able to distance yourself from your obviously sick wife after months of this shit have you at your wits’ end. But in a horror series, playing the character who doesn’t realize something is capital-W Wrong actually is hard work: You have to keep the audience caring what happens to you even as your ignorance or unwillingness to see what’s happening drives us away. Stanfield’s not doing the gangbusters work Backo is in this ep, but what he is doing is impressive in its own right.
“The Changeling” thoughts, Season One, Episode Two: “Then Comes a Baby in a Baby Carriage”
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wrestlers’ on Netflix, a Gritty and Theatrical Look at the Pro Wrestling Underground
Our Take: Professional wrestling is a truly fascinating, uniquely American art form and subculture. Long before I became a weekly viewer — fully three decades removed from when I thrilled to the likes of Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and the Ultimate Warrior as a child — I was drawn to its history, its personalities, and its jargon, which remains one of the most valuable lenses through which to see the world I can think of. (The concept of “kayfabe,” the agreed-upon un-reality in which pro wrestling conflicts exist, is worth the price of admission alone.)
Wrestlers depicts this riveting demimonde through the memorable personae of people living in it. Booker (i.e. head writer) Al Snow, co-owner and promoter Matt Jones, and the Julia Garner character-in-waiting HollyHood Haley J are instantly recognizable character archetypes: hero, villain, and antihero.
Director Greg Whiteley wisely contrasts the emergence of these figures within the non-fictional narrative (at least by reality-show standards) on one hand and the pre-planned presentation of OVW’s faces and heels on the other. Effectively, he’s announcing that the show will work much like a wrestling storyline; like many magicians, he tells you what he’s doing before does it.
I, for one, am impressed — skeptical though I might be of the way he manipulates events with standard reality-show drama. Do I wish this were a real documentary that just so happened to catch a company at a pivotal moment, instead of what it likely is: a reality show, where Jones and Snow and Haley and the rest have been encouraged off-camera to act their parts and play up conflict, especially around the risky tour that just so happens to coincide with the series’ production? Yes I do. Will it stop me from watching? No, it probably won’t.
“Ahsoka” thoughts, Season One, Episode Five: “Part Five: Shadow Warrior”
Good looking show, right? Sheer image-making used to convey a range of emotions, from joy to PTSD. An overall sense that maybe there’s more to the Star Wars Universe’s magic than cameos of preexisting Star Wars characters. (I know the whales have been around before, apparently, but they’re new to me, and they’re not really “characters” anyway, even if the enormous blue eye of the mother of them all seems very wise.) And everything given ample room to breathe in dialogue-free silence.
And, finally, there’s the rub. By “ample room” I mean “more than ample room.” I mean “Wembley Stadium” room. I mean “the lone and level sands stretch far away in ‘Ozymandias’” room. I mean “the distance between one point in space and another as described by an unfortunate passenger in Stephen King’s ‘The Jaunt’” room. I mean a writer and director and showrunner who keeps trying to stuff a 22-minute animated-series runtime of shit into a 50-minute live-action series runtime bag and, as you’d expect, coming up empty, over and over.
Take the two most impressive visual sequences in the episode: Ahsoka’s spectral and sad fog-of-war memories, and the flight of the space whales. Both phenomena are repeated, virtually identically from one iteration to the next. Ahsoka doesn’t just return to the Clone Wars, which she helpfully names in case anyone watching Ahsoka is unfamiliar with the Clone Wars (lol) — a needless idiot-proofing decision, echoed by the egregious of having Anakin occasionally flash into his Darth Vader outfit, as if we need the reminder and would be like “oh, right, that’s who he is!”
No, she also returns to a second battle, one that took place after she and Anakin had parted ways, so they can rehash the same conversations they already had about violence and warfare and the need for soldiers and so on. Whatever magic was in the first sequence has the air let out by the unnecessary second. Moreover, constantly cross cutting from the dream world to the real one — a major plot point, given that we’re required to see General Hera’s Take Your Child to Work Day visitor Jacen use his Force sensitivity to hear the sound of Ahsoka and Anakin’s lightsaber duel so she can…be retrieved while floating unconscious under several feet of water. It’s a dopey idea that’s not worth the sacrifice of the mood and look otherwise maintained by the flashback/dream/vision.
“The Changeling” thoughts, Season One, Episode One: “First Comes Love”
Even if the show hasn’t yet gone far in either direction — it’s difficult to make a big point about The Power of Family when your scariest image is of an estranged father kidnapping his son — it does lean awfully hard on another kind of storytelling: meet-cutes, first dates, a library courtship straight out of The Music Man, a magical rooftop wedding, a quirky “we’re having a baby” announcement straight out of an Alexa commercial, a rapturously scored sex scene, a “the baby’s coming now” scene…romance, in other words. Big Hollywood romance.
I’m not here for this either. It’s not that I don’t like romance as a genre…okay, so it is like that. But I could be convinced, I’m pretty sure, and if anyone could do the convincing it’s likely a pair of actors as charming and photogenic as LaKeith Stanfield and Clark Backo.
The real problem is that I don’t see how you get from all that mushy stuff to a place capable of actual horror. It’s not just the nature of that narrative that’s an issue here, it’s all the techniques used to depict it, like the overactive score by Dan Deacon. I found myself pining for moments of silence in which I could decide for myself how to feel about the sweet or scary things on screen. As it stands, you can certainly deliver the occasional terrifying jolt — the faceless-father dream sequence is proof of that — but you’re not going to be able to build up the atmosphere of unbearable mounting dread that great horror generates if you’re constantly working at cross-purposes with it by telling everyone about twoo wuv. There’s a time and a place for that, and that time and place isn’t Spooky Season.
I’m covering The Changeling for Decider, starting with my review of the premiere (the first of three episodes that debuted this past weekend).
‘Foundation’ thoughts, Season 2, Episode 9: ‘Long Ago, Not Far Away’
But that’s where we’re at with “Long Ago, Not Far Away,” the penultimate episode of Foundation’s second season, and the latest in a series of back-to-back-to-back home runs. Written by Jane Espenson and Eric Carrasco and directed, as was its excellent predecessor, by Roxann Dawson, it’s TV genre entertainment at its grandest, sexiest, saddest, most mysterious, most violent, most spectacular, best.
I reviewed this past weekend’s episode of Foundation for Decider.
“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Five: “The Gulag Archipelago”
Let’s do a little narrative reverse engineering, shall we?
Imagine, if you will, that you are a both a trader and a traitor — a high-powered executive at a major investment fund, looking to fatally undermine your own boss in order to stop him from becoming the president of the United States.
Your Plan A, recruiting your even more dangerous old boss to stop him, has failed. You’re tired of waiting around for your performance-coach colleague, the ringleader of your band of mutineers, to generate a Plan B. It becomes clear that coming up with Plan C is up to you.
So you generate some short-term, medium-term and long-term goals for this plan. In the short term, you need something that will cost your hated boss enough money to rattle his cage. In the medium term, you’d like to generate doubt and dissension among his key employees, as well as elsewhere on the Street. In the long term, you want to increase the power available to a member of your own inner circle to make mischief — enough power, you hope, to engineer the fatal mistake that will take your boss down for good.
I reviewed this weekend’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
“The Wheel of Time” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Four: “Daughter of Night”
A bird’s eye view of the city of Tar Valon spread out in all its splendor around the great White Tower. A vampiric being of an ancient evil called back from beyond the grave while while dripping Hellraiser quantities of blood from her nude body. Moiraine Damodred futzing around in her childhood room, the ghost of a smile on her face as she remembers who she used to be. The ornate latticework covering every column within the tower of the Aes Sedai, a simple design flourish that communicates their beauty and skill on the one hand, their preoccupation with ritual and their decadent splendor on the other. The attempted murder of a demigoddess.
There are many things, large and small, that I could single out as the highlight of this episode of The Wheel of Time, the second very strong one in a row. You know what I’m going to go with, though? A’Lan Mandragoran, the handsome and tormented Warder, pissing on a tree trunk.
I reviewed The Wheel of Time‘s second terrific episode in a row for Vulture.
“Ahsoka” thoughts, Season One, Episode Four: “Part Four: “Fallen Jedi”
“Sabine…can I count on you?” “………You know you can.”
“Is everything alright?” “…………Be careful out there.”
“Best get underway soon.” “…………Is that a note of fear in your voice?” “……Experience.”
“Relax.” “…Don’t worry about me.” “…I’m not.” “…Good.” “……Should I be?” “……What?” “……Worried.” “…………Nope.”
Imperial torture scientists toiling in the bowels of the detention level on the first Death Star for months couldn’t come up with a method of interrogation that would leave the human mind in the kind of state required to deliver the dialogue in Ahsoka. The endless pauses, the soporific delivery, the nature of the dialogue itself — my god, look at that last exchange; I honestly can’t believe Rosario Dawson and Natasha Liu Bordizzo were handed a piece of paper with those words in that order typed out on it — are all so bad that I kept waiting for Joel and the Bots from Mystery Science Theater to start dunking on it during every pause.
“The Wheel of Time” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Three: “What Might Be”
Whoa. Where did this show come from?
Far and away the best episode of The Wheel of Time yet, this third and final installment of season two’s initial batch of three bears out the wisdom of that release schedule. After watching this teeming hour-plus of television, bursting with big ideas, memorable dialogue, and committed, witty performances, it’s hard not to want to see where the Wheel turns next.
I reviewed the third episode in The Wheel of Time‘s three-part Season 2 premiere for Vulture.
“The Wheel of Time” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Two: “Strangers and Friends”
There’s poetry there, right? Potentially, anyway. A neutralized wizard bids farewell to her warrior protector. A messiah can’t be with the one he loves, so he loves the one he’s with. A young student makes a new friend at the potential expense of the old. These are the kinds of relationship dynamics a show can really dig into — and should, if it knows what’s good for it.
I reviewed the second episode of The Wheel of Time Season 2 for Vulture.
“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Four: “Hurricane Rosie”
I’ve enjoyed these last couple of weeks of comparatively low-stakes scheming among the “Billions” bunch, but they raise an important point. What “Billions” needs for its final act is a bit of financial-thriller legerdemain on par with the instant-classic Season 2 episode “Golden Frog Time.” You remember: the bit where it looks as if Chuck is crying because his big plan to take Bobby down got his own father and best friend in big trouble, only for the show to reveal he’s actually laughing because that was his big plan? It remains my favorite moment of the series, not to mention a moment I would point to as a reason I love covering television for a living. It’s not the fault of “Billions” that my expectations for its conclusion are that high, but they are. I hope the show rises to the occasion.
I reviewed this weekend’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
“Foundation” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Eight: “The Last Empress”
When a television show gets on a real creative tear, something special often occurs. To me, anyway. Whether it’s a stone classic deep into its run, firing on all cylinders; a killer from jump, blowing you away right away; or — as is the case here, with Foundation — a formerly sputtering spacecraft that has achieved escape velocity and is now hurtling towards the stars, there comes a point when a regular review simply won’t do, and a litany of superlatives is all that can get the job done.
In other words? There is simply too much shit to like in “The Last Empress.” Directed with total confidence by Roxann Dawson, working off a remarkable script by Liz Phang, Addie Manis, and Bob Oltra, it’s Foundation’s best episode to date. (Seems like we’re saying that a lot lately, no?)
I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation, a success on every level, for Decider.
“The Wheel of Time” thoughts, Season Two, Episode One: “A Taste of Solitude”
There are times when the show that results from all this business feels less like a story, like a lived-in world, and more like a very large box purchased at the cost of a few hundred million dollars into which various story — and lived-in-world-shaped objects can be dropped. I’m a big partisan of the ornate White Tower as a set and location design; its pristine snow-colored latticework filigrees mark it as a place too powerful to be touched and sullied by the wars its residents constantly wage. The show has a kind of ostentatiously poly-couple sex positivity that distinguishes it from the pack, if nothing else. Pike and Henney are transcendently attractive. The Trollocs are perfect monsters under the bed. Beyond that, I’m not sure we’re getting anything here we can’t get more of, or better, elsewhere.
But sometimes that’s enough, you know? I tend to see The Wheel of Time through the eyes of my 12-year-old, a fantasy nerd to whom live-action epic fantasy is still so novel that virtually anything corresponding to that description is a home run. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t still enough of a 12-year-old fantasy nerd left within me that I myself didn’t react that way to the show, at least part of the time, even if Jordan’s books weren’t part of my personal repertoire. Sometimes you just wanna see people in tunics fire waves of magic at people in monster suits, maybe with some swords thrown in the middle. The Wheel of Time gives you that, and if you like that sort of thing, it’s the sort of thing you’ll like.
The Wheel of Time is back and so am I, covering it for Vulture. It’s mid, but in a basically good way? Here’s my review of the Season 2 premiere.
“Ahsoka” thoughts, Season One, Episode Three: “Time to Fly”
Ahsoka comes across as the bare minimum of Star Wars required to make Star Wars fans go “Sure, I’ll watch it.” It feels less like a television show, let alone a movie, and more like a Happy Meal tie-in toy. If you’re absolutely desperate to hold something from a galaxy far, far away in your hands, it’ll do in a pinch. But the better toys, and the imagination required to make them worth playing with, are found elsewhere.
“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Three: “Winston Dick Energy”
Watching a good episode of “Billions,” which this undoubtedly is, is like watching someone expertly play a puzzle game — solving a Rubik’s cube, say, or beating a level of “Tetris.” You gaze in admiration as skilled hands slide pieces and panels from one place to the next until everything lines up exactly where it should. Chuck’s friends and enemies inadvertently guide him to the correct course of action. Wendy’s petulance puts her on the path toward a major breakthrough. Winston’s defection provides Wags with the fresh kill he requires. “Billions” makes it look easy, but if it were, everyone would be doing it.
I reviewed this weekend’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
“Foundation” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Seven: “A Necessary Death”
One element worth singling out: The deft, origami-like folding of Constant and Poly, General Bel Riose and his husband Glawen Curr, and Hober Mallow and the Spacer hive into one single elegant construction. In a sort of cascading series of scenes, Hober makes Hari Seldon’s big offer to the Spacers: an unlimited supply of a synthetic version of the compound that keeps them alive, heretofore controlled by Empire, in exchange for their support. The spacer queen, She-Is-Center (Brucella Neman-Persaud), decides the risk isn’t worth it and rats him out to her daughter, She-Bends-Light (Judi Shekoni), who serves with Bel and Glawen. Hober is handed over to their custody, but escapes thanks to his sentient navigator beast Beki and makes a jump right there within Bel’s ship’s hangar, thus proving the existence of Foundation’s advanced faster-than-light travel technology. As a result, Poly and Constant are brought before the Cleons and Demerzel, taunted, tortured, and returned to prison. It’s almost elegant, the way the pieces are put together.
“Ahsoka” thoughts, Season One, Episode Two: “Part Two: Toil and Trouble”
Instead, though, most of our time is spent with Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Natasha Liu Bordizzo. Man, I just do not know what’s going on there. Winstead’s delivery is completely undistinguished — où sont la Swango d’antan? — and Bordizzo and Dawson sound like someone forgot to wake them up. I don’t want to oversell this, mind you, it’s not like I’m outraged or appalled or upset, I’m just confused. I know these actors. How did this happen? What do you think? Post a comment.
And the show still displays absolutely zero facility for action or suspense, an absolute dealbreaker for the setting. I’m trying hard not to constantly compare Ahsoka to its predecessors, but the heist of the hyperdrive by the bad guys has an apples-to-apples comparison in the form of the heist in Andor, while the double-bladed two-on-one lightsaber battle Ahsoka has with a droid and that mystery assailant is straight-up Duel of the Fates stuff. In neither case is the comparison a flattering one. It’s an embarrassing one, is what it is.
“Ahsoka” thoughts, Season One, Episode One: “Part One: Master and Apprentice”
The costumes look like decent San Diego Comic-Con cosplay. The commemorative mural on display at a big ceremony in Sabine’s honor is laughably amateurish. The children’s drawings Sabine finds in a bunk on Ahsoka’s ship are so obviously an adult trying to draw like a child that it’s almost a provocation to include them. The opening crawl is a syntactical nightmare. The score is frequently dreadful — a ghastly guitar-driven rock song here, lugubrious and out-of-place string sections there. Two lengthy sequences involve puzzle-solving you normally think of as the domain of the parts of Tears of the Kingdom you don’t like playing.
The performances aren’t helped by the dialogue, naturally. There’s only so much anyone can do with clunkers like “May their courage and commitment never be forgotten” or “Mentoring someone is a challenge” or “Sometimes even the right reasons have the wrong consequences.” (Jesus.) The ne plus ultra of this combination of bad writing and bad acting comes in this exchange between Dawson and Bordizzo’s characters:
“I go where I’m needed.” “Not always.” “You never make things easy.” “Why should I? You never made things easy for me, master.” “There is nothing easy about being a Jedi.” “Well, then I should have made a good one.” “Yes, you should have.” It’s like listening to an AI voice chat program train.
I reviewed the series premiere of Ahsoka for Decider. Dreadful.