The show’s ability to make you care about the players it singles out for attention is impressive as well. Gi-hun and Ali and the old man come across like big sweethearts. The pickpocket’s survival instincts make her easy to root for. The mother’s scheming is funny and perversely endearing. Even the cop, Jun-ho, is sympathetic as a guy in way over his head, trying desperately to stay afloat.
The big exception at the moment, other than the gangster, is Sang-woo. Why is he so reluctant to share his knowledge with his alleged comrades? In particular, why didn’t he warn Gi-hun against selecting the difficult umbrella shape? For all Sang-woo knew, he was handing his old friend a death sentence. Is he secretly trying to winnow down the competition in order to increase the jackpot at the end of the games? Does he resent Gi-hun personally for reasons we’re not privy to yet? Is he simply a secretive type, paranoid and self-interested, perhaps due to the years he’s spent one step ahead of the law?
It speaks well of Squid Game‘s success rate that I’m finding these kinds of questions as compelling to contemplate as the games themselves, or the mystery of how they can muster so many hundreds of henchmen for a clandestine enterprise this sadistic. (I briefly entertained the idea that the pink guys were all either aliens or robots, until Jun-ho dumped the obviously human guy he replaced off that barge.) I’m not sure any of these characters are gonna wind up being as complex and nuanced as, like, Tony Soprano, but they don’t need to be. A good action-thriller need only create convincing sketches of people, giving you just enough to latch onto so that their misadventures mean something to you. In that particular contest, Squid Game has already won.
“Squid Game” thoughts, Season One, Episode Three: “The Man with the Umbrella”
“Squid Game” thoughts, Season One, Episode Two: “Hell”
From where I’m sitting, Squid Game episode two scores major points (sorry) in two different ways. First, there’s the matter of the vote. The instant the square-faced pink guy announced that a majority vote would decide whether or not the games would continue, I figured “Well, obviously they’re going to vote to keep going—otherwise there’d be no more show!” When he announced further that the vote would be tallied in reverse numerical order, I was like “Oh, okay, it’s gonna come to a tie, and the old guy with the brain tumor will cast the deciding vote in favor of staying because he has nothing to lose.”
Imagine my surprise—or maybe you don’t have to imagine, maybe it was your surprise too—when the elderly man voted to leave, and the pink crew dutifully dumped everyone back on the streets! This is as pure an example of a show zigging where I expected it to zag as I can think of in a long, long time. That kind of move earns a lot of trust, from me anyway; it demonstrates that this is a show that won’t always take the easy way out.
The second major structural thing this episode has going for it is the way it doles out the characters’ backstories. Rather than front-load the season by having us get to know all the major players in episode one, Squid Game kept its premiere’s focus squarely on Gi-hun, only introducing us to the rest of the main cast (with the exception of the pickpocket’s brief cameo when she stole Gi-hun’s money) when they’d already accepted the invitation to the game. This second episode backfills information on the gangster, the pickpocket, the immigrant, and Sang-woo, as well as giving us additional info on Gi-hun and his family, only after the show has already hooked us on its deadly-game aspect. Reverse that running order, and the show would feel much slower than it does as-is. It’s shrewd storytelling. And more games await.
‘Dune’ for Dummies: Everything You Need to Know Going Into the Sci-Fi Blockbuster
Not even the desert winds of the planet Arrakis can match the heat around the long-anticipated arrival of Dune, director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s landmark 1965 science-fiction classic. Staring Timothée Chalamet as the young nobleman Paul Atreides, Zendaya as his love interest Chani, Oscar Isaac as his father Duke Leto, and Jason Momoa as his mentor Duncan Idaho, this new version of the old classic has weathered the pandemic storm to finally arrive in theaters (and on HBO Max) on October 22nd. But while Herbert’s dense worldbuilding and inventive jargon has made the book a bestseller since its inception, it can be a notoriously impenetrable work — especially when it comes to adapting its long, winding story for the screen.
Don’t know your Baron Harkkonen from your Bene Gesserit? Don’t sweat it: Our quick and dirty guide to Dune will get you up to speed.
“Squid Game” thoughts, Season One, Episode One: “Red Light, Green Light”
So far, at least, the show’s real selling point is not the originality of the plot, but the aesthetics of the game. The brightly colored uniforms and face-obscuring masks recall that other global sensation of recent times, Among Us, while that multi-colored staircase is a killer visual. (There’s more than a little Daft Punk mixed into all of this, I think.) When it comes, the violence is presented in a blasé manner meant to convey the callousness of the game’s masters, but which could also read as glib and exploitative if the show doesn’t play its cards right.
And that’s where we’re at after the first episode: intriguing if unoriginal premise, a likable down-on-his-luck protagonist, compelling visuals. To see if Squid Game is more than the sum of its parts, we’ll have to play again.
I’m covering Squid Game for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.
“Foundation” thoughts, Season One, Episode Four: “Barbarians at the Gate”
By all appearances, Dawn is the odd man out in the current Cleon triumvirate; Day and Dusk seem to speak and move in unison during an audience with an ambassador from one of the galaxy’s big religions, Luminism, with Dawn always a beat behind. However, this external synchronicity is belied by a schism behind the scenes, one to match the schism growing within Luminism. While the Emperors have a chosen candidate in mind to succeed the religion’s deceased leader, another candidate has emerged, one who’s embraced a heretical doctrine: as clones, the Cleons have no soul, and are therefore less than human, not more. This, Day believes, is a direct challenge to their right to rule, one potentially embraced by three trillion citizens of the Empire if the rogue candidate takes over. (Day is pulled away from a deliciously erotic encounter with a sex worker he’s training to touch him gently enough to get past his personal shield aura to deal with this crisis; maybe that’s why he’s so grumpy.)
In a fierce argument, Day overrides the usual protocol and insists on traveling to the religion’s decision-making conclave himself, rather than letting Dusk take the trip as is custom. (No Emperor has ever left Trantor during his “Brother Day” years.) Day has a long memory, it seems, and he blames his predecessor Dusk for the fall of the starbridge, the callous bombing of the warring barbarian kingdoms Anacreon and Thespis, and the exile of Seldon, whose mathematical models predicted both the religious schism and an ongoing insurrection on Trantor, another problem the Emperors are having a hard time managing. No more rash decisions like these, Day says—it’s time for him to take charge of the Luminism issue, not Dusk. (“Certainly now the Empire will no longer be rent by impulsive action,” the robotic assistant Demerzel deadpans when Day strongarms Dusk out of the diplomatic mission. Ya burnt, Brother Day!) Should we be troubled that Day has grown so furious about the Empire’s mathematicians’ inability to debunk Seldon’s work that he shouts one into a fatal heart attack? Yeah, probably.
I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation, freshly renewed for a second season, for Decider.
‘On Cinema at the Cinema’ Is the Ultimate Workplace Cringe Comedy
You don’t have to be a movie buff to love On Cinema at the Cinema, but it helps!
Actually, nevermind—it probably won’t help you at all.
The central joke of this cult-hit comedy series is that its “hosts”—comedians Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington, portraying elaborately fictionalized versions of themselves—don’t know the first thing about the cinema. What they do know about is driving each other crazy, and that’s the core of On Cinema’s appeal. With its Season 12 premiere recently debuting on the show’s new dedicated website HeiNetwork.tv, it’s the perfect show for anyone who’s ever shared a workplace with someone they absolutely can’t stand. And who hasn’t?
“Impeachment: American Crime Story” thoughts, Episode Five: “Do You Hear What I Hear?”
Impeachment’s studied agnosticism regarding the motives, trustworthiness, and guilt or innocence of its characters is its most fascinating trait. The anger Clinton feels when he’s questioned about his commitment to the advancement of women, for example, is (to my eyes anyway) painted as completely legit; certainly the makeup of his Cabinet is an argument in his favor here, as he’s quick to point out to his legal team. But of course, this doesn’t preclude him from being a cad, a creep, and/or a predator in his personal life; his behavior with Monica, an unpaid employee fresh out of college, is proof of that.
Then there are figures like his accusers Paula Jones and (appearing here for the first time) Juanita Broaddrick. There’s no reason to believe, in the show’s construction of these characters, that they’re being anything but truthful in their allegations against the president; Jones is too naive to dissemble and seems completely aghast at being asked explicit sexual questions during her meeting with Clinton’s lawyers, and Broaddrick tries like hell to get the right-wing private investigators who come sniffing after her story to leave, so averse is she to getting mixed up in all this. What reason would such women have to lie about what Clinton did to them?
I reviewed this week’s episode of ACS Impeachment for Decider.
“Billions” thoughts, Season Five, Episode Twelve: “No Direction Home”
SPOILERS AHEAD
“So this is what it is to lose,” says Bobby Axelrod. “OK.”
He’s talking to Mike Prince, the man who helped engineer his downfall — a decisive one this time. How do we know it’s decisive? Because, I think, of that concluding “OK.” (Also, Damian Lewis, who plays Axe, just made public he is leaving the show.) Until this point, Axe has always scratched and clawed like a cornered animal to fight his way out of defeat, whether at the hands of his legal nemesis Chuck Rhoades or his business rivals, like Prince. This time, though? He admits he has been beaten, and makes his peace with it.
So why does it feel like a loss for Chuck, too?
I reviewed tonight’s big, big Billions season finale for the New York Times.
“Foundation” thoughts, Season One, Episode Three: “The Mathematician’s Ghost”
Salvor Hardin’s segment, by contrast, asks a bit too much of the audience. Salvor herself is something of a cipher, like a generic Star Wars Universe protagonist: barren world, space-age weapon, hidden powers, secret destiny, the whole schmear. And so many mysteries surround her storyline that they blend together into a sort of storytelling soup. We’re nearly two decades removed from the events of the first two episodes, we’re told: okay, great. Why did Raych murder his adoptive father Hari Seldon? What happened to the Foundation after Seldon’s death? How did they weather the storm that surely followed after the death of their founder and leader? What happened to Raych, for that matter? Why did he load our narrator and focal character, Gaal Dornick, into some kind of liquid-filled escape pod? Where is Gaal now?
Obviously, the show’s decision to withhold these answers was a deliberate one, and I respect that. And we do get some info on what happened after the Foundation’s slowship made planetfall on Terminus (kicking up an impressively earthy giant billow of dirt and stones when it did so): They cannibalized the ship for spare parts in order to build their settlement, they established various procedures for safeguarding their perimeter, contacting the Empire, trading with other worlds, and so forth.
But so much is left unanswered that when we start adding new mysteries on top of the old ones—the Vault’s expanding null field, the mysterious figure Salvor twice follows into the wreckage of the slowship—we’re basically building on sand. There’s not firm enough, and I hope you’ll pardon my use of the term, foundation on which to build either the character or her world. But then again, we’re talking about a story that plays out over multiple thousands of years, not just a couple of decades. If the show plays its cards right, I’m sure Salvor and her adventures can age up into something interesting.
How ‘Wags’ Became the Hedonistic Heart of Billions
“As the series was coming together,” Costabile says, “[Koppelman and Levien] were reinventing an entire character, someone who was essential to the whole story.” Perhaps the single most recognizable symbol of that process was Costabile’s own contribution: Wags’s signature mustache.
“We originally said to him, ‘Maybe you shave your head,’” Koppelman recalls. “And he was like, ‘I will if you want, but let me show you another idea.’”
“I really pushed Brian and David to have the twisty mustache,” Costabile says. “I was like, ‘This should be who this person is. He knows what he’s doing. He knows that on some level, if you looked at him, you’d be like, Who is this guy with the twisty mustache? The guy who’s either pretending to be the devil or is the devil? What the fuck is going on? It seemed like such a fun chess move. He’s not somebody who pushes you off balance, he pulls you off balance, pulling you in in order for you to fall.”
“He showed up having organized that mustache,” Koppelman says, “with the wax and the upturn thing, and I remember we were just like, ‘Yep, that’s the guy. That’s Wags.’”
I spoke with the creators, cast, and actor David Costabile himself about the creation of Wags, Billions‘ best character, for Vulture. This piece was a long time in the making and I hope you enjoy it!
“Impeachment: American Crime Story” thoughts, Episode Four: “The Telephone Hour”
The second matter involves Vernon Jordan, the longtime Clinton ally played by famously handsome man Blair Underwood. Clinton sends Monica his way in order to placate her demands for a job, and—friendly and avuncular and full of Southern charm—he’s quick to promise her an interview, at the very least, for a PR job at Revlon up in New York City. But as he says goodbye to her after their meeting, he pats her ass. He does it seemingly without thinking about it, before or afterwards. Monica herself is momentarily taken aback, but from that point out all she cares about is whether his Revlon recommendation pans out. The workaday sexual harassment doesn’t even seem to register.
Which makes sense, given what we learn about Monica in this episode. In a painful slumber party with Linda—painful because we already know Linda has “made my peace” with losing Monica as a friend once her tape recordings are made public as part of a potential book deal or as evidence in the Paula Jones suit, a connection Tripp herself makes—Monica reveals her dating history. It consists exclusively of “dating” inappropriately older men in positions of authority over her, from a camp counselor who penetrated her until she said “no” at age 14 to a teacher who took her virginity in high school, then literally relocated his entire family to be closer to her when she went to college in another town. Boys her own age, she says, have always ignored her. Why wouldn’t she gravitate to the most powerful man in the world once he revealed his openness to their flirtation? For that matter, why wouldn’t she accept Vernon Jordan’s ass-slaps as the cost of doing business? The question the show itself asks, I think, is why do we tolerate any of this shit at all?
“Billions” thoughts, Season Five, Episode Eleven: “Victory Smoke”
Watching “Billions” may be a breeze, but watching “Billions” to recap it is not. Constant pausing and rewinding is required to catch the countless twists and turns of every scheme; I would estimate that an hourlong episode takes me an hour and a half — at a minimum — to finish.
Nice work if you can get it, but it makes covering even famously dense shows like “The Wire” or “Game of Thrones” feel like recapping “Blue’s Clues.”
And this second-to-last episode of the show’s fifth season is even more complicated than the average. The conspiracy to take down Bobby Axelrod by involving him in a shady cannabis-funded banking deal, hatched by his enemies Chuck Rhoades, Mike Prince, Kate Sacker and Taylor Mason, is as dizzying a display of double- and triple-crossing as the show has ever served up.
I reviewed this week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
ZEPTEMBER IV
The fourth and final installment of the Zeptember podcast series on Led Zeppelin from me and Matthew Perpetua is out! This one’s a Q&A episode. Go subscribe and enjoy!
“Midnight Mass” thoughts, Episode Seven: “Book VII: Revelation”
SPOILERS AHEAD
A matter of hours. That’s how long the dominion of the vampires reigns over Crockett Island, from their orgy of death in St. Patrick’s Church to their demise in the morning sun in this, the seventh and final episode of Midnight Mass. This is not to say that Crockett Island survives the night, anymore than they do. By the time they all (well, almost all—more on this later) accept their fate and greet the dawn, they’ve killed and partially devoured everyone else on the island, converting many of them into killers in turn—a grim tide of slaughter we watch slowly overtake the island, dragging people screaming from their houses, falling upon them in the streets as they flee. They’ve burned every building on the island, with the exception of the church, burned by their erstwhile leader, and the rec center, burned by one of their own. The boats on which they were counting to spread their religious contagion to the mainland have been burned by their enemies. They are all dead. Their enemies—Erin Greene, Sheriff Hassan, Dr. Gunning—are all dead. The island is dead. There are two survivors.
I reviewed the finale of Midnight Mass for Decider. This was a very good show.
“Midnight Mass” thoughts, Episode Six: “Book VI: Acts of the Apostles”
Utter chaos follows. An orgy of death and violence breaks out in the church, as people poison themselves and die vomiting blood, then rise up to kill and consume the few who resisted this miniature, supernatural Jonestown. Director and cowriter Mike Flanagan lingers on this for a long, long time—echoing the way he shot a candlelit procession of singing congregants for over three minutes, long enough for them to sing an entire hymn—and the effect is profoundly disturbing, a genuine violation of cultural taboo. It’s like watching someone lance a boil from which all the evil done in God’s name bursts out like pus.
I reviewed the penultimate episode of Midnight Mass for Decider.
“Midnight Mass” thoughts, Episode Five: “Book V: Gospel”
I don’t know where creator/director/showrunner/co-writer Mike Flanagan is going to go with this story in the end, and certainly the hopepunk makeover he gave to Shirley Jackson’s brutal The Haunting of Hill House inspires little confidence. But so far—so far—he sure does seem to be likening Roman Catholicism and Christianity more broadly to, yes, a vampire, profiting off the suffering of the communities on which it battens itself. And that’s something worth a personal confession, of sorts.
The priest who confirmed me was a child molester, and you can read legendary newspaperman Jimmy Breslin’s column about the horror he wrought right here, if you can stomach it. A priest on the faculty of my all-boys Catholic high school was a predator as well; last time I checked, he enjoyed a Vatican sinecure. So even aside from wider questions of doctrine, of historical atrocities, of Catholicism’s role as a bastion of present-day right-wing revanchism from the Supreme Court on down, I get it.
“Foundation” thoughts, Season One, Episode One: “The Emperor’s Peace”
“It will all work out, Raych.”
“Everything is dying.”
“That doesn’t mean it won’t all work out.”
That, in a nutshell, is Foundation, the new science fiction series from creators David S. Goyer (the journeyman genre storyteller of Dark Knight Trilogy fame) and Josh Friedman. Adapted—in some cases very loosely—from the landmark series of novels by sci-fi godhead Isaac Asimov, Foundation is a story about people anticipating the greatest calamity ever to befall humankind, and choosing to look at it as a glass-half-full situation.
I’m covering Foundation for Decider this season, starting with my review of the series premiere.
“Midnight Mass” thoughts, Episode Four: “Book IV: Lamentations”
One thing I have a hard time wrapping my head around, in terms of the show’s status as horror, is its willingness to tug on the heartstrings like a weepy primetime soap. I’m perfectly fine with, say, the lengthy pair of monologues in which Riley and Erin outline their different ideas about what happens after we die, with Riley celebrating his eventual dispersal into the ecosystem and thence to oblivion while Erin imagines an afterlife for her disappeared daughter (very firmly a daughter in her mind, though the doctor never ascertained the sex of the baby) in which she is surrounded by love and never alone. I have a harder time with it when it’s underlaid with syrupy music designed to make us feel a certain way about all of it. Think of how much more engaging, riveting even, it would have been had these monologues passed in silence, leaving the words to rise or fall on their own strength.
Other than that, the show’s biggest problem remains Bev Keane. I don’t know how else to put it: This character is dead weight. She’s pure self-righteousness, pure zealotry, pure petty cruelty, pure obnoxiousness—a brick wall where someone who really lives and breathes on the page and on the screen could have been placed. Did you have any doubt in your mind that she’d become more of an acolyte and defender of Father Paul/Msgr. John when she discovered he’d murdered someone? Did you have any doubt she’d cow relatively soft figures like the handyman and the mayor into obedience, as if they were mere schoolchildren? It’s such a boring dynamic! Every second with her is wasted.
“Midnight Mass” thoughts, Episode Three: “Book III: Proverbs”
There’s something extraordinary about the third episode of Midnight Mass—and no, I don’t mean the ending. It’s the performance of Hamish Linklater as “Father Paul Hill,” the…villain of the piece? Or the hero? Or just some poor deluded sap who’s about as wrong as wrong can be about the horror he’s unearthed?
Anyway, long before we see what happened to his “predecessor” Monsignor John Pruitt in a buried desert ruin half a world away, we see a lot of sides of Father Paul. We see a priest asking God for forgiveness for the lies he’s about to tell his congregation. We see a man struggling to deal with a secret illness. We see a preacher delivering the kind of homily that sends you away from Mass thinking “Wow, he was really onto something,” at least until he collapses from exhaustion.
We see the leader of an AA meeting, calling bullshit on Riley Flynn’s recalcitrance around the group’s new third member Joe Collie, disarming the atheistic cynic with his warm but unyielding voice.
In short, we see, ironically as it turns out, just about the most realistic portrayal of a priest I’ve ever seen on TV. Linklater absolutely nails it: the soft vocal cadence, the paradoxically ostentatious humility, the ability to weave God in and out of conversation with members of the congregation, the dark secret locked away.