“This is the one situation where I get to control my helplessness.” I didn’t expect Sir Henry Muck, of all people, to crack the code for the way Industry uses sex to explore its characters interior lives, but there you have it. Henry says this in the context of finally asking Yasmin to urinate on him — please note that he’s “no pervert”; instead of some elaborate production where he gets down on his knees and she stands over his face or whatever, he just has her pee on his leg, then acts as if he’s caught in the video for “Here Comes the Rain Again.” But he could be speaking for almost anyone on the show. Sex is where you can choose to dominate or be dominated, for your own pleasure, instead of having these roles forced on you by external circumstance by a world driven not by pleasure but money, money at all costs. No wonder they all fuck and fetishize like rabbits with Fetlife accounts.
“Industry” thoughts, Season Three, Episode Five: “Company Men”
“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Four: “Eldest”
Ents. Orcs. Elves. Barrow-wights. Wizards, good and evil. Two different kinds of proto-hobbit. A Galadriel battle sequence. A Watcher in the Water. Tom freaking Bombadil. “Pulling out all the stops” is a perfectly valid, even noble, approach for any series belonging to a genre that shows us the spectacular — fantasy, horror, and science fiction foremost among them. About the only problem I have with the cornucopia of Tolkienian pleasures that is this week’s Rings of Power episode is that co-creators and co-writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay didn’t try this approach sooner.
I reviewed this week’s episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Decider.
“Industry” thoughts, Season Three, Episode Four: “White Mischief”
When was the last time you watched an episode of television that made you clap your hands and cheer at the end? It’s been a minute for me, I must say, and I watch a lot of television. A lot of really good television, even! But there’s something special about “White Mischief,” the fourth episode of Industry’s Industry-standard terrific third season. Written by series creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay and directed with breathless panache by Zoé Whittock, it is both a showcase for the prodigious talent of Sagar Radia and for everything this show does well, which is, at this point, pretty much everything.
“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Three: “The Eagle and the Sceptre”
Call this one “The Episode Starring All the Characters Whose Names You Forgot.” With no Elrond or (especially) Galadriel to anchor it, no Stranger/Harfoot antics to provide comforting Hobbit-y vibes, and a pair of very shaky storylines in their place, the third and final of the three episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 released as a giant-sized premiere faces by far the heaviest lift. If it doesn’t get as far as its two predecessors, it manages quite a bit more than I both expected and feared.
“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Two: “Where the Stars Are Strange”
Is this really happening? Is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power…good, now? Without possession of an Elven ring myself, I cannot see things that have not yet come to pass. Who knows, maybe the show falls right back off a cliff in the third and final of the three episodes Amazon released for its giant-sized Season 2 premiere. But so far, so good. Quite good, even.
I reviewed the fine second episode of The Rings of Power‘s second season for Decider.
“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” thoughts, Season Two, Episode One: “Elven Kings Under the Sky”
Well. Well, well, well. Now that’s more like it!
The last thing I wrote about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was this: “a crushing disappointment.” I stand by that. But I also speculated that the inexperience of creators and showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, coupled with the sheer amount of money poured into the misfire, meant there was little chance the show would improve.
Boy, am I happy to be wrong. It’s early yet, obviously, and the show could revert to the mean. But the first episode of Rings’ second season, is, quite frankly, crackerjack live-action fantasy television. No one’s going to mistake it for the first-in-class Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon franchise anytime soon — for one thing, my 13 year old cracks wise about the special effects looking goofy when they watch this one — but can it stand with Amazon’s similarly improved sophomore season of The Wheel of Time? If it keeps it up, I don’t see why not.
“Industry” thoughts, Season Three, Episode Three: “It”
This is is as good a time as any to say the obvious: Myha’la and Marisa Abela are absolutely fucking outstanding as Harper and Yasmin, and they have been from the start. In part this is down to smart casting. Putting “a diminutive woman,” as both Otto and myself have called her, into the role of your leading sociopath is a deft bit of sleight-of-hand, while Abela has the kind of beauty that’s both striking and somehow approachable, both of which are key components of her job as it’s been constructed.
But it’s raw talent, too. That wolfish grin on Myha’la’s face as she brings Eric to heel, then lightens the mood by observing the glitter all over his face! The way Abela can change Yasmin from a woman who hates herself for missing her abusive father to a woman who can make powerful men beg for her favor using just the cast of her eyes! Coupled with the ferocity of the show’s stance against the personal and political hypocrisy and abusiveness of everyone involved, and the two actors are like samurai wielding their swords so efficiently you don’t even notice you’ve been sliced in two.
‘Lady in the Lake’ Ending Explained: Who Killed Cleo Johnson?
Can such a gap in experience and circumstance ever be bridged? The show seems to take a glass-half-empty approach to that question. It’s true that Black Baltimoreans bust up a Nazi rally, since the Jews’ enemies are their enemies too. But the last images of such unrest are the riots and brutal crackdowns that erupted following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination; Cleo, meanwhile, wearily scoffs at the idea that she and Maddie could be friends. The severing of Maddie’s ties to Ferdie and to her adopted neighborhood are other datapoints to consider when assessing the show’s take on cross-racial solidarity against robber barons and fascist mobs. In Lady in the Lake’s world, at least, the outlook is grim.
I did a little explainer for the end of Lady in the Lake for Decider. These are servicey, but I try to have some fun and say something interesting with them.
“Lady in the Lake” thoughts, Episode Seven: “My Story”
But the nice thing about racism is that it has no basis in fact. It’s entirely made-up nonsense. It’s bullshit, it’s bupkis, it’s a fabrication, it’s a myth. This is why all the groups rattled off by that awful Officer Bosko in the previous episode — the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, presumably Polish people like himself — have been able to “overcome” racism and “become” white. Race is sociopolitical Calvinball: The people in charge get to decide who counts, and it has nothing to do with any qualities that are innate to anyone. They make up the rules as they go along!
In other words, people are treated differently, and their different experiences make them different in many ways, but people are the same. The family you see on the news, crying for their slain child in a pile of rubble half a world away, feel the same grief and pain as the family you see on the news, crying for their slain child at a school shooting in an American suburb, who feel the same grief and pain as the family you see on the news, crying for their murdered daughter/sister/mother killed by cops for committing no crime at all. Lionel, Cleo’s son with sickle cell anemia, and Anne Frank, seen in a photo hanging from the wall near Maddie’s desk, are united by far, far more than what separates them. But you don’t have to take my word for it: Ask the Nazis in this very episode.
I reviewed the series finale of Lady in the Lake for Decider.
In ‘Shogun,’ Anna Sawai Drew On the Power of Silence. And Mozart.
“Shogun” reactions seemed to move swiftly from “Hmm, this show sounds interesting” to “Wow, this show is really good” to “Give this woman the Emmy right now.” Were you tracking that groundswell?
It wasn’t like I was sitting in front of my computer reading everything, but there’s always going to be a part of me that’s very self-critical. Even while it was happening, I was like, But what if they don’t like the next episode? Once we hit the end, I realized, Oh, OK, people are actually happy with the Mariko they saw. She’s beautifully written, and that’s why they love it, but I probably didn’t do a horrible job.
Does the Emmy nomination confirm that for you?
It gives me confidence. I have such bad impostor syndrome, so I feel like: I’m doing OK; I can keep moving forward; I can keep doing jobs; I can keep working hard to do what they saw on “Shogun.” It just makes me want to do more. It makes me want to keep telling stories that have a big impact on the people who haven’t been seen.
I got to interview Shōgun star Anna Sawai for the New York Times again, this time focusing on her Emmy nomination for her work as Lady Mariko. This was a really fun one to do.
It Will Only Take You One Hour to Fall in Love with ‘Industry’
All you need is one hour.
Less than an hour, actually. 51 minutes: That’s how long it will take you to watch the first episode of Industry, HBO/Max’s buzzy series about sex, drugs, friendship, money, life, and death among the young sharks of London’s financial industry. And that’s all you’ll need to decide whether Industry, one of the smartest and sexiest on television right now, is for you.
I know, I know, the show is currently in the middle of its third season, and that kind of time commitment can be intimidating. But this isn’t one of those “it starts getting good in Season 2” kind of shows, where you have to sink in several full work days to make it worth watching. Far from it. Everything that makes the show great is present right there in the pilot, and the show only gets better from there.
So it’s simple. If you like the pilot, you’ll like Industry; if you don’t, you won’t. It’s the lowest bar to entry of any prestige TV drama currently on the air — and as far as prestige TV dramas go, Industry is as good as it gets. And don’t worry: We won’t spoil any major twists or surprises as we explain why.
“Industry” thoughts, Season Three, Episode Two: “Smoke and Mirrors”
Industry is not an easy show to cover. Oh, it’s an absolute pleasure to watch — gorgeous to look at, a cast bristling with talent, gripping financial-thriller storylines, and the proverbial Strong Sexual Content we all know love. And it’s equally pleasurable to think about, to discuss, to pull apart and piece back together. You could unpack Eric’s feelings about Harper, or Yasmin’s sexual personae, or the show’s whole bitter commentary on capitalism with someone over drinks for an hour. (I don’t even wanna think about how long you could go with cocaine.)
But it isn’t easy to write about, for the simple reason that, well, it’s too good. There’s so much stuff going on, and so much of that stuff is so rich and attention-demanding, that it’s hard to know where to begin. Often I’ll hit this point with shows I really like fairly deep into a season or a run, reaching a point where all I can do is rattle off a list of superlatives. I’m now on my second review of Industry ever, and I feel as though I’ve hit that point already. Where do we go from here? I swear I’m going to limit this kind of meta self-referential nonsense in future reviews of Industry as much as I can, but after this episode? Come on.
“Lady in the Lake” thoughts, Episode Six: “I know who killed Cleo Johnson.”
And now, ladies and gentlemen, comes the part where reviewing dozens and dozens of television shows for the past decade-plus comes in handy. During that entire time — during an entire lifetime of watching television, in fact — I have never once encountered a dream sequence that ends at the end of an episode, only for it to be revealed in the follow-up that this was a lie and the dream never ended at all. Never, not once. The only time I can remember a dream sequence even continuing from one episode to the next is the Kevin Finnerty episodes of The Sopranos, and no one popped up at the end of the first to tell Tony/Kevin that he wasn’t dreaming.
Natalie Portman’s Steamy ‘Lady in the Lake’ Mirror Sex Scene Takes Us Through the Looking Glass
Filmmakers love putting Natalie Portman’s face in the mirror. It’s easy to understand — if I were a director who had access to a face like Natalie Portman’s, I’d put it everywhere I could. But like Perseus defeating Medusa by her reflection in his shield, there are some faces simply too powerful to gaze at directly for too long. Studying such a striking person from that reflective remove can be more revealing than looking at them directly.
It certainly is in Episode 3 of Lady in the Lake. Adapted from the novel by Laura Lipmman, Alma Har’el’s Apple TV+ series stages this sex scene involving Portman’s character, fed-up ex-housewife turned cub reporter Maddie Morgenstern Schwartz, and her lover, Baltimore police officer Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel), in front of a mirror. And there’s a lot to see.
A few weeks ago, Lady in the Lake had a scene where Natalie Portman has sex in front of a mirror. This got me to thinking about Natalie Portman, sex, mirrors, and the relationship between all three across her career. I wrote about it for Decider.
“Industry” thoughts, Season Three, Episode One: “Il Mattino ha L’Oro in Bocca
The Sopranos, but more bitingly cynical. Euphoria, but with more and better sex and drugs. Mr. Robot, but there’s no hackers. Mad Men, but you flash forward six decades to discover basically nothing has changed. Succession, but with characters who sound like humans instead of lab rats in some kind of inventive-swearing experiment. Industry, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay’s remarkable workplace drama set in the atavistic world of London finance, feels like many shows at once; somehow, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
I am so thrilled to be covering Industry for Decider this season, starting with my review of the season premiere. It’s a show I slept on for way too long. It’s not too late!
“Lady in the Lake” thoughts, Episode Five: “Every time someone turns up dead in that lake, it does seem to lead to you.”
When Maddie talks to Shell Gordon and Reggie Robinson…okay, I’m gonna break format here and just say when this happened I practically cheered. Here we have Academy Award winner Natalie Portman sitting across from Wood Harris, The Wire’s Avon Barksdale, commanding the screen just as effortlessly. That show’s deep bench of talent is just extraordinary.
Anyway, when Maddie talks to Shell, he chooses and delivers his words with the kind of skill and care an unpracticed speaker and interviewer like Maddie can’t match. When she tries to be coy about his racket, he makes her come out and say it. He’s the person who finally makes the racial subtext of their conversation text, praising Jewish people like her for surviving a genocide and overcoming racism, but ultimately letting her know that for all intents and purposes, she’s as white as anyone else to a Black person like himself. It’s like watching a serious version of Zorro making a few quick swordstrokes and his opponent (or lady friend)’s clothes all falling off at once, effortlessly torn to shreds.
Shell isn’t the only other person in the room, though. There’s also Reggie, who for all his gravelly soft-spokenness may as well be an open book. He lets slip that he’s a boxer — you know, the kind of hobby that leaves you with a black eye — and reveals that he and Shell collect tropical fish — you know, the kind that a Black guy with a black eye might have been seen buying at certain store the day a certain girl goes missing. The cherry on top is that, seemingly just for the fun of it, Shell reveals that Reggie was an item with Dora Carter, Cleo’s best friend. (Even now, when it’s in his best interest to do so, Reggie can’t hide his feelings: When Maddie asks if they were in love, he replies with a surprisinagly humble and tender “I’d like to think so.”)
I had a grand time reviewing this week’s excellent episode of Lady in the Lake for Vulture.
In Season 2, was House of the Dragon finally about the dragons?
Rad: FYI, I didn’t actually watch [Game of Thrones]. I came into House of the Dragon Season 2 kind of cold. With that in mind, Sean, what did you make of the big finale?
Sean: Well, call me old fashioned, but I’m the kind of person who thinks that when a season of a television show builds to a big, epic battle, it should show the big, epic battle. And so for the second time this year — first with Shōgun, and now with House of the Dragon — I wound up being kind of disappointed by the end. But I understand why they made the decision that they made.
Even a show like House of the Dragon has a limited budget, and doing all those effects-intensive dragon sequences costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. They had a shorter season than they had the first time around; I’d imagine that changed the rhythm around a bit. It’s not maybe how I would have emphasized things towards the end, but I thought that as an episode it was so effective at building that tension. It was almost like a victim of its own success — like, if I hadn’t been so invested in all those fights happening, I wouldn’t have felt so disappointed. So in that way, it worked.
Abubakar Salim Is Trying to Keep House of the Dragon Fresh for Book Readers
Going from Raised by Wolves to a juggernaut like House of the Dragon — was stepping into this production noticeably different?
Yeah. There’s a feeling of it having already been stabilized: This is an IP that exists, it has its own universe, its own rules, a structure. With Raised by Wolves, it felt we had a lot more to prove; we’re bringing people into this new world. Whereas Game of Thrones had many years to establish the groundwork.But there was a security in that, a safety in knowing the world I’m dancing in. That was the big thing for me. It felt like, Oh, okay, I know what’s happening here.
I’m sorry, but I just have to fanboy out about Raised by Wolves for a second.
No, no, that’s grand! I’m so sad it didn’t come to fruition for the third season. We had something really cool cooking, and it was just heartbreaking, man. I’m so determined to figure out a way to get that story told in some way, shape, or form. But we’ll see. Give it time.
“House of the Dragon” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Eight: “The Queen Who Ever Was”
Chekhov warned writers against placing just one gun on the mantel without firing it by the end, let alone a dozen. In its second season finale, “House of the Dragon” calls Chekhov’s bluff 11 times over.
Vhagar, Dreamfyre, Syrax, Vermax, Vermithor, Caraxes, Seasmoke, Silverwing, Moondancer and the newcomers Sheepstealer and Tessarion: These are the living dragons introduced thus far, all available — theoretically, anyway — to take part in hostilities when the episode begins. (Aegon pronounces his dragon, Sunfyre, dead, so that takes him out of the action; more on Sheepstealer and Tessarion later.) Eleven beasts locked and loaded, and not a single one fired when the closing credits roll.
True, Vhagar torches a town off-camera at Aemond’s command, a horrific crime that shocks both the Black and Green camps. Still, the entire episode — the entire season — builds to a conflagration that never arrives. Even the abundance of dragons soaring together in the opening credits’ tapestry feels like a bait and switch.
That final cut to black knocked the wind out of my sails. Unfortunately, the episode is so good at building tension and anticipation for the three-front war on the horizon that it becomes a victim of its own success when the action doesn’t arrive.
I reviewed the season finale of House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)