When dealing with the Olympics honcho Katerina Brett (Jennifer Roszell), Chuck embarks on a lengthy analogy involving “high-grading” bears, which before hibernation eat only the choicest parts of the salmon they catch, leaving the rest to rot. To Chuck, billionaires like Prince are the bears, and we civilians are the salmon. I’m not quite sure what that makes Chuck.
I reviewed tonight’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
So we’re left with a ragtag band of survivors, adult and child, android and human, atheist and believer, running around trying to figure out how to save themselves from a giant tentacled serpent, an acid sea full of humanoid creatures, and an ancient alien intelligence that seems to want them all dead. I can’t be the only person reminded of Game of Thrones (and not just because of the similarities between the two shows’ scores), in which various fabulously wealthy families carried on killing each other while a threat to all life grew more and more powerful, the danger more and more urgent. Good thing these are only stories on TV, right?
Right?
I reviewed last week’s episode of Raised by Wolves for Decider.
You know, it’s funny: Before I watched this episode of “Billions,” I’d been thinking to myself, “It’s been too long since Chuck Rhoades went to a dungeon.”
Seriously! The series launched with an image of Chuck in flagrante, and his so-called “arousal template” played a major role in the show on and off for quite some time. A calculated admission of his predilections helped him win the attorney general’s office. And a failure to service his kink spelled the end of his relationship with last season’s romantic interest, played by Julianna Margulies.
In this very episode, in fact, Rhoades says regarding sex workers, “I’m out of that game.” An almost entirely sexless sixth season, at least as far as Chuck is concerned, just didn’t sit right.
So it was with some pleasure that I greeted Chuck’s descent into his old dungeon, on a quest to uncover the current location of the high-end brothel where Wags illegally entertained the bigwigs who select the host city of the 2028 Olympics. It was great to see Clara Wong as Troy, Chuck’s one-time dominatrix, and even better to see Paul Giamatti squirm as Troy painfully tweaked Chuck’s ear.
I reviewed this week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
Raised by Wolves is, among many things, a work of ferocious body horror. The human—and android—body is a grotesque battlefield on this show—bleeding white goo, erupting into hideous tumors, sprouting growths that surround the victim like a cocoon, giving birth through multiple orifices, removing and consuming weaponized eyeballs, evolving and devolving into terrifying creatures, you name it. At the climax of this episode, aptly titled “The Tree,” it seems like we have a brand new body-horror image to add to the list: Sue’s transformation into a fucking tree.
There are few things on television I enjoy more than a good “Billions” fake-out. The sine qua non comes from the stellar Season 2 episode “Golden Frog Time,” in which a Chuck Rhoades who at first appears to be sobbing is actually laughing hysterically because his plan to undermine his enemy Bobby Axelrod worked like a charm. (At the expense of his best friend and his father, but still!)
The sleight-of-hand that occurs in this week’s episode isn’t nearly as momentous, but it provides that thrilling frisson nonetheless. For a moment, it looks as if Chuck has put the screws to Mike Prince’s alma mater, Indiana A&M, to prevent it from investing in his firm. How? By blackmailing the university’s endowment chair, Stuart Legere (Whit Stillman alum Chris Eigeman), who has been embezzling.
But it turns out that the opposite is true. Chuck is blackmailing Legere and the endowment into investing with Prince by threatening to expose the embezzlement. Having previously rejected his father for the role as too obvious a choice, Chuck wants an inside man who will report back on Prince’s every move, and now he has found one. The needle drop of the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” that accompanies the maneuver is no mere music cue. It’s a mission statement: No matter what Mike Prince does, the watchful eyes of Charles Rhoades Jr. will be on him, whether he knows it or not.
I reviewed this week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
And there you have it! A narratively and emotionally complex episode, filled with far-out sci-fi imagery, fueled by powerful performances from Amanda Collin as Mother and Aasiya Shah as Holly (my God, the way she sobs when Marcus returns to her) among others, raising far more questions than it answers yet still delivering the goods from a storytelling and image-making perspective—all amid a bestiary that seems to be growing by the day. Raised by Wolves, folks. Isn’t it something?
I reviewed the most recent episode of Raised by Wolves for Decider.
When reviewing a particularly bizarre episode of television, you always run the risk of blowing things out of proportion. The breathless prose you might adopt in order to describe what you’ve watched is a cliché unto itself at this point, and it’s a safe bet that someone out there is making genuinely outré work that puts any given hour of a streaming drama to shame. So I’m going to try and restrain myself when talking about “Control,” the fourth episode of Raised by Wolves’ second season, once I get past saying this: holy Jesus, that was bat-guano crazy.
Six hundred dollars for coffee with Kate Sacker; $46,863 for Wendy Rhoades’s wardrobe; $162,500 for a night at a Covid-free bordello with Wags; $300 million for Mike Prince’s new yacht, plus an extra $300 million to neutralize its carbon footprint. We’ve said before in this space that the credo of the pro wrestler Ted DiBiase (a.k.a. the Million Dollar Man), “Everybody’s got a price,” holds sway in the world of “Billions.” Never before has the show made it quite this literal.
In one of the boldest stylistic choices ever made by the show — you could argue the boldest, and I wouldn’t object — this week’s episode of “Billions” repeatedly freezes the action and superimposes graphics that show you the cost of all the name brands, grand plans and illegal indulgences enjoyed by Michael Prince and his employees. Did you know that a private hog roast with the restaurateur Rodney Scott costs $25,000? That a batch of quaaludes and a courier to deliver them runs you $8,400? That multiple characters’ personal wardrobes and grooming routines on a given day cost more than this country’s yearly per capita income? You sure do now!
I reviewed this week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
In the latest episode of the BLAH podcast, Stefan Sasse and I discuss Amazon’s adaptation of The Wheel of Time from the perspective of TWoT neophytes. Available here or wherever you get your podcasts!
[Morrisey voice] “Robot with a chainsaw, I know, I know, it’s serious.”
Actually, it’s not serious at all. It’s fucking wild, is what it is! Like, show of hands: Who thought Raised by Wolves would one day show Father, the clinically mild-mannered caretaker android responsible for the fate of the human race, battle a robot with a chainsaw for an arm to the death amid a cheering crowd? Hmmm…I’m not seeing any hands raised!
I reviewed this week’s episode of Raised by Wolves for Decider.
If you thought Raised by Wolves was going to be shy about showing us its big snake, think again. The second episode of the show’s second season—released simultaneously with the premiere—delivers on the batshit promise of the Raised By Wolves Season 1 finale in a big way. Not only does the giant flying snake return, it becomes the central focus of the entire plot, as the whole atheist Collective sets out to seek and destroy the beast. I’m guessing that this will be a taller order than they’ve anticipated, but hey, this is Raised by Wolves—I’ve been wrong before, and I could be wrong again.
I reviewed the second half of Raised by Wolves’ two-part Season 2 premiere for Decider.
“I look at every competitor as a potential partner … right up until I can’t anymore.” As far as one-sentence encapsulations of the Mike Prince Method go, it’s hard to beat this statement by the billionaire coprotagonist of the sixth season of “Billions.” In this week’s episode, titled “S.T.D.” (it’s not what you think), Prince drives one such competitor — one of the more odious figures in the “Billions” legendarium — to the edge of defeat, then rides in to save his bacon and enrich them both.
It’s a feat of bargaining so impressive that it literally drives Prince’s enemy Chuck Rhoades into the street, wielding a bullhorn instead of his authority as Attorney General. In the end, Chuck may find the former more effective than the latter.
I reviewed last night’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.
The show continues to be a rare beast, a meditation on the human condition that doesn’t dwell on the whole what-it-means-to-be-human thing that drags down so much android-based SF. (We’re all human, we know what it means!) It’s strange, it’s mysterious, it’s funny, it’s gross, it’s impeccably acted, it’s beautifully shot by director Ernest Dickerson—it’s Raised by Wolves, and I’m glad it’s back.
I’ll be covering Raised by Wolves Season 2 for Decider, starting with my review of the premiere.
All of Us Are Dead ends on a note of mystery. Not the cliffhanger sort, the “gee I wonder what happens next” sort, but the “I actually have no idea where it would go after this” sort, the “I’m not really even sure how I’m supposed to feel about this” sort. And I’m glad for it.
I reviewed the finale of All of Us Are Dead for Decider. Speaking as someone who’d soured on zombie media, this show took me by surprise.
It’s getting bleaker. That’s the unmistakable trajectory All of Us Are Dead is taking in its final episodes, at least from where I’m sitting. There’s every possibility, of course, that the finale will take things in a more optimistic direction—but the casualties that began piling up in the previous episode have only mounted, and the city that surrounds them has been destroyed. It’s hard not to think that the show may well live up to its ominous title.
I reviewed the penultimate episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.
So that’s where things stand after this grim episode: more kids dead, zombies on the move, and an entire city on the chopping block. Only two episodes remain; the question is now, to use the tagline for the horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, who will survive—and what will be left of them?
I reviewed the tenth episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.
The most impressive thing about All of Us Are Dead is how it can continue to mine pathos out of a premise — “zombies overrun society and a small band of survivors in a unique location struggle to stay alive” — that you could easily have dismissed as totally exhausted by now. (Hell, I dismissed it!) In this particular episode, that pathos stems from the fear, and the fact, of abandonment. It stands to reason: In a world overrun by the living dead, being left for dead by the living is perhaps the worst thing anyone can endure.
I reviewed the ninth episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.
Honestly, other than the impressively unpleasant violence, the lasting image of the episode is of the kids gathered around the fire, talking honestly amongst themselves. They’ve spent so much of their lives worried about their grades, their teachers, the opinions of their classmates, their future prospects—and now that their future may have been taken away, they’re able to be honest with each other about all this, for the first time in most of their lives.
In essence, the zombie outbreak functions like an encounter group, forcing them to shake free of their social constraints and relate to one another for real. I don’t know if that’s social commentary or just a convenient storytelling device, but it’s the kind of character work the show requires to stay ahead of the zombie-show pack. In a genre that, for the past twenty years or so, has largely focused on the need to survive above all else, it’s refreshing to see a zombie outbreak that brings out people’s most vulnerable sides, instead of turning them all into unrepentant hardasses. The hardasses are what got them all into this mess, after all. Now’s the time for something new.
Zombie fans rejoice: The undead are back in a big way thanks to All of Us Are Dead. The Korean-made Netflix original series tells the story of a group of high-school students struggling to survive a zombie outbreak that begins right there in their school. Combining inventive and thrilling action sequences with a cast of relatable, sympathetic characters, it’s injected new life (no pun intended) into the zombie genre.
Adapted by writer Chun Sung-il from the webcomic Now at Our School by Joo Dong-geun, All of Us Are Dead appears to be following in the pop-culture footsteps of Netflix’s other big Korean horror hit, 2021’s Squid Game. But after all of its pulse-pounding zombie action, the finale ends on a decidedly ambiguous note. What does it all mean, and what does it say about the potential for more stories in the All of Us Are Dead universe?
Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of All of Us Are Dead—warning: major spoilers ahead!
I wrote a little explainer about the ending of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.
It’s perfectly fine zombie-action filmmaking, adding some new wrinkles to the basic concept and positioning the survivors for one last push for freedom. I miss some of the emotional power of its predecessors, which here is limited to the plight of that poor kid on the roof. But this is all a setup for the next installment, and I understand the need to keep things plot-centric. My hope is that the remaining episodes will reinject (reinfect?) the proceedings with the sense of pain, loss, and against-the-odds optimism that distinguished its predecessors. I think it’s a smart enough show to pull it off.
I reviewed the seventh episode of All of Us Are Dead for Decider.