Euphoria’s third season has amounted to a full reboot, starring most of the same people in the same roles but with little else in common. It truly can’t be exaggerated what a difference the shift between Labrinth and Hans Zimmer as composers alone makes to the overall vibe, much less having Rue make border runs and Cassie make actual porn and Jules wear multi-thousand-dollar garments instead of stuff from the Salvation Army. These aren’t the kids we knew, fucked-up kids though they may have been, and this isn’t a show about those kids anymore. It’s a show about sawed-off shotguns. You have to make your peace with that.

Which I have. Euphoria Season 3 doesn’t feel like a memorial service, it feels like a viking funeral. It’s not about first kisses and popularity and suburban secrets, it’s a VistaVision fantasia about a hell on earth governed by a devil named fentanyl, and the lost souls fighting against the demon lords responsible. It’s not how I saw this story ending when it started, but it’s one of the wildest and most beautifully filmed neo-Westerns in the history of TV, big and bold and bloody against blue skies, like Pluribus for perverts. I’m only sorry you can’t light the same ship on fire twice.

I reviewed the series finale of Euphoria for Decider.

In the meantime, it’s still a marvelously made show. The vocal effects for Warren feel like something out of Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, and the age makeup holds up extremely well under direct closeups. But even less showy aspects of the episode are striking, like the sharp blue-tinted white light used to illuminate the boat and its cabin, cutting against the digital gloom that often plagues nighttime scenes set at sea on streaming shows. It’s a minor thing, but minor things add up, whether you’re making a show about a haunted island, or actually living on one.

I reviewed this week’s second episode of Widow’s Bay for Decider.

Betty Gilpin is television’s most valuable player. She has that Catherine O’Hara/Philip Seymour Hoffman factor: She’s good in absolutely everything, no matter how good that thing is. To name two recent examples relevant to her work in the first of this week’s two Widow’s Bay episodes, she played a ferocious survivor in Mark L. Smith and Peter Berg’s brutal ordeal, American Primeval, and a momentary First Lady in Mike Makowsky and Matt Ross’s creepily relevant assassination drama Death by Lightning. The former felt like a project written with her in mind, the latter one like one where her character was an afterthought. Regardless, she’s excellent in both. Unsurprisingly, she’s excellent here. 

So is Hamish Linklater. (Jeez. Is this the most “actors beloved by TV critics” cast ever assembled or what?) His most relevant recent work is Midnight Mass, Mike Flanagan’s story of a small island fishing town beset by evil forces, in which Linklater plays a God-fearing religious protector of the village with a sinister secret of his own. Sound familiar? 

I reviewed this week’s first Widow’s Bay episode for Decider.

Did Nate deserve any of this? What difference does that make, one way or the other? This is what happened to him. As Clint Eastwood put it in Unforgiven, “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

I reviewed this week’s Euphoria for Decider.

None of the show’s writing problems lessen the charm and vitality of the core cast. Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, and Greg Kinnear are all excellent — adorable, infuriating, and empathetic at different times. Nicole Kidman has much less to do as their wrestler-turned-lawyer, but hey, it’s Nicole Kidman, and somehow wrestlers turned lawyers feel good in a place like this. 

Thaddea Graham, however, is asked to do nothing as Susie but radiate sidekick energy, while Michale Angaro and Marcia Gay Harden are wasted on their characters’ exasperating villainy. This brings us back around to the writing. The Gables feel out of place because they’re the only characters who get to be assholes to Margo without either a) getting booted out of the story, or b) reconciling with her by the end of the next episode, or even the current one. That’s just how this show works.

Once you notice that mechanism…well, it’s a lot like that opening credit sequence. Margo gets bounced around from problem to problem that are inserted in her way expressly for her to collide with. She’s a pinball, not a person. That’s her real trouble.

I reviewed the season finale of Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider.

But for the most part, Tom’s trip is depicted through what we don’t see or hear. Smash cuts to black punctuate the action, which repeatedly resumes with Tom suddenly finding himself in some other place with some other character and no recollection of how they got together and then got where they currently are. From Todd’s house, to his office, to the historical society, to a meeting full of townsfolk furious with his curfew, to a meeting suddenly empty of townsfolk furious with his curfew (Tom’s only clues to their absence are dry erase marker in his hand, a message on a whiteboard, and a trashcan full of his vomit), back to the historical society, to Rosemary’s car, to a gas station, and finally to his house — he’s getting booted through time and space by the drug like he’s Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-five.

I wrote about this week’s excellent Widow’s Bay for Decider.

Euphoria is, above all, an impressionistic show, in which sound and vision often shift to show us the world as not as it is, but as it feels to those living in it. In that sense, the burning tree is no different than Cassie the Topless Kaiju. An image like this, however, inspires awe of a totally different sort. In surviving the near-crash, Rue once again feels God looking out for her, and the burning tree symbolizes His presence as the burning bush once did to Moses.

Which is why the burning tree should worry Rue, not reassure her. God spoke to Moses, yes, and watched over him and his people for years. But Moses died before reaching the promised land. Everything was alright, for a while anyway, but not for the person God appeared to in flames.

I reviewed last night’s beautifully shot Euphoria for Decider.

During its original run, Scrubs built every single episode to a serious emotional moment. Sometimes it involved the lives of the doctors and nurses (and Janitor) who worked at the show’s Sacred Heart hospital. Sometimes it involved the lives — and deaths — of their patients. Sometimes it was both. 

Either way it’s the sort of thing that would normally be death for the show itself. This is a sitcom we’re talking about, a situation comedy. If every situation were Sam Malone falling off the wagon, or Dorothy Zbornak failing to find a diagnosis for her chronic fatigue syndrome, or the Diff’rent Strokes episode with the “funny” bike shop owner, they wouldn’t be comedies anymore, would they?

This never eluded Bill Lawrence, Scrubs’ creator. I can’t speak to the man’s oeuvre since, but back then he knew that for every spoonful of sadness or schmaltz, he needed to include some of the silliest, goofiest, stupidest jokes imaginable. There’s a lot of great character-based work on Scrubs, don’t get me wrong, but if you watched the show I bet you remember The Todd’s banana hammocks or Turk’s dance routine to Bel Biv Devoe’s “Poison” as much as you remember J.D.’s long-running rivalry with his older brother or whatever. 

The point is that Scrubs worked hard for its laughs. Jokes, gags, pratfalls, wordplay, cutaway surrealism, workplace humor, slapstick, guys in banana hammocks, you name it — that show tried everything to get you to laugh. And it worked! It isn’t for everyone of course, but it’s one of this century’s few dramedies, as you might broadly define the subgenre, to understand that its drama portion requires comedy ballast. 

To put it another way, O.G. Scrubs understood something virtually no dramedy or comedy that gets serious or whatever has understood since: If you’re going to bastardize the sitcom format to tug at the heartstrings enough to make every episode a Very Special Episode, you’d better make me fucking laugh by any means necessary first.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles has never understood this. Sure, it’s an affable show, full of likeable characters doing vaguely amusing things, like professional wrestling, or OnlyFans modeling, or getting married in an Elvis chapel. It’s stacked to the ceiling with actors I like a lot: Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, Greg Kinnear, Nicole Kidman. (I’ve never been super high on Marcia Gay Harden and her work here is not turning me around, but your mileage may vary favorably.) It’s about important and interesting topics: sex work, single motherhood, the death of the middle class, professional wrestling. (Sorry, I really like professional wrestling.)

But is it funny enough to sustain an episode like this one, in which Margo is put through the stations of the cross by her awful babydaddy, his ghastly mother, her hugely irresponsible and selfish parents, and the iron fist of Child Protective Services. Not on your life, buster.

I reviewed this week’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider, and after becoming spoiled by the quality of Widow’s Bay I wound up writing a real stemwinder.

At the end of this episode of Euphoria, an enraged Alamo Brown, dressed in his best cowboy gear, rides a horse full-tilt towards Rue Bennett, who’s buried in the ground up to her neck. As he draws closer, she realizes he intends to swing a croquet mallet right into her exposed skull. 

This is more or less what this season of Euphoria is doing to the concept of restraint. It’s an unceasing onslaught of the tackiest, trashiest, most sensational, most spectacular images of sex, violence, and the people who make their money off them both that creator Sam Levinson can come up with. The result feels like what TikTok would be in Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. You can count shows that have ever gone this hard on one hand. What you do with the other is up to you.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Euphoria for Decider.

For most of this episode, however, Margo stays out of its own way. The result is a charming little confection of an episode that’s sweet, colorful, sexy — Elle Fanning looks incredible — and at times laugh-out-loud funny. (Jinx reassuring Margo that “People file restraining orders every day!” got me good.) There’s even a real surprise in the form of Kenny’s A+ reaction to Margo’s big revelation. I’m bummed that the show appears headed in the direction of a custody drama, the outcome of which seems as predicable as the twist itself.

I reviewed this week’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider.

With characters this well drawn and this locked down this early, there’s almost no limit to where you can go. Look at Cheers or The Golden Girls: Those characters were those characters immediately, and thus their pilot episodes contain some of the funniest jokes in the entire run of the series. Kind of reminds you of a show we’re watching right now, right?

I reviewed this week’s Widow’s Bay for Decider.

There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss it joke in the series premiere of Widow’s Bay. It’s one I didn’t even mention in my review, because on this show there’s simply a lot of good stuff to talk about. Mayor Tom Loftis is turning the page of his wall calendar, which features pictures of wolves. The month of July, however, is a picture of a car wreck. On one level, this is just a funny sight gag, one of many sprinkled in to show that things in Widow’s Bay are a little bit…off. On the other hand, dear God why is there a full-page photo of a crashed car  in a wall calendar?

Two episodes deep into Widow’s Bay, I’m starting to understand just how fruitful an approach this whole “is it funny, or, if you stop and think about it, is it actually deeply disturbing?” thing is going to be. 

I reviewed episode 2 of Widow’s Bay for Decider.

“Shut it down. Shut it all down. It’s starting….Close the port. Shutter the businesses. Sound the siren….You refuse to accept our history, to accept the truth, and I’ve lived with that for years, but now it’s gonna get people killed….The island has lain dormant, but she’s waking up, and that’s when bad things happen. You think the fog out there is natural? No, it ain’t natural. It already took Shep and it will take the rest of us tonight. It’s a haunt!”

It may not look like it to read it, but this is some of the funniest dialogue I’ve heard on TV all year. Delivered by the legendary character actor Stephen Root as Wyck, the eccentric old harbormaster of a quaint New England fishing village called Widow’s Bay, it’s a warning about impending death and damnation…and I got no further than the third sentence in the speech, “It’s starting,” before bursting out laughing. A guy who talks only in the voice of bad Stephen King knockoffs from the 1980s? Why, he’s speaking my language!

I’m covering the delightful new comedy Widow’s Bay for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.

Obviously, we’re very far away from high school relationship drama, even the intensely fraught and drugged-up version from Euphoria Seasons 1 and 2. Would the show have taken off like it did without that near-universal backdrop of adolescent angst? Probably not. Does that mean its reincarnation as a black-comedy crime drama about a group of former and current(ish) friends, all of whom are about as dumb as a pillowcase full of doorknobs, doesn’t work? Oh hell no — this is a destination hour of TV for me.

With the new status quo now established for the core characters, creator-writer-director Sam Levinson can make big jumps in the plot like the ones we saw here, while maintaining the show’s usual maximalist blend of arty trash and trashy art. There are bright white shots in this episode that are positively Kubrickian, there’s a rom-com makeover montage, there’s penis graffiti, there’s a high-stakes poker game, there’s a stomach-churning running theme of women being treated as disposable, and there’s a funeral for an assassinated cockatoo, complete with a tiny coffin. Euphoria Season 3 like a safe full of pills: Some are pick-me-ups, some are poison.

I reviewed this week’s Euphoria for Decider.

What makes Monarch so engaging, however, is its emphasis on human drama, and that’s what this finale is really about. As actor Mari Yamamoto explained to Decider, it’s about the bond Keiko and Cate have formed through their shared trauma — escaping the perils of Axis Mundi, coming in contact with the terrifying Titans, and losing Hiroshi, Keiko’s son and Cate’s father. It’s about the bittersweet parting of Keiko and Lee, two people who fell in love knowing it was a love they could never pursue, then denied even the chance to try by the circumstances of their crazy lives. It’s about Kentaro clinging to the past, dreaming of resurrecting his father rather than connecting with the still-living sister and grandmother he has. 

Perhaps nowhere do the two themes connect more clearly than in the scene where Cate reaches out a hand and touches Titan X’s tentacle. Cate’s bond with the beast is reminiscent of the connection that the benevolent kaiju Mothra has had with humans in various films, a symbol of the bond between humanity and nture. Throughout the finale, actor Anna Sawai’s face conveys the awe-inspiring but fragile beauty and power of the creature. This moment uses a monster to depict Cate as a woman who is open to the world’s possibilities once again, despite her many losses. As we said in our finale review, Monarch’s heart is so big it takes Titans to convey the size of it.

I wrote an explainer for the Monarch finale for Decider.

Spectacle is the language art employs to express emotions too large for our everyday vocabulary to convey. That’s the fundamental truth behind everything from musicals to science fiction, horror movies to fantasy epics, and it’s truer of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters than in just about any other show on the air this year. This show’s heart, as seen in the relationships of its main characters with one another, is so big that it takes Titans to convey it.

I reviewed the excellent season finale of Monarch for Decider.

I’m sorry about how heavy this is going to sound—

I love heavy.

That’s a relief. You’d mentioned Keiko and Cate bonding over the loss of Hiroshi, Keiko’s son and Cate’s father. During the stretch of episodes that contained Hiroshi’s death and funeral, my own father died. I have have kind of a big messy family—

[Laughs] Don’t we all?

Well, yeah! So it was cathartic to watch a show where the death of the loved one didn’t instantly bring everyone together and solve everyone’s problems. For Keiko, she’s grieving the loss of a son she didn’t even really get to know.

It really resonates, because I lost my father, too. It was right after wrapping Season 1. When we were shooting Season 2, I was actively grieving. [Tearing up] I’ll try not to cry, but it was a really tough season, because all Keiko’s doing is grieving. It’s so in parallel with my life. 

But I was really looking for signs. Some people do that when they experience loss, right? Like, “Send me a sign.” Meanwhile, I’m annoying, because I’m always pitching the writers theme and things Keiko could say. I kept saying, “I think Keiko would look for signs from Billy. Can we have something from him? Can it be a letter?” That culminated in all the letters he sent through the rifts. 

A hugely romantic image.

And with Hiroshi’s death, my first thought was, What would Keiko do in that moment? I love working with Takehiro Hira, he’s just so brilliant and I love him so much. We had a few scenes, and one I loved was a little scene where she’s like, “Don’t bite your nails” and stuff like that. So what she’s going to do in that moment to make up for lost time? My thought was, She’s going to try to comfort him. She’s going to sing a song to him that she sang to him as a baby. 

I asked the writers, and I found this song, which is of my dad’s generation, a song that everybody knew and sang at school. It’s called “Furusato,” which is the title of the episode, and it means home, homeland — your metaphorical home. The lyrics are “Mother, father, where are you?” It speaks to all of them. Cate is a person who keeps losing her home. Hiroshi, Keiko —they all repeatedly lose their homes because of the monsters, and because of the people around them, too. So it felt really fitting to try to recreate that home for him in his last moments. Because of all the things I was going through personally at the time, it was emotional. 

I remember that scene well — that was the day I told everyone “The Godzilla show made me cry.” But several of the Godzilla movies are very moving films, of course. Scenes like that prove kaiju are just a tool, and you can do almost anything you want with them, like any other genre.

Absolutely. That’s what we’re really trying to do: not just be a monster spectacle show, because the more you flesh out and explore the characters, the harder the kaiju stuff hits. The stakes are so much higher, and they have more meaning. I’m glad that comes through, because we work really hard to do it. As shitty as these people may seem, they’re so real. 

I interviewed actor Mari Yamamoto, aka Keiko Randa, about her work on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters for Decider.

If you don’t like conflict on Margo’s Got Money Troubles, just wait fifteen minutes. In this week’s episode, the family Millet takes a trip to Las Vegas for Shyanne and Kenny’s Elvis-themed nuptials. Once again, one of Margo’s parents finds out her big sex-worker secret. Once again, ugly things are said. Once again, they’re forgiven (if not forgotten) a couple scenes later. For a show that’s trying mighty hard for dramatic heft, this sitcom structure keeps wrapping things up in once neat little bow after another.

I reviewed this week’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider.

Like Cerberus, guard dog of the underworld, this episode of Euphoria is a three-headed monster. It follows three cohesive storylines, each centered on the show’s most charismatic and famous actresses: Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, and Sydney Sweeney. Each one is a crime story, to one extent or another, and each one is lurid, violent, or both. It’s like the King Ghidorah of trash. I mean that as a very high compliment.

I reviewed this week’s Euphoria for Decider. Show’s good!

“History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man,” or so Blue Öyster Cult sang of Godzilla long ago. Generally speaking, the Godzilla films that have demonstrated this theme most clearly do so on ecological/environmental/pacifist grounds, decrying the human instinct to conquer and destroy, leading to humanity’s own inevitable destruction when nature revolts. Monarch’s brilliant innovation is to link this directly to that other great folly of man: love.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Monarch for Decider.