Silo continues to be some of the most pound-for-pound satisfying storytelling on television. In this episode, the flashbacks serve up a heaping helping of Answers — though pointedly they have little to say about why the hell Stensen felt the need to turn his Silos into giant gas chambers with the flip of a switch, a haunting mystery in itself. The future returns us to our home for half of Season 2 and a much-beloved supporting character, wraps up the Orla Kent case, and keeps up the confrontations between Camille, Robert, and Juliette, which have been dramatic gold for all three actors involved. To me, this is the baseline of what TV should be. If you’re not at least this competent and compelling, give the job to someone who’ll do it right.

I reviewed this week’s Silo for Decider.

I love a good dance scene. I mean I love a good dance scene. I adore watching interesting characters played by beautiful people move their bodies in time with good music playing within their fictional world. I find interpreting their body language, feeling what the music and the movements are meant to communicate, absolutely thrilling. Dance scenes are a rhythmic audiovisual spectacle of sex and glamour. That’s the stuff movies and TV were made for. So of course I’m gonna go gaga for an entire dance episode. 

I reviewed this week’s The Shards for Decider.

To put it into the context of superhero comics, Lanterns is very much a ’00s-style “superheroes-plus” story, the idea back then being that superheroes were unpopular, but other genres were not, so you just mash them together and enjoy the results. The plus in this “superheroes-plus” story is “a True Detective–style unlikely buddy cops in rural America murder mystery.” It’s the kind of slow, down-to-earth thing superhero fans reared on Bendis and Brubaker are likely to enjoy.

I reviewed the series premiere of Lanterns, which I liked, for Decider.

Robert talks Camille down by saying their son should be spared having two murderers for parents. Clearly he’s feeling guilty for using the boy’s school jacket to help smuggle IDs needed for the aborted bombing; Camille caught him so easily you’d almost think he wanted to be caught. Once again, actor Common makes Robert’s moral and emotional dilemmas seem truly painful for him to endure. This is not a man used to honoring his own conscience.

I reviewed this week’s Silo for Decider.

The episode ends with Debbie refusing to look up at the beautiful sky. “I’ve seen it already,” she sighs. This cynicism is the embodiment of the world of adulthood and death into which Bret now feels he’s been thrust permanently. His days as a kid are permanently over. This, of course, is what the whole party was a rehearsal for, but now it seems ugly and empty. As a wise woman once said, when they get what they want, they never want it again.

I reviewed episode four of The Shards for Decider.

FX‘s The Shards loves lingering on beautiful things that won’t last. Director Michael Uppdendahl’s lens luxuriates in the sight of a beaming, utterly fearless girl roller-disco dancing on her own in slow motion…on a circle of young, beautiful friends eating lunch, the camera whirling around and around them…on an incredible dancer commanding the camera…on a fast drive down a twisting, secret road…on a fallen model practicing her grand Oscar kiss-off…on a boy smelling his lost boyfriend’s jacket and crying. When this episode finds something nice to look at, it lets you know it, and does not let go, until it has to.

I reviewed episode 3 of The Shards for Decider.

What an odd thing Apple TV‘s Sugar has become. Whatever the behind-the-scenes turmoil during Season 1 that led to a showrunner handoff was, it’s worth bringing up only because its effects are still being felt on screen. Despite being built to for a full season, there’s a rushed, slapdash quality to the resolution of old storylines and the establishment of new ones here that’s really unfortunate to see on a show that only just began steering itself out of its second-season skid.

I reviewed the baffling season finale of Sugar for Decider.

What a pleasure it is, watching Apple TV’s Silo’s investment in Camille Sims — and in Alexandria Riley, the actor who plays her — pay off. 

Making someone who’s not part of the cast’s core the chief antagonist for the show’s third season is a risky move. Camille’s been around since early on, but she’s hasn’t had the importance of a Knox or a Shirley or a Sheriff Paul. Nor does Alexandria Riley have the star cachet of series leads Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins, Common, Harriet Walter, Steve Zahn when he’s around, or Rashida Jones and David Oyelowo for a hot minute way back when. 

Yet here Camille is, generating the story’s main conflict, acting like a true conflicted but hubristic arch-villain. She’s having arguments with the AI that runs the Silo, with its messianic hero Juliette Nichols, with her increasingly estranged husband Robert Sims, even with her troubled son Anthony. She’s helping the Voice in the Vault deceive Juliete, while also staying a step ahead of the Voice by taking the initiative and dosing the whole damn Silo with the forgetting drug “Vitamin D+” hours before the Algorithm orders her to. 

As a politician, she’s an all too familiar type. She’s always turning the ratchet to the right, to more extreme extralegal sanction, to duplicity as policy, to ceding decisions to an AI program that tells her what a great job she’s doing to calm her down. Her apparently sincere belief that she’s going to turn the minds of everyone in the SIlo to Swiss cheese For The Good Of The Silo somehow makes her conduct more infuriating than if she were merely a cynic or a sociopath. She’s a portrait of a person mistaking doing their worst for doing the best they can.

I reviewed this week’s Silo for Decider.

Directed by frequent Ryan Murphy collaborator Michael Uppendahl, this episode lacks its predecessor’s copious film references and dreamy vibe. But it’s excellent at capturing the outrageous lives of hedonism, luxury, and unsupervised independence enjoyed by Bret and “the gang.” Drinking red wine in the hot tubs of houses blissfully unoccupied by parents might be a memorable evening for normal kids; for them, it was Tuesday.

The show’s deadpan cheesiness, meanwhile, is a hoot. The central-casting Satanic cult and its evil leader named (dun dun dunnnnnn!) Bruce (Gus Halper). Bret keeping a knife on his manuscript for self-defense. Susan narrating every detail of the Kellner family’s lives (Matt’s dad is played by an uncredited James Wolk) like she’s somehow the prosecuting attorney in his murder trial. Bret’s pretentious pronouncements about the perils of life in the Serial Killer Age…It’s funny! On purpose! 

It’s also sexy and sleazy and now and then creepy and occasionally, as in a striking composition that puts Bret’s face in the extreme foreground as Debbie does her makeup behind him, lovely. As is typically the case with Murphy ensembles, everyone in the cast appears to be having a ball with the material. I know I am.

I reviewed episode two of The Shards for Decider.

“It became clear to me after our second introduction that Robert Mallory was like a virus, a new kind of insidious, invading agent who was here to destroy the very cellular structure of my friends, my school, and me. He was up to something, and it was up to me to find out exactly what it was.” Herein, I believe, lies the secret of exactly how seriously you’re meant to take FX‘s The Shards. Feel how you will about Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis, the provocateurs who adapted the series from Ellis’s novel of the same name — itself a work of autofiction, juxtaposing details from Ellis’s real childhood with pure invention — but they understand how this sounds. 

These are the words of a teenager, Bret Easton Ellis’s fictional avatar in fact, declaring that another teenager is a virus out to destroy everything, And Only I Can Stop Him. It’s superhero dialogue, coming from the mouth of a kid who looks like Peter Parker, but enjoys luxury living like Jordan Belfort…or Patrick Bateman. And why has he decided that this newcomer to his clique is pure evil? Because the guy fibbed about, or just plain forgot, seeing Bret for five seconds at an opening-day screening of The Shining half a year earlier. The monster! 

It’s funny on purpose, is what I’m saying. If you want to appreciate The Shards, you’ll have to get on that level. 

I reviewed the premiere of The Shards for Decider. Fun show!

Meat, sex, murder. As of this episode, John Sugar has partaken in all three. What kind of man — or “man” — does that make him?

For answers, maybe we should look to Breaking Bad, showrunner Sam Catlin’s old stomping grounds and an obvious influence on this season of Sugar, even beyond the presence of Better Call Saul villain Tony Dalton as the evil Lieutenant Vega. This episode starts with a BB/BCS-style cold open, showing us the detritus from a car crash before flashing back two days earlier to show us how that car came to be upside-down in the middle of a desert road. 

Breaking Bad’s storyline is so famous by now it hardly constitutes a spoiler warning to discuss it, but the basic idea was that once a mild-mannered but frustrated science teacher started killing people, he’d never stop. The definition of “self-defense” is slowly expanded outward until he’s ordering a dozen simultaneous hits to keep people from snitching. When you break bad, or when you “assimilate” in Sugar’s parlance, there’s no going back.

Just ask Sugar’s assimilated friends Peg and Henry, both dead by their own hands. Is that where Sugar is headed? A life of crime, be it white-collar like Peg or red-handed like Henry, culminating in suicide? Or will he skip the middleman and cut straight to the killing-himself bit? Sugar connects with a cheery scene on his television right at the end of the episode, or else I’d figure self-harm was an immediate possibility.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself: In this episode, John Sugar wins.

I reviewed this week’s fun episode of Sugar for Decider.

Before I start an episode of Apple TV‘s Cape Fear, I crank up the volume on my soundbar. I want that Bernard Herrmann/Elmer Bernstein/Jeff Russo score to hit like the fist of an angry god. I turn off every light, because I want the ruddy flesh tones and blue-green eyes of these sweat-soaked lunatics to pop off the screen. I turn off the air conditioning, partially because I don’t want to the show to compete with the white noise but partially because if it gets hot while I watch it, well, that feels appropriate. To properly enjoy Cape Fear, you have to give yourself over to it completely. 

Boy, does that approach pay dividends here. Titled “The Executioners” after the John D. MacDonald novel that started it all, this season finale plays more like the finale of a fireworks show, with one spectacular scene and set piece after another until the ominously understated conclusion. It’s a sensory experience, a parade of lurid sights and bombastic sounds best represented by a single shot: Max Cady, standing on the roof of the Bowdens’ house in the middle of a hurricane, as the theme song blares. I was grinning from ear to ear. A moment like that is why you make this show — a masterpiece of modern TV horror.

I reviewed the finale of Cape Fear for Decider.

Hot damn, this is the kind of episode you build mystery boxes for. This obviously pivotal episode of the third season of Silo is titled “Memory,” for multiple reasons. In part, it’s because we are afforded glimpses of the past we skipped over in the transition between seasons. In part, it’s because with the help of her friends, Juliette begins, at last, to remember.

I reviewed this week’s Silo for Decider.

Okay, so this episode leaves in a crime-does-not-pay suicide but edits out a love scene like it’s a Hays Code Hollywood movie. Other than that, though, it’s the second in a row I’d call the strongest of the season to date. Director Adam Bernstein and cinematographer Marshall Adams really outdo themselves here, with one crisp, gorgeous shot of the Los Angeles night after another. Colin Farrell and Laura Donnelly look radiant during their date, like Golden Age movie stars. There’s a view of the sky at dusk that John and Peg catch before her death that takes your breath away.

Meanwhile, the mystery now feels much more focused. We know what Vega is up to and why, though as Sugar notes he’s just the muscle and his real backer has yet to reveal themselves. Ji’s plight makes more sense, particularly now that Vega has gotten Danny dragged off to jail where he can be killed if John fails to cough up Ji’s location. Vega and Sugar have established some hero-villain understanding like Pacino and De Niro in Heat. And Peg works much better as a real, traumatic memory than a series of cryptic hallucinations. I’ll wait until a third strong episode in a row establishes a pattern for certain, but after its initial growing pains, it seems Apple TV‘s Sugar Season 2 may have righted the ship.

I reviewed this week’s Sugar for Decider.

Suddenly I wonder if the tables will be turned in the finale. In previous iterations of the story, Max Cady assaults the Bowden family at Cape Fear. But Tom is in prison, Natalie is with Noa, and Zack is who knows where, possibly in Max’s trunk but most likely not given the timing. That leaves Anna alone with Max, Crystal, Robert, Luke, and mama Hester (Jill Larson). (Granted, she’s busy breastfeeding dolls she believes to be Crystal, but she’s still out there.) Will the finale, which I fully expect to be batshit insane, feature Anna as a one-woman army, an unstoppable force destroying the Cady family before it destroys hers?

I reviewed this week’s Cape Fear for Decider.

It’s time to talk about the past. Or, rather, the present. It’s time to have a tough conversation about the pre-apocalyptic flashbacks, is what I’m saying. 

On some levels, they have a lot going for it. This is the storyline that will ostensibly answer the big question, Why are they down there?, and as such it has undoubtedly held my interest. It’s charmingly acted by Jessica Henwick as investigative journalist Helen Drew and Ashley Zukerman as idealistic freshman congressman Daniel Keene. (They’re very good-looking people.) But man, the material is like styrofoam packing peanuts, designed to transport you safely from point A to point B, nothing more. I hate those things.

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

If Sugar 2.0’s back-to-basics approach is going to work, it’s because of episodes like this. Relying more on the tricks of Sugar’s trade than police-procedural style portrayals of stereotypical gangbangers, this week’s installment is the most solid of the season so far. 

I reviewed this week’s Sugar for Decider.

I can picture it now. A mausoleum somewhere in Savannah, holding four corpses. HERE LIE THE BOWDENS, reads the legend above the entrance to their crypt, below which is printed a single explanatory sentence for their collective demise: “IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME.” Over and over, Anna, Tom, and Natalie — Zack is in a mental institution recovering from his brainwashing — do what feels right in the moment, only for it to come back to haunt them in the most horrifying way possible.

I reviewed this week’s Cape Fear for Decider.

When portraying a functionary in a dystopian regime, it helps to have resting scowl face. Actor Denise Gough, for example, made the most of what she has called her “downturny mouth” as the sneering Imperial officer Dedra Meero in Andor. Richard Burton’s hard-bitten hangdog looks made his O’Brien in the film version of 1984 seem possessed of some terrible wisdom that burns from within. 

To this list, we can add Alexandria Riley and her character, Camille Sims, on Silo. For a long time I struggled with Camille, wondering why she was so much less sympathetic even than archvillains like Bernard or her own husband, Robert Sims. Even when she was helping Juliette before the rebellion and her exile and return, something in her eyes just defies empathy. She has the face of someone who’s about to explain to you why they had to betray you, and will be irritated that you don’t understand.

This, of course, is all by design on the part of the writers, the filmmakers, and the actor. In fact, Camille’s fundamental dislikability is made canon in this episode, by no less an authority than the Algorithm itself. Why was she chosen by the AI that runs the Silo to become the new head of IT and guardian of the Silo’s terrible secrets? “Your ability to lie,” the program says placidly. Her manipulative nature, her willingness to play both sides of any given conflict, is ironically how the Algorithm knew she could be trusted.

I reviewed this week’s Silo for Decider.

A couple years ago I wrote an essay about a TV style or subgenre I called “the New Lurid”: Dead Ringers, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Idol, Copenhagen Cowboy, and other hyper-lush depictions of the incestuous degeneracy of the ultra-rich — Saltburn-core, basically. Since then, recent seasons of shows such as The White Lotus, Industry, Euphoria, and Interview with the Vampire as retitled The Vampire Lestat have carried the New Lurid torch. Cape Fear, a raw psychosexual thriller about a one-percenter family in which everyone is related, as they fight and fuck under trees whose branches appear ready to snap from the weight of their greenness, does so too.

“Like a televisual vanitas,” I wrote, these shows are “sensual but death-haunted, lush to the point of rottenness, like a once-magnificent family finally, terminally, gone to seed.” If that doesn’t describe Cape Fear, I don’t know what does.

I reviewed this week’s Cape Fear for Decider.