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.

For me, the main attraction here is Nick Offerman and Nicole Kidman wrestling, and not just for the obvious reasons, although for those too. This isn’t a perfect representation of how this stuff works — any convention that doesn’t want to be sued into oblivion is not going to let a guy get in the ring and wrestle an impromptu match without being medically cleared, and also you can’t send old wrestling equipment via media mail — but it’s a respectful one. It honors the idea that while this art for may be silly, as silly as taking pictures of your boobs with the word BOOBS written on them for example, it is still an art form, with artists who care about their craft and viewers who derive great happiness from watching their incredible bodies at work. If that doesn’t also describe erotica and pornography, I don’t know what does. 

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

“If you are into a certain Type of Guy, Nick Offerman has never been hotter.” When I saw critic Angie Han post these words, I had not yet watched this third and final episode in Margo’s Got Money Trouble’s three-part premiere. I had not yet seen the vision. But it simply cannot be denied: Nick Offerman looks amazing in this show. Jinx, his grizzled ex-wrestler character, brings forth his innate combination of traditional masculinity and avuncular vulnerability like nothing I’ve ever seen him do, and he gets off some incredible aged biker fits in the process. I’ll put it this way: Nick Offerman has scenes with Michelle Pfeiffer and Elle Fanning where you can’t take your eyes off him.

I reviewed episode three of Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider.

Fans of professional wrestling and prosthetic breasts, your ship has come in. This episode of Margo’s Got Money Troubles, the second installment in the show’s three-part premiere, officially introduces Nick Offerman as James “Jinx” Millet, a rehabbed and retired wrestler whose character comes from the “Macho Man” Randy Savage school of aesthetics. It also introduces actor Elle Fanning’s The Substance–style fake breasts, which are subjected to the trials of breastfeeding in all their prefab glory, and as such get a lot of airtime. That’s as it should be: Breastfeeding, like every other aspect of single motherhood, is a full-time job.

I reviewed episode two of Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider.

Cal, Faye, and Cassie really get dunked on in particular, but Nate is portrayed as a sweaty loser and Jules as a vaguely sinister femme fatale, while neither Maddy nor Rue’s behavior makes you particularly fond of them. The OnlyFans shoots are horny as hell, the language is laden with bad guy–appropriate slurs, a pig shits live on camera, Chloe Cherry groans about someone’s big cock in front of a swastika flag, on and on it goes.

Is it shock for shock’s sake? Admittedly I’m mostly with Cassie on these things as a matter of principle: When a friend of hers tells her that people are into sick shit, she replies “I know, right??” with audible excitement. Hell yeah, sister! That said, when you remove these characters from the supposedly sacrosanct setting of adolescence, it really does change everything. Rue and her friends are no longer teen tragedies, they’re just adult assholes. 

But that’s the point. What’s really shocking in an era when many fans judge the quality of a show by how good it makes their favorite characters look? All these people are assholes. Their experiences didn’t make them wiser, they made them more cunning. They are eager to exploit and willing to be exploited. That sucks. They suck. And that’s good television.

I reviewed this week’s hilariously mean-spirited episode of Euphoria for Decider.

For the first time all season long, the monsters of Monarch have stolen main-character status from the human beings. Featuring a big appearance by Godzilla himself, some impressively disgusting egg-laying visuals, and a recognizable emotional plight for Titan X to endure, this week’s episode shifts the focus from star-crossed romance to, well, monsters punching each other. In that respect, it’s a fun one. 

I reviewed last week’s characteristically spiffy Monarch for Decider.

“The beginning of a story, when you start to read it, is like a first date. You hope that from the opening lines, the magic will happen, and that you will sink into the narrative like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely. That’s what you want: for the author to come right up to you in the dark of your twisted mind and kiss you on the throat.”

Putting narration like this in the opening minutes of your brand new show is either very brave or very foolish. Using the voice of title character Margo Millet — English major, aspiring writer, and (as of the end of this premiere) single mother — writer-creator David E. Kelley is laying out the criteria by which the audience can evaluate the opening of his own show. By the time the closing credits roll, you can think back to Margo’s words and judge the quality of what you’ve watched.

Did it feel like a great first date? Did the magic happen? Did you sink into a hot narrative bath, like Margo herself sinks into an actual bath later on? Did Margo’s Got Money Troubles come up to you in the dark of your twisted mind and kiss you on the throat?

Well, no. 

I’m covering Margo’s Got Money Troubles for Decider, starting with my review of the uneven series premiere, one of three episodes that were released last week. Expect my other reviews up shortly after a back-end backlog!

Euphoria is lurid, overheated, violent, fetishistic, hyper-stylized, cynical, sentimental, melodramatic, druggy dirtbag action trash, so of course I love it. But it’s not hard to see why this has come to be the position of an increasingly beleaguered minority. Even putting aside the show’s lengthy-for-a-million-reasons absence from screens and writer-director-creator Sam Levinson’s “where there’s smoke, there’s…well, there’s smoke” air of disreputability, one need look no further than Stranger Things to see how critical fortunes can shift when the stars of a high-school drama age up. That show still at least pretended to be set during high school. What is Euphoria now?

I reviewed the season premiere of Euphoria for Decider.

“Disco deserved a better name, a beautiful name, because it was a beautiful art form. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star.” 

Reading these words changed my life. I was a sophomore in college and very much arrayed against any kind of mainstream music when I happened to pick up the loose liner notes for a Barry White best-of compilation one of my roommates had lying around. All my life disco had represented everything cheesy and plastic about popular music — until I read what Barry said.

Suddenly it all clicked for me. What used to come across as phony about disco now felt to me like the utmost sincerity. Love really is that powerful. Dancing really is that wonderful. The night really is that magical. Disco is designed to make you feel good things in as big a way as possible. It makes you beautiful.

This revelation opened up a mind that had been closed to vast swathes of artistic expression. It also made me just about lose my mind when DTF St. Louis writer/director/creator Steven Conrad selected my favorite Barry White song, “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby,” to soundtrack the climactic underwear-only dance party between Clark Forrest and Floyd Smernitch. I’m serious, I threw my hands up in the air so fast I spilled a beverage. I love this music. As it turns out, I think I love these men, too.

I reviewed the finale of DTF St. Louis, an extraordinary show and one of the year’s best, for Decider.