And that, sigh, is where Wheels come in. He’s the leader of a secluded but benevolent underground community in the tunnels beneath Grand Central Station, a multi-racial gender utopia that is functionally identical to a hippie commune from a circa-1970 off-Broadway musical. In New Orleans-accented dialogue laden with absurd beatnik wordplay like “electrickery” and “ain’t no people higher, in both senses of the word,” he introduces Emma to this improbable community of “mole people” straight out of an urban legend.

Frankly, I wish they’d stayed there. Once, not very long ago, this was a show about a mother driven to psychosis by the belief her baby is not human, and the horrified husband left behind to deal with the fact that the woman he loved more than anyone murdered their child and nearly murdered him as well. The horror stems from that, and from the uncertainty of the role of the supernatural in it all — the fear that the mother was right all along, and what that means about the world. It does not stem from a visit to the Age of Aquarius, featuring Tom Bombadil narrating a Zatarain’s commercial.  

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Changeling for Decider.

Throughout the Ahsoka journey — and what a journey it’s been, am I right? — I’ve insisted that the people who say its problem is assuming everyone’s familiar with the Dave Filoni cartoons to which it’s a direct sequel have identified the wrong problem. This is Star Wars after all, and you don’t exactly need to consult Wookieepedia to figure out which characters are good, which characters are bad, and which one-sentence-long backstories and motivations have driven them in those directions. I didn’t need to be familiar with Ahsoka, Sabine, Hera, Ezra and the gang to figure out they were Rebel soldiers and friends, that Ezra was lost in some big victory, and that the loss has haunted the otherwise basically genial survivors. You don’t need to know anything beyond that.

But occasionally, you do need to feel something beyond that, and that’s where the two most recent episodes of Ahsoka have failed. That includes this episode, inexplicably subtitled “Dreams and Madness” despite the total lack of dreams or madness in the episode itself. Sure, you can understand that Sabine’s reunion with Ezra, Sabine’s reunion with Ahsoka, and Ahsoka’s reunion with Ezra are big deals. But unless you spent several years watching some genuinely hideous computer-animated children’s cartoons, I’m not sure how writer-creator Dave Filoni expects you to actually feel about this stuff. I’m not sure I feel anything at all, other than boredom.

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

Did you ever see passable CGI space whales undulating through a hyperspace rainbow vortex, man? Did you ever see passable CGI space whales undulating through a hyperspace rainbow vortex…on weed? It’s fuckin’ crazy, man! It’s like you are a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away!

I reviewed this week’s Ahsoka, which contains the worst moment in the history of Star Wars, for Decider.

When I say LaKeith Stanfield is the star of The Changeling, I mean it: LaKeith Stanfield is the star of The Changeling. So much of what makes the show work stems directly from his performance, which takes a single note — grief — and turns it into a symphony. 

I reviewed today’s episode of The Changeling for Decider.

Oddly, this is the second week in a row that a dark fantasy show from a major tech-platform streaming service debuted with three episodes because they were clearly saving the best for last; the same thing happened with Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time just a few days ago. Lord only knows why streamers do what they do (beyond screwing writers and actors to save a buck, I mean), but it’s hard to question the wisdom of packaging The Changeling this way. From “promising but a bit treacly” to “okay, now we’re going somewhere” to “Jesus Christ make it stop” in three episodes is the kind of trajectory that shows a horror series is being made with thought, skill, and a willingness to go there. I’m both dreading and excited for where it goes next.

I reviewed the third and final episode of The Changeling‘s three-part premiere last week for Decider.

It’s not until I lay it all out like that that I realize just how steep a hill the tenth and final episode of Foundation’s superb second season had to climb. To deliver on any one of these promising elements of the show would be an achievement, one that many shows, including ones I really like, would settle for. Just by way of a for instance: Silo, a sister “adaptation of a bestselling sci-fi series about the menacing future airing on Apple TV+” show, is all the better for having a narrow focus and relentlessly aiming its laser at it.

But that was not the path chosen for Foundation. Instead, writers Goyer and Liz Phang, director Alex Graves, and the entire stellar cast set about delivering on every single thing. And deliver they did. Overdelivered, actually. In fact, in terms of sheer scale and scope and daring, the last show I can remember serving up season finales this replete with emotional and visual spectacle is, deep breath, Game of Thrones. And no, I’m not tossing that comparison around lightly. In terms of SFF TV, Foundation is currently as good as it gets.

I reviewed the finale of Foundation Season 2 for Decider. What a show!

Humor aside, the project this episode brings to mind more than any other — and not just because they share a composer, Baltimore musician Dan Deacon — is Unedited Footage of a Bear, the terrifying 2014 Adult Swim Infomercial whose drum I never stop banging. (I’ve probably talked more about this short film than the filmmakers, Alan Resnick and Ben O’Brien, have themselves.) The slow descent from happy parenthood to isolated misery; the emphasis on how mothers in psychological distress often go un- or under-treated; the portrayal of severe mental illness as something so close to the supernatural stuff of horror that it’s a distinction without a difference; the use of both the family and the phone as vectors for fear — it’s all there. I don’t mean to imply this is a rip-off, because it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination. I do mean to imply, however, that this episode is eerie enough to merit comparison to one of the most frightening things I’ve ever seen on television.

As was the case with Unedited Footage, the lead performance is the load-bearing structure here. Like twin actors Kerry and Jacqueline Donelli in that earlier project, Clark Backo transitions so seamlessly from perky, fun mama to glassy-eyed, sallow-faced living zombie. Her paranoia and dread, which either bring on or are brought on by her sleeplessness, have turned her into something less than herself — a being one macabre half-step out of sync with the world around her, like a mirrored reflection that somehow begins moving a brief but unmistakable moment after you do. By episode’s end, you too want to keep this poor person and her poor baby away from each other, for both their sakes.

LaKeith Stanfield’s assignment in this episode is a comparatively easy one: Be normal, be a good dad, be a pretty shitty friend, and be ready willing and able to distance yourself from your obviously sick wife after months of this shit have you at your wits’ end. But in a horror series, playing the character who doesn’t realize something is capital-W Wrong actually is hard work: You have to keep the audience caring what happens to you even as your ignorance or unwillingness to see what’s happening drives us away. Stanfield’s not doing the gangbusters work Backo is in this ep, but what he is doing is impressive in its own right.

I reviewed episode two of The Changeling for Decider.

Our Take: Professional wrestling is a truly fascinating, uniquely American art form and subculture. Long before I became a weekly viewer — fully three decades removed from when I thrilled to the likes of Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and the Ultimate Warrior as a child — I was drawn to its history, its personalities, and its jargon, which remains one of the most valuable lenses through which to see the world I can think of. (The concept of “kayfabe,” the agreed-upon un-reality in which pro wrestling conflicts exist, is worth the price of admission alone.)

Wrestlers depicts this riveting demimonde through the memorable personae of people living in it. Booker (i.e. head writer) Al Snow, co-owner and promoter Matt Jones, and the Julia Garner character-in-waiting HollyHood Haley J are instantly recognizable character archetypes: hero, villain, and antihero. 

Director Greg Whiteley wisely contrasts the emergence of these figures within the non-fictional narrative (at least by reality-show standards) on one hand and the pre-planned presentation of OVW’s faces and heels on the other. Effectively, he’s announcing that the show will work much like a wrestling storyline; like many magicians, he tells you what he’s doing before does it.

I, for one, am impressed — skeptical though I might be of the way he manipulates events with standard reality-show drama. Do I wish this were a real documentary that just so happened to catch a company at a pivotal moment, instead of what it likely is: a reality show, where Jones and Snow and Haley and the rest have been encouraged off-camera to act their parts and play up conflict, especially around the risky tour that just so happens to coincide with the series’ production? Yes I do. Will it stop me from watching? No, it probably won’t.

I took a look at the premiere of Wrestlers, the fun new Netflix docu-reality series about the small but storied regional promotion Ohio Valley Wrestling, for Decider.

Good looking show, right? Sheer image-making used to convey a range of emotions, from joy to PTSD. An overall sense that maybe there’s more to the Star Wars Universe’s magic than cameos of preexisting Star Wars characters. (I know the whales have been around before, apparently, but they’re new to me, and they’re not really “characters” anyway, even if the enormous blue eye of the mother of them all seems very wise.) And everything given ample room to breathe in dialogue-free silence. 

And, finally, there’s the rub. By “ample room” I mean “more than ample room.” I mean “Wembley Stadium” room. I mean “the lone and level sands stretch far away in ‘Ozymandias’” room. I mean “the distance between one point in space and another as described by an unfortunate passenger in Stephen King’s ‘The Jaunt’” room. I mean a writer and director and showrunner who keeps trying to stuff a 22-minute animated-series runtime of shit into a 50-minute live-action series runtime bag and, as you’d expect, coming up empty, over and over.

Take the two most impressive visual sequences in the episode: Ahsoka’s spectral and sad fog-of-war memories, and the flight of the space whales. Both phenomena are repeated, virtually identically from one iteration to the next. Ahsoka doesn’t just return to the Clone Wars, which she helpfully names in case anyone watching Ahsoka is unfamiliar with the Clone Wars (lol) — a needless idiot-proofing decision, echoed by the egregious of having Anakin occasionally flash into his Darth Vader outfit, as if we need the reminder and would be like “oh, right, that’s who he is!” 

No, she also returns to a second battle, one that took place after she and Anakin had parted ways, so they can rehash the same conversations they already had about violence and warfare and the need for soldiers and so on. Whatever magic was in the first sequence has the air let out by the unnecessary second. Moreover, constantly cross cutting from the dream world to the real one — a major plot point, given that we’re required to see General Hera’s Take Your Child to Work Day visitor Jacen use his Force sensitivity to hear the sound of Ahsoka and Anakin’s lightsaber duel so she can…be retrieved while floating unconscious under several feet of water. It’s a dopey idea that’s not worth the sacrifice of the mood and look otherwise maintained by the flashback/dream/vision.

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

Even if the show hasn’t yet gone far in either direction — it’s difficult to make a big point about The Power of Family when your scariest image is of an estranged father kidnapping his son — it does lean awfully hard on another kind of storytelling: meet-cutes, first dates, a library courtship straight out of The Music Man, a magical rooftop wedding, a quirky “we’re having a baby” announcement straight out of an Alexa commercial, a rapturously scored sex scene, a “the baby’s coming now” scene…romance, in other words. Big Hollywood romance. 

I’m not here for this either. It’s not that I don’t like romance as a genre…okay, so it is like that. But I could be convinced, I’m pretty sure, and if anyone could do the convincing it’s likely a pair of actors as charming and photogenic as LaKeith Stanfield and Clark Backo. 

The real problem is that I don’t see how you get from all that mushy stuff to a place capable of actual horror. It’s not just the nature of that narrative that’s an issue here, it’s all the techniques used to depict it, like the overactive score by Dan Deacon. I found myself pining for moments of silence in which I could decide for myself how to feel about the sweet or scary things on screen. As it stands, you can certainly deliver the occasional terrifying jolt — the faceless-father dream sequence is proof of that — but you’re not going to be able to build up the atmosphere of unbearable mounting dread that great horror generates if you’re constantly working at cross-purposes with it by telling everyone about twoo wuv. There’s a time and a place for that, and that time and place isn’t Spooky Season. 

I’m covering The Changeling for Decider, starting with my review of the premiere (the first of three episodes that debuted this past weekend).

But that’s where we’re at with “Long Ago, Not Far Away,” the penultimate episode of Foundation’s second season, and the latest in a series of back-to-back-to-back home runs. Written by Jane Espenson and Eric Carrasco and directed, as was its excellent predecessor, by Roxann Dawson, it’s TV genre entertainment at its grandest, sexiest, saddest, most mysterious, most violent, most spectacular, best.

I reviewed this past weekend’s episode of Foundation for Decider.

“Sabine…can I count on you?” “………You know you can.”

“Is everything alright?” “…………Be careful out there.”

“Best get underway soon.” “…………Is that a note of fear in your voice?” “……Experience.”

“Relax.” “…Don’t worry about me.” “…I’m not.” “…Good.” “……Should I be?” “……What?” “……Worried.” “…………Nope.”

Imperial torture scientists toiling in the bowels of the detention level on the first Death Star for months couldn’t come up with a method of interrogation that would leave the human mind in the kind of state required to deliver the dialogue in Ahsoka. The endless pauses, the soporific delivery, the nature of the dialogue itself — my god, look at that last exchange; I honestly can’t believe Rosario Dawson and Natasha Liu Bordizzo were handed a piece of paper with those words in that order typed out on it — are all so bad that I kept waiting for Joel and the Bots from Mystery Science Theater to start dunking on it during every pause.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Ahsoka, which aside from some lovely imagery and a killer performance by Ray Stevenson is the most embarrassing Star Wars thing I’ve ever seen, for Decider.

The authorship of the Marvel Universe may remain an hotly debated question, though books by writers such as Tom Spurgeon, Sean Howe, and Josie Riesman have long supported the contention of Kirby and his heirs that he played a far larger role in the shared world’s creation and continuation than his erswhile collaborator Stan Lee — and the corporate hagiography recently served up by Marvel’s current owner, Disney — would ever admit. Yet even the movies that deal most directly in Kirby-heavy concepts, Thor and Black Panther and the Fourth World elements of DC’s so-called Snyderverse, look and feel little like the King’s comics. Indeed, years spent in the superhero comic trenches have taught me that many contemporary readers see Kirby’s cartooning as dated, even clumsy, compared to the genre’s current practitioners. 

You know what else was seen as dated, even clumsy, compared to the techniques of current practitioners? Physical sets. Actual costumes. Establishing color and lighting on set rather than through post. Reviving an aesthetic associated with earlier times. 

Barbie, in other words. Everything that Barbie did, it had to do while swimming upstream against a 15-year-old current of CGI slop, set loose by the establishment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the arrival of its many clones and knockoffs. I think it’s fair to say this has worked out for Barbie, no?

And it just so happens that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Six is slated to kick off with a Jack Kirby co-created superhero team — the Jack Kirby co-created superhero team — called the Fantastic Four, with a film helmed by TV veteran Matt Shakman. At the risk of sounding like Kirby myself, do I need to draw you a picture here?

I wrote about Barbie, Marvel, Jack Kirby, and the need for superhero movies to do go back to being bold for Decider.

When a television show gets on a real creative tear, something special often occurs. To me, anyway. Whether it’s a stone classic deep into its run, firing on all cylinders; a killer from jump, blowing you away right away; or — as is the case here, with Foundation — a formerly sputtering spacecraft that has achieved escape velocity and is now hurtling towards the stars, there comes a point when a regular review simply won’t do, and a litany of superlatives is all that can get the job done. 

In other words? There is simply too much shit to like in “The Last Empress.” Directed with total confidence by Roxann Dawson, working off a remarkable script by Liz Phang, Addie Manis, and Bob Oltra, it’s Foundation’s best episode to date. (Seems like we’re saying that a lot lately, no?) 

I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation, a success on every level, for Decider.

Ahsoka comes across as the bare minimum of Star Wars required to make Star Wars fans go “Sure, I’ll watch it.” It feels less like a television show, let alone a movie, and more like a Happy Meal tie-in toy. If you’re absolutely desperate to hold something from a galaxy far, far away in your hands, it’ll do in a pinch. But the better toys, and the imagination required to make them worth playing with, are found elsewhere.

I reviewed today’s episode of Ahsoka for Decider.

One element worth singling out: The deft, origami-like folding of Constant and Poly, General Bel Riose and his husband Glawen Curr, and Hober Mallow and the Spacer hive into one single elegant construction. In a sort of cascading series of scenes, Hober makes Hari Seldon’s big offer to the Spacers: an unlimited supply of a synthetic version of the compound that keeps them alive, heretofore controlled by Empire, in exchange for their support. The spacer queen, She-Is-Center (Brucella Neman-Persaud), decides the risk isn’t worth it and rats him out to her daughter, She-Bends-Light (Judi Shekoni), who serves with Bel and Glawen. Hober is handed over to their custody, but escapes thanks to his sentient navigator beast Beki and makes a jump right there within Bel’s ship’s hangar, thus proving the existence of Foundation’s advanced faster-than-light travel technology. As a result, Poly and Constant are brought before the Cleons and Demerzel, taunted, tortured, and returned to prison. It’s almost elegant, the way the pieces are put together.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Foundation for Decider.

Instead, though, most of our time is spent with Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Natasha Liu Bordizzo. Man, I just do not know what’s going on there. Winstead’s delivery is completely undistinguished — où sont la Swango d’antan? — and Bordizzo and Dawson sound like someone forgot to wake them up. I don’t want to oversell this, mind you, it’s not like I’m outraged or appalled or upset, I’m just confused. I know these actors. How did this happen? What do you think? Post a comment.

And the show still displays absolutely zero facility for action or suspense, an absolute dealbreaker for the setting. I’m trying hard not to constantly compare Ahsoka to its predecessors, but the heist of the hyperdrive by the bad guys has an apples-to-apples comparison in the form of the heist in Andor, while the double-bladed two-on-one lightsaber battle Ahsoka has with a droid and that mystery assailant is straight-up Duel of the Fates stuff. In neither case is the comparison a flattering one. It’s an embarrassing one, is what it is.

I reviewed the second episode of Ahsoka for Decider.

The costumes look like decent San Diego Comic-Con cosplay. The commemorative mural on display at a big ceremony in Sabine’s honor is laughably amateurish. The children’s drawings Sabine finds in a bunk on Ahsoka’s ship are so obviously an adult trying to draw like a child that it’s almost a provocation to include them. The opening crawl is a syntactical nightmare. The score is frequently dreadful — a ghastly guitar-driven rock song here, lugubrious and out-of-place string sections there. Two lengthy sequences involve puzzle-solving you normally think of as the domain of the parts of Tears of the Kingdom you don’t like playing.

The performances aren’t helped by the dialogue, naturally. There’s only so much anyone can do with clunkers like “May their courage and commitment never be forgotten” or “Mentoring someone is a challenge” or “Sometimes even the right reasons have the wrong consequences.” (Jesus.) The ne plus ultra of this combination of bad writing and bad acting comes in this exchange between Dawson and Bordizzo’s characters:

“I go where I’m needed.” “Not always.” “You never make things easy.” “Why should I? You never made things easy for me, master.” “There is nothing easy about being a Jedi.” “Well, then I should have made a good one.” “Yes, you should have.” It’s like listening to an AI voice chat program train. 

I reviewed the series premiere of Ahsoka for Decider. Dreadful.

You know, when it comes to this week’s episode of Foundation, I think Tim Robinson put it best: What the fuck?! What the fuuuuuuuuck?!?!

I’ve been OOO but I cannot let the weekend pass without drawing your attention to one of the most insane things I’ve seen on TV in a long time: this week’s episode of Foundation, which I reviewed for Decider.

Foundation is funny, exciting, lyrical, dazzling to the eye, epic in scope, and horny at heart, in service of the refreshingly non-pollyannaish goal of limiting humanity’s next dark age to a mere millennium. Even its hero’s journey involves getting off a few stops early and walking. That’s just one more thing to admire about the year’s best comeback.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation for Decider. More big-budget streaming-network SFF adaptations should feature plotlines in which the supreme leader is in serious diplomatic trouble because immortal robot lover never taught him that the cowgirl position exists.