So yeah, I’m still in on what Fatal Attraction is doing. It’s not the stylish, sexy, nasty, almost expressionistic exploration of male desire, insecurity, and guilt that the movie was, but it doesn’t want to be, and I won’t hold that against it — not when it’s providing so many simple pleasures in exchange.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

Which leads us back to the bulk of the episode, in which we see the formation of the affair from Alex’s perspective. The most interesting thing about this is that while it presents Alex as more instantly deranged about things than it initially appeared, it also fleshes her out as a human being, with her own likes and dislikes, fears and hangups, friends and colleagues — a life, in other words. It’s just not a very good one.

Alex’s therapist from out of state unceremoniously breaks up with her over the phone, ostensibly because she’s not licensed to practice in California but also, by the tone of it, because she’s tired of dealing with Alex. Paul, the doctor from across the hall, tries to slam the breaks on whatever they had going on; Alex responds by unsubtly threatening to call the cops on him over his extracurricular pill-peddling. She recounts trying and failing to get closer to her dad by getting really into his favorite Civil War movie, to the point of memorizing the real and moving letter from a soldier that closes the film. You get the feeling this is the story of Alex’s life: She gets intensely close to people, inevitably alienating them, then turns against them on a dime when they fail to live up to her expectations. (This is literally textbook borderline personality disorder stuff, by the way.)

I reviewed the third episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

But it does raise the question: Where do we go from here? If we’re going off the movie as a template, the sexual affair between Dan and Alex is now over, nearly as soon as it began — within the same episode, at least. Her suicidal gesture — she pretends to ingest every pill she has after he tries to leave, not admitting to the ruse until he drives her all the way to the hospital and warns her that she will lose her job if authorities determine she’s suicidal — marks the end of this being a casual, easy thing for either of them, and the beginning of the spiraling obsession that will destroy their lives.What do you think? Post a comment.

The thing is, the show has eight hours of screentime to fill instead of just two. Rushing through the affair made sense in the film: Dan and Alex’s sexual relationship was limited to a 48-hour whirlwind they both knowingly entered into because his wife was out of town, and which he planned to end upon his wife’s return; his literally fatal error was in assuming Alex planned the same thing. The show has already extended the timeframe of the affair, adding two other nights of passion to that initial lost weekend. Moreover, Dan is a much more active agent in the affair’s progression — following Alex to the roof, having her assigned to one of his cases, going back to her place after she interrupts his dinner with Mike. 

If I had the kind of time on my hands that the filmmakers do, I might have expanded the affair’s screentime to match. In addition to further cementing the complicity of both participants in creating the idea in Alex’s head that this isn’t just some limited-time-only fling, this would give the show the chance to develop and intensify the characters’ sexual relationship before bringing the hammer down on it after another episode, perhaps. In other words, the show could stay hotter for longer, and I, for one, like my erotic thrillers erotic.

I reviewed the second episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

Let’s get it out of the way quickly: Fatal Attraction is not the kind of show that Alice Birch and Rachel Weisz’s Dead Ringers is. I mean, why would it be? Despite their proximity in the broader erotic-thriller genre, Fatal Attraction is not the kind of movie David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers is either. That said, it’s a much more interesting looking, interesting sounded, interestingly acted and written movie than it needed to be to become a titillating hit; Lyne’s use of silence, shadow, and silhouette in particular is notable without being overtly neo-noirish. Go watch it if you haven’t in a while, it’s worth your time.

I’d say the same about Fatal Attraction the TV show, based on this episode. The simplest way to put it is that if you want to watch telegenic actors like Joshua Jackson, Lizzy Caplan, Toby Huss, and Amanda Peet have a good time talking to each other the way grown-ups actually talk while being crisply filmed and scored, Fatal Attraction is a show for you. 

I reviewed the series premiere of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

So yeah, I worry that the show’s eyes are too big for its stomach. You can really feel the creakiness around some of these storylines, and because of their sheer number and variety, the creaky storylines are going to vary from viewer to viewer. Some people don’t give a shit about the survival horror or the supernatural stuff, while for others that’s the main draw. Some don’t care about the adult stuff compared to the teenage stuff, while for others the draw of the legendary ‘90s stars as grownups will outweigh the young unknowns. Some will like the comedic bits, some will think they’re in the way. Everyone will find certain characters more compelling than others. Everyone will prefer certain casting decisions (Lauren Ambrose as Van is dynamite) to others (Simone Kessell has none of her younger counterpart Courtney Eaton’s damaged, blank-eyed magnetism as Lottie). Some people adore the big obvious ‘90s needledrops (4 Non Blondes! Danzig!), while others think the whole I Love the ‘90s thing is, ahem, overblown. 

Me, I found myself spending a lot of time thinking I wish the hyperactive score by Theodore Shapiro, Craig Wedren, and Anna Waronker would just shut the fuck up for a few minutes, allowing the tension, the dread, the quiet isolation of the woods to build. And that’s a decent stand-in for my problem with the whole thing. Pare back. Let stuff breathe. Let stuff be.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Yellowjackets Season Two for Decider.

In all honesty, I prefer being a little bit confused. Elliot is what Beverly and Genevieve’s relationship has been about from the start — Genevieve says so herself. She’s what Beverly’s whole life has been about from the start — as the younger sister she has never known a second of life outside the womb without the other. Even when they’re apart Ellie is the constant buzzing of an unanswered phone, everywhere, at all times, inescapable, even in the audience you just want to turn the goddamned thing off it’s so fucking anxiety-inducing, but you can’t any more than she can. She seeps through cracks, around corners, over boundaries, until she’s all that’s left. If that clouds how we read the actions of the women closest to her, Beverly and Genevieve and Rebecca, well, that’s Elliot for you.

Even on a narrative level, the Mantle twins cannot be separated. After watching this exceptional show, I’m going to have a hard time separating them from me.

I reviewed the finale of Dead Ringers for Decider. Holy shit, what a show.

With only one episode to go, there’s no sign Dead Ringers is content to keep its head down and its guard up during the final rounds. Nope, it looks like this is a show that’s swinging haymakers until the final bell rings.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Dead Ringers for Decider.

All told, despite being the least spectacular of the show’s episodes to date, it’s the most momentous. So much has been dragged out into the light, with the promise of more life-upending revelations to come. The episode begins with an exterior shot of the twins’ nightmarish birthing and research center, but I suspect the Center cannot hold.

I reviewed episode four of Dead Ringers for Decider.

It all goes to what Agnes, the woman who lives in the alley outside the Mantles’ apartment and who storms the place after Ellie rains down debris on her from several stories up, says to Elliot in her fucking unbelievable rant on the rooftop. There’s really no way I can overstate what writer Rachel De-Lahay and actor Susan Blommaert accomplish here; it’s like watching some swift, muscular predator with claws the size of your middle finger tear a slow-moving gazelle to shreds. 

I reviewed episode three of Dead Ringers for Decider.

How good is Dead Ringers the TV show? I’ll tell you how good it is: While watching this second episode of the show, the first comparisons that sprang to my mind were Mad Men and The Terror. The two shows with the most precise, lacerating dialogue and character work in the past 15 years? Two shows obsessed with class, status, and the creation and severing of intimacy? Two shows with absurdly stacked casts of actors given their best material ever? Two shows that had me dying to see what happened next with every episode? That’s probably a good sign for Dead Ringers, right? 

I reviewed the incredible second episode of Dead Ringers, featuring one of the very best television scenes ever aired, for Decider.

Smartly, savagely adapted by Alice Birch from the David Cronenberg film of the same name (co-written by Cronenberg and Norman Snider) — itself adapted from the novel Twins, by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, which was adapted in turn from the true story of twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus — Dead Ringers is part of a wave of reimagined erotic ‘80s classics, including Paramount+’s Fatal Attraction and Netflix’s Damage update Obsession. This one, though, comes with a massive mainline injection of what I like to call “the high weirdness” — the spectacle and perversity that’s the stuff of great art.

I reviewed the first episode of Prime Video’s extraordinary remake of Dead Ringers for Decider.

There’s a scene in this episode of Yellowjackets (Season 2, Episode 4) where teenage Taissa and Van are wandering around a narrow patch of woods, the same patch they’ve spent the whole day exploring. They’re searching for another tree with that now-familiar symbol carved into it, because Taissa has discovered a double-digit number of them while sleepwalking. Van has mapped their locations out and discovered that, when the dots are connected, they’re arranged in the shape of that same symbol. So there’s gotta be one last tree in this specific area in order to complete the pattern, there’s just gotta be! But try as they might, they can’t finish the picture. 

Okay, fine — they discover Travis’s long-lost kid brother Javi, mute but otherwise miraculously unharmed after months in the freezing wilderness, giving Van the proof she needs that Taissa, like Lottie, is psychically attuned to…whatever it is that’s going on out there. But shhhh, I’m trying to make a point here, which is this: Like the map that drove Taissa and Van’s seemingly pointless search for the missing symbol, I feel like Yellowjackets is an incomplete picture. I keep seeing what it’s supposed to be, recognizing exactly where it needs to go to fully flesh things out and become what it’s meant to become, but dammit, it never quite connects that last dot.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Yellowjackets season two for Decider.

On Yellowjackets, the present-day material functions like training wheels. Interested in a survival-horror story about cannibalistic ‘90s teenage girls lost in a haunted no-man’s-land, but afraid things might get too spooky and you’ll fall and scrape your psychological knees? Don’t worry! The comedic shenanigans of present-day Shauna, Misty, and Natalie will keep you nice and steady if things get too intense. 

I reviewed the third episode of Yellowjackets season two for Decider.

The best episode of Yellowjackets since the very earliest episodes? The best episode of Yellowjackets since the pilot itself? An argument can be made, for sure. “Edible Complex” is fast-paced, frequently disturbing, and most importantly, deadly serious for about 85 percent of the time. It’s the Yellowjackets I want, for the most part.

I reviewed the second episode of Yellowjackets season two for Decider.

Yellowjackets sold something I wasn’t buying. The breakout Showtime hit — not a phrase you hear everyday in this Netflix/HBO dominated landscape, which explains the network renewing it for not one but two additional seasons after its initial run ended — seemed, from its harrowing and horrifying cold open anyway, to be a story of survival horror among a late-‘90s high school girls soccer team stranded in the wilderness by a plane crash. The Terror starring girls who probably have a favorite Smashing Pumpkins song? Now that’s a show I can do business with.

The bifurcated thing we got instead, however, was not really what I was in the market for. Don’t get me wrong, I adore much of the work of the adult cast, whose job it is to chronicle the lives of the survivors in the present day. Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis? The stars of Heavenly Creatures, Speed Racer, and Natural Born Killers, very literally on my ballot for the best movies ever made? How could you possibly go wrong?

Oh gosh, let me count the ways. While the teenage material more or less stayed true to the promise of the concept — increasing desperation, clandestine sexuality, teenage betrayals, drug trips, incredibly disgusting self-administered amateur surgery, the establishment of a folk-horror cannibal cult at some point — the adult segments of the show became bogged down in schtick. Suddenly characters whose journey into murderousness you’re supposed to treat as deadly serious when they’re kids start offing people for black-comedy punchlines, deflating any sense of moral urgency. How are we supposed to take their moral conflict seriously, when the show very literally cracks jokes about them murking people and covering it up in the here-and-now?

I reviewed the Season 2 premiere of Yellowjackets, which I’ll be covering all season, for Decider.

What happens in that Firefly hospital, then, isn’t a material break with the past, but rather a palette swap. Marlene is a more sympathetic figure than either Kathleen or David, she has her eyes on a much bigger and legitimately noble prize, but in the end she’s still just a person other than Joel who thinks she knows what’s best, and “what’s best” involves killing Ellie. Again and again we’ve been conditioned to believe that when faced with such a person, there’s only one right move for Joel to make.What do you think? Post a comment.

A more charitable critic than I might say “Yes, and that’s the point: after zigging and zigging and zigging for eight episodes, The Last of Us has finally zagged. It’s meant to be confounding. It’s meant to be challenging.” To that I can only reply that the show doesn’t have the chops to pull off such a complicated maneuver, not after the season of rehashed The Walking Dead/The Road/The Mandalorian that it offered us up until this point.

I reviewed the season finale of The Last of Us for Decider.

And I’m actively repulsed by Joel’s half of the story, the 40,000th illustration of the necessity and effectiveness of violence that the American culture industry has produced in the past 20 years. In reality torture is ineffective and — this is the important thing — fucking immoral. Creating scenarios in which it’s the only way out for the good guy, and thus the good guy’s goodness makes torture acceptable, is slimy, wormy shit. So is doing the same thing to set up one kill-or-be-killed scenario after another, thus conveying to the audience that wholesale slaughter in the name of your loved ones is the only moral arbiter. The Walking Dead made a whole show out of this low-grade fascist bullshit. Who needs another?

I reviewed last night’s The Last of Us for Decider.

I guess that’s a weakness of your basic post-apocalyptic road-movie structure: You’re only gonna run into so many people, most of whom are adults, most of whom are carrying guns that they may or may not be shooting at you. Not a lot of opportunities to explore the rich panoply of human emotion, you know? This lack of variety is reflected in the effectively one-note performances of both Ramsey and Pedro Pascal, and it handicaps the show considerably. More interesting or innovative writing could work around that, but, well, you get what you get. 

Even the exceptions, like this flashback, aren’t really much to write home about. You can see Ellie’s wide-eyed wonder at the mall coming the moment its lights switch on, and the show does nothing unexpected with the sequence. Even if it did, Gustavo Santaolalla and David Fleming’s constant, hyperactive, sledgehammer-subtle score tells you exactly how to feel about everything at every moment. I’ve been rewatching The Sopranos recently — I know, I know, that’s hardly a fair comparison for this or any other show — and it’s amazing how its lack of a score makes it feel so much more wide-open and intriguing than this. A little more faith in the audience’s ability to think for itself would go a long way.

Which is the story of The Last of Us, I think. Every week it comes on, every week it’s basically serviceable genre entertainment, and with a couple of exceptions (the highs of Episode 3, the lows of Episode 5) every week it’s out of my mind within minutes of the closing credits rolling. You don’t really need to think for yourself, as there’s simply not much to think about.

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

If there were an award given out for the year’s most adequate hour of television, The Last of Us Episode 6 (“Kin”) would be a contender. Basically competent, mildly engaging, largely inoffensive, gesturing in the direction of emotional power without ever running the risk of triggering it directly, it comes nowhere near the highs nor the lows of the five episodes that preceded it. Some lovely scenery, some cursory worldbuilding, a reunion and a farewell, a bunch of wild animals in a post-apocalyptic city, an unsuspenseful cliffhanger, and that’s a wrap. It’s a fresh installment of the biggest show on TV right now, and it’s pretty much just there.

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

The Last of Us made its sympathetically portrayed fascist collaborators Black and Jewish and had them hide with a child in an attic or else the antifascists would murder them. When you type it out it feels even more unpleasant than it did to watch it. Who does this thought experiment serve? In whose shoes is this placing us? Surely it’s intended to be “makes you think” television. What, exactly, are we supposed to think here?

I reviewed The Last of Us episode five for Decider.