Death by a thousand cuts. Max Cady (Javier Bardem) has already compared his (allegedly) undeserved prison sentence to this form of piecemeal torture. He may have actually committed it, if indeed he’s responsible for severing a certain teenager’s toe. But after this episode of Cape Fear, it’s apparent that Anna (Amy Adams) and Tom Bowden’s (Patrick Wilson) happy family is under lethal threat, and death by a thousand cuts is how they’re in danger of being taken out.

I reviewed this week’s Cape Fear for Decider.

The funny thing is that this isn’t a super-funny episode of Widow’s Bay, or a super scary one, or one that riffs on one or two very specific stories or subgenres. Sure, there are shades of Nope and The Lighthouse here and there, and a twister straight out of The Wizard of Oz, but there’s no one central horror here — no sea hag, no sunset cocktails death ritual, no machete-wielding Boogeyman. Other than Chris Fleming’s untimely demise and the genuinely chilling cold open, this episode feels mostly like set-up for the finale. It’s funny in places and creepy in others, but in both the horror and comedy categories, I’m hoping it’s just the calm before the storm.

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

When we open, Max Cady’s life has been turned upside down. Seven years ago, in a flashback sequence depicted in gritty black and white, Max is attacked in the prison weight room by a trio of Nazis. He gets the better of them, definitively killing two of them before passing out from his own head injuries, which we know continue to plague him even now. 

But this bare-bones description does not do this cold open justice. Cape Fear has just given us the most brutal television fight scene since the Mountain dueled the Red Viper on Game of Thrones, possibly even since Dan Dority met Captain Turner in the thoroughfare on Deadwood. Simply put, it’s fucking unbelievable. 

I reviewed the second episode of Cape Fear for Decider.

Horror is a genre in conversation with itself. Tasked with frightening their audiences, horror filmmakers naturally turn to what has frightened them. Even the very best works in the genre borrow ideas and images from their predecessors, often quite openly. Provided the end result is something unique unto itself, this process can yield results as vital as cover versions or well-chosen samples do in music. 

Nick Antosca, creator and writer of Cape Fear, has a distinguished track record in the genre himself, creating or co-creating the shows Channel Zero, The Act, Brand New Cherry Flavor, Candy, and A Friend of the Family — a mix of gory, surreal horror and true crime served at a bone-chilling temperature. Here he’s working directly from a trio of sources: John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel The Executioners, J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 film Cape Fear, and Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of it. All three are credited as source material on screen. 

But the show’s very first scene isn’t a reference to any of those works that I can see. With its inverted, photo-negative images soaked in lurid color, with its images of a happy family enjoying the good life on the Fourth of July, it feels like a nod to a very different movie: of all things, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest.

I reviewed the series premiere of Cape Fear for Decider. It rules.

Let’s not beat around the bush here: How about that jump scare, huh? Or more accurately: Jesus Leweezus, how about that freaking jump scare?

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

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.