Now that’s more like it!

Look, I’ll admit there are any number of reasons why I might have warmed to this episode of The Rings of Power more than its predecessors. Maybe, as a guy with the White Tree of Gondor tattooed on my arm, I just want a big-budget J.R.R. Tolkien TV series to succeed. Maybe I’m simply getting used to the show’s depictions of its characters and their world and learning to live with them rather than chafe at them. Maybe I’m feeling peer pressure!

Or — and I think this is the more likely case — maybe the show is finally doing what I’ve wanted it to do from the start: tightening the focus, abandoning the cheap “cliffhanger” mysteries that artificially forced the plot along, and allowing the story to emerge organically from interactions between characters with different personalities, goals, fears, plans, desires. Maybe it’s acting like a drama, instead of an expensive sandbox in which to play with a bunch of Tolkien and Tolkienesque toys.

In other words, maybe it got good!

I reviewed this week’s Rings of Power for Decider. It’s a vast improvement over its predecessors, though still far from perfect.

The episode’s primary driver, as you might have guessed from this brief summary, is not plot at all, but character-based ambiance, specifically emanating from Jon Bernthal. I’ve had the pleasure of covering his work in The Punisher and We Own This City for this website, and I’m not ashamed to say I simply can’t get enough of the guy. The thrill of watching Jon Bernthal work out in prison, drive a car on the freeway, languorously recline in bed, walk around in expensive-looking clothing, run his hands through his floppy hair, et cetera and ad nauseam, cannot be overstated. There’s just something about his dark brown eyes, his prizefighter face, his overall physical swagger that can’t be imitated or duplicated. You either have it or you don’t.

Of course, the same could no doubt be said about Richard Gere, who originated the role of Julian in Paul Schrader’s original film. (Reports that this show functions as a timeframe-adjusted sequel to the movie are greatly exaggerated; there’s simply no way to reconcile the events of that movie, in which Julian dodges a murder rap at the last minute thanks to the grace afforded him by the woman who loves him, with the events of this show, in which he does 15 years hard time.) Gere, who in retrospect looks like a sort of Bernthal/David Duchovny prototype, portrayed Julian as a beautiful nullity, a sort of sexual idiot savant whose polyglottism and knowledge of fashion, food, cars, stereos, art, and so on functioned solely as a means to woo older, wealthier women. The movie’s big tell is that Gere’s Julian had an apartment full of framed paintings and photographs simply stacked against the walls, not hung on them; he knew what constituted Good Art in the eyes of his milieu, but he didn’t care enough to actually enjoy it, since enjoying it wasn’t his job. 

I wrote about the series premiere of American Gigolo for Decider, where I’ll be covering the show all season. I also wrote a fair bit about Paul Schrader’s original American Gigolo film, about which I have mixed feelings. Check it out!

I’m trying, as hard as I can, not to let my lifetime of Tolkien readership to affect my judgment of the show, which is its own thing in a very different medium with different structures, strengths, and requirements. But it’s hard! It’s hard because I know how complex and tragic this material can be, and I’m seeing so little of that complexity and tragedy; in its place are a bunch of gritty tough guys and wide-eyed wonder-seekers I don’t recognize, whether their origins are canonical or not. Aside from some really cheesy seafaring sequences everything still looks solid and expensive, but it feels like some vital part of the storytelling and character-building budget was cut. Short of a magic ring, I’m not sure how the show digs itself out of that hole.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Decider.

The biggest problem with this episode is evident if you compare it to, like, any other episode of good television. For the most part, stories in prestige TV are driven by character interaction. People encounter one another, have conversations or arguments or fights, emerge on the other side either changed or redoubled in their determination not to change, and the plot proceeds from there. (This is how House of the Dragon works, to cite an obvious point of comparison for this show.)

In this episode, though, written by Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul veteran Gennifer Hutchison of all people, way too many of the scene transitions that propel the narrative are these kind of cheap cliffhangers, in which the action is cut off just before or just after something interesting happens. Arondir gets got by some goblins? Cut! Durin père and Durin fils open a treasure box with a secret MacGuffin inside? Cut! Theo’s blood gets drawn into his obviously evil Sauronic artifact? Cut! Galadriel and Halbard get rescued by the silhouette of an off-camera sailor? Cut! 

You could get away with one or even two of these pseudo-suspenseful edits, I guess. But a whole suite of them? It’s not storytelling — it’s a cheat code, the easiest possible way to drive people from one moment (or episode) of the story to the next. I’m surprised it made it out of the writers’ room this way.

I reviewed the second episode of The Rings of Power for Decider.

At this point, I want to state for the record that I am currently covering not only The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon, and in neither case do I feel it’s my job to adjudicate the differences between the books and the shows. The books are the books and the shows are the shows — two different media, two different sets of structures and demands and rewards. Ultimately, what matters is what winds up on screen, and how that comes across to the viewer.

That being said, I must admit that it’s extraordinarily difficult for a person like me — a guy who first read The Hobbit at age 5, who’s seen the LotR movies more times than I can count, who’s read Tolkien’s books to his children multiple times, who has the goddamned White Tree of Gondor tattooed on his arm — to formulate an equal appreciation for the canonical characters and the invented ones. Galadriel and Elrond, and even Finrod and Gil-galad — these are old friends of mine, dating back decades. Arondir and Bronwyn and Theo and Nori? To paraphrase Mariah Carey, I don’t know them.

I reviewed tonight’s series premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which was okay, for Decider.

Where does that leave us, then? In the grips of an expertly made story of devotion and deceit, supported by excellent acting (I’m particularly impressed with John Lithgow’s ability to convey dismay and disbelief in seemingly dozens of different ways), played out with guns, on an international scale. And hey, did I ever mention how beautiful those medieval-style opening titles with the dogs are, by the way? The Old Man is crackerjack TV, in other words. I can’t wait for round two.

I reviewed the excellent season finale of The Old Man for Decider.

I put together a little explainer for the season finale of The Old Man, which is very good, for Decider. Full review coming soon!

[whispering to date while watching The Old Man when The Old Man first appears on the screen] That’s The Old Man

Apologies to Twitter user @vineyville, but that was the tweet that came to mind the moment John Lithgow’s Harold Harper, the simultaneously scheming and well-intention assistant director of the FBI, told Jeff Bridges’ “Dan Chase” that “the Old Man”—Joel Grey’s Morgan Bote—has his daughter, Alia Shawkat’s Angela Adams/Emily Chase. Their daughter, actually, if you want to count Angela/Emily’s close work relationship with Harold as a father-daughter thing, which both characters seem comfortable doing.

If that paragraph seems confusing, congratulations—you’re watching The Old Man! This penultimate episode of the skillful spy drama’s first season is an at-times dizzying display of conflicting loyalties, secret relationships, and sudden betrayals. Like the coded messages that Angela and Chase send to each other using secret bank accounts, it can take a lot of deciphering.

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

It’s remarkable how much can happen in an episode where nothing really happens. That, at least, is the conclusion I’ve drawn from The Old Man’s fifth episode. As a matter of physical business, it’s almost profoundly uneventful: Harold Harper and Angela Adams sit on a plane and wind up in a records storage closet; Dan Chase and Zoe McDonald take a car ride to a pet hotel and a banker’s house. But within that basic framework, secrets are revealed and allegiances shift back and forth like shadows. I’m not sure how much I’m buying what they’re selling, but it’s never less than a blast to watch.

I reviewed last night’s episode of The Old Man for Decider.

“Keeping you alive and safe: That became my priority, Zoe,” says Dan Chase—excuse me, “Dan Chase.” He’s talking to the woman he spirited away from her own home, which had been invaded by a hitman, by secreting her in the trunk of his car. Zoe’s understandable reaction is to back away from him like a beat dog. He tells her to call her son and let him know she’s being held against her will, in a ploy to keep the Feds from considering her an accomplice. She tries to do so, but her son is screening her calls and won’t pick up.

The next thing we know, FBI Assistant Director Harold Harper is saying “Dan Chase is gone.” The phone calls we’d just seen happened three days ago. Time flies when you’re a rogue black-ops veteran on the run from the government, I guess.

It’s bold little maneuvers like this—sweeping three pivotal days aside in a breath—that make The Old Man such compelling viewing, even three full episodes removed from the pilot’s astonishing long-take fight scene. The show, and its characters, are full of surprises, and spring them on us at nearly every turn.

I reviewed last night’s episode of The Old Man for Decider.

It’s juicy material, all told. And if it isn’t quite as pulse-poundingly delivered as it was in The Old Man Episode 1 — Zoe’s witnessing of Chase’s battle with the assassin notwithstanding — it’s still pretty riveting stuff. Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, Alia Shawkat: If you were wondering if a series with these leads might be entertaining to watch, wonder no fucking longer. I’m still waiting for a return to that astonishing long-take battle from the premiere, but regardless, this is a spy game worth playing.

I reviewed last week’s episode of The Old Man for Decider.

Which leads to a larger concern I have about the show: Why, exactly, does it exist? As with so many Star Wars tie-in projects, it dances between the raindrops of existing continuity, while occasionally shifting that continuity to its own ends. Like, we kind of knew Obi-Wan had to whip Darth Vader’s ass, because in A New HopeVader tells Obi-Wan he was “a learner” the last time they met. 

But establishing a pre-existing relationship between Obi-Wan and Leia—and in this episode, even Obi-Wan and Luke—adds a whole lot to the existing canon. And for what? A six-episode show with all the visual flair and emotional heft of a Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order cut scene? I don’t think the game is worth the candle. (This is why stuff like “Why didn’t he just kill him when he had the chance?” is popping up in my mind—not because I’m some CinemaSins-style pedant, but because the project’s overall sense of mild aimlessness gave my brain a chance to question plot holes I’d otherwise overlook.)

I reviewed the finale of Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider.

I’ll say this for The Old Man’s second episode: It was wise of FX to schedule it back-to-back with that bravura first episode. Many of the pilot’s strengths—the cat-and-mouse games, the bone-crunching combat, the barrage of surprises—are replaced by the (admittedly charming) relationship dynamics between Chase and Zoe on one hand and Harper and Adams on the other. And for all that the ep includes a brief monologue from Chase about a wise man who believed “the truth lived only in silence”—an echo of Harper’s Frank Lloyd Wright quote about space being “the breath of art” from the first episode—the ostentatious long takes and silences of the first episode aren’t really on display here. Aside from a lovely prolonged shot of Chase and Zoe taking and holding each other’s hands, it’s a much more standard episode of television, for whatever that’s worth.

Still, I think you’d be a fool to write off what Bridges and Lithgow and Brenneman are delivering here: thoughtful portraits of aging people by intelligent and extremely telegenic actors. I mean, I’d watch a romance about Chase and Zoe even without the CIA-killing-machine business. And I have some confidence, whether earned or not, that the show can return to the nail-biting thriller sequences of its debut if and when it wants to, especially with Harper’s assassin in play. 

What I wonder, beyond hoping for a return of the premiere’s suspense, is whether The Old Man will delve into the wisdom, or lack thereof, of America’s imperialist counteroffensive in 1980s Afghanistan. When you look at the past 20-plus years of life on this planet, it seems pretty important to get that story straight, right? As a rabid anti-communist who helped the mujahideen (until he suddenly stopped, for reasons unknown), Chase is a hard figure to valorize. Will the show try, or is the futility of what he did a part of the narrative? Whatever my reservations about this episode, I’ll be sticking around to find out.

I reviewed the second episode of The Old Man for Decider.

Take another lengthy sequence, for instance—actually, it’s not a sequence, it’s one long shot that lasts for roughly five and a half unbroken minutes. In this shot, Chase rams his car into one of his black-ops pursuer, gets out of the car and shoots the guy to death, then has a seemingly endless mixed martial arts battle against the surviving agent, until Chase’s well-trained attack dogs chase the guy back into another car for safety. Remember that teary-eyed old man from the driver’s-seat phone calls? In his place is a vicious operator who manages to kill three highly trained men half his age, and we get to observe him in action without the camera cutting away. After all the attention the show has lavished upon Chase’s age, watching him defeat his enemies—with a little help from his dogs—is borderline miraculous. And indeed, Jeff Bridge’s masterful physical performance throughout the episode makes his every impressive physical feat feel like a borderline miracle. That power from that body? It feels incredible, and totally earned.

This is the kind of gripping, self-assured action filmmaking that awaits you in The Old Man’s pilot episode, the first half of a two-episode giant-sized series premiere. Based on the book by Thomas Perry and directed by Jon Watts (late of the Spider-Man franchise) from a script by co-creators Robert Levine and Jonathan E. Steinberg, who serves as showrunner, it’s the most engaging espionage thriller debut since The Americans.

I reviewed the series premiere of The Old Man for Decider, where I’ll be covering the show.

Overall, it’s hard to look at the episode as a success from a suspense perspective, though when you think about it, that’s nothing new. Star Wars has always been about characters we know aren’t gonna die anytime soon, with rare exceptions; its great trick was in constructing action set pieces so gripping that they make you forget. (Seriously: No one on the planet thought Luke Skywalker was going to get shot down during the attack run on the first Death Star, but if your knuckles don’t still whiten at least a little bit every time you watch it, I don’t wanna know you.) 

But a prequel show that features Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, and Princess Leia as main characters faces an extra challenge, just as the prequel movies did: We know, for a fact, that these characters survive, since we’ve seen their future adventures. For that reason, the action must be doubly exciting and inventive to maintain audience investment. 

Does the show deliver on that score? No, I don’t think it does. It’s true that there are occasional moments of menace or awe, like when the Grand Inquisitor sweeps back in to gloat, or when Darth Vader uses his incredible Force powers to stop an entire transport from taking off. (It’s a decoy transport, but still.) And of course there’s that nostalgic duel between Obi-Wan and pre-Vader Anakin.

But the battle between the Path folks and the stormtroopers is indifferently blocked and shot—it’s just a bunch of people shooting guns at each other and somehow missing despite the fact that they’re like four feet apart. The Imperials are so bad at this that Obi-Wan’s lightsaber-twirling presence on the side of the good guys is barely needed. The fight between Vader and Reva, at least, is supposed to be a one-sided affair, driving home Vader’s superior power, and on that count it succeeds. 

I reviewed today’s episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider.

All in all, it’s a brisk little episode that reminds me of nothing so much as a cut-scene sequence from a Star Wars video game like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. (It doesn’t hurt that the game features a Fortress Inqusitorius break-in/break-out sequence of its own.) It utilizes the spartan Imperial aesthetic to create an illusion of impregnability, then shows our characters shattering that illusion. It’s a tried-and-true method of Star Wars storytelling that goes all the way back to Obi-Wan, Luke, Han, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO’s adventures on the first Death Star. And there are interesting glimpses of how the Empire has handled Force-sensitives since its establishment, namely a hallway full of Jedi bodies in suspended animation that Obi-Wan stumbles across. Entombing the Force sensitive is at least part of the Fortress’s true purpose, and that’s some good Dark Side storytelling.

But the episode brushes past some of the series’ most momentous moments to date. Take that confrontation between Vader and Obi-Wan in the previous episode. That scene was already burdened by the filmmakers decision to wedge in a new face-to-face between the two old frenemies that had little of the mythic power of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s confrontation on Mustafar in Revenge of the Sith or their final battle on the Death Star in A New Hope. Now, its one moment of real urgency, Vader using the Force to push Obi-Wan into a fire so as to mimic Vader’s own injuries, gets brushed away with a quick dunk in a bacta tank. Hell, Obi-Wan doesn’t even stay in the tank for the doctor-recommended length of time! If this was all that was gonna come of that confrontation, why have it happen in the first place, given how it short-circuits the “circle-is-now-complete” loop between Mustafar and the Death Star?

I reviewed today’s episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider.

In a way, Under the Banner of Heaven winds up being as much about fragile masculinity as it is about religion, though religion no doubt shaped the masculinity of the people involved. When Ron’s estranged wife Dianna returns to town in hopes of rescuing the other brothers’ wives before it’s too late, she confronts their brother Sam. “You’re not special,” she tells him, arguing that he and the other brothers turned to fundamentalism because they were unable to confront their own failures.

And that’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it? A failing chiropractic practice, a failing construction company, a refusal to pay fines and taxes—this is the quotidian bad luck and bad decisions that led the Lafferty brothers to collectively go mad. Every setback is refashioned into a challenge to be overcome with ever more fervent and violent faith. Anything but admitting that such mighty men as they could possibly have steered the plane into the mountain on their own.

Ditto the polygamy concept. These small little men, losing control in other aspects of their lives, no doubt treasured the power and thrill of having multiple wives (or “wives,” in the sense that simply having sex with a woman constitutes marriage to them). It’s an extension of the control they wish to have over their own original wives, and a reflection of the misogynistic rage that drove them to kill Brenda Lafferty and her daughter over her perceived meddling in their affairs. 

I reviewed the finale of Under the Banner of Heaven for Decider.

Bernthal makes it clear that Jenkins does not see himself as a dirty cop—he reacts in horror several times when this allegation is made—but rather as a resourceful one, a guy who sees all the angles and commits a series of victimless crimes. The fact that innocent people are routinely brutalized and, in the case of one high-speed chase, accidentally killed during the course of his work doesn’t really concern him. He feels he meant well, and that’s all that matters.

That’s a tall order for any actor to convey, but Bernthal somehow makes it look easy. From underneath a series of world-historically unfortunate haircuts, his dark brown eyes radiate a sort of idiot good cheer. (When that good cheer goes away at the end of the story, those same eyes become the dim dark eyes of a hit dog, wondering what went so wrong.) Bernthal gives a physical performance that indeed makes Jenkins look like he owns this city and everyone in it. Indeed, he’s often polite to the point of comedy to the very people he arrests, robs, and/or frames. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s a good guy, right? Call it noblesse oblige, call it whatever you want: Bernthal radiates a lethal “who, me?” charm even at his character’s most brutal moments.

I tried to explain what makes Jon Bernthal so good for Decider.

For his part, Obi-Wan mostly gets wrecked, which is to be expected—he’s facing the most powerful former Jedi in the galaxy, a guy who’s been using unchecked power for years instead of hiding in a cave in the desert someplace. But it lacks the drama and power called for by the moment—a poor follow-up to their final battle in Revenge of the Sith, which even most prequel haters seem to appreciate.

The new rendez-vous also calls into question the conversation he has with Vader during their fateful duel aboard the Death Star in the first Star Wars movie, about how when they last met, Vader was his student. As with Leia, who now has canonically spent time with Ben Kenobi prior to her plea for his help in A New Hope, there’s now an extra wrinkle to the Kenobi/Vader timeline, and I’m not convinced it makes sense, or that the payoff here was worth monkeying with the continuity.

And that’s the big question dogging Obi-Wan Kenobi. Is it pleasant to spend more time with Ewan McGregor in the title role? Absolutely. Is it fun to hear James Earl Jones’s voice coming out of Vader’s mask, and to catch blink-and-you’ll-miss-him glimpses of Hayden Christensen as the once and future Anakin Skywalker? You bet. But does the story that reacquaints us with these characters have both the logic and the emotional heft to make it worth telling, in the end? On this matter, the Force is hazy.

I reviewed today’s episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi for Decider.

And I’m left sounding like a broken record, because the show’s pros and cons have remained constant right up through the end. Jon Bernthal delivers a for-the-ages villain performance as Jenkins, the jolliest goon in the entire BPD. Jamie Hector imbues (relatively) good cop Sean Suiter with intensity and pathos. And the show’s thesis, repeated once again by Grabler, that the War on Drugs is what turned policing into the brutal business we know and loathe today still doesn’t hold water.

Look back through the history of the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, environmental protests, gay liberation, fucking Prohibition, you name it—the police have been a brutally reactionary right-wing force for decades before the War on Drugs’ militaristic terminology took effect. Writer-creator David Simon’s belief in some platonic ideal of Good Policing, something that once existed and which could perhaps be revived if the drug war were abandoned, remains his and the show’s biggest blind spot.

I reviewed the finale of We Own This City for Decider.