Overall, I remain very impressed with Under the Banner of Heaven—with its fine cast, its depiction of the Lafferty family’s sort of group psychosis, and its sensitive but unsparing exploration of perhaps the most American of all religions. It almost plays like a lost season of American Crime Story, which is about the highest praise I can give a true-crime TV show. And despite knowing that the facts of the case are online for anyone to see, I find myself holding off, waiting to see what comes next.

I reviewed the most recent episode of Under the Banner of Heaven for Decider.

But ultimately there’s no solid ground to stand on. We’ll never know for sure what made Candy Montgomery chop Betty Gore to ribbons, and this is as true of the filmmakers behind Candy as it is for us viewers. If that troubles you, well, I get it.

But I don’t think that art exists to present us with answers. Good art asks questions and trusts us to answer them ourselves. That’s Candy, very good art indeed, in a nutshell. To echo Betty, that’s it.

I reviewed the finale of Candy for Decider.

Written by Elise Brown and directed by Tara Nicole Weyr, this episode (“Cover Girl”) straddles the line between black comedy and outright tragedy more than any other episode so far. There are funny bits to be found throughout the hour, from Allan admitting he doesn’t know how to change a diaper but, “Well, I am an engineer…” to him pouring the wrong kind of dish soap into the dishwasher and generating a comical overflow of bubbles. Candy’s behavior, too, is played for dark laughs, as she has to feign surprise at every new revelation. And in a flash-forward/flashback on the witness stand at the trial, Pat admits to buying his wife flowers and a card when he found out she had the affair. “I blamed myself,” he says, but they worked through it. Maybe they should have worked through it a bit harder.

But it’s when the dark humor has you off-guard that the episode really twists the knife. Child actor Antonella Rose is heartbreaking as young Christina Gore, who hums a little tune to herself in blissful ignorance as the Montgomerys drive her back to her house, where they know she’ll hear the worst news of her life. Her tears are devastating, particularly when she takes it upon herself to reassure others through those tears; when she says to her weeping grandmother “It’s okay, Grandma,” I just about lost it myself. (Aven Lotz and Dash McCloud are adorable as the Montgomery kids, too—two children who are also about to have their lives turned upside down due to their mother’s actions.) And for the first time in the series, Betty herself is nowhere to be found—no flashbacks, nothing.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Candy for Decider.

Candy is a drama about a woman who chopped her friend up with an axe over an affair that began with a literal list of pros and cons. Seriously: When we join Candy and her would-be inamorata Allan as they plot their affair, there’s a big sheet of bround paper taped to a nearby window wall with all the “Whys” and “Why Nots” written down in black marker. “Adventure :)” reads one item on the Why side, complete with a smiley face; “Could be good for spouses!?” is up there too. The Why Not that concerns Candy the most is “Danger of emotions”—though given that Allan kicks off the part of the discussion we see with that famously romantic phrase “Let’s talk logistics,” it’s not at all clear that emotions enter into the picture at all. At least it wouldn’t be clear, if it weren’t for the whole eventual axe-murder thing.

I reviewed episode three of Candy for Decider.

It was the best of cops, it was the worst of cops. That’s the contrast established by We Own This City in its third episode, in which the paths of bad cop Wayne Jenkins and good cop Sean Suiter unexpectedly cross. But the unexpected team-up between Jenkins and Suiter—once old friends going back to their rookie days, apparently—reveals another layer to the show’s intricate interweaving of different plotlines and time frames. By now the show has firmly established Jenkins as a cowboy and Suiter as a straight arrow, in very separate storylines. Seeing them together as they raid a car wash that’s a front for a drug dealer has the effect of watching the stars of two different shows suddenly cross over and team up.

I reviewed this week’s episode of We Own This City for Decider.

To paraphrase Pink Floyd paraphrasing Thoreau, hanging on in quiet desperation is the Texas way. At least that’s the impression we get from Candy‘s second episode, pointedly titled “Happy Wife, Happy Life.” Directed by Jennifer Getzinger (who, like showrunner Robin Veith and premiere director Michael Uppendahl, is a Mad Men alum) from a script by David Matthews (late of the harrowing suburban-horror series Them), it takes us deeper into the lives of Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore, before the former took the life of the latter. Neither woman is happy, but they have very different ways of coping.

I reviewed today’s episode of Candy for Decider.

You ever have one of those days? You’ve got to get the kids to their swimming lessons, but only after their Bible pageant at Sunday school. They’ve been bugging you to go see the new Star Wars movie too, so that has to go on the schedule. You murder your best friend with an axe. Father’s Day is coming up, so it’s off to Target to pick up a card. Busy, busy, busy!

I’ll be covering Candy for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere. Check back in all week for each episode’s review!

There’s a secretive group of Americans out there who believe their word is law. Mostly men, though at least one woman sides with them, they are religious fanatics who believe the Constitution as originally written is a perfect document, ordained by God. To them, subsequent revisions to the laws of the land are unconstitutional, illegitimate, and most importantly immoral. They want to return to the old days, to the old ways. Keeping women in their place through having children, whether they want to or not, is key to their plan—to God’s plan, as they see it. They’ve studied and prayed all their lives, and now their time has come.

Also there was a new episode of Under the Banner of Heaven.

Sigh. “See what I did there?”, the critic asked depressively.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Under the Banner of Heaven for Decider.

And it’s an emotionally intriguing note to end on, that’s for sure—a new Marvel Cinematic Universe hero, doing something pointedly anti-heroic, or even just straight-up bad. If we do wind up getting more Moon Knight adventures, Oscar Isaac’s lightly comic performance as all of the Moon Knight collective’s individual components will be the main selling point, no question; they’re what made this show so easy and fun to watch. But after that ending, I’ll be curious to see just how grim’n’gritty the character is allowed to get. I’d imagine that white costume dirties up pretty good.

I reviewed the season finale of Moon Knight for Decider.

We Own This City knows its chief weapon is Jon Bernthal, that’s for sure. The show’s second episode is full of lingering close-ups on his character Wayne Jenkins as he does, well, nothing really—sitting and waiting in an interrogation room, in a jail cell, wherever, just impatiently thinking about his next move. Bernthal’s black-eyed charisma here is just off the charts; even in doing nothing, Jenkins feels so dangerous you don’t want to come near him.

I reviewed this week’s episode of We Own This City for Decider.

But in the end, I enjoyed the bulk of my time in Ozark’s world. Clearly positioned as Netflix’s answer to the canonical prestive-TV crime dramas, it succeeded in creating a visually distinct world peopled with compellingly broken characters. With the exception of a Ben Davis here and a Ruth Langmore there, it never quite held the incandescent power of those earlier shows in its hands. But I appreciate the boldness of its core performances—Jason Bateman as the perpetually scowling Marty, Laura Linney as the crescendoingly dangerous Wendy, Julia Garner as the raw nerve that was Ruth Langmore. And I respect its bleak outlook, never bleaker than here in the finale—a view of a fallen world. Welcome to Ozark Country, population: us.

I reviewed the series finale of Ozark for Decider.

I’m starting to wonder if, in the end, we’ll look back at Ozark as primarily Wendy’s story rather than Marty’s or even Ruth’s. I wonder if watching her American dream completely fall to pieces, scattering dead bodies all along the way, is the whole point.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Ozark for Decider.

“I know I’m not easy to love,” Wendy Byrde tells her husband Marty.

Long pause.

“…That’s not true,” he finally says.

But it’s the pause that does the talking here. I do believe Marty still loves Wendy, in that bone-deep way that people who’ve thrown their lot in together do—despite their bitter disagreements, despite their enmeshment in criminal conspiracy after criminal conspiracy, despite their constant life-and-death danger. Or maybe not despite them, but because of them. Hard though Wendy may be to love, I can’t see Marty taking her up on her suggestion that, after it’s all said and done, she’ll understand if he leaves her. They’re simply in too deep together. And in Ozark Season 4 Episode 12 (“Trouble the Water”) may well be where they finally start drowning.

I reviewed the antepenultimate episode of Ozark for Decider.

There’s other business to attend to in this episode, of course—Wendy and Camila attempting to force Claire Shaw to uphold her end of the old deal with Javi, Ruth getting declared Wyatt Langmore’s heir and thus the inheritor of a large portion of Darlene Snell’s holdings, FBI SAC Hannah Clay (Tess Malis Kincaid) trying to force Marty to remain in charge of the cartel—but I’ll freely admit to being most fascinated by the return of Rachel and Wilkes. These once-and-future main characters, seemingly swept aside for others, are now being put back in play for the show’s endgame. What will their moves at this late stage mean for the game at large? I have no idea—and that’s a thrilling place to be. More shows should leave the viewers guessing like this, I say. Bring it on.

I reviewed Ozark Season 4 Episode 11 for Decider.

Two momentous developments bookend Ozark Season 4 Episode 10. Both feature members of Wendy Byrde’s family. Both involve executions. But beyond that, they couldn’t be more different. It’s a hell of a parallel that writer John Shiban and director Melissa Hickey construct here, first showing us how a decent person dies, then how a deeply compromised person kills.

I reviewed Ozark Season 4 Episode 10 for Decider.

It’s business as usual in Ozark country. After a killer mid-season premiere that effectively functioned as an interlude based on a single plot point—the murder of Javi Elizondro by Ruth Langmore, in response to his murder of her cousin Wyatt—the show has returned to the status quo ante. Tense phone calls, shifting loyalties, last-second business deals, lots of characters driving back and forth to talk to other characters for two minutes or less: The tropes that have made Ozark what it is, for better and for worse, are back with a vengeance.

I reviewed Ozark Season 4 Episode 9 for Decider.

Ruth Langmore behind the wheel of her truck. Ruth Langmore standing in the middle of a country road. Ruth Langmore sitting atop her trailer. Ruth Langmore listening to music and sipping coffee in a diner. Ruth Langmore following Wendy and Marty Byrde. Ruth Langmore crying in an underground parking lot after shooting a man to death.

You could practically reconstruct the plot of Ozark Season 4’s mid-season premiere (“The Cousin of Death”) from lingering closeups of Ruth Langmore alone. Writer/showrunner Chris Mundy and director Amanda Marsalis know what a weapon they have in the form of actor Julia Garner—I’ve waxed rhapsodic about her myself, multiple times—and in this pivotal episode from the show’s final season, they’re firing at will. Even aside from the repeated use of lengthy shots of nothing but her face, this whole hour is a star turn for Garner, and a turning point in the life of the character she plays.

I’m covering Ozark‘s final episodes for Decider, starting with my review of the mid-season premiere.

My main critical takeaway from this episode (“Rightful Place”)—as was the case with the first half of the two-episode premiere, this installment was written by showrunner Dustin Lance Black and directed by David Mackenzie—is how ultimately pathetic the behavior and motives of the Lafferty brothers really are. Wyatt Russell, in particular, is a perfect choice for would-be “man of the house” Dan; his snot-nosed “you think you’re better than me?!?!” performance here echoes his similar work as the replacement Captain America in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, of all things. (I wasn’t nuts about that Disney/Marvel show, but Russell was well cast, that’s for sure.) There’s a brilliant bit where he insults a client, then says “you can say that twice!”, then literally says it a second time. As for Robin, Seth Numrich gives him the air of an inveterate second banana, so determined to make a life for himself as Dan’s father-appointed right hand man that he’s called down the Word of God itself to justify his conduct. The fact that he’s grown a shaggy beard, prophet-style, shows just how far he and his kin have drifted from the conservative but straight-laced beliefs of their father. This generation wants to be seen as different from the norm.

All in all, it’s another compelling glimpse into the secret life of America, fueled by faith and resentment in equal parts. Good thing we’ve moved past all that, huh?

I reviewed the second episode of Under the Banner of Heaven for Decider.

Whatever the case, the story makes for fine true-crime television so far. Part of that is down to the casting, which is uniformly excellent. There’s a sort of echo between Andrew Garfield as Jeb and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Brenda, for example—they both seem like affable, guy/girl-next-door types, which helps root the awful circumstances of the story in an “it can happen here” way. Christopher Heyerdahl, who played a terrifying religious fanatic in Them, brings some of that dark fire with him here as Ammon, a guy who looks extremely unpleasant if you’re on his bad side. I liked Wyatt Russell’s smarmy smile as favored son Dan and Sam Worthington’s barely repressed emotion as passed-over Ron. Even a stock detective character like Taba is invested with verve and vigor by Gil Birmingham.

Aside from the cast, Under the Banner of Heaven distinguished itself so far with its use of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them snatches of flashbacks, often lit brightly by the sun as if in contrast with the night work of the detectives. This is how we see the story of Joseph Smith unfold as Allen narrates it; the cross-cutting between historical figures and the modern-day plot (which echoes the structure of Jon Krakauer’s original book) and between recent and distant memories takes on an almost hallucinatory rhythm at times.

I’m covering Under the Banner of Heaven for Decider, starting with my review of the first half of the show’s two-part premiere.

The question, I suppose, is this: Is it so bad that the show ends this way? If you were looking for a happy ending, then sure, it’s a bummer. But the counterargument, that individual virtue and skill are not enough to stem systemic injustices, is a strong one, and it’s powerfully made here. It may not be the ultimately upbeat tale of a cub reporter exposing wrongdoing that the show promised to be early on, but that may not be a bad thing in the end. After all, it’s the job of a journalist to tell the truth, and sometimes that truth is ugly indeed.

I reviewed the puzzling finale of Tokyo Vice for Decider.