But in the end, isn’t that Hollywood‘s big idea? Imagine a world in which, thanks to a string of lucky breaks, women and queers and black people and Asian people and people who’ve been arrested by vice squads suddenly had it within their power to change the kinds of movies Hollywood makes. Imagine a world in which, thanks to innovative business and PR maneuvers, the first of these movies winds up being a big hit. The resulting story isn’t a matter of “Well, if Rock Hudson had simply come out of the closet we wouldn’t have had all those problems”—it’s speculative fiction, a sort of social-justice steampunk (imagine Dick’s early invention of the wide release as the equivalent of an armored blimp or whatever) in which values of diversity and acceptance battered down the doors years before they did IRL. I get it. I enjoyed it. I had a good time at the movies, so to speak. Action!

I reviewed the season/series/not sure finale of Hollywood for Decider. It was a fun show!

Directed once again by Janet Mock, it’s maybe the most Hollywood episode of Hollywood yet. Take the opening sequence, for example. Avis vows to provide security for the cast and crew, who’ve come under threat by the Ku Klux Klan. Ernie, the old pimp benefactor of Jack and Archie, refuses their and Rock and Raymond’s offer to go back to work to make up Meg‘s budget shortfall, instead calling in all his old employees for a week-long binge of sex work in order to raise the money for them (and earns a major role for himself in the process). You gotta love a series that takes that old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland “hey kids, let’s put on a show” vibe and funds it with prostitution!

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Hollywood for Decider.

The speed with which Hollywood can shuffle between all these storylines and all these modes—the personal, the artistic, the political—isn’t trivializing any of them, I don’t think. If anything, it’s arguing that these factors are all fundamentally inseparable. The big test of the show, I think, will be whether it argues that success in one sphere equates to success in the others. Does making a politically worthy film make the film good, or make the filmmakers good people? Can great art affect political change, or do we settle for it in lieu of political change? I don’t know how Hollywood will answer these questions, especially with just two episodes to go. But my butt will be in the seat until I find out.

I reviewed episode five of Hollywood for Decider.

I agree with the basic thesis advanced by creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan and their co-writer and director for this episode (“(Screen) Tests”) Janet Mock, I really do. Representation matters. Culture sends messages people receive and act on. Hollywood is not nearly so powerless when it comes to what the public will accept and pay for as they make themselves out to be every time they shy away from roles for women and queer people and people of color, both behind and in front of the camera. They’ve got all the power in the world where that’s concerned.

But the idea that they’re more powerful than the goddamn government in terms of their ability to ameliorate oppression and suffering…well, that’s kind of why we’re in the mess we’re in right now, isn’t it? Generations of liberal politicians downplaying expectations, winning the culture war for the most part but ceding vast swathes of the body politic to the sworn enemies of women, of queer people, of people of color. I want Ace Studios to cast Camille, the right woman for the role, same as Roosevelt does. But I also want the government to pound Jim Crow laws into dust, which government and government alone, motivated by mass action, has the power to do.

I reviewed episode four of Hollywood for Decider.

I’ve never quite seen Hollywood‘s blend of earnest social-justice anachronism and dirty-minded played-for-laughs smuttiness before. I certainly never would have guessed it would go down like peanut butter and chocolate. But here we are, three episodes into a seven-episode run, and I’m enjoying every dick joke and every impassioned speech about standing up for who you really are. Sometimes—like when Henry tells Rock he reminds him of what it was like to truly care about someone, declares that he’ll make Rock the biggest movie star in the world, then makes him have a threesome with Roy Calhoun and Tab Hunter—I’m enjoying them within the same scene. That’s Hollywood, baby!

I reviewed episode three of Hollywood for Decider.

“Sometimes I think folks in this town really don’t understand the power they have. Movies don’t just show us how the world is, they show us how the world can be. And if we change the way that movies are made—you take a chance and you make a different kind of story—I think we can change the world.”

As mission statements go, Hollywood could not make it plainer. Through the voice of Raymond Ainsley (Darren Criss), a neophyte director and a half-Filipino man who passes as white, Hollywood co-creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan are making their position clear, or at least it seems that way for now. You chip away at the kind of people who make it to the screen here, you chip away at the kind of people who make those decisions there, and before long the world will remake itself in Hollywood’s new image.

I reviewed the second episode of Hollywood for Decider.

Hollywood is not Ryan Murphy‘s first television series about Hollywood. It’s not his first series about fame, or performance, or the desire to remake oneself. From American Crime Story to Nip/Tuck, from Glee to Feud, these topics have been the prolific writer/director/producer’s bread and butter since his own Hollywood career began. But this new Netflix miniseries gives him a chance to flex his dream-factory muscles at the absolute apex of the Hollywood studio system, its true Golden Age, and still involve both his bawdiest and most high-minded storytelling obsessions: sex, identity, performance, what stories get to be told and who gets to tell them. And judging from this pilot episode (“Hooray for Hollywood”), it’s Ryan Murphy done right.

I reviewed every episode of the new Netflix series Hollywood for Decider, starting with my look at the series premiere. This is both the most cornily earnest and gleefully filthy show I’ve seen in a long time. I enjoyed it!

‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’

You can’t swing a dead parrot on Netflix without hitting content from comedy’s answer to the Beatles—all four seasons of their Flying Circus series are on there, along with a bunch of documentaries, greatest-hits comps, and the religious satire Life of Brian. But you can’t beat the granddaddy of them all, the midnight-movie masterpiece that put John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam et al in the world of King Arthur and his Knights Who Say “Ni!”—no, wait, his Knights of the Round Table, sorry. The movie’s laconic pace and legendary bits (“Just a flesh wound!”) make for the baked equivalent of comfort food. And don’t forget to stick around until the very end of the closing theme for the best sketch of the bunch!

Celebrate 420 Day with this list of ten perfect stoner movies and shows on Netflix that I wrote for Decider. Comedy, drama, action, horror, musicals, documentaries, you name it!

And so passes a season of Ozark that largely, if not quite entirely, did away with the previous season’s writing tics—the timed ultimatums, the ultraviolence during the cold opens—and dug us deep into a brand new character, only to yank him away from us by the end, Sopranos-style. It may not be a canonical drama, no matter what the awards shows say, but it’s an entertaining one, and one that isn’t afraid to aim high now and then. At the end of last season I speculated that the show might be on the verge of greatness, and said I’d be thinking about it for a long time. I don’t think either of those predictions quite played out, but the show kept me engaged and never insulted my intelligence in the process. Sometimes, that’s plenty.

I reviewed the season finale of Ozark Season Three for Decider.

There’s a Sopranos episode, maybe you remember it, called “Long Term Parking.” In that episode, [CHARACTER A REDACTED] reveals to [CHARACTER B REDACTED] that they’ve been working with the FBI, in hopes that Character B, too, will want to flip on the mob. The two separate, and then Character A receives a phone call from [CHARACTER C REDACTED] that Character B has attempted suicide, and that [CHARACTER D REDACTED] will come pick Character A up to visit Character B in the hospital. As Characters A and D take that ride together, your brain reels back and forth from relief to dread to relief again, since it seems Character A is in the clear. Only they’re not, not by a long shot. Character D isn’t there to give them a ride—at least not the ride they wanted. Character D is there to drive Character A out into the middle of nowhere and murder them, which Character D does. All these characters who seemed to love Character A are revealed as charlatans, or at the very least as people who put their own safety ahead of every other consideration. If you pose a risk to the family, you will be killed. It’s that simple.

Anyway, the cinematographer for that episode of The Sopranos is Alik Sakharov. Sakharov also directed Ozark Season 3 Episode 9 (“Fire Pink”). Why do I bring that up? Oh, no reason.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Ozark Season Three for Decider.

What we have here is a chickens-come-home-to-roost episode. Ozark Season 3 Episode 8 is titled “BFF” for reasons that I must say elude me at the moment; it’s the antepenultimate installment of Ozark‘s third season which sees a lot of long-delayed reckonings, as characters wake up to truths that should probably have been self-evident. And the truth hurts.

I reviewed episode eight of Ozark Season Three for Decider.

The thing I keep returning to while watching this show is how taxing it must be for Marty and Wendy to constantly have to think at maximum brain capacity, all day every day. Like, that casino license business—what must it take to keep stuff like that in line and still find the time and energy required to, I dunno, eat dinner or go to the bathroom or schedule a doctor’s appointment? It must be enormously draining for everyone involved. I think Ozark may be an experiment in seeing how far and how taut a string can be pulled before it finally snaps.

I reviewed episode seven of Ozark Season Three for Decider.

So, let’s talk about running times. As has been customary in previous seasons, Ozark Season 3 routinely presents us with episodes that run right up to, and sometimes cross, the full 60-minute mark. In the past I might have called this “Netflix Bloat,” part and parcel of the same mindset that led the Netflix/Marvel collaboration series to run, oh I dunno, four to six episodes too long each season.

In Ozark‘s case, at this point anyway, I don’t think that’s a fair criticism. I never feel bored during an episode, never wonder why we’re spending time watching the cinematic equivalent of paint drying—the way I often did on Jessica Jones or Luke Cage, when characters would be shot just walking to the places where actual scenes were happening, as if the show needed to clear its throat before actually getting down to business.

What Ozark‘s lengthy runtimes do produce is a sense of disconnection between what happens at the start of an episode and what happens at the end of it. For example, Ozark Season 3 Episode 6 (“Su Casa Es Mi Casa”) ends when Ben Davis, off his meds for a previously undisclosed bipolar disorder, and his nephew Jonah Byrde track Ruth Langmore to a cash dropoff that goes south when unknown parties in black SUVs show up and gun down the Kansas City mob grunts tasked with the dropping off before blowing up the truck they were driving.

I was so engrossed by the whole business—by seeing how Ben’s condition was manifesting itself, by Jonah’s use of his drone, by the evident care and tenderness Ben feels towards Ruth, by Ruth’s relationship with the KC assholes, by whether they were going to fuck with her again, by whether Ruth would get out of there in time when the shit hit the fan—that I completely forgot how the episode began.

I reviewed episode six of Ozark Season Three for Decider.

I believe that covers everything? This is an eventful show, with a real gordian knot’s worth of plot threads. It’s to the point where it can be hard even to remember where we were this time last season. (Remember Rachel and the Blue Cat? They haven’t even been so much as mentioned.) One moment you’re digging up dirt on an FBI agent and the next you’re apologizing to a horse breeder for cutting an animal’s nuts off for no good reason. Then again, I suppose this is how life feels for the Byrdes, perhaps the busiest main characters in any prestige drama I can remember. Every time Wendy asks Charlotte to put something on her schedule I cringe a bit inside. How much more can these people take?

I reviewed episode five of Ozark Season Three for Decider.

In the end, Marty gets dropped back off at home after his forcible sojourn to Mexico, and all is right with the world, more or less. But there are ominous signs for the future. (Aren’t there always?) I’ve got no idea how his scheme to corrupt a federal agent is supposed to play out. And Helen’s warning to Charlotte (who knows nearly everything about her family’s dirty deeds) that no one must ever tell her daughter Erin (who’s in the dark) anything lest they face dire consequences is a Chekov’s gun if ever there was one. This is not a show in which people succeed in keeping secrets; indeed, constant revelations are the very engine that powers the entire story. Poor Erin Pierce is gonna find out soon enough what her mother’s real job entails, and I wouldn’t want to be in the blast radius when that particular bomb goes off.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Ozark Season 3 for Decider.

But most promising of all, I think, are the curveballs the episode throws. I like how out-of-nowhere Wendy’s decision to reclaim custody of Ezekiel is; that makes it hard to pin down as just another plot beat and makes it seem more like the product of a personal decision. I also like how Uncle Ben seems like…not such a bad dude! He’s a fine confidant for Wendy, who tearfully tells him about the affair she had that helped blow up her marriage (“It fuckin’ sucked” is her verdict after the fact), and a halfway decent suitor for Ruth, who like I said actually smiles at the dude. (It says a lot about Julia Garner’s talent that she can make her character scowl in like forty different expressive ways, to the point where you might not even notice she’s never happy until, all of a sudden, she is.)

I reviewed episode three of Ozark Season Three for Decider.

As a title, Ozark pegs the show to a unique location. It has a nice oddball ring to it as well. But if this show were looking for another name, A Series of Unforeseen Events would work pretty well. Every time Marty and Wendy Byrde do…well, pretty much anything, some other unexpected thing comes back to bite them in their collective ass.

I reviewed episode two of Ozark Season Three for Decider.

These strongly delineated characters, and the performances behind them, keep the show afloat. As Marty, Bateman is all quiet cynicism and resignation; he always seems to be struggling just to get through the day, and his volume never rises above a four. Linney’s Wendy alternates between chipper, we-can’t-lose plan-making and peals of derision when her saturnine husband tries to shoot her down. And Garner, the real star of the show, portrays Ruth as a woman who always has to keep proving herself, sometimes succeeding, sometimes lapsing into impulsive outbursts of anger when someone accuses her of falling short.

You can string a lot of story between these three opposing poles, that’s for sure. They’re sturdy, they’re easily recognizable, and they play off one another beautifully. (It’s impressive, in its way, for the show’s auteur Bateman to continuously take a back seat to the more dynamic performances of his leading ladies.) The Redneck Riviera setting and the tangle of competing criminal enterprises give the show its own unique flavor, too. Yes, the show has its obvious precedents and its storytelling tics, but I’m still glad the Byrdes are back.

I reviewed episode one of Ozark Season Three for Decider.

I’ve heard Narcos and Narcos: Mexico described as the platonic ideal of a Netflix show: eminently bingeable, instantly forgettable. I don’t know if that’s entirely fair, particularly (as I’ve said before) for the Wagner Moura/Pablo Escobar seasons. But here we are at the end of a season that I enjoyed watching from start to finish, but would be hard pressed to, like, recommend to anyone for any particular reason, aside from maybe all the screentime Scoot McNairy got. He was right: This story does not have a happy ending.

I reviewed the season finale of Narcos: Mexico Season Two for Decider. Good but pointedly not great.

There’s one episode left in this season of Narcos: Mexico, and there’s over thirty years of actual narcos in Mexico remaining before the series gets up to date. So there’s plenty of room for final twists and turns in the season finale, which may or may not see the fates of Félix and his plaza bosses sealed, to say nothing of Walt back in Sacramento. All we know for sure is that, to quote Dune, the spice must flow. The only question remaining for this ruthlessly plot-driven show to answer is who will control that flow, and who will act to shut it off.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Narcos: Mexico Season 2 for Decider.