It’s as if on the Vegas Strip did Randall Flagg a stately pleasure dome decree. People in fetish gear fuck freely in public. Everyone’s drunk, and some are doing blow right out the open. It’s a bacchanalia—and it’s being staged around a gladiatorial pit where slaves are made to fight each other with chainsaws.

In other words, it’s the nightmare scenario of people who used to want parental advisory stickers on Marilyn Manson records. Is it a plausible setup for a dystopian society run by a demon in denim? I’m not so sure. Where did he find all the hardbodied models, male and female, who are gyrating and pole-dancing and having sex out there? Does no one find the blend of hedonism and ultraviolence a little much? Could a new society really coalesce around that particular kernel?

The funny thing, and I use funny very loosely here, is that we’ve scene what an American dystopia would look like just last week. And while there is a certain cathartic venting of violent desires, it’s against perceived enemies to the desired order of things, not randos dumped into a thunderdome scenario while onlookers hump each other. It seems to me that the pitch Randall Flagg made to Lloyd Henried in prison—don’t you want the chance to get even with the kind of people who did this to you?—is a much more compelling and plausible way to structure New Vegas. Everyone there is attracted to the darkness Flagg embodies, so promise them the chance to extinguish the light (specifically in Boulder)! Turning the place into a sex club with a death-match arena in the middle just rings hollow. It’s a Hollywood idea of what fascism looks like.

I reviewed this week’s less-than-promising episode of The Stand for Decider.

I get the feeling that this iteration of The Stand is meant to focus on the whole life-in-the-aftermath aspect of the story, to the near-exclusion of the pandemic, and relegating the dark vs. light conflict—the titular stand!—to second place, at least for now. But it’s running out of road for this approach. Sooner or later, and probably sooner than later, it’s going to come down to Mother Abigail and her crew against Randall Flagg and his own. (A crew we simply have not seen at all yet, aside from that one episode when he rescued Lloyd Henried from prison.) I think the tone it’s struck for the material on which it’s concentrating its efforts is appropriately elegiac and surprisingly gentle. But if you’re gonna knock the house down again, it pays to have sturdily built it, and that I’m not sure the show has done at all.

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

It is kind of a feat, when you think about it: an audience in 2020 not knowing what’s going to happen in The Stand. This unusual, mix-and-match adaptation of one of the best-known horror novels in the English language continues to unfold in non-linear fashion, making familiar characters and plot points seem strange and unexpected. Sometimes this is very effective, like how it allows Nick-the-outsider and Nick-the-high-priest-of-Mother-Abigail to be directly contrasted with one another in the episode where we get to know him in the first place. Sometimes it doesn’t work as well, like how it races through the creation of the “committee” established by the survivors to govern Boulder; here it’s all the work of Mother Abigail, who picks them to be her emissaries first and a governing body second (if at all).

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

Overall, this episode functions less as a successor to the premiere and more as a part two. Showrunners Josh Boone and Benjamin Cavell are still introducing characters, weaving their pasts and presents together in that same dreamy way—a million miles from Stephen King’s relentless forward pace at this same stage in the story in the book version. In effect, we’re just seeing pieces of the puzzle at this point, and waiting for the final picture to take shape. Until then, it’s hard to judge the show as a success or failure, though the game cast, impactful score, and occasional flash of post-apocalyptic imagery (like the George Washington Bridge covered from one end to the other by stalled cars filled with dead passengers) are keeping my interest. It’s kind of like we’re in the early stages of the superflu, before it’s had a chance to really take off. We’ll see what kind of world we’re inhabiting when we reach the other side.

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

So that’s what The Stand 2020 is. I can tell you what it isn’t, though: It isn’t anything like Stephen King. I mean, the characters are all there, sure, and the story beats too, albeit shuffled; what I’m talking about is (paraphrasing Barton Fink here) That Stephen King Feeling. King, as he himself has written about extensively in his treatise on horror Danse Macabre, nearly always establishes a situation-normal status quo, then introduces some world-ending catastrophe or soul-eating demon-thing that overturns the whole Apollonian apple cart. You have to see little George Denbrough make his toy boat, kiss his big brother goodbye, and head out into the rain in his yellow slicker before you can meet Pennywise the Dancing Clown, you know? It’s the most King-feeling thing in all his work: You set up the house of cards, and then you knock it down.

In the book version of The Stand, the house of cards was the entirety of human society—specifically the American subsection thereof—and the knocking down was performed by Captain Trips. And boy, was it ever! For my money there’s no more thrilling section in all the King books I’ve read than the opening quarter or so of The Stand, where we meet all our main characters as civilization stumbles, crumbles, and completely collapses around them. Hell, they don’t even need to be main characters at all: There’s a chapter that simply follows the virus across the country from one random person to the next, establishing the virus as history’s most lethal chain letter, that’s just gleefully dark and frightening. It’s as good as King gets.

And The Stand’s 2020 TV adaptation will not be going there at all, it seems. It is, to put it mildly, a bold choice. And you know what? I like bold choices where adapting Stephen King is concerned! The most slavish recreations of his work tend to be the most boring; even in a case like the recent Hulu series Castle Rock, which was not a straight adaptation at all but an attempt to do for King’s oeuvre what Noah Hawley’s Fargo did with the Coen Brothers’ filmography, the effort to nail all those little King-isms came at the cost of doing anything actually memorable, let alone frightening. (I’m old school in that I think horror TV shows are supposed to be scary. Go figure!) Compare and contrast with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining: It’s very much Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, not Stephen King’s, and it just so happens to be one of the greatest movies ever made; King, of course, despises it.

So no, a lack of fidelity isn’t going to get on my nerves per se. It never does! So I’m not interested in comparing chapter and verse, describing what the series got “right” and “wrong” about the details or even the broad strokes. In the end, it’s all in the execution. And in this early going at least, the execution is intriguing enough to keep me watching. The fading between times and places, the freeform mixture of “now” and “then,” gives the show the feel of a dream, or a nightmare (several of which punctuate the action, after all). The lush, traditional score (no John Carpenter knockoffs here) by Nathaniel Walcott and Mike Mogis contributes beautifully to that dreamy feeling. Will it last? Or, in the absence of the harrowing rise of the superflu plague, will the flashback/flashforward device wear out its welcome before the real action kicks in? These are open questions, but compared to “Why the hell am I watching this?”, they’re questions I don’t mind asking at all.

I’m covering The Stand for Decider, starting with my review of the premiere. It’s bold, I’ll give it that!

But it’s Mike Milligan/Satchel Roy who must bear the weight of all this. It’s he who’s cursed to remember, he in whom the bloody history of this war is imprinted. And for the purposes of this episode, it renders him speechless. Who fits in and who is rejected? For whom is the power of violence sufficient to gain entry into the promised land? How many people must watch their loved ones die in front of them to feed the maw of the money machine? Mike has no history report to offer us. He stares out at the great American nowhere and fiddles with a gun and does nothing—and if that isn’t the “Storia Americana” that gives the episode its title, I don’t know what is.

I reviewed the season finale of Fargo for Decider. The final scene made the whole season for me.

In thinking about this episode, it’s the details that jump out at me, despite all the major goings-on. The black comedy of the cops explaining their presence in Oraetta’s apartment by simply saying “He woke up.” Oraetta’s taunting of Ethelrida: “What does it feel like to be so sure you’re right and nobody cares?” Josto and Gaetano literally bragging about the size of their dicks. (“Big like a pickle?” Gaetano asks his brother, quoting “The Humpty Dance” of all things.) The lovely slo-mo shots of strutting gangsters and lethal shootouts in the episode’s opening gang-war montage. Josto trying to lift his brother up affectionately and failing miserably. Josto’s baffled “What the fuck?” when Gaetano dies. Odis’s smile. Gaetano’s flapping skull. Loy’s forgery of a painting he grew fond of when he saw it in a magazine, and Ethelrida’s ability to identify it.

If this season of Fargo is to be considered a success, it’s in these little things, these images, these exchanges of dialogue—moments that accumulate and tell a story of their own, even if the big picture has yet to come together.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Fargo Season Four for Decider.

Deliberately disorienting and strange, the better to mimic the world in which Satchel Cannon now finds himself alone, this episode of Fargo (“East/West”) is by far the season’s best. Coming as it does after the bloodbath of Episode 8, it relies less on sheer body count for its power than on the mysteries described above—the meta mysteries of why the show uses the techniques it does, the in-world mysteries of Satchel and Rabbi’s fellow guests at the Barton Arms hotel (it hardly needs to be said that this is a reference to Barton Fink, which is itself set largely in a strange hotel), and the general feeling that some horrible future awaits.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fargo, the season’s strangest and best to date, for Decider.

Now that the inevitable bloody explosion for which we’ve waited all season has taken place, it’s worth noting that three full episodes remain. Will we be looking at a protracted aftermath, or will the violence continue, or even ratchet up? Will Odis and Oraetta get their comeuppance? Will Josto’s scheming (he’s like a snake, in Gaetano’s admiring words) or Loy’s stoicism win the day? Will Zelmare seek revenge of her own? And what is to become of Ethelrida, the one decent person in the whole mess? With no righteous lawman or law-woman to anchor the action as in previous seasons, and an extra episode for creator and co-writer Noah Hawley to play with, the contours of the season’s denouement are unclear. I get the feeling, though, that Ethelrida isn’t the only character who can’t afford to make mistakes.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fargo for Decider.

I was not prepared.

No, seriously, listen: I was not prepared.

I reviewed the series finale of the magnificent Suburra: Blood on Rome for Decider.

It’s a hell of a note to end on. Only one episode remains before Suburra arrives at its final destination, and I find myself just as enthralled by these handsome criminals and their emotional misadventures as ever. Almost certainly this will leave me bereaved by the season’s end, as I just can’t imagine all of them making it out alive. I want them to, though—that’s the thing. I want my beautiful boys to live to fight another day. I want them to get along. I want the New Kings of Rome to stand triumphant, that’s how successful this show has been, over the course of its three seasons, in making me care about these dirtbags. And I have a sinking feeling I’m going to be disappointed.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome for Decider.

Watching the two of them egg each other on is like watching a dark mirror image of meetings between Spadino and Aureliano; you want the boys to get along, whereas with Manfredi and Adelaide, all you want them to do is sit down and shut up.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season Three for Decider.

The most endearing thing about Suburra is how endearing Aureliano Adami and Spadino Anacleti find each other. Despite starting the series at odds, despite all the twists and turns in their personal and professional relationship since then, you always get the sense that these two dudes fundamentally enjoy each other’s company, even at times when they enjoy very little else. There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in this episode that makes that point very clearly. At the big, ill-fated party Spadino throws to celebrate his and Aureliano’s coronation as “the new Kings of Rome,” they, along with their significant others Nadia and Angelica, toast to their success. And right then, Aureliano leans over and kisses Spadino on the arm.

The main thing to notice here is what you don’t notice here. There’s no camera cut to emphasize the gesture. There’s no reaction shot focusing on any of the characters, showing that they’re taken aback or smiling warmly at the kiss or anything like that. In the absence of that kind of basic filmmaking infrastructure it feels safe to assume that the kiss was improvised on the spot by actor Alessandro Borghi and then kept in the episode because the filmmakers liked the look of it.

But that absence of emphasis says so much about the closeness between these two guys. Aureliano can kiss Spadino on the arm and the party proceeds as normal (for now anyway) because yeah, of course these two guys love each other and would display that without it being a big deal. And it’s in moments like those that I love them too.

I reviewed the third episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 3 for Decider.

I think the thing that surprises me most about this episode is the rapidity with which Spadino and Aureliano are moving their way through Rome’s criminal power structure. We barely meet the truculent Titto before he’s opening fire on the duo’s enemies on their behalf. If the rest of the season simply frogmarches our heroes to the top of the power structure—well, I’ll be pretty excited about it, the way the episodes of Boardwalk Empire or Fargo in which someone comes out indisputably on top always excited me.

I reviewed episode 2 of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 3 for Decider.

Of course, this is Suburra, so the other star of the show is just the way the show itself looks. Competing color schemes, none of which are the typical prestige-TV palette of slate-blue or puke-green, come with each character: Aureliano is blue like the sea of his oceanside headquarters, Spadino is gold like the overly opulent decorations in his home, Nascari is crimson like a cardinal’s robes, and Cinaglia tends to be shot in harsh lighting as if he might wilt under the bright lights. The show doesn’t beat you over the head with any of this, but it’s there, and it has an impact.

I reviewed Suburra: Blood on Rome‘s third and final season premiere for Decider, where I’ll be covering the entire season.

I don’t know where this season of Fargo is going; I just know I feel like I’m in expert hands on the way there.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fargo for Decider.

I like art when it’s weirder than it needs to be. That historically has been one of the things I’ve liked best about Fargo: It’s weirder than it needs to be. Think of Lorne Malvo’s batshit extended flashback in Season One, or the prophetic dream soundtracked in part by Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” in Season Two, or V.M. Varga’s whole deal in Season Three. None of these things needed to be that way, but they were, because weirdness is where art lives.

Perhaps that’s why, in the least weird episode of Fargo Season Four to date, I keep thinking of the incredibly morose and shadowy birthday celebration (complete with creepy singing) that the Smutnys, fresh from the takeover of their family business by Loy Cannon, sing to their daughter Ethelrida. Happy birthday to you, kid! It’s really weird around here!

I reviewed last night’s episode of Fargo for Decider.

The first thing we should talk about when it comes to this week’s episode of Fargo (“The Birthplace of Civilization”) is the last thing that happens in it. As the lights flicker and fade around the dead body of Loy Cannon’s consigliere Doctor Senator, shot dead by Gaetano Fadda’s button man Constant Calamita, Jeff Russo’s grandiosely melancholy Fargo theme—absent from the entire season until now—comes roaring in on the soundtrack. It’s as if series creator and episode co-writer (with Francesca Sloane) Noah Hawley is sending us a signal: The real show is about to begin.

I reviewed last night’s episode of Fargo for Decider.

That “Sh-Boom” singalong is a solid stand-in for Lovecraft Country and its season finale, “Full Circle.” I see what they’re going for—in this case a moment of levity before the horror and desperation of the final battle sinks in. I get it, in theory. But the delivery is just a bit off: The smiles feel forced, the shared connection too neat, the scene too much of a scene instead of something that feels like it emerged organically from the characters involved. Similarly, I get what Lovecraft Country wants to do; I just don’t think it did it.

I reviewed the season finale of Lovecraft Country, a nobly intentioned, well-acted, poorly executed show, for Decider.

This isn’t the first time Fargo the series has trafficked in the supernatural. Season Two was punctuated by alien vistations; Season Three gave us a character who was invisible to all electronic sensors, and another, played by Twin Peaks‘ Ray Wise, who can best be described as an avenging angel, meting out justice to the wicked. And there are precedents in the work of Joel and Ethan Coen, whose entire oeuvre is Fargo the TV show’s source material at least as much as Fargo the movie itself: Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There, The Hudsucker Proxy, and even The Big Lebowski—whose narrator, the Stranger played by Sam Elliott, shows up and interacts with the Dude before addressing the audience directly—all dabble in the paranormal, to name a few.

But neither the show nor the body of cinematic work that inspired it has, to my recollection, presented us with so pure a figure of horror as Mr. Snowman (played by Will Clinger, according to FX’s press notes on the season). With his blackened, frostbitten fingertips, his missing nose, his pale gray skin, and his ability to change the atmosphere surrounding him, he’s more like a White Walker or one of their wights than anything we’ve seen on the show before. Why series creator and episode co-writer (with Stefani Robinson) Noah Hawley decided to veer so hard and so far in a horror direction with this entity is a mystery, at least for now.

I reviewed last night’s episode of Fargo, which was a doozy, for Decider.