It’s only when the episode reaches its conclusion that it starts to trip over itself. First, it indulges in a cheap and easy Terminator-style temporal paradox: Angela tells Dr. Manhattan that her grandfather murdered Judd Crawford for being a closet Klansman and member of the Cyclops conspiracy, facts of which he goes on to inform her grandfather years earlier, causing him to commit that very murder in the first place.

Alan Moore wisely avoided these chicken-and-egg brainteasers when he wrote the character. Instead, he emphasized the way Dr. Manhattan’s quantum-physics experience of life would affect him emotionally. Passing messages backwards and forwards in time until reality becomes a loop is a lot less interesting than the idea of a man constantly adrift in an endless sea of memory, experience, and anticipation. One is a parlor game; the other is a story. It doesn’t surprise me to see the co-writer of this episode is Jeff Jensen, the former TV critic best known for his elaborate and always incorrect theories about what was really going on on Lindelof’s Lost. (Apparently Lindelof appreciated those pieces a lot more than I did.)

I reviewed this week’s episode of Watchmen, about which I had mixed feelings, for Decider.

Do you see where I’m going with this? The art of this show doesn’t lie in Damon Lindelof’s nervous-breakdown interviews or contractually-obligated making-of mini-documentaries, or in the Peteypedia supplementary materials on HBO.com, or in finding just the right place to stop the chicken-and-egg cycle of racism and racism-induced trauma that led to the state of vigilantism and policing today. It’s in the pacing and the imagery, in that staccato strangeness that Lindelof has developed and unleashed in his Gibbons-endorsed, Moore-ignored homage to the original.

If that’s not to your taste, that is fine—even The Leftovers was Not For Everyone TV. But at least respond to it as a work of visual narrative, not a thinkpiece. At least reflect on and wrestle with where the art of the thing really is, not where you feel you need it to be.

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

Most interesting is the chicken and the egg question all this raises. Is a black man to blame for the pseudofascist superheroes who followed in his footsteps and gave Dick Nixon decades in the White House, then went on to spawn the 7th Kavalry? Or is it the original masked vigilantes, the KKK, who should get the blame for driving Reeves to become Hooded Justice in the first place? And most importantly, does Watchmen have a sure enough grasp on this material to answer the question at all?

I reviewed this week’s episode of Watchmen for Decider. It has a complicated relationship with the source material, to say the least.

What really matters here is how Looking Glass takes it, and that’s written all over his face. I’m sorry, I know that sounds like a bad joke given his faceless mask, but it’s really not Looking Glass who receives this revelation—it’s his secret identity, Wade Tillman. Without saying a word, actor Tim Blake Nelson makes the man’s relief so obvious and so strong it borders on awe. You almost expect him to start weeping tears of joy. In dramas, human responses beat shocking twists every time.

And why shouldn’t he be happy? He was a victim of one of the worst events in human history (the horror of which is very effectively conveyed by that flyover shot of the squid’s path of destruction, accompanied by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s horror-movie score). He’s spent the rest of his life terrified, wearing tinfoil hats to protect him from ever experiencing that sort of thing again. His entire life, in fact, revolves around a worst-case scenario that this videotape, in one fell swoop, erases from the realm of possibility. What would you do on behalf of someone who allayed your greatest fear?

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

What I think is inarguable is how writerly Lady Trieu is, how removed from our everyday experience of language, of interaction and reaction, for which cleverness has been substituted. The easy irony (following up a fatuous threat to “destroy” the baby with a smiley “Guys, I’m joking”); the ability to cap off her conversation with a bon mot (“What was that?!?” “That…is mine”); and most especially the penchant for treating the most remarkable and outlandish things—her unimaginable wealth, her ability to manufacture babies, a meteor (or is it a rocket containing Superman?!?!?!) falling out of the sky just seconds after she purchased the land into which it crashes—like they’re just part of an ordinary day…this is extremely Smart Comic Book Writer shit. Or as Lady Trieu herself puts it, when talking to Angela’s missing grandpa Will Reeves about his plan to deliver vital information to her by leaving behind a bottle of pills in her car for her to investigate, “It’s still too cute by half.”

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

Even at this relatively early stage in Watchmen‘s game, summarizing the events of an episode, much less watching one, can be a dizzying prospect. Phone calls to Mars, exploding coffins, racism detectors, homemade spacesuits, dead buffalos, pet owls, Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites,” cars falling from the sky, massive blue dildos—it makes you sound like a crazy person, or at the very least the police chief from The Naked Gun.

But that’s the charm, isn’t it? Alright, I’m not asking, I’m telling: That’s the charm. Even though “She Was Killed by Space Junk,” Watchmen Episode 3, is so far the only one to make a big deal of its ties to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s epochal comic book, it is every bit as weird in its content and jarring in its rhythm as its predecessors. You thought introducing the Silk Spectre was going to slow things down? Think again.

I reviewed the third episode of Watchmen for Decider.

There’s a going on here, and it’s been a while since I’ve watched a show that seems so full of conflicting ideas it might burst at the seams. It’s a good feeling.

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

It’s wild!

No, seriously, it really is wild. It reminds me, in a good way, of some of the most far-out episodes of Lindelof’s Leftovers run—the ones where Justin Theroux near-death-hallucinates that he’s an international assassin, say, or the one where Christopher Eccleston talks to God on a weird cult’s orgy boat before God gets mauled to death by a lion. Where Moore and Gibbons’s Watchmen eased you into its world’s weirdness—which to be fair was orders of magnitude less weird than either the Marvel or DC shared universes of which it served as a critique—Lindelof and director Nicole Kassell dump you into the deep end and expect you to do the butterfly, with the aggressive and eerie music of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross blaring in the background.

I reviewed the series premiere of Watchmen for Decider, where I’ll be covering the show all season. It’s good!

Succession‘s second season finale ends on a high point not just for the episode or the season but the entire series. Until now it’s seemed almost unthinkable that one of Logan Roy’s brood would defy him this dramatically after first agreeing not to. This is more shocking than Kendall’s first attempt to dethrone his dad, since we’d watched him build to that point over several episodes. Our only clues here were implicit and contextual: the presence of Cousin Greg, who kept copies of incriminating documents, by Kendall’s side; the Judas/Fredo kiss Kendall planted on his dad’s cheek when he agreed to be the fall guy required to placate congressional investigators and nervous shareholders alike. With so little fanfare beforehand, watching Kendall actually get up there on the world stage and call his dad out for what he is feels like watching a dog suddenly stand on its hind legs and speak fluent Latin.

I reviewed the season finale of Succession for Decider. I liked it, though people need to calm way down about this thing. As I say elsewhere in the review, dramedies are the coward’s drama.

The chickens have sailed home to roost. Written by series creator Jesse Armstrong and directed by series mainstay Mark Mylod, this week’s episode of Succession sees the long-simmering cruise-ship sex-abuse scandal storyline bear fruit, as the Roys and their lackeys are called to testify before the Senate to answer for their crimes. Now, this is Succession, so you know ahead of time nothing will come of it. But the Roys are generally at their most compelling when they’re forced to pretend to be normal humans during the rare occasions when other people have a leg up on them, and this is one of those occasions. It’s worth taking a little time to savor.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Succession, which I liked better than most, for Decider.

As if a giant clamshell washed ashore and birthed it nude and radiant from my mind’s own womb, this week’s episode of Succession felt like it was crafted to illustrate my argument that the show’s blend comedy and drama is fundamentally unworkable by the gods themselves. It’s an hour-length demonstration of how going for the cheap and easy laugh can neuter sociopolitical critique and reduce deft character work to hamfisted about-faces a daytime soap would look down on.

[…]

Anyway, I’m sure Kendall’s stupid rap is the toast of Twitter, right up there with the joke about j-school grads writing clickbait (“Ten Reasons Why You’re Never Getting Paid”) and a brief mention of the Democratic Socialists of America. In terms of middling political shows, Succession is The West Wing for people who’ve tweeted about how much they dislike The West Wing, and it just aired its answer to “The Jackal.” Tweet away.

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

Doesn’t this get tiresome for people other than me? Like, don’t you want a little more variety in your comedy-drama hybrid than fucking dick jokes an average of once every ten minutes like clockwork? Is that really and truly the only way the venality and machismo of the ultra-rich can be conveyed via humor? Dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick? (“How many dicks is that?” “A lot.”)

I reviewed episode seven of Succession Season 2 for Decider.

As satire, this is pretty thin gruel. Succession has precisely one target audience: The kind of people who know enough about what Aspen and Davos are to want to make fun of them, but who are never going to be at any risk of actually attending them. Perhaps you’ve seen these people all the way up and down your Twitter feed. Perhaps you are one of these people! If so, pat yourself on the back, because someone finally invited you to see how the other half lives. God, look at these assholes, amirite? Pass the vape pen.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Succession, which was actually better than most despite my continued reservations about its overall quality, for Decider.

The confab between the broods does afford a few members of the cast an opportunity to stretch their acting muscles, in some cases for the first time…maybe ever? I’m thinking in particular of Brian Cox as Logan. As formidable an actor as it gets—have you seen what he did with Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter? because if not, stop the fucking presses and get on that—Cox does nothing on this show but growl in the same cadence a few dozen times an episode.

But in this scenario, he can’t bully and bluster his way through things; if the Pierces are determined to make him eat a shit sandwich, and they are, he must do so with a smile and say “thank you” in his gentlest tone of voice. Getting caught off guard when Rhea (Holly Hunter), his ostensible go-between with the Pierces, drives up the price they’d already agreed to is the most interesting thing I’ve seen happen with the character to date.

The other acting highlight, and this should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention since his character is the only one who’s written like a human being, is Jeremy Strong as Kendall. As usual, he comes across as painfully pensive, as if he has to examine every syllable he utters for razor blades like candy from a stranger before he lets it slip from his mouth.

Kendall quickly strikes up a…let’s say a kinship with Naomi Pierce (Annabelle Dexter-Jones, rueful and soulful), the Pierces’ equivalent addict. They snort some rails, pound some vodka, nearly take off in the Logans’ helicopter, and fuck in its back seat. Their connection feels sad, sexy, and true.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Succession for Decider. It’s a little better than the norm in places, but it’s still a sitcom with delusions of grandeur.

Is Succession a TV show, or just a summary of stuff you’ve read on Twitter? This is the unpleasant question each new episode forces us to ask ourselves. “Safe Room,” so called because of the locations to which the Roy family are spirited after a shooting incident at the ATN news network (turns out it was just some guy committing suicide because working there is so awful), is a collection of topics you’ve seen blue-checkmark accounts tut-tut about, wired together by dick jokes.

[…]

Logan and Gerri panic over antifa, Connor and Willa attend the funeral for a thinly veiled Jeffrey Epstein analogue, white nationalist talk show hosts, mass-shooting paranoia, the collapse of legacy news media into the maw of reactionary conglomerates, yes yes yes, we get it. It really does feel like Twitter: The Television Show, because in the end, Succession doesn’t have anything interesting to say about any of these phenomena other than “Look, these phenomena exist.” At this point, that’s almost all there is to be said about, Succession, too.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Succession for Decider. I don’t care for this show.

Jokes? Succession’s got jokes, are you kidding? Succession fuckin’ loves jokes! Succession’s like a big fuckin’ joke-shaped dick, squirting out hot loads of joke sperm, you dumb bastard. “No one is gonna wanna tackle a big angry pufferfish bristling with dick.” “I don’t wanna get into a dick-measuring competition, but I have a better, more powerful dick than you.” “This is about as choreographed as fucking a dog on roller skates.” Jokes, Greg!

“Hunting,” the wearying third episode of Succession’s second season, goes on much like that for the duration. Which is how the whole series has gone on, pretty much: overwrought obscenity delivered as the punchline to a slow and winded setup. No matter who’s talking—that’s Tom, Roman, and Logan above respectively, not that it matters—the jokes come out the same.

This is true even without the crutch of inventive cussing to lean on. Here’s Greg, for example, enthusing about his first flight on a private jet: “It’s like I’m in a band! A very white, very wealthy band. It’s like I’m in U2!” Here’s the windup…and the windup…and the windup…aaaaand the pitch. The idea, I suppose, is that by the time the jokes get where they’re going you’re caught up in the huff-and-puff rhythm and primed to receive whatever they throw at you. I’m mostly just bored.

I reviewed the third episode of Succession for Decider.

As Mindhunter Season 2 winds down—as Bill returns to an empty home and finds his wife and son have moved way without him; as Wendy throws out her ex-girlfriend’s trashy magazines; as Holden tends to a spaghetti stain on his shirt while Atlanta officials officially close the book on the so-called Atlanta Monster; as BTK poses for masked bondage photos with his souvenir gallery on full display—I feel it tried to do those 29 murders, those 29 victims, justice. It had to work as an engaging television story to do so, not just a current-events report or a Wikipedia article. And it did.

I reviewed the season finale of Mindhunter for Decider. This season was a tremendous step up from its predecessor.

If you’ve been reading these reviews of Mindhunter Season 2, you know one of my main (or really only) complaints about this season has been the lack of interesting things for Nancy Tench to do. Not the lack of interesting things done with her—when your little boy crucifies the dead body of another little boy in hopes of bringing him back to life, you’ve got a lot on your plate, to understate the case to an absurd degree. But her reaction has consisted mostly of fretting that everyone else, from his case worker to his father, is doing more harm than good, and only she can see it. My term for this character type is “mama bear,” and my go-to example of the syndrome is Catelyn Stark during the first season of Game of Thrones. (The book version of the character was far livelier and slipperier.)

I’m not leveling this complaint anymore, not after this episode. For one thing, Nancy is evincing unspoken feelings at last, when she is clearly but (and this is key) not vocally perturbed that even the goddamn caseworker investigating her child’s welfare after a goddamn killing is as spellbound by hubby Bill’s stories of serial killers as your average small-town cop or D.C. bigwig.

But more importantly, she denies the mother of a victim closure, and we’re made to sit with this decision, and we’re forced to live with it. I can’t tell you how much good it does a show to have this kind of faith in its audience, to let a character do something seemingly unsympathetic and ask you to sympathize anyway.

I reviewed the seventh episode of Mindhunter Season 2 for Decider.

If there’s a chink in Mindhunter‘s armor right now, it’s Nancy Tench. That’s not the fault of actor Stacey Roca, mind you; her performance is sharp and vibrant. But between Catelyn Stark–style “You have a choice, and you’ve made it” dialogue, shopworn stage business like lying secretly awake with her eyes open as her husband climbs into bed, and a relationship with the two other characters with whom she comes into contact, Bill and Brian, that consists solely of reprimanding them, she’s a reactive and predictable character. A type, even.

Being a concerned parent, or a concerned mother specifically, doesn’t suddenly rob you of the potential for a rich emotional life—it might even enhance it—but you wouldn’t know it from watching this. Where’s the Behavioral Science Unit when you need it?

I reviewed the sixth episode of Mindhunter Season 2 for Decider. It’s not perfect.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m finding all of this rather compelling this time around. Without that weird clipped dialogue from last season dragging it down, Mindhunter is able to live its authentic self: a smart period crime drama asking questions about human behavior that its characters don’t have the answers to.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Mindhunter Season 2, which feels almost like a new show, for Decider.