Enid locks herself within the confines of the lupine cages to prevent her from wolfing out, since a full moon is coming up, and if a young alpha transforms at that stage of the lunar cycle, they’re stuck that way permanently. Inside her cell, Enid tells Wednesday something Professor Capri said to her about her pack being her strength. “You’re my pack, Wednesday,” she insists.

And even though both characters are essentially living cartoon characters — very literally, in Wednesday’s case — that bond between them feels legit. It’s not so much that opposites attract, it’s that each of these people has gotten so used to looking at their opposite number and thinking “I know exactly what she needs” that they now consider each other in this way as a matter of habit. You can’t not make Wednesday care about Enid, not for long, nor vice versa. They’re too determined to stay in each other’s business. That’s a very believable basis for a comedy friendship, and this is one of the best comedy friendships on TV.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Wednesday Season 2 for Decider.

Foundation is a marvelously rich experience, in which a Crayola 64-pack of SFF character types, visuals, and storylines coexist not only easily but symbiotically. The heady stuff enhances the earthy stuff. The kaleidoscopic spectacles provide contrast for the ghastly gore. Scenery chewing baddies like the Mule and Shakesperean tragedies like Lady Demerzel inhabit the same story.

My delayed review of last week’s Foundation is now up at Decider!

The Kingdom of Hawai’i, Ka’ū District. The windswept, ocean-darkened beach sands. Keōua, newly crowned King of a divided Hawai’i, kneels before a fire. His mother (Kekuhi Keali’ikanaka’oleohaililani), a formidable singer and one of his chief advisors, brings him his father’s mahiole, the trademark Hawai’ian helm. It was a symbol of his wise father’s rule, but he has no use for it anymore. “I no longer fight to preserve his kingdom,” Keōua says, tossing his father’s legacy on the flames. “I will live to build my own.”

My notes at this point read simply “THAT’S INCREDIBLY BADASS. THIS IS JUST A BADASS SHOW.”

Due to a technical glitch, my review of last week’s Chief of War for Decider has just gone up now. Go read it!

Did I say the last episode was the best Wednesday episode ever? I lied. Boy, did I ever. A body-swap comedy that sees the mind of Wednesday Addams inhabit the body of Enid Sinclair and vice versa, “Woe Thyself” (Season 2, Episode 6) proves that Wednesday, well, knows itself. From the start, leading actors Jenna Ortega and Emma Myers have played their mismatched roommate characters as if they were John Goodman and Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, no matter how far short the material they were given fell of the talent they were giving it back. What this episode, co-written by co-creators Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, does is simple. It takes the best things about the show and gives them even more to do: act like each other.

I reviewed episode 6 of Wednesday Season 2 for Decider. This was a hoot.

It wasn’t a fluke. Wednesday Season 2’s mid-season finale was the show’s best episode ever — funny, frightening, and genuinely striking to look, all in ways the show had so often struggled to achieve. That struggle seems to be over. The fifth episode of the series’ bifurcated second season is even neater and nastier.

I reviewed the mid-season premiere of Wednesday for Decider.

We live in a time when the most powerful, most wealthy, most seemingly unstoppable people in the world are telling you and me and our children on a daily basis that no one else matters, no one else is real, the only thing that counts is getting what you want, preferably at the expense of others. There are certainly characters on Chief of War who’d fit right in in that world; give King Kahekili a tactical vest and a neck gaiter and he could be out there threatening Democratic politicians at gunpoint even now. What a boon to see a story in which the willingness to be open, to listen, to understand, to be honest, to be friends and family and lovers, to be a community, a people, is seen as the ultimate virtue. Other people aren’t our enemies, they’re our brothers, our sisters, our siblings. When we betray them, we betray ourselves.

I reviewed last week’s Chief of War for Decider.

It’s almost boring to say at this point, but Foundation’s astonishing hot streak continues. For the second season in a row, the show balances a seemingly impossible-to-reconcile number of characters, storylines, tones, and visual palettes in episode after episode. The Demerzel hallucination is an all-timer image for this show, which is saying something, and both the flashbacks and the Foundation’s horrifying massacre by the Mule’s mind-controlled forces recall the most unpleasant moments of Andor’s masterful second season. Writers Jane Espenson and Greg Goetz and director Christopher J. Byrne also prove adept chroniclers of the Mule’s sadism, with Indbur’s bloodless but brutal demise ranking way up there on this series’ history of violence. Again, this is really saying something.

I reviewed last week’s Foundation for Decider.

This is a plot-focused episode compared to its predecessors, relatively light on the sci-fi spectacle that’s Foundation’s hallmark. That’s fine — it’s good to bring things back down to earth a bit in order to advance the story.

But this is not to say it’s devoid of fascinating space-opera visuals. Demerzel pulling the Prime Radiant out of herself from between her robotic cleavage is an image that probably shouldn’t be as disconcertingly strange and sexy as it is. The coldwave psychedelia of their journey into the black hole is a bravura effect, reminiscent of Hari’s strange fractal freakouts while trapped within the Prime Radiant last season. And I love the design of Mycogen, which blends the familiar Blade Runner vibe of a decrepit futuristic city with the art nouveau beauty of a Peter Jackson Elf kingdom for its wealthier districts. I’m perpetually amazed by just how smart the design of this show is.

I keep coming back to poor oblivious Brother Day, though. His is the shock of any rich and powerful person when confronted with how normal people really think about them. Don’t you love me? I love me! I know it’s fake with all the others, but it’s real with me, right? Right? The belief of the mighty in their own irresistibility is a gap in their armor as clear and as vulnerable as the missing scale on the belly of Smaug the Golden. Great and terrible things can be done when it’s exploited.

I reviewed this week’s Foundation for Decider.

Tell the Shōgun and Game of Thrones fans in your life now: Chief of War is the real deal. 

I reviewed this week’s Chief of War for Decider.

Telling you that any given episode of Foundation kicks ass in five or six different ways seems to be the Prime Radiant’s prediction of my destiny, and far be it from me to deny the math: This episode of Foundation kicks ass in five or six different ways. Caitlin Parrish and Leigh Dana Jackson’s script is merciless, sullying a babyface character perhaps beyond salvation. It’s also dependent on not one but two characters, Gaal and the Mule, remaining several steps ahead of the audience, which in my case at least they certainly did. I always enjoy it when shows are smarter than I am.

As outer space spectacle, this remains a magnificent show. From Toran’s wounded ship skipping across space and down to the surface of their planet half destroyed, to the imposing enclosure of Kalgan by Empire’s ships, to the “cobalt spike” that burns the planet, even down to the red and green lighting of Dusk aboard his “black hole gun” weapon as he hears the news from Dawn, to the gravity-defying ways of the tubular planet where the Council meets, there’s virtually always something to feast on. 

I reviewed today’s episode of Foundation for Decider.

This show is full of surprises. With a one-year time jump, the relocation of a major character into a whole other world, and the introduction of perhaps the most major character of all, Chief of War has once again shaken itself up from one episode to the next. What impresses me most isn’t that it keeps introducing new wrinkles to what is at heart the simple story of a noble exile and an evil king, but how artfully it’s done.

I reviewed this week’s Chief of War for Decider.

In terms of sheer imagemaking, this is Tim Burton’s best work on the show. In terms of overall quality across the board, this is the show’s best episode. It’s scary, it’s actually funny, it’s relatable (knock before you enter the room when your roommate’s in there, god!), it’s got that awesome orc-troll-Gollum-Large Marge monster design for Tyler, it’s got goth Patsy from AbFab, and it ends with the possibility of Wednesday Addams journeying to the realm of the dead for real. It makes me want to tune in next time, even if that’s a month away. That’s exactly what you want a midseason finale to do.

I reviewed the midseason finale of Wednesday for Decider. I liked this one!

So yeah, random animated sequences? Jenna Ortega and Catherine Zeta-Jones doing their best Uma Thurman/Lucy Liu impression? Horror comedy centered on a Luis Guzmán shower scene? Christina Ricci getting dragged before Thandiwe Newton in chains? It would be churlish to deny the show’s pleasures. But it would be foolish to deny the many ways it hobbled itself right out of the gate.

I reviewed the third episode of Wednesday Season 2 for Decider.

It took me a minute, but I figured out what the second episode of Wednesday’s second installment reminds me of: Conan O’Brien’s old “Late Night’s Parade of Characters” bit. Hey, everyone, look! It’s Thandiwe Newton as a director of psychiatry for a hospital for the criminally insane! It’s Heather Matarazzo as the hospital’s chipper, ugly sweater–wearing personnel director! It’s Hunter Doohan returning as his evil Tyler/Hyde character, who’s now basically the Red Hulk! It’s Fred Armisen making an Uncle Fester Cameo for ten seconds! It’s Christopher Lloyd as a severed head in a robotic jar! It’s Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as Morticia and Gomez, who are now series regulars because we realized the Addams Family is more interesting as a concept when it’s an actual family! And don’t forget Principal Evil Steve Buscemi! But wait — Morticia’s estranged Mama Hester is still on her way!

I reviewed Wednesday Season 2’s second episode for Decider.

So why did the series hit so big? The cast, plain and simple. Headlined by overnight sensation Jenna Ortega in the title role, supported by a breakout turn as Wednesday’s chipper werewolf sidekick Enid by Emma Myers, and augmented by a cast that included — let’s face it — certified dimepieces Catherine Zeta-Jones, Christina Ricci, Gwendoline Christie, Joy Sunday, Riki Lindhome, Hunter Doohan, and Percy Hynes White, the show felt more vivacious and charming than it actually was at any given time, just by virtue of how pleasant it was to watch these people act out their haunted-house hijinks. The flatness of any scene involving the badly miscast Luis Guzmán as family patriarch Gomez Addams shows how important the casting was to the overall project; it’s the exception that proves the rule.

I reviewed the season premiere of Wednesday for Decider.

The last word I wrote in my note s for this episode is “WOW.” TV should always be this beautiful, savage, and strange.

I reviewed this week’s Foundation for Decider.

Shows that launch with two or three episodes at once instead of a simple one-and-done series premiere always intrigue me. Is this just some random fluke of streaming services’ inexplicably bizarre release schedules, or is there some narrative or thematic logic to it? Are those first two or three episodes telling one big chapter of the larger story, or are they just, y’know, the first two or three episodes?

Chief of War’s second hour falls firmly in the latter category. In retrospect, the Chief of War we saw in the actual first episode was only half a show. We got to know the lay of the land, the sociopolitical circumstances, our hero, and his family. But we had yet to meet his co-protagonist, or encounter the world of white people, the boundaries of which are expanding all the time.

I reviewed the second episode of Chief of War for Decider.

Blood, butts, boats, and beauty: There are worse foundations upon which to build your historical epic. Judging by the sheer quantity of each in the series premiere of Chief of War, Apple TV+’s brutal and beautiful new saga of war-torn late 18th century Hawaii, this show’s on solid ground. Filmed entirely in Hawaiian and fueled by the simmering star power of Jason Momoa, who co-created the show and co-wrote the episode with Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett, it’s proof that the “Game of Thrones but in the real world” success of Shōgun was no fluke. Executed with care and charisma, it’s a formula that works.

I’m covering the new Apple TV+ historical epic Chief of War for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere. I really can’t emphasize this enough: Jason Momoa is bare-assed throughout.

Plot-heavy recaps of a plot-heavy show tend to make those shows feel, well, heavy. There’s always a lot going on on Foundation, and since much of the business is very grim, cataloging it feels a bit like reading your New York Times push notifications. Collapse of civilization, fall of empire, rise of a tyrant, destruction of all that is kind and good in this world, flaying shirtless himbos with a potato peeler…It’s a lot to take in.

Not when you’re watching, though. Director Tim Southam drops us into the action with a you-are-there shot of Dawn’s huge landing craft touching down and keeps things spectacular from there. Bravodo Magnifico Giganticus’s performance is a sci-fi psychedelic musical rainbow, staged in one of those futuristic nightclubs that play EDM as heard everywhere from Andor to Dune: Prophecy. From lamplit glow of the library to the red light of the nightclub exterior, the scenery is vividly realized.

The script by Eric Carrasco and Greg Goetz, meanwhile, is full of funny little gems shining out from in between the flayings and the mindwipings. My favorite line goes to Day, who asks Song, “Are you feeling alright, darling? You’ve hardly touched your drugs.” (Second favorite is him insisting to Demerzel that “giraffe” is pronounced with a hard “G.”) Toran referring to the child princess whose archduke father the Mule killed as “your drunken toddler” is a nice bit too, as is her scampering after the Mule and his goons when they leave like she’s about to yell “Wait for meeeeee!” 

And all the Cleons resting their chins on their hands in contemplation simultaneously? It’s a great visual, but it also points to how similar these three men are despite all their self-perceived differences. Like so many aspects of this show, it works on multiple levels, which is why Foundation, like any empire, works so well.

I reviewed the most recent Foundation, which includes one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen (complimentary), for Decider.

“Do you feel it? The air gone stale? The common people holding their breath, watching their neighbors’ door get kicked in?” When Captain Han Pritchard asks this of the wealthy nepo baby Toran Mallow (Cody Fern) and his “wife” — marriage is the latest trend; everything old is new again — Bayta (Synnøve Karlsen), he knows what their answer will be. They’re too rich, too callow, too comfortable to hear the sound of the jackboots. When the Black Tongue, the flagship vessel of the telepathic pirate warlord known as the Mule, hovers over their honeymoon spot, their only concern is that its shadow will prevent them from getting a tan. They don’t want something so insignificant as a coup interfering with their comforts.

Not to sound like a broken record in these reviews, but boy, does that feel familiar!

I reviewed this week’s Foundation for Decider.