It feels like Yellowjackets is about to change, and for the better. In fact, maybe it’s already happened. In Season 2 Episode 6 (“Qui”), momentous events take place in both the present and the past. In the former, the gang’s all here: Shauna, Taissa, Misty, Natalie, Van, and Lottie end the episode face to face for the first time in 25 years, each bearing the weight of her own secrets and regrets; the unspecified terrible things they did in the woods loom over them like a threatening wave. 

And in the past, the moment the survivors have waited for for months has finally arrived: Shauna gives birth. A full episode passes before we really learn how that birth turns out. It’s another point of no return.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Yellowjackets for Decider.

So yeah, I’m still in on what Fatal Attraction is doing. It’s not the stylish, sexy, nasty, almost expressionistic exploration of male desire, insecurity, and guilt that the movie was, but it doesn’t want to be, and I won’t hold that against it — not when it’s providing so many simple pleasures in exchange.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

It can be said without fear of contradiction that this is the least zany episode of Mrs. Davis yet. Except for the part when David Arquette goes undercover as a nun. Or the scene where Jesus permits Simone to fuck her ex-boyfriend. Or the deal when a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged unlocks a secret chamber with a Star Wars trash compactor–style security mechanism. Or the reveal that there’s a fully accurate replica of the office with the secret chamber and trash compactor on a soundstage in Altadena. Or the lengthy animatic depicting how Simone’s dad rigged a corpse to be dissolved in acid and ooze a wave of viscera all over the set of a local morning show in Reno. Or the way good sex warps you to Jesus’ restaurant right in the middle of it — no matter how half- or fully naked you are at the time.

But yeah, other than that? Pretty straightforward stuff!

I reviewed today’s episode of Mrs. Davis for Vulture.

Which leads us back to the bulk of the episode, in which we see the formation of the affair from Alex’s perspective. The most interesting thing about this is that while it presents Alex as more instantly deranged about things than it initially appeared, it also fleshes her out as a human being, with her own likes and dislikes, fears and hangups, friends and colleagues — a life, in other words. It’s just not a very good one.

Alex’s therapist from out of state unceremoniously breaks up with her over the phone, ostensibly because she’s not licensed to practice in California but also, by the tone of it, because she’s tired of dealing with Alex. Paul, the doctor from across the hall, tries to slam the breaks on whatever they had going on; Alex responds by unsubtly threatening to call the cops on him over his extracurricular pill-peddling. She recounts trying and failing to get closer to her dad by getting really into his favorite Civil War movie, to the point of memorizing the real and moving letter from a soldier that closes the film. You get the feeling this is the story of Alex’s life: She gets intensely close to people, inevitably alienating them, then turns against them on a dime when they fail to live up to her expectations. (This is literally textbook borderline personality disorder stuff, by the way.)

I reviewed the third episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

But it does raise the question: Where do we go from here? If we’re going off the movie as a template, the sexual affair between Dan and Alex is now over, nearly as soon as it began — within the same episode, at least. Her suicidal gesture — she pretends to ingest every pill she has after he tries to leave, not admitting to the ruse until he drives her all the way to the hospital and warns her that she will lose her job if authorities determine she’s suicidal — marks the end of this being a casual, easy thing for either of them, and the beginning of the spiraling obsession that will destroy their lives.What do you think? Post a comment.

The thing is, the show has eight hours of screentime to fill instead of just two. Rushing through the affair made sense in the film: Dan and Alex’s sexual relationship was limited to a 48-hour whirlwind they both knowingly entered into because his wife was out of town, and which he planned to end upon his wife’s return; his literally fatal error was in assuming Alex planned the same thing. The show has already extended the timeframe of the affair, adding two other nights of passion to that initial lost weekend. Moreover, Dan is a much more active agent in the affair’s progression — following Alex to the roof, having her assigned to one of his cases, going back to her place after she interrupts his dinner with Mike. 

If I had the kind of time on my hands that the filmmakers do, I might have expanded the affair’s screentime to match. In addition to further cementing the complicity of both participants in creating the idea in Alex’s head that this isn’t just some limited-time-only fling, this would give the show the chance to develop and intensify the characters’ sexual relationship before bringing the hammer down on it after another episode, perhaps. In other words, the show could stay hotter for longer, and I, for one, like my erotic thrillers erotic.

I reviewed the second episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

Let’s get it out of the way quickly: Fatal Attraction is not the kind of show that Alice Birch and Rachel Weisz’s Dead Ringers is. I mean, why would it be? Despite their proximity in the broader erotic-thriller genre, Fatal Attraction is not the kind of movie David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers is either. That said, it’s a much more interesting looking, interesting sounded, interestingly acted and written movie than it needed to be to become a titillating hit; Lyne’s use of silence, shadow, and silhouette in particular is notable without being overtly neo-noirish. Go watch it if you haven’t in a while, it’s worth your time.

I’d say the same about Fatal Attraction the TV show, based on this episode. The simplest way to put it is that if you want to watch telegenic actors like Joshua Jackson, Lizzy Caplan, Toby Huss, and Amanda Peet have a good time talking to each other the way grown-ups actually talk while being crisply filmed and scored, Fatal Attraction is a show for you. 

I reviewed the series premiere of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

In short, the show is about pregnant women, and the legal, medical, ethical, moral, and political issues that swirl around them. Needless to say, this significantly shifts the framework of the original. Jeremy Irons’s Mantle twins are misogynists who see women as both sexual playthings and medical tools against which they can sharpen their genius. The misogyny present in Rachel Weisz’s Mantle twins, as well as in characters like Rebecca and her ghoulish circle of rich women, is internalized, though it’s no less present for that.

In both versions, the female body is a commodity to be experimented with, and on, but changing the gender of who’s doing the experimenting changes almost everything else. But only the TV show expands this into a multifaceted feminist critique of the economic and political forces surrounding the issue: America’s murderous for-profit healthcare system and the women who’ve girlbossed their way to its apex; racial and class discrepancies in maternal healthcare outcomes; the fascist anti-abortion movement’s pas de deux with advances in care for premature infants; the objectification and infantilization of women during the process; and probably more I’m missing. All of this emerges naturally through story and character, which is a pretty staggering achievement in itself.

I compared the David Cronenberg/Jeremy Irons Dead Ringers film to the Alice Birch/Rachel Weisz Dead Ringers TV series for Decider.

“Would you two prefer to keep on wildly theorizing, or may I continue on with the story?” I get the impression this question, asked by Dr. Schrödinger of his visitors Lizzie and Wiley, has been on Mrs. Davis co-creator Damon Lindelof’s mind for a long time.

On the one hand, wild theorizing has kept him in business. Large portions of the fanbases of Watchmen,The Leftovers, and especially Lost spent week after week frantically guessing, even passionately arguing, what would happen next. From water coolers to internet forums to social media to speculative articles on, well, websites like this one, theorizing generates buzz and maintains interest.

At any rate, Mrs. Davis is a wildly theorizing kind of show. Lindelof and his co-creator and showrunner Tara Hernandez have, in this respect at least, truly committed to the bit. From episode to episode, from storyline to storyline, from scene to scene, occasionally from line to line, the show is a constant deluge of “everything you thought you knew was wrong,” much more so even than Lost.

But it’s also much funnier in how it does this than Lost was. On that show, the mysteries were serious business. On Mrs. Davis, by contrast, the whole thing is one big metatextual tap dance atop the fourth wall. This isn’t a show that simply has big twists and turns, nor even a show about having big twists and turns — it’s a show about how its big twists and turns are inherently ridiculous.

I reviewed episode five of Mrs. Davis for Vulture.

As a pretty much miserable guy who’s sincerely angry about injustice, Perry Mason is a hero for our time.

I reviewed the season finale of Perry Mason for the New York Times.

So yeah, I worry that the show’s eyes are too big for its stomach. You can really feel the creakiness around some of these storylines, and because of their sheer number and variety, the creaky storylines are going to vary from viewer to viewer. Some people don’t give a shit about the survival horror or the supernatural stuff, while for others that’s the main draw. Some don’t care about the adult stuff compared to the teenage stuff, while for others the draw of the legendary ‘90s stars as grownups will outweigh the young unknowns. Some will like the comedic bits, some will think they’re in the way. Everyone will find certain characters more compelling than others. Everyone will prefer certain casting decisions (Lauren Ambrose as Van is dynamite) to others (Simone Kessell has none of her younger counterpart Courtney Eaton’s damaged, blank-eyed magnetism as Lottie). Some people adore the big obvious ‘90s needledrops (4 Non Blondes! Danzig!), while others think the whole I Love the ‘90s thing is, ahem, overblown. 

Me, I found myself spending a lot of time thinking I wish the hyperactive score by Theodore Shapiro, Craig Wedren, and Anna Waronker would just shut the fuck up for a few minutes, allowing the tension, the dread, the quiet isolation of the woods to build. And that’s a decent stand-in for my problem with the whole thing. Pare back. Let stuff breathe. Let stuff be.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Yellowjackets Season Two for Decider.

In all honesty, I prefer being a little bit confused. Elliot is what Beverly and Genevieve’s relationship has been about from the start — Genevieve says so herself. She’s what Beverly’s whole life has been about from the start — as the younger sister she has never known a second of life outside the womb without the other. Even when they’re apart Ellie is the constant buzzing of an unanswered phone, everywhere, at all times, inescapable, even in the audience you just want to turn the goddamned thing off it’s so fucking anxiety-inducing, but you can’t any more than she can. She seeps through cracks, around corners, over boundaries, until she’s all that’s left. If that clouds how we read the actions of the women closest to her, Beverly and Genevieve and Rebecca, well, that’s Elliot for you.

Even on a narrative level, the Mantle twins cannot be separated. After watching this exceptional show, I’m going to have a hard time separating them from me.

I reviewed the finale of Dead Ringers for Decider. Holy shit, what a show.

With only one episode to go, there’s no sign Dead Ringers is content to keep its head down and its guard up during the final rounds. Nope, it looks like this is a show that’s swinging haymakers until the final bell rings.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Dead Ringers for Decider.

All told, despite being the least spectacular of the show’s episodes to date, it’s the most momentous. So much has been dragged out into the light, with the promise of more life-upending revelations to come. The episode begins with an exterior shot of the twins’ nightmarish birthing and research center, but I suspect the Center cannot hold.

I reviewed episode four of Dead Ringers for Decider.

It all goes to what Agnes, the woman who lives in the alley outside the Mantles’ apartment and who storms the place after Ellie rains down debris on her from several stories up, says to Elliot in her fucking unbelievable rant on the rooftop. There’s really no way I can overstate what writer Rachel De-Lahay and actor Susan Blommaert accomplish here; it’s like watching some swift, muscular predator with claws the size of your middle finger tear a slow-moving gazelle to shreds. 

I reviewed episode three of Dead Ringers for Decider.

How good is Dead Ringers the TV show? I’ll tell you how good it is: While watching this second episode of the show, the first comparisons that sprang to my mind were Mad Men and The Terror. The two shows with the most precise, lacerating dialogue and character work in the past 15 years? Two shows obsessed with class, status, and the creation and severing of intimacy? Two shows with absurdly stacked casts of actors given their best material ever? Two shows that had me dying to see what happened next with every episode? That’s probably a good sign for Dead Ringers, right? 

I reviewed the incredible second episode of Dead Ringers, featuring one of the very best television scenes ever aired, for Decider.

Smartly, savagely adapted by Alice Birch from the David Cronenberg film of the same name (co-written by Cronenberg and Norman Snider) — itself adapted from the novel Twins, by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, which was adapted in turn from the true story of twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus — Dead Ringers is part of a wave of reimagined erotic ‘80s classics, including Paramount+’s Fatal Attraction and Netflix’s Damage update Obsession. This one, though, comes with a massive mainline injection of what I like to call “the high weirdness” — the spectacle and perversity that’s the stuff of great art.

I reviewed the first episode of Prime Video’s extraordinary remake of Dead Ringers for Decider.

As a final side note, and speaking as a very lapsed Catholic, I’m also grateful for how this enables the show to sidestep a nagging question: Why become a nun, of all things? Without getting into the weeds about it, the Catholic Church’s actions and beliefs are real things that have had real pernicious effects in the real world. Yes, it’s fun to watch a beautiful woman in a nun’s habit ride motorcycles and kick ass, but it’s less fun when you consider what the church she belongs to believes in and/or has covered up. Lindelof already played fast and loose with a problematic institution, policing in the United States, to the detriment of Watchmen; I’m happy to see him and his colleagues write their way out of doing something similar this time around by making Simone’s commitment romantic rather than ideological in nature.

I reviewed the third and fourth episodes of Mrs. Davis for Vulture.

I wish Mrs. Davis had the courage to just be the thing, not be a thing about being the thing.

I’m covering Mrs. Davis, the new series co-created by Damon Lindelof, for Vulture, starting with my review of the first two episodes.

Perry’s not especially charismatic, as was Raymond Burr’s interpretation of the character back in the day. God knows he’s not very pleasant to be around, either. But he is unimpeachably dedicated to justice, which he’s determined to serve by any means necessary. No wonder this show is such a delight to watch! We all need a little Perry right this now.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Perry Mason for the New York Times.

I can’t remember the last time I shouted at the screen as much as I did during this episode of “Perry Mason.” I’m not kidding: I was hooting and hollering for what seemed like half the duration of this week’s installment. It didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped in the end, of course. But in the meantime? What a rush!

I reviewed the sixth episode of Perry Mason season two for the New York Times.