Whatever the case, we’re left with two players, who are forcibly held apart by the pink guards. This time it’s for real: If one of them kills the other, there can’t be a final game. And wouldn’t that disappoint the VIPs? We can’t have that, now, can we?

It’s here, really, that the emptiness of the games’ promise of an egalitarian world, an antidote to the unfairness of the real world, is revealed as empty. Gi-hun and Sang-woo are being kept alive for the entertainment of the rich, to whom they are nothing more than toys to be used and discarded. Remind me again how this is different than the status quo that sent them to the games to begin with?

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Squid Game Season One for Decider.

One thing is for certain: Squid Game‘s power is additive in nature. Every episode compounds the tension and ratchets up the pressure on the main characters. Even a relatively straightforward outing like this one feels grandiose in the terror the characters experience. I’m almost afraid to see what the show will do for an encore. And that’s a good feeling.

I reviewed Squid Game episode seven for Decider.

There’s a cheerful sadism in the way the games are constructed—seriously, can you even stand one more ironically colorful set, one more chipper announcement that the game is about to begin over the strains of “The Blue Danube”—that belies the Front Man’s insistence that their goal is to construct a fair world in opposition to the unfair one outside the complex’s walls. About the best thing I can say about Squid Game is that, for all its brutality, it does not seem to share the games’ sadism itself. The scenarios it rolls out for us are awful to contemplate, to be sure, but the awfulness is the point. Creator/writer/director Hwang Dong-hyuk values the interpersonal connections he’s creating, even as he destroys them. It’s an exploration of violence, not an exploitation of violence. He’s making sure that when he kills people you care about, you know their names.

I reviewed Squid Game‘s brutal sixth episode for Decider.

My God, where to begin.

ACS Impeachment Episode 7, “The Assassination of Monica Lewinsky,” is primarily about just that—the character assassination of the young woman at the heart of the whole network of Bill Clinton scandals. It’s about the way a hungry press, an overeager right-wing prosecutor, and a gleeful entertainment industry took a vulnerable young woman and tore her to shreds, hour after hour, day after day, for month after month. It’s also about how a president lied to almost everyone he knew about the nature of his relationship with that woman. It’s also about how the friend who exposed and betrayed her was ridiculed in turn, nearly as badly as Monica Lewinsky herself.

It’s difficult to watch. It’s riveting to watch.

I reviewed this week’s episode of ACS Impeachment for Decider.

But the most compelling aspect of BNCF is its refusal to hold the audience’s hand. Tried-and-true TV tropes such as, you know, likable characters and relatable protagonists are largely swept aside; in their place are people who grow and change and run wild like the overgrown vine that gradually takes over Lisa’s apartment. Characters lie, they obfuscate, they hide their true origins and intentions. The “good guys” are difficult and often dangerous; the “bad guys” reveal hidden depths of genuine emotion; innocent people live or die — well, they mostly die — for no good reason at all. Lisa and Boro are the trickiest of all: The former shape-shifts from a wronged ingenue into a bloody force of nature, while the latter seems to follow none of the codes of behavior that typically govern witches in fiction. It’s impossible to predict what either will do from one moment to the next, let alone from episode to episode.

And everyone — seriously, everyone — is amoral when amorality suits them. That amorality, that sense that deep down in its bones BNCF is decidedly sleazy, is a breath of fresh fucking air. We live in a cultural climate that increasingly demands that its fiction be easy-to-grasp morality plays with protagonists who model good behavior and antagonists who get what’s coming to them. BNCF devotes far more time to watching characters vomit up kittens than learning lessons.

Maybe that’s the real magic of BNCF: All the characters do things that make them “deserve” comeuppance, but when the comeuppance comes, it’s virtually always worse than what they deserve. You can’t make sense of it because, in its hallucinogenic horrors, there’s no sense to be made. There’s no moral to the story beyond what you make of it. During this spooky season, that’s a flavor worth savoring.

I wrote about Nick Antosca & Lenore Zion’s wonderful horror series Brand New Cherry Flavor for Vulture.

There’s a moment early on in Squid Game Episode 5 (“A Fair World”) where Gi-hun looks directly into the eyes of a man he’s about to murder. He has little choice, of course. Once he, and everyone else involved in the games, accepted their invitation to play, they were effectively strapped into a murder machine, and the only way out is through. Still, in that moment, as Gi-hun and his tug-of-war team struggle mightily to save their own lives at the expense of their rivals’, you can see Gi-hun process the terror, desperation, and ultimately despair written all over the face of the opposite team’s captain. He knows he’s going to die, he knows Gi-hun is one of the people who will be killing him, and neither person can do anything about it.

I wrote about the fifth episode of Squid Game for Decider.

We’re five episodes deep into Foundation, and from Salvor Hardin to Gaal Dornick, our heroes face what could be an insurmountable task. No, it’s not the attack by Anacrean forces that Salvor tries and fails to fend off. Nor is it Gaal’s need to figure out where the ship on which she has been stranded is going when the ship itself won’t tell her. The big challenge is this: Can the rest of the Foundation cast hold things down without the presence of Lee Pace’s beautiful, beautiful Emperor Cleon? I’d say that after this ep (“Upon Awakening”), the answer is a qualified yes. (Lee Pace hive, feel free to roast me when you link to this review.)

I reviewed the fifth episode of Foundation for Decider.

Many of Monica’s concerns are hard to listen to, because they ring so true as something a young woman in her position would be concerned about. “My grandma’s going to be so disappointed in me,” she tells Emmick in a Crate & Barrel. In what looks like a TGI Friday’s, she continues: “I’ll never have kids. No one’s ever gonna marry me.” In this, at least, her prediction has been borne out. All her life plans, tossed out the window because a man in power abused his authority and a woman who was supposed to be her friend sold her out to feed her own delusions of grandeur. In the end, she’s left sobbing in her shower, as her mother crumples to the floor outside the bathroom, brought low by the sounds of her daughter’s pain. It’s brutal stuff.

I reviewed episode six of ACS Impeachment for Decider.

With over half a season left, Squid Game still feels like it’s entered the lightning round. Its fourth episode (“Stick to the Team”) is not only its most viscerally violent—in terms of savagery, if not body count—but also its most plot-heavy. New characters emerge, new alliances form and dissolve, new cracks in the facade of the game-masters’ united front begin to show, and, ultimately, a new moral burden is forced upon even the biggest babyfaces (that’s wrestling jargon for “good guys”) in the game. It’s tense, terrific filmmaking from start to finish.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Squid Game for Decider.

The show’s ability to make you care about the players it singles out for attention is impressive as well. Gi-hun and Ali and the old man come across like big sweethearts. The pickpocket’s survival instincts make her easy to root for. The mother’s scheming is funny and perversely endearing. Even the cop, Jun-ho, is sympathetic as a guy in way over his head, trying desperately to stay afloat. 

The big exception at the moment, other than the gangster, is Sang-woo. Why is he so reluctant to share his knowledge with his alleged comrades? In particular, why didn’t he warn Gi-hun against selecting the difficult umbrella shape? For all Sang-woo knew, he was handing his old friend a death sentence. Is he secretly trying to winnow down the competition in order to increase the jackpot at the end of the games? Does he resent Gi-hun personally for reasons we’re not privy to yet? Is he simply a secretive type, paranoid and self-interested, perhaps due to the years he’s spent one step ahead of the law?

It speaks well of Squid Game‘s success rate that I’m finding these kinds of questions as compelling to contemplate as the games themselves, or the mystery of how they can muster so many hundreds of henchmen for a clandestine enterprise this sadistic. (I briefly entertained the idea that the pink guys were all either aliens or robots, until Jun-ho dumped the obviously human guy he replaced off that barge.) I’m not sure any of these characters are gonna wind up being as complex and nuanced as, like, Tony Soprano, but they don’t need to be. A good action-thriller need only create convincing sketches of people, giving you just enough to latch onto so that their misadventures mean something to you. In that particular contest, Squid Game has already won.

I reviewed episode three of Squid Game for Decider.

From where I’m sitting, Squid Game episode two scores major points (sorry) in two different ways. First, there’s the matter of the vote. The instant the square-faced pink guy announced that a majority vote would decide whether or not the games would continue, I figured “Well, obviously they’re going to vote to keep going—otherwise there’d be no more show!” When he announced further that the vote would be tallied in reverse numerical order, I was like “Oh, okay, it’s gonna come to a tie, and the old guy with the brain tumor will cast the deciding vote in favor of staying because he has nothing to lose.”

Imagine my surprise—or maybe you don’t have to imagine, maybe it was your surprise too—when the elderly man voted to leave, and the pink crew dutifully dumped everyone back on the streets! This is as pure an example of a show zigging where I expected it to zag as I can think of in a long, long time. That kind of move earns a lot of trust, from me anyway; it demonstrates that this is a show that won’t always take the easy way out.

The second major structural thing this episode has going for it is the way it doles out the characters’ backstories. Rather than front-load the season by having us get to know all the major players in episode one, Squid Game kept its premiere’s focus squarely on Gi-hun, only introducing us to the rest of the main cast (with the exception of the pickpocket’s brief cameo when she stole Gi-hun’s money) when they’d already accepted the invitation to the game. This second episode backfills information on the gangster, the pickpocket, the immigrant, and Sang-woo, as well as giving us additional info on Gi-hun and his family, only after the show has already hooked us on its deadly-game aspect. Reverse that running order, and the show would feel much slower than it does as-is. It’s shrewd storytelling. And more games await.

I reviewed episode two of Squid Game for Decider.

So far, at least, the show’s real selling point is not the originality of the plot, but the aesthetics of the game. The brightly colored uniforms and face-obscuring masks recall that other global sensation of recent times, Among Us, while that multi-colored staircase is a killer visual. (There’s more than a little Daft Punk mixed into all of this, I think.) When it comes, the violence is presented in a blasé manner meant to convey the callousness of the game’s masters, but which could also read as glib and exploitative if the show doesn’t play its cards right.

And that’s where we’re at after the first episode: intriguing if unoriginal premise, a likable down-on-his-luck protagonist, compelling visuals. To see if Squid Game is more than the sum of its parts, we’ll have to play again.

I’m covering Squid Game for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.

By all appearances, Dawn is the odd man out in the current Cleon triumvirate; Day and Dusk seem to speak and move in unison during an audience with an ambassador from one of the galaxy’s big religions, Luminism, with Dawn always a beat behind. However, this external synchronicity is belied by a schism behind the scenes, one to match the schism growing within Luminism. While the Emperors have a chosen candidate in mind to succeed the religion’s deceased leader, another candidate has emerged, one who’s embraced a heretical doctrine: as clones, the Cleons have no soul, and are therefore less than human, not more. This, Day believes, is a direct challenge to their right to rule, one potentially embraced by three trillion citizens of the Empire if the rogue candidate takes over. (Day is pulled away from a deliciously erotic encounter with a sex worker he’s training to touch him gently enough to get past his personal shield aura to deal with this crisis; maybe that’s why he’s so grumpy.)

In a fierce argument, Day overrides the usual protocol and insists on traveling to the religion’s decision-making conclave himself, rather than letting Dusk take the trip as is custom. (No Emperor has ever left Trantor during his “Brother Day” years.) Day has a long memory, it seems, and he blames his predecessor Dusk for the fall of the starbridge, the callous bombing of the warring barbarian kingdoms Anacreon and Thespis, and the exile of Seldon, whose mathematical models predicted both the religious schism and an ongoing insurrection on Trantor, another problem the Emperors are having a hard time managing. No more rash decisions like these, Day says—it’s time for him to take charge of the Luminism issue, not Dusk. (“Certainly now the Empire will no longer be rent by impulsive action,” the robotic assistant Demerzel deadpans when Day strongarms Dusk out of the diplomatic mission. Ya burnt, Brother Day!) Should we be troubled that Day has grown so furious about the Empire’s mathematicians’ inability to debunk Seldon’s work that he shouts one into a fatal heart attack? Yeah, probably.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Foundation, freshly renewed for a second season, for Decider.

You don’t have to be a movie buff to love On Cinema at the Cinema, but it helps!

Actually, nevermind—it probably won’t help you at all.

The central joke of this cult-hit comedy series is that its “hosts”—comedians Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington, portraying elaborately fictionalized versions of themselves—don’t know the first thing about the cinema. What they do know about is driving each other crazy, and that’s the core of On Cinema’s appeal. With its Season 12 premiere recently debuting on the show’s new dedicated website HeiNetwork.tv, it’s the perfect show for anyone who’s ever shared a workplace with someone they absolutely can’t stand. And who hasn’t?

I wrote about On Cinema at the Cinema, which might be the best thing Tim Heidecker has ever done?, for Decider.

Impeachment’s studied agnosticism regarding the motives, trustworthiness, and guilt or innocence of its characters is its most fascinating trait. The anger Clinton feels when he’s questioned about his commitment to the advancement of women, for example, is (to my eyes anyway) painted as completely legit; certainly the makeup of his Cabinet is an argument in his favor here, as he’s quick to point out to his legal team. But of course, this doesn’t preclude him from being a cad, a creep, and/or a predator in his personal life; his behavior with Monica, an unpaid employee fresh out of college, is proof of that.

Then there are figures like his accusers Paula Jones and (appearing here for the first time) Juanita Broaddrick. There’s no reason to believe, in the show’s construction of these characters, that they’re being anything but truthful in their allegations against the president; Jones is too naive to dissemble and seems completely aghast at being asked explicit sexual questions during her meeting with Clinton’s lawyers, and Broaddrick tries like hell to get the right-wing private investigators who come sniffing after her story to leave, so averse is she to getting mixed up in all this. What reason would such women have to lie about what Clinton did to them?

I reviewed this week’s episode of ACS Impeachment for Decider.

SPOILERS AHEAD

“So this is what it is to lose,” says Bobby Axelrod. “OK.”

He’s talking to Mike Prince, the man who helped engineer his downfall — a decisive one this time. How do we know it’s decisive? Because, I think, of that concluding “OK.” (Also, Damian Lewis, who plays Axe, just made public he is leaving the show.) Until this point, Axe has always scratched and clawed like a cornered animal to fight his way out of defeat, whether at the hands of his legal nemesis Chuck Rhoades or his business rivals, like Prince. This time, though? He admits he has been beaten, and makes his peace with it.

So why does it feel like a loss for Chuck, too?

I reviewed tonight’s big, big Billions season finale for the New York Times.

Salvor Hardin’s segment, by contrast, asks a bit too much of the audience. Salvor herself is something of a cipher, like a generic Star Wars Universe protagonist: barren world, space-age weapon, hidden powers, secret destiny, the whole schmear. And so many mysteries surround her storyline that they blend together into a sort of storytelling soup. We’re nearly two decades removed from the events of the first two episodes, we’re told: okay, great. Why did Raych murder his adoptive father Hari Seldon? What happened to the Foundation after Seldon’s death? How did they weather the storm that surely followed after the death of their founder and leader? What happened to Raych, for that matter? Why did he load our narrator and focal character, Gaal Dornick, into some kind of liquid-filled escape pod? Where is Gaal now? 

Obviously, the show’s decision to withhold these answers was a deliberate one, and I respect that. And we do get some info on what happened after the Foundation’s slowship made planetfall on Terminus (kicking up an impressively earthy giant billow of dirt and stones when it did so): They cannibalized the ship for spare parts in order to build their settlement, they established various procedures for safeguarding their perimeter, contacting the Empire, trading with other worlds, and so forth. 

But so much is left unanswered that when we start adding new mysteries on top of the old ones—the Vault’s expanding null field, the mysterious figure Salvor twice follows into the wreckage of the slowship—we’re basically building on sand. There’s not firm enough, and I hope you’ll pardon my use of the term, foundation on which to build either the character or her world. But then again, we’re talking about a story that plays out over multiple thousands of years, not just a couple of decades. If the show plays its cards right, I’m sure Salvor and her adventures can age up into something interesting.

I reviewed the third episode of Foundation for Decider.

The second matter involves Vernon Jordan, the longtime Clinton ally played by famously handsome man Blair Underwood. Clinton sends Monica his way in order to placate her demands for a job, and—friendly and avuncular and full of Southern charm—he’s quick to promise her an interview, at the very least, for a PR job at Revlon up in New York City. But as he says goodbye to her after their meeting, he pats her ass. He does it seemingly without thinking about it, before or afterwards. Monica herself is momentarily taken aback, but from that point out all she cares about is whether his Revlon recommendation pans out. The workaday sexual harassment doesn’t even seem to register.

Which makes sense, given what we learn about Monica in this episode. In a painful slumber party with Linda—painful because we already know Linda has “made my peace” with losing Monica as a friend once her tape recordings are made public as part of a potential book deal or as evidence in the Paula Jones suit, a connection Tripp herself makes—Monica reveals her dating history. It consists exclusively of “dating” inappropriately older men in positions of authority over her, from a camp counselor who penetrated her until she said “no” at age 14 to a teacher who took her virginity in high school, then literally relocated his entire family to be closer to her when she went to college in another town. Boys her own age, she says, have always ignored her. Why wouldn’t she gravitate to the most powerful man in the world once he revealed his openness to their flirtation? For that matter, why wouldn’t she accept Vernon Jordan’s ass-slaps as the cost of doing business? The question the show itself asks, I think, is why do we tolerate any of this shit at all?

I reviewed this week’s of ACS Impeachment for Decider.

Watching “Billions” may be a breeze, but watching “Billions” to recap it is not. Constant pausing and rewinding is required to catch the countless twists and turns of every scheme; I would estimate that an hourlong episode takes me an hour and a half — at a minimum — to finish.

Nice work if you can get it, but it makes covering even famously dense shows like “The Wire” or “Game of Thrones” feel like recapping “Blue’s Clues.”

And this second-to-last episode of the show’s fifth season is even more complicated than the average. The conspiracy to take down Bobby Axelrod by involving him in a shady cannabis-funded banking deal, hatched by his enemies Chuck Rhoades, Mike Prince, Kate Sacker and Taylor Mason, is as dizzying a display of double- and triple-crossing as the show has ever served up.

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

The fourth and final installment of the Zeptember podcast series on Led Zeppelin from me and Matthew Perpetua is out! This one’s a Q&A episode. Go subscribe and enjoy!