But hey, Narcos is gonna be Narcos from time to time. This is not genre revisionism along the lines of what The Sopranos did for mafia stories, or what Deadwood did for Westerns, or what The Wire did for cop shows, or what Game of Thrones did for fantasy and so on. Narcos: Mexico never really promises to be much more than a jaundiced but well-crafted look at the drug war. Sometimes those drug warriors are gonna sound like clichés rather than people. Like getting kidnapped and tortured, it’s an occupational hazard.

I reviewed the second episode of Narcos: Mexico for Decider.

Subtlety has never been Narcos‘ strong suit. In its original incarnation as the story of the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, its transitional season chronicling his rivals in the Cali Cartel, and now in the spinoff series Narcos: Mexico, the show displays a welcome cynicism about America’s quixotic war on drugs. At times, it also takes on a rueful, almost poetic tone, as the thugs on both sides of the battle are made to confront the consequences of their actions. But as a viewer, you’re never asked to do a whole lot of work to figure out what’s going on. Case in point: As Félix Gallardo, Mexico’s drug kingpin, struggles against a cash flow problem that has him at odds with both his Cali suppliers and his Mexican underbosses, he sits and watches a chained tiger.

Get it?

I’m back on the Narcos: Mexico beat for Decider this season, starting with my review of the season premiere. I really enjoy writing about this show, which is good-but-not-great in a way that’s interesting to talk about.

More than any episode of The New Pope yet — and this is saying something — this one has sex on the brain.

I reviewed the fifth episode of The New Pope for Vulture.

Horror is a genre of worst-case scenarios, narrowly avoided or not. The monster must feed, the slasher must kill, the demon must possess, the alien must infect, and we mortals, we normals, must defend and escape or die trying. There’s a reason that one of the most recently popular and influential movies in the category named itself after this imperative, boiled down to two simple words: Get Out.

Not all horror stories work that way. In some, the protagonist does not escape from or kill the beast, but nor is she simply killed in turn. In these stories, the protagonist enters into a state of communion with the very horror that has spent the rest of the movie threatening her life and her sanity. The process may be voluntary or not. The embrace of the evil may be gleeful or reluctant, and the outcome may be triumphant or tragic. But in the end, the dangerous, deranging, demonic forces at work are greeted not as destroyers, but as liberators, freeing the human protagonist from his human concerns once and for all, the life he once led forgotten in favor of a supernatural, superhuman new state of existence.

This is transcendental horror: stories that climax with the protagonist entering a state of ecstatic or enlightened union with the source of the horror they’ve experienced.

I wrote about a phenomenon I’m calling Transcendental Horror for The Outline. It’s extensively spoilery, but if you’ve enjoyed any recent horror movies it’s worth taking a peek!

I appeared on the latest episode of Fanbyte’s The New Pope podcast Papal Bull: Resurrection to speak with hosts Merritt K and Eric Thurm about the show, Catholicism, Marilyn Manson, and much more!

Picture two people. Then picture a wall between them. Now imagine that this wall is permeable, so that human connection can take place through it. Even so, the wall is a barrier that partially obscures the identity of the person on the other side, preserving anonymity, or at least the illusion thereof.

Congratulations: You have just imagined either a Catholic confessional or a glory hole. What this episode of The New Pope asks is, porque no los dos?

I reviewed this week’s episode of The New Pope for Vulture.

More than any other show on television today, The New Pope understands the value of unusual human faces. In addition to Orlando’s Cardinal Voiello, its core cast includes the saturnine, frog-faced Cardinal Aguirre (Ramón García); the effete and angular Cardinal Assente (Maurizio Lombardi); the beady-eyed, mononymed Vatican operative Bauer (Mark Ivanir); the soft-tempered and soft-featured Cardinal Gutiérrez (Javier Cámara); Kiruna Stamell, a little person, as the Abbess of the Vatican’s cloistered nuns. Of course, there’s the new pope himself: John Malkovich’s Sir John Brannox, his deeply lined face framed by a scraggly white beard, deep-set eyes recessed even further by generous helpings of guyliner. Creator and director Paolo Sorrentino’s closeups, particularly striking when the whole College of Cardinals is gathered together in all their red-robed splendor, make a meal out of every one of them.

My new column at The Outline is about the unconventional (read: normal) faces of The New Pope.

I’ve made my triumphant return to the Delete Your Account podcast to talk to co-hosts Roqayah Chamseddine and Kumars Salehi about the year in movies, the decade in TV, the horror renaissance, the Star Wars situation, and more!

“You remind me of my favorite actor, John Malkovich.”

“Doesn’t do much for me.”

It feels too easy, somehow, to lead a review of an episode of television as rich as The New Pope’s third installment with the cheap pop of a fourth-wall break. But that’s the thing about The New Pope: It can make easy meta-jokes, like Cécile de France’s Vatican PR maven Sofia Dubois telling John Malkovich’s character that he looks like John Malkovich, and still be an enormously affecting and visually spectacular meditation on desire, duty, family, sex, and the need for human connection even in the face of extraordinary obstacles. Hell, it even can crack wise about Megan Markle floundering in her role as royalty—a reference that wound up being unbelievably timely—and still feel more like a poem than a gossip rag. That is its power.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The New Pope for Vulture.

If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, The New Pope, like its predecessor, The Young Pope, is a show about everything. Everything important, anyway. Love, faith, sex, death, shame, grief, God, lust, politics, violence, orgasms, depression, art, poetry, music, hope — all of it coming at you faster than you can keep up with, all of it wrapped in a package as beautiful as one of the bespoke suits worn by Sir John Brannox, the man who will soon be … well, you know.

I reviewed last week’s fantastic episode of The New Pope for Vulture.

Ever since he strolled across the landing bay of the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, ever since I held him in my five-year-old hands as a hefty hunk of Kenner-manufactured plastic, I have adored the Emperor. I’ve tried the other Dark Lords, and much as I might enjoy them, they’re just not the one: Sauron is a giant flaming eyeball, Voldemort is just Ralph Fiennes with no nose, Thanos is a finger-snappin’ Genocide Fonzie. But Star Wars’ Emperor Palpatine, the ruler of his galaxy and the series’ ultimate villain, is a star — pure evil in the form of a weird, wrinkly old fart who can shoot lightning from his fingers.

The Emperor rules. Figuratively, I mean, not just literally. And I didn’t need JJ Abrams to resurrect him in The Rise of Skywalker — now disappointing fans in a theater near you! — to convince me.

Why? Because he’s not just evil. He’s a dick about it. And that’s an evil I recognize.

I’m very excited to announce I’m now a columnist for the Outline! I kicked things off with an essay on why the Emperor rules and why, in The Rise of Skywalker, he rules less.

Have you heard the Good News? We have no longer forgotten to masturbate!

Yes, Lenny Belardo, the erstwhile Pope Pius XIII, must be spinning in his non-grave: Before the opening credits of The New Pope, Paolo Sorrentino’s daring new sequel to his 2017 masterpiece The Young Pope, even roll, a nun jerks off after giving Belardo’s comatose body a sponge bath. This kind of sexual excess was literally the stuff of Lenny’s nightmares, with that famous line about self-love popping up in an anxiety dream prior to his first address to the faithful. After the cliffhanger heart attack at the end of last season that we learn left him comatose, who will guide his flock now?

That’s the subject of the first episode of The New Pope, and the answer is not who you think it is. To wit, it’s not Sir John Brannox, the English prelate played by John Malkovich. Before his ascension, there’s papal-political hardball to be played among the College of Cardinals whose responsibility it is to select Pius XIII’s successor, and the game goes horribly awry.

Meet The New Pope, same as The Young Pope, insofar as they both whip ass. I reviewed the season premiere of The New Pope for Vulture, where I’ll be covering the show all season long.

The horror-movie atmospherics of Quake are the closest reference point for Watchmen’s first and strongest track, “How the West Was Really Won.” The show’s unofficial theme music—it recurs repeatedly in the series’ most frightful moments, including the ripped-from-the-comic image of a gigantic alien squid in the ruins of Manhattan—it’s the sound of Reznor and Ross going full John Carpenter, with a simple synth hook that seems to swallow up more of the world around you with each repetition. Its melodic structure recurs throughout the score, in the gently acoustic “Watch Over This Boy” at the end of Volume 1, the jazz throwback “Nostalgia Blues” on Volume 2 (co-written and performed by John Beasley), and the major-key weightlessness of “The Waiting Sky” on Volume 3. The original song is resilient enough to mutate in this way, showing off the duo’s skill with leitmotif as well as their considerable range. It’s the theme music Nine Inch Nails fans have been waiting for them to deliver.

I reviewed Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’s excellent three-volume Watchmen score for Pitchfork.

8. Mindhunter: “M.E.” by Gary Numan

After a shaky first season that was all over the map in terms of what we were supposed to feel about its main characters — remember the stiff Holden Ford romance subplot? — Mindhunter settled into a comfortably macabre groove in its second season, chronicling the drudgery involved in tracking down some of the world’s worst people. In the case of the musical montage set to “Cars” singer Gary Numan’s synth stomper “M.E.,” the drudgery is the whole point.

The sequence follows FBI Agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench as they stake out bridges where they hope to trap the perpetrator of the Atlanta Child Murders. It’s a joyless slog of bad sleep, shitty room service, buzzing mosquitoes, muggy weather, cigarette smoke, and ever-shortening patience. Numan’s song, sung from the perspective of a machine that survived the apocalypse alone, provides a surprisingly apt accompaniment to a routine that breaks Ford and Tench down until they feel unmoored from the very humanity they’re trying to protect.

In case you missed it—I know I did!—I wrote about the ten best TV music cues of the year for Vulture.

44. The Return of the Sith (Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker)

Much of director J.J. Abrams’s course-correction of a final installment in the sequel trilogy aims for a grandeur and scale that came much more naturally to George Lucas & Co. a long time ago. But there’s definitely one place he nailed it: in the depths of the temple beneath the surface of Exogol, the Sith home planet. When Rey arrives to confront the reemergent Emperor Palpatine before the Sith throne, the camera whirls to reveal that she’s standing in the center of an entire arena, filled with the emperor’s black-robed acolytes. Much like the absolutely massive fleet of planet-killing Star Destroyers hovering above, it’s a vivid demonstration of the power and reach of the dark side.

I’ve once again revised and ranked my list of the 50 Best Star Wars Moments for Vulture, this time taking The Rise of Skywalker into consideration.

Lyra Silvertongue and her friend Roger Parslow have been through a lot: being kidnapped, narrowly escaping a magical lobotomy, meddling in ice-bear politics, staying one step ahead of the ruthless Mrs. Coulter and her Magisterium goon squads. Now they’ve reached the mountaintop sanctuary of her father, Lord Asriel, whose experiments with the substance called Dust have marked him for death. Faced with all this trauma and turmoil, what do these two brave souls do?

They make a blanket fort.

Of all the beautiful, terrible things we see in His Dark Materials‘ season finale (titled “Betrayal” for reasons that will be apparent), this is moment that lingers the most. For all their courage, Lyra and Roger are still just kids. When they want to feel safe in this strange stronghold, they build a little fortress of their own, eating sandwiches while reminiscing about how their friendship has changed their lives.

And nothing drives home the horror of what happens afterward than the sight of Lyra frantically reentering the blanket fort at one end and emerging from the other side, alone. Roger is nowhere to be found.

I reviewed the season finale of His Dark Materials for Rolling Stone.

I reviewed the series finale of Mr. Robot for the New York Times. This show stayed true to itself, and even if it now feels slightly out of step with the times I think that’s commendable.

Something very strange happens when they finally meet Lord Asriel. When he sees Lyra, he pretty much flips out. “I did not send for you!” he shouts, seemingly on the verge of panic. Then he lays eyes on her little pal Roger, and his whole demeanor changes. “I am very pleased you came,” he says to the boy. He sounds like a spider who’s discovered a fresh fly in his web.

Lyra has escaped every enemy, survived every skirmish, journeyed to places of great danger and lived to tell the tale. (All this, and she helped overthrow the king of the ice bears to boot!) Now that the young woman can give her alethiometer to her father, as she believes she was chosen to do, her quest should be at an end. That’s how a traditional fantasy story would work, you know? But there’s something about Lord Asriel’s voice, and the look in his eyes, that hints at horror to come.

I reviewed this week’s episode of His Dark Materials for Rolling Stone.

Anyway, there’s some perfunctory “and the moral of the story is…” stuff about masks—Ozymandias says they “make men cruel,” Hooded Justice says “you can’t heal with a mask” because “wounds need air”—the sum total meaning of which you can grasp in about the time it took you to read this sentence. It seems to me that in an episode that featured, again, Angela Abar breaking someone’s fingers one by one for information, you should probably have shown how vigilantism and unaccountable law enforcement are bad rather than just told us. It would have made it easier to believe the show meant what it was saying.

As it stands, I’m not really sure what the show means. Not that meaning is the be-all and end-all of visual narrative—like I said a few episodes ago, this is a drama, not a thinkpiece. If you were to treat all of this as an essay rather than serialized television, you’d miss how much dizzying fun Damon Lindelof’s brand of blow-to-the-head surrealism can be, or how good Regina King and Jeremy Irons and Jean Smart and Tim Blake Nelson and Louis Gossett Jr. and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Tom Mison and Sara Vickers and Don Johnson and Hong Chau were in their roles. (Seriously, that is a murderers’ row of individually vivid performances, whatever you think about the show they were in.)

But seriously, what do we have here that we didn’t have before? Watchmen the original article had a lot to say about America, the Cold War, vigilantism, the right, the superhero genre, and the comics art form. Other than opening with the Tulsa Race Massacre—a big point in its favor—did Watchmen the TV show comment on politics in general or its own medium in particular with anything approaching Moore & Gibbons’s innovation, vision, and purpose? The puzzle pieces all fit, but what kind of picture are we looking at? I’ll give you a little time to think it over. Tick tock, tick tock.

I reviewed the finale of Watchmen for Decider. I feel like in the end it was a bunch of beautiful humbug.