I reviewed tonight’s episode of Homeland for Rolling Stone. No sir I didn’t like it.

I reviewed tonight’s episode of Homeland for Rolling Stone. Short version: Carrie Mathison is the one who knocks.

Over at Rolling Stone, I interviewed creator Robert Kirkman about season three of The Walking Dead, about which I’ve heard good things. (Nevermind the byline — there was a mixup of Seans.) Kirkman has written a lot of comics I like, notably including the stretch of The Walking Dead upon which this season of the show was based, so this was a pleasure. I’m also glad I got the opportunity to slag the trade press’s treatment of Tony Moore following the settlement of his suit against Kirkman as well. (Seriously.)

For my review of tonight’s episode of Homeland, please visit Rolling Stone. I liked this one quite a bit.

For my review of tonight’s episode of Homeland, please visit Rolling Stone. Uh, how about that ending?

For my review of tonight’s season premiere of Homeland, please visit Rolling Stone. It’s kind of a half-review, half-vent.

I interviewed Jaime Hernandez, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Gilbert Hernandez for Rolling Stone. Comics game Mount Rushmore.

(photo by Meredith Rizzo)

I’m told I have a short article on Michonne, a new character on The Walking Dead, in the current issue of Rolling Stone, with Bob Dylan on the cover. How about that?

James Franco started a band with an art-school classmate (and Smokey Robinson) and I talked to them (not Smokey) about it for Rolling Stone. If you were wondering, he was extremely nice and soft-spoken and appears to do all the different things he does not out of ego but simply because he really enjoys working.

For my review of last night’s Breaking Bad finale, please visit Rolling Stone. Terrific episode.

Over at Rolling Stone, I updated my list of Walter White’s worst moments — now including Season Five — in anticipation of tonight’s Breaking Bad half-season finale.

For my review of last night’s Breaking Bad, please visit Rolling Stone. I was, like, oddly unfazed by this one?

I interviewed Jesse Plemons, who currently plays Todd on Breaking Bad and previously played Landry on Friday Night Lights, for Rolling Stone. I thought this was an eye-opening one — Plemons said at least two things about Todd that I hadn’t considered before but which made the character click for me in a new way, while his observation that there seems to be a big new wave of people watching Friday Night Lights for the first time right now (which would include me, if I ever get around to watching the two discs I’ve had out from Netflix since god knows when) confirmed something I’d been noticing, too. I think what has happened is that people have now had the time watch their way through the big HBO and AMC dramas and are looking for what to watch next, and FNL is right at the top of that “what to watch next” list.

For my review of tonight’s episode of Breaking Bad, please visit Rolling Stone.

This week I interviewed Breaking Bad‘s Dean Norris for Rolling Stone. He plays Hank, a character I really love.

When we first met Hank, he came across as an obnoxious blowhard. In this episode, he’s moving into the boss’s office. It took me a while to see it, but Hank’s a good cop.

Yeah, he is. One of the tensions in the show has always been that I think he’s a good cop, Vince [Gilligan] thinks he’s a good cop, yet he obviously hasn’t caught on yet. There’s always this question: “Why doesn’t he know?” I think it’s because it would be ridiculous for him to ever suspect that any of these things led to [starts laughing] Walter White. That would be bad writing. But he’s found everything else out. He found Tuco, and he obviously was right about Gus Fring, which everyone else was wrong about. He’s getting there.

And last week I interviewed Laura Fraser, who plays the new character Lydia Rodarte-Quayle. She’s a pretty big new ingredient for the show to be adding this late in the cook, as it were, and I’m impressed by how well it’s working.

The audience had to hit the ground running with Lydia, too. We really had no chance to get to know her under normal circumstances, since right away she’s in such dire straits. That has to create a lot of pressure on you to win the audience over.

One relief was that I didn’t have to worry about making her likeable. She’s so clever and bright, and yet so odd. I liked her, but sometimes she can be such an asshole that she just makes me laugh to play her, even when I’m about to die. It’s a trip.

For my review of tonight’s episode of Breaking Bad, please visit Rolling Stone.

I can’t remember the last time I was this badly upset by a television show.

For my review of tonight’s episode of Breaking Bad, please visit Rolling Stone.

I wrote up a list of 15 essential Batman graphic novels—essential, not necessarily best; you’ll see—for Rolling Stone. Number one is definitely number one, though.

There’s been a backlash against Skyler, something she has in common with women characters on a variety of big dramas about men who tend to behave much worse than they do. Do you have a sense of why this happens? Does it faze you at all?

Some of it is still the double standard in our society – that it’s more acceptable for a man to be this antihero badass doing all these things that break the law or are really awful. People watching want to be Walt, or they identify with him. He doesn’t have to answer to anybody. He does what he wants. There’s a fantasy element to that, I think. I also think that in some ways, there’s kind of a sexism to it, honestly. Sometimes . . . [pauses] I’ve been told particularly, how do you say . . . non-flattering or just really vicious – you could use the word vitriolic – angry stuff about Skyler, or about other female characters on other shows. The hatred and the vitriol and the venom and the nastiness and the attacks are so personal sometimes that it feels like, “Oh gosh, OK, I get that you don’t like Skyler, you like Walt, you’re on his side, but it just feels different.” I don’t feel like that stuff would be written about a male character.

—I interviewed Anna Gunn about last night’s episode of Breaking Bad for Rolling Stone.

For my review of tonight’s episode of Breaking Bad, please visit Rolling Stone.