Blue, white, red, green, gold — these are the colors of the factions whose drivers thrill the crowds at the Circus Maximus. But the color I want to talk about is purple. A dawn purple, a dusk purple, making the streets of Rome look cool and rich and inviting. This particular shade of purple doesn’t really show up until director Marco Kreuzpaintner takes over from Roland Emmerich for Those About to Die’s fourth episode. But after spending much of the intervening time in the amorphous, blue-and-orange color-graded no-man’s-land favored by so many TV productions today, it’s nice to spend a little time in lavender and violet. Feels appropriately imperial, doesn’t it?

I reviewed the third and fourth episodes of Those About to Die for Vulture.

With a cold-blooded murder orchestrated by its main character within its premiere episode’s first minute, Those About to Die ain’t your daddy’s sword-and-sandal action epic. Except that, well, it kind of is. Its writer-creator, Robert Rodat, is the Academy Award–nominated screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan, perhaps the greatest dad movie of them all (give or take a Shawshank Redemption). Roland Emmerich, director of the first two episodes, gave us Independence Day among many other “Sunday afternoon on TNT in a hotel room” blockbusters.

The show is largely being sold on the strength of a pivotal but minor role played by Anthony Hopkins, who achieved megastardom more than 30 years ago. Even the source material — the dubiously accurate and extraordinarily lurid “history” of Roman gladiatorial games and combat-sport spectacles by Daniel P. Mannix, the cover blurb of which is transcribed above — is the kind of thing you’d find moldering on your granddad’s bookshelf. For all its nudity and gore, the latter liberally splashed across the streets and statuaries of Rome in the CGI opening credits, Those About to Die is not in danger of crossing any kind of artistic Rubicon anytime soon.

The short version: This is the most obviously Game of Thrones–inspired show to come along since Shōgun, and it lacks half that show’s vision or restraint.

But sometimes you just wanna see sexy people in gladiator uniforms run around snogging and fighting and using old-timey accents to sound faux ancient. Well, I do, anyway. And even if there’s a lot of fat that could have been trimmed from these first two hourlong episodes, as well as a lot of dramatically inert characters who could have been spun into something more substantial, well, to paraphrase Gladiator, I was at least entertained.

I reviewed the first two episodes of Those About to Die for Vulture.

I still can’t say enough good things about the performances. The way O-T Fagbenle slowly emits the word “fuuhhhcked” from his mouth has to be heard to be believed. Peter Sarsgaard is like the Gollum of legal thrillers. Jake Gyllenhaal maintains an intensely physical vibe through careful placement of intense workouts and equally intense snippets of his sex life with Carolyn. You need to feel that passion, as he puts it on the stand. You need to feel how it’s both exciting and destructive. 

I reviewed this week’s fine episode of Presumed Innocent for Decider.

The new episode of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour on House of the Dragon 2×05 is up! Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

In his series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, the author George R.R. Martin has based a trio of men-at-arms on Curly, Moe and Larry, the Three Stooges. He has used the superheroes Blue Beetle and Green Arrow as the basis for noble houses’ emblematic sigils. During the events depicted in “House of the Dragon,” the important House Tully is variously ruled over by Lords Grover, Elmo, and Kermit, with a Ser Oscar thrown in for good measure, as if “Sesame Street” had come to the Seven Kingdoms.

So do I think it’s possible that in his book “Fire and Blood,” the basis of “House of the Dragon,” Martin put Prince Aemond Targaryen in control of Westeros just as a cheeky way to illustrate the maxim “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”? I wouldn’t put it past him.

I reviewed tonight’s episode of House of the Dragon for the New York Times.

Presumed Innocent is a good-looking show in a non-ostentatious way, and that’s true throughout this episode. Little moments like Barbara and Rusty hugging in their living room. Tommy returning home and displaying genuine, uncomplicated happiness as he hugs his adorable orange cat. Jaden clinging to Rusty almost for dear life. The almost expressionistic positioning of Rusty, Mya, Ray, and Barbara for the camera in their meeting discussing Barbara’s demeanor in court. It’s nice to feel rewarded for watching.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Presumed Innocent for Decider.

The new Boiled Leather Audio Hour episode is out! Guest co-host Gretchen Felker-Martin and I talk about the big dragon battle episode of House of the Dragon, available here or wherever free podcasts are sold!

Let the record show it was neither my decision nor yours to spend the first six episodes of The Acolyte teasing a mystery to be revealed in the seventh. That’s the kind of decision made by a creative team confident in its choices — in ability to reveal and conceal at will, to generate fresh interest while continuing to string us along, and to deliver when the time finally comes.

Based on this week’s episode, that confidence was misplaced. Not one choice made in “Choice” proves capable of bearing the accumulated weight of the six episodes of “What really happened on Brendok on that fateful night sixteen years ago?” that preceded it. 

The script stumbles right out the gate by casting this flashback episode as a sort of alternate take on the previous such installment, which showed us the Jedi’s arrival on Brendok and the tragic end of Mae and Osha’s coven from Osha’s perspective. The problem is that nothing whatsoever is gained from shifting the focal point from Osha to Sol, or to his fellow Jedi Indara and Torbin, or to their mothers Aniseya and Koril. They might has well have simply re-aired that earlier episode, just with the cameras placed three feet to the left. That’s the revelatory new viewpoint we’re getting.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Acolyte for Decider.

The new Boiled Leather Audio Hour episode is out! Guest co-host Gretchen Felker-Martin and I talk about the big dragon battle episode of House of the Dragon, available here or wherever free podcasts are sold!

From its sobriquet on down, George R.R. Martin’s World of Ice and Fire is largely a bipolar one. Blacks fight Greens. Starks fight Lannisters. And in the prophetic Song of Ice and Fire itself, death wars against life.

The dragons flown by the Targaryen dynasty are an exception to this rule. In the source novels, various maesters and royals speculate that dragons are neither male nor female, capable of switching sexes as needed. True, they are the fire that helps turn back the ice of the Night King and his undead minions in “Game of Thrones,” and the most magnificent and awe-inspiring living creatures in the Westerosi bestiary. But they are also death incarnate, capable of inflicting carnage amid soldiers and civilians alike at an industrial scale.

And if need be, they can be called upon to kill one another, in battles as brutal as they are beautiful. There is a reason scholars within Martin’s fictional universe refer to the Targaryen civil war as the Dance of the Dragons: The conflict is as rapturous to behold as it is repugnant, often in the same scene.

I reviewed tonight’s incredible episode of House of the Dragon for the New York Times.

Week 3 of House of the Dragon Season 2. Week 3 of The Boiled Leather Audio Hour, the longest-running A Song of Ice and Fire podcast still active in the world today, covering House of the Dragon Season 2. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

I recognize his reaction, because I’ve seen people react to me that way. Yeah, that’s right, call me Tommasino “Tommy” Molto, because I’ve horrified my inner circle with my self-pity. The key exchange:

TOMMY: “I’m good at what I do!”

NICO: “…Do you think I would give you this case if I didn’t think that?”

There’s a uniquely insufferable trait, and it’s one I recognize in myself, of being awarded some boon you earned from a person who respects you, yet insisting they don’t and the whole thing’s some kind of scam set up for the benefit of watching you fail. Why? Who would do this, and to what end? What is Step 2 in the Underpants Gnomes’ plan here? I don’t know! Tommy doesn’t know! But there’s a certain kind of self-pity — self-contempt is probably the right word — that insists upon this absurd premise anyway. It’s crybully behavior. It’s the mentality of a person who’s a bottomless pit.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Presumed Innocent for Decider. Good show!

The episode ends admirably oddly, with Osha putting on Qimir’s helmet — it’s made from cortosis, a metal that both shorts out lightsabers and has a sensory-deprivation effect so that your only remaining sense is the Force itself, provided you can tap into it. We see her put the helmet on through her eyes, watching the world go black except a little sliver of dim light. We hear her breathe, and the credits begin to roll over the sound effect, not Star Wars-y music as has been the case…well, literally every other time I’ve watched anything Star Wars. 

I’m impressed by this willingness to break the mold, also reflected in the decision to let actor Manny Jacinto flex his full sex appeal as Qimir. Obviously, I’m impressed by all the cute little guys. But I’d be more impressed if I felt these innovations came in service of material that provided any of it with a compelling context. Evil twins, mistaken identity, “What happened?” “I’ll tell you everything” episode after episode…there’s not much to go on there.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Acolyte for Decider.

“We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think,” George R.R. Martin wrote in his short 1996 essay “On Fantasy.” “To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang.” By that standard, this week’s episode of “House of the Dragon,” a series based on Martin’s book “Fire and Blood,” is spicy fantasy indeed.

I don’t just mean the sex and nudity, though what there was of both blew my hair back on my head. For Martin, fantasy is about more than ribaldry. Describing it as a genre of “silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli,” he goes on to write of how its very largeness, the unbounded scope of its imagination, “speaks to something deep within us.” This episode certainly spoke to something deep within this critic.

I reviewed this week’s superb episode of House of the Dragon for the New York Times. Please note that I’m going to be using gift links from now on, which will enable you to read my NYT pieces even without a subscription

Presumed Innocent is not agnostic about the morality of Rusty’s decision to cheat, no matter how far it goes to present you with his side of things. It might not work if it were less condemnatory, since the whole idea is that his hubris led to avoidable tragedy. (This isn’t The Affair, in other words.) But it’s very sharp writing by Sharr White and David E. Kelley, that’s for sure, writing that digs into some unpleasant secret parts of adult desire and validates them as real and important and capable of changing your life. For better or for worse…well, that depends on the context.

I reviewed episode four of Presumed Innocent for Decider.

Stefan and I took another good long look at House of the Dragon this past week with a review of Season 2 Episode 2. Listen in!

First, it’s not often I recommend a show based entirely on the strength of one supporting performance, but O-T Fagbenle makes Presumed Innocent such a show. What a villain, man! Imagine being a left-wing scholar getting publicly condescended to by a prosecutor endorsed by Obama. That’s his character, and it’s gorgeously obnoxious. As a bonus you get Peter Sarsgaard as his underling Tommy Molto, who wears shirts from Dan Flashes during his off hours and says things like “You dismiss me at your peril” with total sincerity. The fact that he’s Jake Gyllenhaal’s brother-in-law makes his role as Rusty Sabitch’s nemesis that much funnier.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Presumed Innocent for Decider.

Did the Jedi really brainwash Osha into believing a lie about the arson incident? Can they brainwash people like that? Or is Mae just delusional? It may be somewhat interesting to see Sol and Mae hash this out, just as it’s somewhat interesting to meet a Sith who’s not trying to conquer the universe or topple the Republic but just be evil on his own. Somewhat interesting is fine, if you just like Star Wars and your main criteria is “Is there more of it?” I still have no idea what this show is about, what it’s trying to say, what reason it has to exist beyond those two four-letter words.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Acolyte for Decider.

Stefan and I are going weekly for the duration of House of the Dragon Season 2 with episode-by-episode, uh, episodes! We’re starting, of course, by talking about the season premiere — listen here or wherever quality podcasts are found!

This ability to shock — not in the gross-out sense, although this is often the case as well, but rather in the sense of a sudden, severe surprise — is the greatest strength “House of the Dragon” possesses. Civil wars are often said to be battles of brother against brother; fantasy can make the metaphorical literal. What better way to illustrate the senseless brutality of warfare than by having two men who look and sound exactly alike, who love each other, who say they are one soul in two bodies, perish in a brutal murder-suicide that achieves exactly nothing?

I reviewed tonight’s weirdly untitled episode of House of the Dragon for the New York Times.