My favorite thing about this week’s episode of The Affair is that there are two more episodes to come after it. The show’s first season was just ten episodes long, but this year it’s gotten the bump to twelve, which I didn’t realize until the coming attractions. To this I say “hell yeah.” When you go Solloway, you gotta go all the way!

My second favorite thing about this week’s episode of The Affair was the half Meghan got to cover. Noah’s solo stint in couples therapy was the most realistic portrayal of a therapy session I’ve ever seen on screen—which makes me think it’s long past time for me to seek out Affair co-creators Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi’s psychologist-centric show In Treatment. It was also the most in-depth and even-handed investigation of Noah’s strengths and weaknesses as a person—or as “a man,” as he might prefer to put it—we’ve gotten yet.

Alison’s half of the episode wasn’t half as meaty, but it was at least twice as juicy. By missing the therapy session, she missed out on a chance to take a long journey inward, but she got to give the plot all its forward motion as a make-good.

My compadre Meghan O’Keefe and I reviewed this week’s episode of The Affair for Decider. So jealous she got to cover Noah’s therapy session!

Six episodes into its first season, AvED shows no signs of either slowing down or slipping up. In fact, in sheer entertainment terms, this week’s episode — “The Killer of Killers” — may be the best of the bunch so far. Yes, it lacks the genuine jump-scares of the pilot’s haunted-house atmosphere — hard to pull off when your climactic battle is staged in a greasy spoon — or the inventively awful creature design of the Eligos installments. But it more than makes up for this with crackerjack jokes, no-nonsense viciousness, and enough gore to fill an elevator in the Overlook Hotel. Directed by Michael Hurst, whose resume is full of rollicking genre fare (Hercules, Xena, Spartacus, the Bruce Campbell–starring Jack of All Trades), it’s the most fun you’ll have in 24 minutes this weekend.

I reviewed this weekend’s episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead for Rolling Stone. My editor cut the concluding “…without taking your clothes off” from this graf but otherwise I stand by it.

The show’s willingness to take on subjects with a degree of difficulty high enough that even so-called “prestige” dramas tend to steer clear remains impressive. Case in point: Following their rousing duet “Powerful” — a Black Lives Matter protest anthem mixed with “Roar”-style empowerment pop — inveterate morning-DJ troublemaker Charlamagne tha God, appearing as himself, bluntly interrogates the pair about their identities. “You black now?” he asks Skye, accusing her of “singing about a race she never really claimed.” Without realizing that he’s struck a nerve, he asks Jamal how people would react if, despite being gay, he suddenly started dating a woman. You can see every possible shade of these sentiments expressed across social media anytime a celebrity’s statements on race or sexuality make the national news. A quickie photoshop of Skye with “a Rachel Dolezal wig” adds even more authentic viral-politics flavor to the mix.

All of this was in service of last week’s shocking smooch — maybe the single soapiest moment in the show’s history, at least until that staircase tumble tonight. The series could have coasted off the sensationalism of that moment for as long as it wanted; instead, it choose to dig into the sociopolitical subtext. (Showrunner mindreading attempts are always ill-advised, but it’s not tough to imagine it’s because this shit matters to them.) Not that any of it felt like getting lectured, of course. It wouldn’t be Empireif even sensitive topics weren’t turned into “oh shit!” moments, whether that’s the shock of Charlamagne’s Q&A or the heartbreaking bigotry ofLucious when, with tears of joy in his eyes, he tells Jamal, “She fixed you!”

I reviewed the “fall finale” of Empire for Rolling Stone.

Here, I suppose, is where we’ve got to grapple with the most unsurmountable problem the show faces: the flat performances of its two leads. With only one episode to go, my earlier reservations about the work being done by Krysten Ritter and David Tenant have blossomed into full-blown dislike. There’s almost nothing to Ritter’s acting here beyond dead-eyed, monotone sarcasm, pitched up into anger or down into tears at appropriate moments. Tennant, in turn, is a scenery-chewing gentleman villain, unrelated to and unrecognizable from any comparable figure in real life.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Jessica Jones for Decider. It was bad.

The gravity of the situation is consistently undercut. This begins almost immediately, right there in the restaurant where Hope stabbed herself to death and four others came within a hair’s breadth of hanging themselves. Jessica wants to orchestrate a cover-up in order to avoid entangling the cops in Kilgrave’s web, but her goofball neighbor Robyn, who unleashed the telepath as part of an extremely dumb plan to get to the bottom of her brother Ruben’s death, isn’t having it. “We tell our truth,” she says, “for Ruben.” Then, referring to Hope, whom Jessica has shrouded under a tablecloth, “For tablecloth girl.” Nothing says “We take this seriously” like a cutesy nickname for a distraught woman who just slit her own throat! I get gallows humor, but this is too much too soon, and it jibes with neither Hope’s death nor Robyn’s horrifying close call.

I reviewed the eleventh episode of Jessica Jones for Decider. It was bad.

About the best thing you can say about Jessica Jones’s tenth episode is that Carrie-Anne Moss and Robin Weigert have a horrifying fight scene. With encouragement from Kilgrave and an accidentally lethal last-second rescue by Pam, Jery and Wendy’s vicious divorce turns violent, with the doctor attempting to make emotional “death by a thousand cuts” the lawyer dealt her all too literal. The assault goes on for an uncomfortably long time, with Wendy counting out every slash of the knife against the body of the woman she once loved more than anything. She winds up dead with a glass table embedded in her skull, staring forward with dead unseeing eyes at the woman it turns out she didn’t see clearly in life either. The superhero genre is powered by the use of violence as metaphor, a spectacularly physical way of speaking the unspeakable, and this is as good as the show has ever gotten in that area. Too bad the rest of “AKA 1,000 Cuts” fails just as spectacularly.

I reviewed the tenth episode of Jessica Jones for Decider. It was bad.

But the real tragedy, it seems to me, is Hanzee Dent, Dodd’s right-hand man turned murderer. He’s killed people for a living twice, first as a highly decorated soldier in Vietnam, then as an enforcer for the Gerhardt family. Now, as he seamlessly transitions from hitman to spree killer, he’s killing on his own, for his own reasons. (Maybe he always was.) Given the ease and skill with which he’s been shown to pull the trigger, the scene in which he’s taunted by racists at a Sioux Falls bar (complete with vomit-soaked plaque commemorating the hanging of 22 Sioux in the alley out back) is soaked in schadenfreude. I mean, you just know these assholes are gonna get what’s coming to them. But it’s still somehow very, very sad to watch Hanzee snap—to see him humiliated for being who he is despite the sacrifices he made for the country that despises him, to see the rearguard struggle of his people against centuries of genocide reduced to wisecracks about Wounded Knee, to watch him wearily decide to shoot two people and murder three others, including two cops who arrive on the scene and call him “Cochise” immediately, out of sheer fatigue with being treated like garbage, by everyone, all the time. He puts it best himself later, when he tries to get a haircut from Peggy, whom he’s finally tracked down. “‘Professional,’ you said?” she asks regarding his preferred style. “Yeah,” he replies. “Tired of this life.” His exhaustion is so total he doesn’t even include himself as the subject of the sentence.

I reviewed this week’s Fargo for the New York Observer. This show is just tremendous.

The biggest problem with the episode is structural. Since it begins with Kilgrave locked away safely in his soundproof, hermetically sealed, electroshock-equipped prison cell, we know that he’ll have to escape by the time it ends. I mean, there’s five more episodes left in the season, including this one, when he gets locked up, right? If he doesn’t get out, what are they gonna be about, Trish and Simpson getting engaged and picking out items for their wedding registry? And if he has to escape, that requires someone on the other side of the glass to do something to help, either by going inside and falling under his control or letting him have access to the outside and control whoever he wants—in other words, doing something unimaginably stupid.

I reviewed the ninth episode of Jessica Jones for Decider. It was bad.

But the most entertaining thing about this mightily entertaining episode (if you find dark shit entertaining, which, if you don’t, why are you watching this show) is simply its context in the series. This season, The Leftovers has proven itself to be a carnival ride through humanity’s grimmest emotions. A new family of main characters, a sudden switch to old ones we’d all but forgotten, seamless shifts backward through time to events we thought we’d seen the last of, an entire episode taking place in a hallucinated dreamworld, in-depth grappling with cult deprogramming and reprogramming, one-on-one conversations as intense as any action sequence—each new installment has the potential to do something entirely different than its predecessors. In an era where prestige drama has a tendency to be consistent from episode to episode, perhaps to a fault, The Leftovers mixes it up while remaining true to its core thematic and emotional obsessions each time. It’s impressive, risk-taking work—doubly so given Lindelof’s oft-stated preoccupation with the reactions of his audience. What will happen in the finale next week, then? To paraphrase Megan, I’m guessing it’s gonna be pretty fucking amazing, what they’re gonna do.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of The Leftovers Season Two for Decider.

The coup de grace against Eligos is the moment that brings it all together. Once Pablo lures the entity out of their friend, Ash is ready to blow it to kingdom come with his shotgun, except the beast teleports far too quickly for the boomstick to get a bead. Then our hero flashes back to something he said during his drug trip last week: “Shoot first, think never.” It’s a terrific credo for the character, not least because Bruce Campbell hilariously plays any instance where thought is required like the strain might cause his head to explode.

And it leads to a kick-ass climax: El Jefe tosses his shotgun in the air, then takes a swipe at the demon with his chainsaw-hand in slo-mo. The creature disappears. The shotgun lands back in his hand, he levels it where it lands, and just before he pulls the trigger, bang, that’s where Eligos reappears. BOOM — the demon is dispatched in a spray of green jelly. Instinct prevails over logic, chaos over order, magic over reason, fun over not-fun. For both the character and the show itself, nonsense makes perfect sense.

I reviewed last weekend’s Ash vs. Evil Dead for Rolling Stone.

Relative to Helen, Alison’s situation is straightforward. She goes into labor. She needs her fiancée. He’s not there for her, due to the combination of a misplaced smartphone, a coked-up sex party, serial philandering, and an unseasonal hurricane. She gives birth to a beautiful daughter without him, with the help of a doctor she mistakes for a nurse due to her youth and, let’s face it, her gender. During labor she seems to commune, on some level, with her ex-husband Cole as he hits rock bottom. And when she emerges, she finds she needs Noah less than she did before. Maybe that’s what she and her romantic rival Helen ultimately have in common. Whatever it is they really need, Noah isn’t it.

Meghan O’Keefe and I reviewed the penultimate episode of The Affair Season Two for Decider.

There’s a certain irony to “AKA WWJD?”, the title of Jessica Jones’s eighth episode. Asking “What would Jessica do?”, it then does something the series has consistently failed to do throughout the season so far: something (anything!) surprising. Often unpredictable, frequently subtle (at least by superhero standards), it’s the show’s best episode so far, by far.

I reviewed the eighth episode of Jessica Jones, which I thought was good, for Decider.

Still, Ritter fares better than David Tennant, who leaves no scenery unchewed in our longest glimpse of Kilgrave in action to date. His ranting and raving in the squad room where he confronts Jessica is 100% Boar’s Head ham. The false humility, the sudden rages, the skin-crawling professions of love—some of this is the writing’s fault, no question, but every choice he makes in trying to sell it is rote and predictable. Contrast this with Vincent D’Onofrio as Daredevil big bad Wilson Fisk. From his physical comportment to speech patterns, he was a wholly original creation. The performance ran the risk of alienating the audience by doing something superhero stories rarely do: forcing them to watch something they’d never seen before. Tennant feels like a copy of a copy of a copy of a mash-up of a Bond villain and Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecter by comparison. Meanwhile he’s supposed to hold down half of this show’s emotional bargain. Like Hogarth’s wife Wendy, you don’t have to take this deal.

I reviewed the seventh episode of Jessica Jones for Decider. Sorry, Whovians.

All the great shows ask big questions. Mad Men made us think “Can people really change?” The Wire wondered “Can the system be saved?” And tonight, Empire asked “Is Alicia Keys talented and gorgeous enough to convert a gay dude?” According to Fox’s smash-hit soap, the answer is yes! The series has already had a wild second season, but this week’s installment — “Sinned Against” — was the daffiest hour to date…and it was sealed with a kiss.

I reviewed last night’s episode of Empire for Rolling Stone.

“You are a hard-drinking, short-fused mess of a woman,” Luke Cage tells Jessica Jones. “But you are not a piece of shit.” Thesis statement! Yes, Luke has reason to reassess the latter part of that description later in the episode. But either way, this line from “AKA You’re a Winner!”, the season’s sixth episode, tidily sums up the show’s vision of its lead character: Sure, she’s an alcoholic asshole fuckup, but she’s got a heart of gold! If this is an interesting archetype for you, great, go with God. If not? You’re in for a slog.

I reviewed the sixth episode of Jessica Jones, aka the one where they throw people into weed, for Decider.

One sentence did more to damage my appreciation of Jessica Jones than any other. It wasn’t anything any of the characters said, or even anything a TV critic wrote. It was something mysignificant other said to me as we watched “AKA The Sandwich Saved Me,” the show’s fifth episode. “Does Kilgrave need to speak to people directly to control them?” she asked. “Seems like it,” I replied. Her response: “Then why don’t they wear earplugs?” I believe that’s what Mortal Kombat calls “FATALITY.”

I reviewed the fifth episode of Jessica Jones for Decider. More like Justokay Jones, amirite?

The title character herself is not getting any more interesting. While the handling of abuse and trauma is as incisive as ever, so too does Jessica remain a glowering hardass stereotype in every other respect. Some of this is down to the writing, which sets her up in cliched scenarios like the ol’ sad shower scene (I don’t know about you, but I’m rarely sad in the shower—my bouts with melancholy usually take place on the couch) and forces her to deliver wooden lines like “Not tonight, Hogarth. Not tonight.” But, and I hate to say this, some of it is Krysten Ritter, who seems more and more miscast as the series continues. As good as she was in Breaking Bad, investing a supporting character with a mainline dose of audience empathy, she’s doing very little with this part beyond glaring, sneering, and occasionally sitting in silence. Sure, they can have her do a Pete Venkman twirl on a street corner or cry a single Frodo Baggins tear when she discovers her junkie neighbor Malcolm has been Kilgrave, but like when she trashes the room she’s been lured to by her anti-gifted client for an assassination attempt, the emotional displays feel forced since her affect is otherwise so stonefaced. If this show is ever gonna soar, something’s gotta break.

I reviewed episode four of Jessica Jones for Decider. I’m not crazy about it.

Last week on Ash vs. Evil Dead, the show put its unique splatstick spin on Hellraiser. This time out, it took on the Monkees’ Head. The Pre-Fab Four’s film, a free-form psychedelic-era artifact (written by Jack Nicholson!), is as good a touchstone as any for the far-out trip Ash J. Williams went on this week — that, or the “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” dream sequence from The Big Lebowski. Our working theory was that tonight’s episode, “Brujo,” was going to offer AvED’s version of New World witchcraft. Instead, it showed us El Jefe’s brain on drugs. As the man himself might put it: Groovy.

I reviewed this past weekend’s Ash vs. Evil Dead for Rolling Stone. This show is really a hoot.

SPOILER ALERT

It’s been nearly a week since I first watched last night’s Fargo. Like I’ve said, I rush to watch each new advance-screener episode the moment the network sends them to me, like a kid running headlong to unwrap the biggest present under the tree on Christmas morning. A lot has stuck with me since then: the opening massacre montage set to Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath” (window washers!); Floyd Gerhardt’s smile in the interrogation room when she realizes she’s used the cops to win her war; the use of a ‘70s-style cover of “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In),” a Big Lebowski soundtrack standout; the Undertaker; the appearance of the title in the cold air above the Gerhardt farmstead. You could easily list two or three times as many memorable moments without breaking a sweat.

But I’ll tell you the bit that got to me the most. It’s a line from Simone Gerhardt, the ill-fated double-agent heiress to the empire. Barely surviving her confrontation with Mike Milligan over the hit on her grandma’s home (which took out Grandpa Otto, not her hated father Dodd), she’s escorted out by Ben Schmidt, one of Fargo’s Finest. He falls for her blunt come-ons like the supporting-character dupe he is, then gets kneed in the balls for it so that she can effect her escape. “If I’m goin’ to the noose,” she tells him, “I’m goin’. But I’m done lyin’ down for men.”

Then she walks out to the parking lot, where she is waylaid by her uncle Bear, who drives her out to the middle of nowhere, marches her deep into the woods, and kills her for sleeping with the enemy while she begs for her life. She was done lying down for men, yes. She was not done kneeling for them.

I reviewed this week’s Fargo for the New York Observer. Good God, this show.

As a reward for all this good behavior, Helen apologizes for the choices she forced Noah to make, for her secret glee that his first book failed, and for her inability to see how important writing really was to him. “I never in a million years thought you would be this, this guy,” she tells him. “And now you’re here, and I’m very proud of you.” She means it. That this is coming from Helen’s perspective indicates she wants and needs to be seen as forgiving, supportive, and honest about her ex-husband’s character. But it also means she thinks he deserves it.

And on Noah’s side of the equation? He’s a drunken dickhead, ranting about how hard it is for white men to get ahead in literature (“It’s impossible to be a man in 2015!” he says, unleashing a laughing fit from his ex), picking fights with student-newspaper book critics, barely resisting the temptation to pick up admiring undergrads, and coming an unzipped fly away from cheating on his pregnant fiancée with his publicist. Yet even here Helen is affirming the better angels of his nature: “You’re not a dick! You’ve made some questionable choices, and you don’t like yourself very much for reasons I don’t understand, but you’re fundamentally a decent human being.” As we’ve been saying for a while, that’s the thesis statement for The Affair’s take on masculine martyrdom: Sure, we men make mistakes, we fuck up, but at heart we’re Good Guys—why can’t everyone see this? In Noah’s case, Helen can. He’s the one whose descent has blinded him.

Meghan O’Keefe and I reviewed last night’s episode of The Affair for Decider. The dialogue basically quoted my long-standing read of how Noah wants to be seen verbatim, which was nice!