Okay, fine, I’m gonna come right out and ask it: Are they gonna kill the baby? I know this is television and 99 times out of 100 shows that aren’t Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon are not gonna kill the baby. But this is Squid Game. Yanking the audience’s heartstrings as hard as possible until the damn things snap is what Squid Game does. So I’ll ask it again: Is Squid Game gonna kill that goddamn baby?

I reviewed episode four of Squid Game Season 3 for Decider.

My understanding of the multiverse theory is almost entirely science-fictional in nature. It has something to do with probabilities, or maybe divergent timelines, I dunno; mostly I know the multiverse is where you find a few dozen Spider-Men. 

But it isn’t hard to picture a multiverse in which the island game complex from Squid Game, the severed floor from Severance, the Island from Lost, and the Village from The Prisoner each exist by themselves in their own separate universe, one standing in for the other. After all, when you get down to it they all serve the same purpose: trapping people in inescapable, inexplicable torment, the better to crack them open and see what comes spilling out.

As such, they’re kind of the perfect TV shows, aren’t they? By condemning Gi-hun and his fellow contestants to keep on playing and playing; by forcing Mark S. and his coworkers to keep on working and working; by forcing Jack and the rest of the castaways to keep surviving and surviving; by forcing Number Six to keep trying and trying to escape a place he also keeps trying and trying to figure out — by doing these things, Squid Game and Severance and Lost and The Prisoner are really only replicating the circumstances through which television shows in general entertain us.

Was anyone forcing Sam and Diane to stay in that bar, or Laura Palmer’s friends and family to stay in that small town, or Walt and Jesse to stay in that meth lab? Okay, maybe that one’s a bad example. But you get my point, right? The “weird prison of the mind” vibe of The Prisoner and its spiritual successors only renders more literal the purgatorial conditions of basically all television shows. Gi-hun and Mark S. and Jack and Six are all stuck where they’re stuck until we in the viewing audience — or the powers that be in the network suites — set them free.

I reviewed the third episode of Squid Game season 3 for Decider.

Don’t let overfamiliarity cloud your vision: Squid Game is one of the most singular sci-fi visions to reach television since The Prisoner 60 years ago. 

I reviewed the second episode of Squid Game Season 3 for Decider.

However it goes down, I’m impressed by how much mileage Murderbot has gotten out of its simple premise, small cast, and brief runtime. More would-be sci-fi mindbenders could stand to install a Keep It Simple, Stupid module.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Murderbot for Decider.

Considering the amount of screen time the two Sixes share, the late-Sixties special effects that enable them to appear together in the same shot is shockingly effective. Their hand-to-hand combat in particular is very visceral, in part because of McGoohan’s fists-only fighting style, here doubled, but also because both men appear determined to be the only Six left standing by the end of it.

But could the doubling suggest something deeper? Whatever else it is, The Prisoner was made in the shadow of McGoohan’s previous super-spy TV hit, Danger Man. (That’s what Danger Mouse was parodying, if you didn’t know.) It’s no secret that McGoohan had grown bored with the role by the show’s fourth season; The Prisoner, developed with help from Danger Man Season 4 script editor Doug Markstein, is essentially McGoohan doing a revisionist version of the character he’d just finished playing. The biting cynicism, the distinct lack of heroic catharsis, the overall absence of globe-trotting derring-do, with mind-bending psychological torture in its place: It’s kind of like if Chris “Captain America” Evans created and starred as Homelander in The Boys. Is there a better visual metaphor for this than Patrick McGoohan, secret agent at large, duking it out with Patrick McGoohan, secret agent in chains?

(Also, are you familiar with a little show called Twin Peaks? Because I’ve got a feeling many of the trials and tribulations of the oft-doubled FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper can be tracked back to this episode.)

Still, the thing that really got to me had nothing to do with Six at all, but with Twelve, the traditional movie/TV secret-agent type sent to imprison him. Whoever he is, he had a wife who loved him, and who he subsequently lost, and — wait, did we just figure out why this person would agree to become another man in the first place? The surgery, the training, all of it: Is it the equivalent of Jim Carrey getting his memories erased in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Adam Scott taking on a very strange day job so he can forget about his late wife in Severance?

Even if you’re not buying this backstory (which I just made up as I wrote that paragraph), there’s no two ways about it: Number 12, Curtis, loved a woman named Susan, who loved him back, and now she’s gone. By the time we learn any of this we’ve already seen him be destroyed by Rover (now identified by this codename by both Six and Two, so there you go, official Orb name designated) in what looks to be excruciating fashion. It’s hard to empathize with the kind of person who’d work for the Village organization, or who’d try to break Six in this way. It’s hard for me, personally, to imagine that people with minds like that — fascists, I mean — can truly love the way real people can. But that’s the life he built for himself, and that’s the life that’s over now, and even Number Six is made to wrestle with that.

I reviewed the sixth episode of The Prisoner for Pop Heist. Gift link!

Put it all together and it’s one of the most entertaining hours of Marvel superhero TV I’ve seen that doesn’t involve a blind ninja lawyer. 

I reviewed episode three of Ironheart for Decider.

The show’s portrayal of AI strikes me as grossly irresponsible. Again, I get that in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “AI” means J.A.R.V.I.S. and the Vision, not the thing Amazon has announced is going to help them fire people or the thing the Trump regime is using to decide which vitally important medical programs to shitcan. But that is what AI is in the real world. 

In the real world, AI is designed by rich people, on purpose, to make people stupider and poorer, the end, full stop. People who use it for other purposes boil their own brains, convincing themselves they’re talking to a new girlfriend or a dead relative when what they’re actually talking to is a magic 8-ball, a mechanical Turk, a fucking Clippy. (Ironheart riffed on this last bit in the first episode, when Riri’s suit used an AI that acted like a talking pencil.) You either reckon with that reality when you’re writing your show or you don’t. Personally, I can’t enjoy watching people talk to dead friends using this bullshit technology when I know people are doing this to themselves for real. AI is the Anti-Life Equation.

On the other hand, creating a superhero whose weakness is the sight of a gun feels like a proper reflection of the real world. Gun violence, a cause to which the ruling political party in America is dedicated like a worshipful acolyte, is frequently a foundational trauma for superheroes, from Bruce Wayne on down. Making it a continued, kryptonite-style chink in the armor (no pun intended) for Riri and N.A.T.A.L.I.E. feels like a natural evolution, and a thematically appropriate one given the historical focus on gun violence in Chicago in particular. I’ll take what I can get.

I reviewed the second episode of Ironheart‘s three-part premiere for Decider.

Writer-creator Chinaka Hodge and lead actor Dominique Thorne don’t quite surmount the standard “Here’s who I am and here’s who everyone is and here’s how I feel and here’s why I feel that way and here’s what I need” over-explanatory first-episode syndrome, but they do their level best. You can rarely judge a show by its pilot in that regard at any rate, since the structural requirements of a first episode are so much different even than the needs of a second. 

A bigger problem for the script is the sense that it’s out of step with the moment. Riri’s lionization of billionaires and, as they put it in Speed Racer, the unassailable might of money feels real real weird right now. So does the constant invocation of so-called AI as the wave of the future. I get that in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, AI means “Paul Bettany” rather than “fascist technology developed by rich men who want to own slaves that steals from writers and artists in an attempt to eliminate freedom of expression and thought,” but at a certain point you have to adjust with the times.

None of this would be so bad if it weren’t for the two most recent Disney+ franchise dramas of note. The last MCU show, Daredevil: Born Again, was an anti-Trump allegory that was as subtle as a crushed skull. Andor, Ironheart’s immediate predecessor, is somehow one of the most politically radical things ever aired on American television, to the point where thousands of people from MSNBC resist libs to honest to god leftists (ask me how I know!) quoted from it unironically while protesting against Trump and his ICE gestapo on No Kings Day. Those are big shoes to fill.

Of course, you can simply sidestep the shoes entirely, and tell a kickass story about a woman of steel who battles a guy in an evil cape. I’d be 100% down with that! Certainly the fight choreography we see in this episode feels promising — it’s not the brutal bonecrunching of the Born Again and its Netflix antecedents, but it’s fluid and physical and fun. Which, when you think about it, is maybe exactly how a superhero story should be.

But Ironheart has something going for it that those other shows don’t: it’s…well, I was gonna say “unapologetically Black,” but it’s the kind of show that recognizes that being unapologetically anything only gets you so far. Every time Riri pipes up with some prepared speech about she’s a special young giant being made to feel small while rousing music swells on the soundrack, someone’s there to undercut the easy catharsis of speechification. I think there’s a very real possibility that by the end of this short six-episode season, Riri may feel very differently about the almighty dollar, too, especially if an obvious evildoer like Parker is speaking up on its behalf. We’ll just have to stay tuned for the next issue — I mean, the next episode — to find out.

In the meantime, though, just seeing Chicago photographed lovingly, while the most powerful man on the planet demonizes and attacks it…just hearing a guy say hello by saying “Hey, Black people,” which feels like a radical statement while books and people are being purged based on their race by the white supremacist government…just seeing Black characters who are straightforwardly portrayed as brilliant without a single concession made to segregationist anti-DEI scaremongering…This is a world people are actively trying to take away from us, even within our imaginations. These things are not nothing. In a way, these things are the only thing.

I reviewed the series premiere of Ironheart for Decider, where I’ll be covering the show for the duration.

“I want him with whole heart, body, and soul,” Number Two says early on, while rejecting the usual offers to use more extreme methods to break Number Six. That is the way of fascism. It’s not enough to submit: You must embrace your own submission. That this itself is a destruction of heart and soul does not concern the regime. Your heart and soul are your masters’, and they will remake you in their grey and grinning image.

I reviewed the fifth episode of The Prisoner for Pop Heist. (Gift link!)

From start to finish, this episode’s entire “creature/other creature/monster sex/gross eggs/evil robot/monster’s revenge” sequence is a perfectly executed daisy chain of escalating sci-fi action and gross-out splatstick humor. Rampaging robots, Lovecraftian beasts, huge gooey 1980s horror movie style slime-dripping monster eggs — this thing has it all. It serves as a bombastic bookend to the subdued first scene, which relies not on special effects or spectacular gore but the performance of David Dastmalchian as Gurathin, whose combination of shame, gratitude, and awkwardness about his checkered past and the way Mensah rescued him from it is riveting to watch. 

This is a really fun show, man!

I reviewed this week’s Murderbot for Decider.

Number Six is his own worst enemy. But you don’t have to take my word for it: just ask the administrators of the Village. For two episodes in a row now, they’ve used his own determination to smash the security of his prison and break free to drag him down deeper into their morass of mind games. 

I think this is why Patrick McGoohan works so well in the role. Sure, he created the show, stars in it, wrote and directed several episodes, uses his own professional headshot for Six’s dossier photograph, uses his birthdate for Six’s right down to the second, et cetera. (This is partly why co-creatorship claims by McGoohan’s collaborator, the writer and script editor George Markstein, strike me as exaggerated.) 

But beyond that, he’s developed a very physical style of acting that meshes well with the man of action he portrays. I’ve joked before that Six has three settings: lurk, lurch, and loom. His movements are sudden, almost erratic. Quick-cut editing makes them seem even choppier and more unpredictable. Even his style of hand-to-hand combat, which he’s deployed in two episodes running now, is all stiff punches. This guy’s gonna hit you till you fall down, full stop. He’s gonna get where he’s going at top speed. He’s gonna get answers from the people he wants answers from even if he has to chase them down and pop out of the woodwork to grab them. 

He’s unstoppable, and that’s his problem.

I reviewed the fourth episode of The Prisoner for Pop Heist. Gift link!

But the most unnerving thing about the episode is the way it depicts Number Six’s fellow Villagers as mysterious, fundamentally unknowable people. Some of them are brainwashed automatons. Some of them are active agents of the enemy. Some seem reluctant to fulfill their duties, others positively gleeful. They spend their days in endless parades and celebrations, blasting John Philip Sousa marches and screaming at the top of their lungs — except for the times when they’re eerily silent and still. 

How can you possibly live in a society constructed of people this unreliable, this unstable, this incapable of conceiving of genuine common good and working towards it together? How can you live with people who’ve collectively abandoned reality?

My latest review of The Prisoner is up at Pop Heist. (Gift link, but please subscribe, it’s worth it!)

Murderbot is a triumph of casual viewing. It’s breezy without feeling flimsy and disposable. It’s intense without demanding that you respond to that intensity with your entire mind, body, and soul. The violence is taken seriously and depicted graphically, but it’s still more in the “Halloween haunted house” vein than the “Jesus Christ this is a real endurance test” mode. 

Everyone’s performance is lively and engaging. The biggest star in the piece steps back and mutes his wattage — it’s inherent to his character — so that everyone else shines brighter. There’s interesting romantic chemistry going on between a whole bunch of people with interesting faces, people who are handsome and beautiful in a real way rather than a movie-star-with-veneers way. 

Every episode is substantial but short, and you can watch it with your laptop on your lap, your feet kicked up on the sofa, stoned and eating pretzels and hummus quite comfortably. (Ask me how I know!) All told, Murderbot is my favorite way to spend 20 minutes on TV this season. 

I reviewed this week’s Murderbot for Decider.

“I am not a number! I am a free man!”

To this last declaration of Number Six, the final line of the dialogue that from here on out is a standard fixture of the opening sequence of The Prisoner, the new Number Two only laughs. Everything else Number Six says to her, she dignifies with some sort of response. The idea of freedom garners only mocking dismissal without a word.

I reviewed the second episode of The Prisoner for Pop Heist. (Gift link!) Please note! If you’re following along you’ve already noticed we’re watching the show out of order vs. how it’s listed on streaming sites. That’s because it was not really intended to be watched in the order it was aired! Fun, right? We’re using Zack Handlen’s so-called AV Club order, which you can find here, in a nifty table you can rearrange according to the various suggested viewing orders floating around out there with a couple of clicks.

I, a dad who sometimes watches TV standing up, am quoted in this piece by my pal, the great stand-up comedian Josh Gondelman, on why dads watch TV standing up. The answers may surprise you!

To paraphrase Ghostbusters: Yes, it’s true. This Murderbot has no dick.

I mean, so we’ve seen, in, uh, non-graphic detail. Whatever organic components went into the construction of our reluctantly, confusedly heroic SecUnit, a penis was not one of them. But that doesn’t stop Leebeebee (Anna Konkle), the delightfully stupidly named sole survivor of the DeltFall habitat massacre, from fantasizing about his imaginary potential penis at length. No pun intended. 

I reviewed the most recent episode of Murderbot for Decider.

The Prisoner can largely be credited, or blamed, for the mystery-box genre via its outsized influence on Lost, which in many ways feels like a sexier, less severe version of this show — The Prisoner: Pacific Nights, if you will. Certainly the question of who runs the Village and why they’re so obsessed with Number Six is of grave concern both to the audience and Six himself. 

But what I take away from this episode is not a puzzle to solve but a person to study. Here’s a guy who did Her Majesty’s dirty work, and apparently with enough aplomb and success to drive a preposterous sportscar. He was so good at his job of being a spy for a Western government that the Village, whoever or whatever is behind it, has dedicated its resources to cracking his brain open and seeing what’s inside. 

And what is his attitude towards all this? Lol yeah right, best of luck, assholes. Is he confused, is he angry, is he frightened? Oh, for sure. But he has a single conviction, and it is this:

“I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.”

The most talked about and praised show of the year is Andor, Tony Gilroy’s exploration of violent insurrection in the face of fascism, set in the Star Wars universe. The reason it has resonated so much with people, I think, is because its eponymous character shares this sentiment. 

For all its maddening — and intentional; it serves fascists well to confuse their opponents and victims — contradictions, fascism presents us with a straightforward proposition: We are human only to the extent that we fit the regime’s perpetually constricting definition of who is human. Resisting fascism is in large part a matter of personal integrity: My words will match my thoughts, my actions will match my words, I will be the person I am and not the servant they want me to become, I will not betray my soul. Number Six, who in this episode gives Patrick McGoohan’s birthdate as his own down to the minute, will not go along with any of this either. He’s not the machine-man with a mind of gray sludge that Number Two and his masters want him to be. He is a human. He is not a number. He is a free man. 

So are you.

Oh boy! Starting today over at Pop Heist, I’m launching a new series called Prestige Prehistory, about stone-classic pre-Sopranos dramas that helped (re)define what you could do on television. My first show is Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, beginning with its premiere, “Arrival”!

Pop Heist is worker-run, subscription-supported, and anti-algorithm, and new reviews go up early for subscribers. Check it out!

There’s one moment in this episode in particular that I think speaks to a much broader problem with The Better Sister as a whole: a phone call in which Chloe reports Agent Olivero’s misconduct to an FBI complaint hotline. The operator’s dialogue is stiff and wooden. The report, if you can call it that, goes into no details whatsoever beyond saying his behavior was inappropriate and hanging up. This takes place while actor Jessica Biel is behind the wheel of a car, with sunglasses on, effectively making it impossible for her to convey emotion. 

And the entire conversation lasts about 20 seconds. It’s so abrupt, so goofy, like on the level of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie, that I actually laughed. The effort feels so minimal! If The Better Sister had put half the energy into making little scenes like this work that it did into ensuring everyone dresses exclusively in shades of blue-green and orange-brown, it might have been something, well, better.

I reviewed the finale of The Better Sister for Decider. What a turkey!

I miss the days when people on television wore colors. Sure, television is still in color, technically, but on far too many shows that color runs the gamut from Point A to Point A. Everything is blue and orange, apricot and teal, denim and wood, aquamarine shirts and orange skin tones. The fourth season of True Detective Season 4 served as a real Magic Eye poster for this critic in this regard — once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it, and now I see it everywhere, up to including otherwise brilliant works of art like the second season of Andor. And I’m not crazy — oh no, not I! Watch this episode of The Better Sister and take a drink every time you see a shot with that exact blue-orange palette or a variation thereof. By the end you’ll be drunker than Nicki after getting roofied by her husband Adam.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of The Better Sister for Decider.

There is, however, one genuinely strong scene in this episode, the cold open. In a flashback, we see Adam in a confessional at a Catholic church. Rather than confide his own sins in the priest, however, he enumerates Ethan’s. He sees the boy as a fat, slothful stoner-gamer who’s ungrateful for everything Adam’s worked so hard to provide him with, and he sees his mother, Chloe, as an enabler who keeps throwing bad money after good where the boy is concerned. Corey Stoll is quietly but very frightening in this scene; you can feel how his anger would warp Nicky, Chloe, and Ethan around itself one after the other. 

It takes the priest to point out that he hasn’t actually confessed any sins to be forgiven, but he grants Adam absolution anyway. When Adam asks what for, the priest replies, “You can name it, son.” He can tell this is a man who can’t even admit to himself the things he’s done wrong, but he knows they’re there, and he’ll need to face up to it sooner or later. 

Stoll’s performance makes the scene, but it’s beautifully and moodily lit as well, it deepens the character of Adam, and it even retroactively explains his career as a prosecutor and his current work with the FBI — he was a do-gooder because he’d done bad and wanted to atone for it. In other words, the whole thing makes sense, aesthetically, narratively, emotionally, intellectually. It can be done. I just wish this show did it more often.

I reviewed the sixth episode of The Better Sister for Decider.