But the show’s sophistication is present in more than how its characters talk to one another — it’s in why they talk to certain people the way they do. On a show like Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof’s Mrs. Davis, the main character’s occupation as a nun, as clergy for the Roman Catholic Church, is treated as a quirky detail, an excuse for running around having wacky adventures in a fun costume, and the setup for an admittedly very surprising and funny twist — but that’s it. The fact that being a part of the structure of a specific religion has a specific political valence goes completely unremarked upon.

Not so here. Much to my surprise and delight, much of this episode of Fatal Attraction (“The Dillingers”) explores how poorly people treat Dan and Mike in the present, not because they’re a disgraced ex-DA and ex-cop respectively, but because they were ever a DA and a cop at all. These are political jobs, and politics have real-world consequences on real people’s lives, and people justifiably hate them for that, and Dan and Mike are not excepted simply because they’re the main characters, or because they’re played by actors we like. 

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fatal Attraction, which is very good, for Decider.

Setting a show in world this insular and claustrophobic requires an attention to fine detail when working with the characters who inhabit it. True, it’s the kind of genre storytelling painted with very broad strokes, so I’m not expecting these people to suddenly become the cast of The Sopranos or Mad Men or Halt and Catch Fire. But what writer Rémi Aubuchon (PSA: The writers of the WGA deserve fair treatment and fair pay from the enormous corporations that profit off their labor), director David Semel, and actors Amelie Child-Villiers and Iain Glen achieve here is extraordinary nonetheless. You can feel how real the crack-up between them is — stemming from their exhaustion and frustration at the end of their respective days, triggered by the sudden clangor of the alarm and the threat of the smoke, built up over time as Juliette grew to resent her father for keeping her at a distance and her father grew to resent himself for doing so as well.

Thanks to Child-Villiers you can hear the absolute misery in Juliette’s voice as she runs from the room, blocked by Semel so that her back is turned to both her father and the camera as she mourns for the childhood she’s losing and blames him for the loss. Glen (very convincingly de-aged by makeup, a wig, and I’d imagine a little bit of digital sleight-of-hand) holds back just long enough before delivering the doctor’s retort to convey the fact that this is a failure of self-control for him; he knows he should not play tit for tat with his grieving daughter, but his pain is such that he can’t stop himself from venting it. 

Taken in totality, this scene gives what could be a rote partial-orphan origin story for Juliette (genre fiction absolutely loves killing off its protagonists’ mothers) and makes it something raw and lived-in. This in turn makes the Silo feel less like something from a YA novel you read and forget about and more like a real place, with real people in it. It’s an achievement.

I reviewed today’s episode of Silo for Decider.

This is all terrific stuff, frankly. (Kudos to writers Sarah L. Thompson and Liz Phang; writers are responsible for all your favorite shows and deserve fair treatment and fair pay!) It really, really is about time that Yellowjackets got around to portraying its teenage characters as feral cannibals in the making; as I hoped and predicted, the combination of Shauna’s baby dying in the past and the whole gang reuniting in the present has marked a turning point for the show. None of them will ever be able to walk back what they were planning to do, and what they’re going to do instead. It’s the hidden shame beneath every interaction the adult characters have had.

I reviewed today’s episode of Yellowjackets for Decider.

But take heed of Joy’s words to Simone, who tracks her down thanks to that repetitive glitch we kept hearing when she’d talk to the app via proxy, culminating in that big serenade of “Electric Avenue.” (That’s where Joy lives.) Mrs. Davis isn’t a she, Joy says, but an it. Algorithms aren’t a form of life; they’re code. They don’t have subconsciouses; they have subroutines. They don’t have mothers; they have coders. It’s not just that the quest Mrs. Davis assigned to Simone is dumb; it’s that all algorithms are “super dumb.”

This is the kind of energy we need in 2023, as our tech and business overlords try to convince us that AI is learning, growing, and experiencing organisms capable of replacing virtually all human endeavors. They’re just moronic computer programs that plagiarize Wikipedia and make pictures of fake people with 17 fingers. That’s it! Algorithms are not inevitable, and they don’t have intelligence, not any more than Pong was an Olympic table-tennis champion.

The episode’s problem — the whole show’s problem, in fact — is that its valuable insights kind of begin and end there.

I reviewed the season (series?) finale of Mrs. Davis for Vulture.

What follows plays out like a class demonstration in how to execute a thriller sequence. The mission? Simple: Shut down the generator, fix it, and start it back up. The risks? The steam could blow, the repairs could fail, the workers could die. The stakes? The future of the Silo. That’s all you need to know to enjoy the white-knuckle stuff that follows. Keep it simple, stupid.

What’s more, every individual step within that simple plan is described, depicted, and executed with clarity and verve. The show establishes the major players — Juliette, her boss Knox (Shane McRae), her apprentice Cooper (Matt Gomez Hidaka), and her colleague Shirley (Remmie Milner) — and gives them all easily understood jobs to do — Juliette IDs the problem and then descends into the steam hatch room to cool it down with a fire hose; Cooper reinstalls the repaired rotor blade he and Juliette remove; Shirley monitors the situation in the steam room; Knox watches over the whole thing, communicating messages from one person to the next.

It’s easy to understand where everyone is in relationship to one another in the space of the big machinery chamber. It’s easy to understand the kind of damage they’ll incur if things go wrong — from a fall, from getting hit by machinery, from drowning, from burning. It’s easy to understand how much time they have left, and to feel the tension mount along with them as that time ticks away faster than they’d anticipated. And finally, it’s easy to feel the same relief and triumph they do when they pull it all off just in the nick of time. 

Meanwhile, the recognizable, analog, industrial nature of all the machinery — it’s all blades and bolts and pipes and valves and big steel plates — only helps us intuit exactly what could go wrong and how bad going wrong would be. This goes double or triple for Juliette, whose fear of drowning (presumably that’s how her mom and/or brother died) has already been established; Rebecca Ferguson’s guttural shrieks of terror as the water rises around her in the steam hatch chamber are convincing and effective.

Seriously, from top to bottom, it’s crackerjack genre filmmaking. It’s also a marked contrast from the main-character switcheroos that characterized the first two episodes. This one’s based on action, and the action is damn good.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Silo for Decider.

I like a mystery box show that isn’t in a big rush to show off how mysterious the box is. Shotgunning holy shit, what’s going on, everything we thought we knew was wrong moments at the viewer is seen as a shortcut to intrigue, a way to get people hooked early and hooked hard. More often than not, though, it obscures whatever other ideas the show may have about itself, its characters, its world, its worldview. I already know something mysterious is going on; I don’t need to be frogmarched past hidden door after hidden door and treasure chest after treasure chest and hidden connection after hidden connection just for my interest to be held. Like, what’s the hurry? You got a hot date or something, mystery box show?

So kudos to the second episode of Silo (“Holston’s Pick”) for playing things out with focus and restraint. Instead of going all 1899 on us and flipping everything upside-down just as we’re getting the lay of the land, it simply burrows deeper into the mysteries we’re already familiar with.

I reviewed the second episode of Silo for Decider.

I’ll say this right up front: Silo will not wow you. This is not a big, bold, bizarre, frightening science-fiction vision in the vein of Netflix’s marvelous Dark or HBO Max’s late, lamented Raised by Wolves. It’s more in the vein of Apple+’s own Foundation: adapted from a series of novels, given a decent budget and a solid cast, and aimed right down the middle at the kinds of folks who like to open up streaming apps and watch science fiction shows. There are a lot of people like that, and so there have been a lot of shows like that too. Which is fine.

I’m covering Silo for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.

I bring all this up not to suggest that Dan is, like, a really terrible guy or anything. (It was always weird when people acted like Don Draper’s infidelity was somehow on par with Walter White killing loads of people on the “I Hate This Antihero” scale.) I bring it up to point out that the real attraction of Fatal Attraction isn’t how it does or doesn’t mirror the dynamics and major moments of the movie, but the dialogue the show serves its participants. Writers Kevin J. Hynes, Tandace Khorrami, and James Dearden, *LOWERS SHADES TO LOOK YOU DEAD IN THE EYE* who like all union writers should be paid and treated fairly by the Hollywood studios by the way, continue the show’s tradition of simply giving Amanda Peet, Toby Huss, Joshua Jackson, Lizzy Caplan, and Alyssa Jirrels interesting things to say and interesting ways of saying them.

I reviewed the most recent episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

Hold on, I’m getting a message from a hidden resistance cell dedicated to thwarting the onslaught of AI. A top-secret organization called the WGA? Anyway, they say that Jason Ning and Jonny Sun wrote this episode of Mrs. Davis and that without union screenwriters, everything any of us have ever read, written, or posted about television shows like Mrs. Davis would not be possible. Huh, sounds like those writers should be paid and treated fairly. Something to consider!

I reviewed last week’s episode of Mrs. Davis for Vulture.

New theme song! Gutting secret confessions! Intense grief! Thwarted suicide attempt! Hallucinatory parrot-based musical theater interlude! Multiple total breaks with reality! Savage Fight Club–style beatdown! Gahhh, there’s so much to talk about in Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 7…and it’s thanks to the work of writers Rich Monahan and Liz Phang that we get to watch and talk about any of it at all. The union writers of the WGA deserve to be paid and treated fairly by the major studios — surely not even the Antler Queen herself would be evil enough to disagree with that!

At any rate, last week I speculated that in simultaneously reuniting all the known survivors in the past and killing Shauna’s baby in the present, Yellowjackets may have reached a major inflection point, moving from being one kind of show into being something else. I think the new version of the theme song — quieter, more somber, and performed by Alanis Morrisette — may be an indication that creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson and showrunner Jonathan Lisco agree. You can’t do either those things and then go on as if two major, major milestones haven’t been reached, and now passed.

I reviewed the most recent episode of Yellowjackets, which I thought was pretty darn good, for Decider.

It feels like Yellowjackets is about to change, and for the better. In fact, maybe it’s already happened. In Season 2 Episode 6 (“Qui”), momentous events take place in both the present and the past. In the former, the gang’s all here: Shauna, Taissa, Misty, Natalie, Van, and Lottie end the episode face to face for the first time in 25 years, each bearing the weight of her own secrets and regrets; the unspecified terrible things they did in the woods loom over them like a threatening wave. 

And in the past, the moment the survivors have waited for for months has finally arrived: Shauna gives birth. A full episode passes before we really learn how that birth turns out. It’s another point of no return.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Yellowjackets for Decider.

So yeah, I’m still in on what Fatal Attraction is doing. It’s not the stylish, sexy, nasty, almost expressionistic exploration of male desire, insecurity, and guilt that the movie was, but it doesn’t want to be, and I won’t hold that against it — not when it’s providing so many simple pleasures in exchange.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

It can be said without fear of contradiction that this is the least zany episode of Mrs. Davis yet. Except for the part when David Arquette goes undercover as a nun. Or the scene where Jesus permits Simone to fuck her ex-boyfriend. Or the deal when a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged unlocks a secret chamber with a Star Wars trash compactor–style security mechanism. Or the reveal that there’s a fully accurate replica of the office with the secret chamber and trash compactor on a soundstage in Altadena. Or the lengthy animatic depicting how Simone’s dad rigged a corpse to be dissolved in acid and ooze a wave of viscera all over the set of a local morning show in Reno. Or the way good sex warps you to Jesus’ restaurant right in the middle of it — no matter how half- or fully naked you are at the time.

But yeah, other than that? Pretty straightforward stuff!

I reviewed today’s episode of Mrs. Davis for Vulture.

Which leads us back to the bulk of the episode, in which we see the formation of the affair from Alex’s perspective. The most interesting thing about this is that while it presents Alex as more instantly deranged about things than it initially appeared, it also fleshes her out as a human being, with her own likes and dislikes, fears and hangups, friends and colleagues — a life, in other words. It’s just not a very good one.

Alex’s therapist from out of state unceremoniously breaks up with her over the phone, ostensibly because she’s not licensed to practice in California but also, by the tone of it, because she’s tired of dealing with Alex. Paul, the doctor from across the hall, tries to slam the breaks on whatever they had going on; Alex responds by unsubtly threatening to call the cops on him over his extracurricular pill-peddling. She recounts trying and failing to get closer to her dad by getting really into his favorite Civil War movie, to the point of memorizing the real and moving letter from a soldier that closes the film. You get the feeling this is the story of Alex’s life: She gets intensely close to people, inevitably alienating them, then turns against them on a dime when they fail to live up to her expectations. (This is literally textbook borderline personality disorder stuff, by the way.)

I reviewed the third episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

But it does raise the question: Where do we go from here? If we’re going off the movie as a template, the sexual affair between Dan and Alex is now over, nearly as soon as it began — within the same episode, at least. Her suicidal gesture — she pretends to ingest every pill she has after he tries to leave, not admitting to the ruse until he drives her all the way to the hospital and warns her that she will lose her job if authorities determine she’s suicidal — marks the end of this being a casual, easy thing for either of them, and the beginning of the spiraling obsession that will destroy their lives.What do you think? Post a comment.

The thing is, the show has eight hours of screentime to fill instead of just two. Rushing through the affair made sense in the film: Dan and Alex’s sexual relationship was limited to a 48-hour whirlwind they both knowingly entered into because his wife was out of town, and which he planned to end upon his wife’s return; his literally fatal error was in assuming Alex planned the same thing. The show has already extended the timeframe of the affair, adding two other nights of passion to that initial lost weekend. Moreover, Dan is a much more active agent in the affair’s progression — following Alex to the roof, having her assigned to one of his cases, going back to her place after she interrupts his dinner with Mike. 

If I had the kind of time on my hands that the filmmakers do, I might have expanded the affair’s screentime to match. In addition to further cementing the complicity of both participants in creating the idea in Alex’s head that this isn’t just some limited-time-only fling, this would give the show the chance to develop and intensify the characters’ sexual relationship before bringing the hammer down on it after another episode, perhaps. In other words, the show could stay hotter for longer, and I, for one, like my erotic thrillers erotic.

I reviewed the second episode of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

Let’s get it out of the way quickly: Fatal Attraction is not the kind of show that Alice Birch and Rachel Weisz’s Dead Ringers is. I mean, why would it be? Despite their proximity in the broader erotic-thriller genre, Fatal Attraction is not the kind of movie David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers is either. That said, it’s a much more interesting looking, interesting sounded, interestingly acted and written movie than it needed to be to become a titillating hit; Lyne’s use of silence, shadow, and silhouette in particular is notable without being overtly neo-noirish. Go watch it if you haven’t in a while, it’s worth your time.

I’d say the same about Fatal Attraction the TV show, based on this episode. The simplest way to put it is that if you want to watch telegenic actors like Joshua Jackson, Lizzy Caplan, Toby Huss, and Amanda Peet have a good time talking to each other the way grown-ups actually talk while being crisply filmed and scored, Fatal Attraction is a show for you. 

I reviewed the series premiere of Fatal Attraction for Decider.

In short, the show is about pregnant women, and the legal, medical, ethical, moral, and political issues that swirl around them. Needless to say, this significantly shifts the framework of the original. Jeremy Irons’s Mantle twins are misogynists who see women as both sexual playthings and medical tools against which they can sharpen their genius. The misogyny present in Rachel Weisz’s Mantle twins, as well as in characters like Rebecca and her ghoulish circle of rich women, is internalized, though it’s no less present for that.

In both versions, the female body is a commodity to be experimented with, and on, but changing the gender of who’s doing the experimenting changes almost everything else. But only the TV show expands this into a multifaceted feminist critique of the economic and political forces surrounding the issue: America’s murderous for-profit healthcare system and the women who’ve girlbossed their way to its apex; racial and class discrepancies in maternal healthcare outcomes; the fascist anti-abortion movement’s pas de deux with advances in care for premature infants; the objectification and infantilization of women during the process; and probably more I’m missing. All of this emerges naturally through story and character, which is a pretty staggering achievement in itself.

I compared the David Cronenberg/Jeremy Irons Dead Ringers film to the Alice Birch/Rachel Weisz Dead Ringers TV series for Decider.

“Would you two prefer to keep on wildly theorizing, or may I continue on with the story?” I get the impression this question, asked by Dr. Schrödinger of his visitors Lizzie and Wiley, has been on Mrs. Davis co-creator Damon Lindelof’s mind for a long time.

On the one hand, wild theorizing has kept him in business. Large portions of the fanbases of Watchmen,The Leftovers, and especially Lost spent week after week frantically guessing, even passionately arguing, what would happen next. From water coolers to internet forums to social media to speculative articles on, well, websites like this one, theorizing generates buzz and maintains interest.

At any rate, Mrs. Davis is a wildly theorizing kind of show. Lindelof and his co-creator and showrunner Tara Hernandez have, in this respect at least, truly committed to the bit. From episode to episode, from storyline to storyline, from scene to scene, occasionally from line to line, the show is a constant deluge of “everything you thought you knew was wrong,” much more so even than Lost.

But it’s also much funnier in how it does this than Lost was. On that show, the mysteries were serious business. On Mrs. Davis, by contrast, the whole thing is one big metatextual tap dance atop the fourth wall. This isn’t a show that simply has big twists and turns, nor even a show about having big twists and turns — it’s a show about how its big twists and turns are inherently ridiculous.

I reviewed episode five of Mrs. Davis for Vulture.

As a pretty much miserable guy who’s sincerely angry about injustice, Perry Mason is a hero for our time.

I reviewed the season finale of Perry Mason for the New York Times.

So yeah, I worry that the show’s eyes are too big for its stomach. You can really feel the creakiness around some of these storylines, and because of their sheer number and variety, the creaky storylines are going to vary from viewer to viewer. Some people don’t give a shit about the survival horror or the supernatural stuff, while for others that’s the main draw. Some don’t care about the adult stuff compared to the teenage stuff, while for others the draw of the legendary ‘90s stars as grownups will outweigh the young unknowns. Some will like the comedic bits, some will think they’re in the way. Everyone will find certain characters more compelling than others. Everyone will prefer certain casting decisions (Lauren Ambrose as Van is dynamite) to others (Simone Kessell has none of her younger counterpart Courtney Eaton’s damaged, blank-eyed magnetism as Lottie). Some people adore the big obvious ‘90s needledrops (4 Non Blondes! Danzig!), while others think the whole I Love the ‘90s thing is, ahem, overblown. 

Me, I found myself spending a lot of time thinking I wish the hyperactive score by Theodore Shapiro, Craig Wedren, and Anna Waronker would just shut the fuck up for a few minutes, allowing the tension, the dread, the quiet isolation of the woods to build. And that’s a decent stand-in for my problem with the whole thing. Pare back. Let stuff breathe. Let stuff be.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Yellowjackets Season Two for Decider.