As it turns out, Adar’s whole deal is absolutely fascinating: He is a first-generation orc, one of the original Elves whom Morgoth tortured and warped to create his race of minions. (He also claims that he killed Sauron, which, okay buddy, but that’s neither here nor there.) If you’re deep into Tolkien lore — as, presumably, a decent chunk of the audience for a show set in Tolkien’s Second Age would be — this is a glimpse of something we’ve never seen before but have been wondering about since…well, in my case, since I first read The Hobbit at age four. Wouldn’t it have been so much more interesting for the show to make his origin clear immediately, thus getting the audience invested in who he is rather than who he might be, instead of erroneously presuming that mYsTeRiEs are the be-all and end-all of fantasy narratives?

Please recall that there are approximately zero “mysteries” in Tolkien’s work: Aside from the origin of Gollum and the Necromancer, which are irrelevant when they first show up in the text, everything you need to know is spelled out almost immediately, with Tolkien counting on his inventive skill to engross you all by itself. Which it does!

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

We’re back, baby! Stefan Sasse and I return for the latest (still can’t believe I’m saying this) weekly episode of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour, this time focusing on House of the Dragon episode six. Available here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Ian Brennan, Ryan Murphy, Evan Peters, Niecy Nash, Richard Jenkins, and their collaborators have created one of the most harrowing, most viscerally upsetting, television shows I’ve ever seen. And when they finally turn the violence against its primary perpetrator, they make it hurt, they make it hard to look at. In the end, there’s nothing glamorous about this dead man who caused the deaths of so many others, who shuffled and stumbled his way through life, whose presence at the center of a vortex of homophobia, racism, bad policing, bad medicine, bad parenting, and pervasive isolation tells us so much about how what this country values, and how it rewards those who fail to measure up. 

I reviewed the finale of Dahmer for Decider. I’m grateful to have taken on this difficult assignment.

Four episodes (though just two weeks) into Andor, and I remain shocked by just how good it is. And having made similar statements on Twitter, I feel the need to clarify and caveat a bit. Is it The Sopranos? No. But is it, say, Obi-Wan Kenobi? Also, no, and that’s a good thing. This is a real show, with a real message yes, but more importantly with real moments that are not necessary to move the plot or pop the fans with Easter eggs and references. 

There are going to be viewers and critics who are so disgusted with Disney Star Wars material that this simply will not penetrate to them, and that’s fine, I totally get it, it’s not hard for me to imagine being in that position too. But I’m too shocked by the show’s many subtle, legitimately subtle, touches of personal and interpersonal drama to share that disgust. Again, Andor is a real show. Given the machine that produced it, that’s a minor miracle.

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

Not all of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims died. No, not all of them. I’m not even talking about the escapees — Tracy Edwards, Ronald Flowers, Somsack Sinthasomphone, the jogger who dodged his baseball bat. I’m talking about his slain victims’ families, his neighbors, even his own family, even the entire city of Milwaukee. “The Bogeyman,” once again directed by Jennifer Lynch from a script by Ian Brennan, David McMillan, and Reilly Smith, depicts the many ways in which Dahmer haunted all these people even while safely behind bars. (Safely for them, physically speaking, if not for himself, but we’ll get to that.) They lived on, but — as he’d longed to do with his actual, physical victims — he got into their heads, permanently.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Dahmer for Decider.

For Lionel, though, clinging to the belief that his son was insane when he committed his crimes is important because, for a long while at least, he lives in terror of the idea that he was in some way responsible for it all himself. When Jeff brings up the way Lionel used to help him collect and dissect roadkill, Lionel literally starts laughing in comical outrage over the idea. “You ain’t gonna lay this on me, no!” he says. “It’s not my fault! I didn’t do this! I was a good dad to you!” Of course he wants to believe this. Who wouldn’t, in his position?

I reviewed the eighth episode of Dahmer for Decider.

“I called y’all for months! Now y’all finally came and it’s too late! You came too late!” 

That would be the first time during this episode of Dahmer that I burst into tears.

“You knew he was a monster.”

“I knew. But nobody heard me.”

“I hear you, Glenda.”

That would be the last time during this episode of Dahmer that I burst into tears.

But there were times in between, and times afterwards, times after the episode ended and left me alone with what I’d just seen. Once again directed by Jennifer Lynch, from a script by co-creator Ian Brennan, Janet Mock, and David McMillan, this installment — titled “Cassandra,” after the prophetic figure from Greek mythology doomed to see the future without anyone every listening to her about it — is the most emotionally taxing thing I’ve seen on television all year. In terms of my visceral reaction to it, it’s one of the most emotionally taxing things I’ve seen on television ever.

I reviewed the seventh episode of Dahmer for Decider.

But for those of us who major in Jon Bernthal Studies, Gigolo remains a captivating portrait of a guy forced into a life he didn’t want at a too-young age, who found he excelled at it and came to embrace everything about it, only to have it all taken away from and be forced to reinvent himself, first as a convict, now as a free man. By the looks of things, he’ll be tricking again soon enough, yet another reinvention. Bernthal’s natural magnetism is the thing that connects all the dots: He’s equally convincing as a carefree playboy, a tatted-up jailbird, a down-on-his-luck sad sack, a doe-eyed heartsick lover, and a recidivist hustler. Physically, his gift is that he can embody all these things at once: It’s so easy to picture him as a fuck machine, a friendly just-folks kinda guy, or a thug, or sometimes all three at once. That’s the beauty of his work, and that’s the beauty of American Gigolo.

I reviewed this weekend’s episode of American Gigolo for Decider.

Dahmer may be the most grueling drama I’ve ever covered, and its sixth episode, “Silenced,” is one of the saddest hours of television I’ve ever seen. Anchored by a tremendous, heartfelt, achingly vulnerable performance by deaf actor and former reality TV star Rodney Burford, it offers the corrective that Dahmer has needed by giving one of the killer’s victims his own story, then slams the door on it, as you knew it must. That knowledge does not soften the blow one bit.

I reviewed episode six of Dahmer for Decider.

I was asked to submit a ballot for Rolling Stone’s big list of the 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, written top to bottom by Alan Sepinwall. Can you guess which ones I voted for, and which of my votes missed the cut?

It’s only by cruising through life on Easy mode due to his race and gender — despite his outcast status, despite his closeted sexuality, despite his unspeakable urges, despite his overall taciturn and unlikeable demeanor — that Jeff got away with everything he got away with for as long as he did. Looked at with clear eyes, his life is just one long chain of fuck-ups. If he were a different color, if his victims were a different color, that chain might have been cut short much, much earlier.

I reviewed the fifth episode of Dahmer for Decider.

In terms of Larys’s position in society, he’s got two strikes against him from birth. First, he’s the second son, so he’s at a loss there. Then there’s his disability, from which his nickname “the Clubfoot” is derived. Obviously you don’t want to raise the implication that because he has a physical disability, there’s something morally wrong with him — but at the same time, that’s how some of the characters in this world see it. How do you approach that?
It’s his superpower. It’s worked really well in his favor. The fact that he has a clubfoot and people don’t deem him as a threat, or don’t think he can fend for himself … I mean, Harwin is very protective of him. He’s able to use it to his advantage. He’s not an evil disabled person or anything like that. He’s used the prejudice of the world against itself.

It’s reminiscent of how Tyrion knew his dwarfism would lead people to underestimate him in the original Game of Thrones.
That’s George R.R. Martin’s obsession, right? “Cripples, bastards, and broken things.” That’s who he loves: People who have a disadvantage in this very macho world. It’s the people who use their mind — and the more feminine aspects of their personality, I think — to decimate the world. It’s extraordinary.

I interviewed House of the Dragon‘s Matthew Needham about his character, Larys Strong, for Vulture.

I’ve once again updated my House of the Dragon character guide for Vulture, this time divided into three helpful sections: people in this episode, people in previous episodes, and people who died (valar morghulis). Enjoy!

FEAR NOT, PEOPLE of Westeros: The line of succession is strong.

True, we’ve said goodbye to Milly Alcock as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Emily Carey as Queen Alicent Hightower, two key peformances that helped make House of the Dragon a massive hit. But even after a 10-year time jump, the introduction of a whole new generation of Targaryen heirs, and the replacement of Alcock and Carey with older actors Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke respectively, this prequel series has somehow not missed a beat. Indeed, this is the show’s best episode yet. Even a maester would tell you this is a minor miracle.

I reviewed last night’s episode of House of the Dragon, which was essentially a new series premiere, for Rolling Stone.

My illustrious cohost Stefan Sasse and I have posted not one but two Patreon-exclusive new podcasts, one on the most recent episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and one focused on the three-part series premiere of Andor! We’ve got a very ambitious schedule going on right now so there’s no guarantee of future Andor episodes, although at the rate TRoP is going we might decide to switch, who knows. Subscribe and listen! And hey, they’re at two different tiers, so you can select one that’s right for your budget!

Anyway, I could not help be brought up short by the idea that mithril, of all things, is required to preserve the lives of the Elves? Because of the failure of a magic tree with no basis in Tolkien’s mythology? This seems like an awful lot to add to the mythos, and for what? An added sense of urgency? A connective tissue between the disparate narrative threads? A way to move the story along during these early episodes in order to kill time between now and the end of the season? All of these seem like ways of saying “the writers didn’t really know what to do, so they said to hell with it, Elves need mithril to live, so let it be written, so let it be done.” Granted, I’m bringing a certain bias to this analysis. But even if I weren’t, it seems both too neat and too busy, an overcomplication of a pretty straightforward story about the resurgence of evil and the need for disconnected races to unite to fight it. Adding “or else one of them will go extinct” undercuts the human (for lack of a better word) drama inherent in the need to persuade different peoples to fight for a common cause.

I reviewed the fifth episode of The Rings of Power for Decider.

There are three shots from this episode that are going to stay with me, I think. The first is Jeff in the bathroom mirror, covered in blood, accompanied by a menacing sting from the excellent score by art-rock musicians Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. The second is the moment where a drunken Jeff raises his cup of beer in a toast to the test of strength at the fair, emblazoned with phrases like “HE MAN” and “GOOD BOY,” phrases that mean more to him than anyone could have ever known. The third, probably obviously, is when he kisses the severed head through the plastic at the end of the episode. The man he murdered is now his keepsake, his secret. And many more men and boys will die before the secret is out. 

I reviewed the fourth episode of Dahmer for Decider.

We’re only three episodes deep into Dahmer’s ten-episode run, and already the accrual of brutal, depressing incidents has become difficult to endure. The fantastic, committed performances of Evan Peters as Jeffrey and Richard Jenkins and Penelope Ann Miller as his parents manage to make everything both better and worse. These are real, recognizable people with real, recognizable hopes and fears — the scene in which an astonished, joyful Joyce is offered a job counseling women at the center where she was once a patient is a genuinely touching moment of kindness towards an otherwise resolutely unpleasant, if very ill, person — that Jeffrey’s deeds will pulverize as surely as his hammer smashed those bones. It’s not going to be easy to watch, but then, that’s the point.

I reviewed the third episode of Dahmer for Decider.

That’s right, it’s the latest episode of the WEEKLY Boiled Leather Audio Hour podcast, in which Stefan Sasse and I discuss episode five of House of the Dragon—available here or wherever you get your podcast!

Once again, cowriters Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy, led by director Clement Virgo, create a gruesome portrait of a broken person who can only find wholeness by breaking other people, quite literally down into their constituent body parts. He is both sad and contemptible, a shattered person who finds his meager pleasures only in shattering other people. The degree of difficulty inherent in handling this material is astronomical, but so far, they’ve pulled it off. I’m darkly excited to see where this ten-episode limited series goes. I’m anxious. I’m frightened. I’m sick. I’m watching good television.

I reviewed the second episode of Dahmer for Decider.