In general I pride myself on being able to follow dense, tangly narrative. What kind of critic brags about feeling otherwise, I’ve often wondered? If you can’t tell one house in Game of Thrones from another, or one mafia underboss in The Sopranos from another, that’s hardly anything to crow about like it’s the show’s fault rather than yours. But His Dark Materials’ narrative is such a latticework of deception and competing-but-overlapping quests for various magical items and people that trying to read it as an actual story about actual humans governed by actual human-behavior patterns is a punishing task. (Seriously: When they figure out that Lord Boreal has stolen the alethiometer, why on earth would Will and Lyra just show up at his house and walk up to the front door?) This story, these characters, need room to breathe. Watching them run up and down various narrative staircases isn’t enough.

I reviewed last night’s episode of His Dark Materials for Fanbyte.

But it’s Mike Milligan/Satchel Roy who must bear the weight of all this. It’s he who’s cursed to remember, he in whom the bloody history of this war is imprinted. And for the purposes of this episode, it renders him speechless. Who fits in and who is rejected? For whom is the power of violence sufficient to gain entry into the promised land? How many people must watch their loved ones die in front of them to feed the maw of the money machine? Mike has no history report to offer us. He stares out at the great American nowhere and fiddles with a gun and does nothing—and if that isn’t the “Storia Americana” that gives the episode its title, I don’t know what is.

I reviewed the season finale of Fargo for Decider. The final scene made the whole season for me.

This is what I keep bumping into as I think about this show: I don’t think that the villains have the complexity and nuance that would merit their share of screen time. Coulter is a completely transparent liar who’s personally unpleasant to be around; the men of the Magisterium are varying degrees of toady, fanatic, and coward; Boreal is like a dastardly Dr. Who baddie. The more they all puff themselves up, the harder it is to take any of them seriously, or to desire any more time in their company. The whole show feels off-balance as a result; outside of Will and Lyra and maybe Mary (it’s a bit too early to tell), no one behaves in a way that feels recognizably human, and the whole thing feels like it would fall apart if looked at too closely.

Compare all of them to the care with which Mary is introduced. We first see her as she attempts to take care of a family of wrens outside her office window. She and Lyra share tea and cookies, but the cookies are stale, probably having sat forgotten in a desk drawer for months. After Lyra’s visit, Mary tells a colleague what happened over beers. She feels like a person, not a parody of religious extremists crossed with the iconography of the Empire from the Star Wars franchise, nor a Coulter-esque figure of permanent, obvious mendacity. More Marys and fewer eeeeevildoers would go a long way towards making His Dark Materials appointment viewing.

I reviewed this week’s episode of His Dark Materials for Fanbyte. Less mustache-twirling please!

In thinking about this episode, it’s the details that jump out at me, despite all the major goings-on. The black comedy of the cops explaining their presence in Oraetta’s apartment by simply saying “He woke up.” Oraetta’s taunting of Ethelrida: “What does it feel like to be so sure you’re right and nobody cares?” Josto and Gaetano literally bragging about the size of their dicks. (“Big like a pickle?” Gaetano asks his brother, quoting “The Humpty Dance” of all things.) The lovely slo-mo shots of strutting gangsters and lethal shootouts in the episode’s opening gang-war montage. Josto trying to lift his brother up affectionately and failing miserably. Josto’s baffled “What the fuck?” when Gaetano dies. Odis’s smile. Gaetano’s flapping skull. Loy’s forgery of a painting he grew fond of when he saw it in a magazine, and Ethelrida’s ability to identify it.

If this season of Fargo is to be considered a success, it’s in these little things, these images, these exchanges of dialogue—moments that accumulate and tell a story of their own, even if the big picture has yet to come together.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Fargo Season Four for Decider.

Deliberately disorienting and strange, the better to mimic the world in which Satchel Cannon now finds himself alone, this episode of Fargo (“East/West”) is by far the season’s best. Coming as it does after the bloodbath of Episode 8, it relies less on sheer body count for its power than on the mysteries described above—the meta mysteries of why the show uses the techniques it does, the in-world mysteries of Satchel and Rabbi’s fellow guests at the Barton Arms hotel (it hardly needs to be said that this is a reference to Barton Fink, which is itself set largely in a strange hotel), and the general feeling that some horrible future awaits.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fargo, the season’s strangest and best to date, for Decider.

“I don’t need a stand-up bath, do I?” asks Lyra Silvertongue (Dafne Keen). A young traveler between worlds, she has just learned of the marvelous technological achievement known as a shower, and she’s skeptical.

“That’s one question you don’t need to ask the alethiometer,” replies her daemon Pantalaimon (a shape-shifting animal companion voiced by Kit Connor). He’s referring to the magical, golden compass-like device she uses to ascertain the truth. And sure enough, a couple of sniffs of her own B.O. later, Lyra winds up hitting the stand-up bath.

As the joint HBO/BBC adaptation of novelist Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series enters its second season, small humanizing moments such as these take on added importance. Written by series creator Jack Thorne, the show’s second season premiere, “The City of Magpies,” is weighed down by dialogue consisting largely of arch declamations and great big gobs of exposition. Reminding us that the show’s protagonist is basically a middle-schooler who’s gone days without bathing and could use a good scrub-down is a small but vital way of keeping things down to earth when everything else is up in the air.

I’m happy to make my Fanbyte debut with my review of His Dark Materials‘ second season premiere. I’ll be covering the show there all season long, so stick around!

Now that the inevitable bloody explosion for which we’ve waited all season has taken place, it’s worth noting that three full episodes remain. Will we be looking at a protracted aftermath, or will the violence continue, or even ratchet up? Will Odis and Oraetta get their comeuppance? Will Josto’s scheming (he’s like a snake, in Gaetano’s admiring words) or Loy’s stoicism win the day? Will Zelmare seek revenge of her own? And what is to become of Ethelrida, the one decent person in the whole mess? With no righteous lawman or law-woman to anchor the action as in previous seasons, and an extra episode for creator and co-writer Noah Hawley to play with, the contours of the season’s denouement are unclear. I get the feeling, though, that Ethelrida isn’t the only character who can’t afford to make mistakes.

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

I was not prepared.

No, seriously, listen: I was not prepared.

I reviewed the series finale of the magnificent Suburra: Blood on Rome for Decider.

It’s a hell of a note to end on. Only one episode remains before Suburra arrives at its final destination, and I find myself just as enthralled by these handsome criminals and their emotional misadventures as ever. Almost certainly this will leave me bereaved by the season’s end, as I just can’t imagine all of them making it out alive. I want them to, though—that’s the thing. I want my beautiful boys to live to fight another day. I want them to get along. I want the New Kings of Rome to stand triumphant, that’s how successful this show has been, over the course of its three seasons, in making me care about these dirtbags. And I have a sinking feeling I’m going to be disappointed.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome for Decider.

Watching the two of them egg each other on is like watching a dark mirror image of meetings between Spadino and Aureliano; you want the boys to get along, whereas with Manfredi and Adelaide, all you want them to do is sit down and shut up.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season Three for Decider.

The most endearing thing about Suburra is how endearing Aureliano Adami and Spadino Anacleti find each other. Despite starting the series at odds, despite all the twists and turns in their personal and professional relationship since then, you always get the sense that these two dudes fundamentally enjoy each other’s company, even at times when they enjoy very little else. There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in this episode that makes that point very clearly. At the big, ill-fated party Spadino throws to celebrate his and Aureliano’s coronation as “the new Kings of Rome,” they, along with their significant others Nadia and Angelica, toast to their success. And right then, Aureliano leans over and kisses Spadino on the arm.

The main thing to notice here is what you don’t notice here. There’s no camera cut to emphasize the gesture. There’s no reaction shot focusing on any of the characters, showing that they’re taken aback or smiling warmly at the kiss or anything like that. In the absence of that kind of basic filmmaking infrastructure it feels safe to assume that the kiss was improvised on the spot by actor Alessandro Borghi and then kept in the episode because the filmmakers liked the look of it.

But that absence of emphasis says so much about the closeness between these two guys. Aureliano can kiss Spadino on the arm and the party proceeds as normal (for now anyway) because yeah, of course these two guys love each other and would display that without it being a big deal. And it’s in moments like those that I love them too.

I reviewed the third episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 3 for Decider.

I think the thing that surprises me most about this episode is the rapidity with which Spadino and Aureliano are moving their way through Rome’s criminal power structure. We barely meet the truculent Titto before he’s opening fire on the duo’s enemies on their behalf. If the rest of the season simply frogmarches our heroes to the top of the power structure—well, I’ll be pretty excited about it, the way the episodes of Boardwalk Empire or Fargo in which someone comes out indisputably on top always excited me.

I reviewed episode 2 of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 3 for Decider.

Of course, this is Suburra, so the other star of the show is just the way the show itself looks. Competing color schemes, none of which are the typical prestige-TV palette of slate-blue or puke-green, come with each character: Aureliano is blue like the sea of his oceanside headquarters, Spadino is gold like the overly opulent decorations in his home, Nascari is crimson like a cardinal’s robes, and Cinaglia tends to be shot in harsh lighting as if he might wilt under the bright lights. The show doesn’t beat you over the head with any of this, but it’s there, and it has an impact.

I reviewed Suburra: Blood on Rome‘s third and final season premiere for Decider, where I’ll be covering the entire season.

I don’t know where this season of Fargo is going; I just know I feel like I’m in expert hands on the way there.

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

I forgot to mention this, but I appeared on the Raised by Wolves podcast Crazed by Wolves to discuss the show’s wild first season. Enjoy!

I like art when it’s weirder than it needs to be. That historically has been one of the things I’ve liked best about Fargo: It’s weirder than it needs to be. Think of Lorne Malvo’s batshit extended flashback in Season One, or the prophetic dream soundtracked in part by Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” in Season Two, or V.M. Varga’s whole deal in Season Three. None of these things needed to be that way, but they were, because weirdness is where art lives.

Perhaps that’s why, in the least weird episode of Fargo Season Four to date, I keep thinking of the incredibly morose and shadowy birthday celebration (complete with creepy singing) that the Smutnys, fresh from the takeover of their family business by Loy Cannon, sing to their daughter Ethelrida. Happy birthday to you, kid! It’s really weird around here!

I reviewed last night’s episode of Fargo for Decider.

We’ll never know, and that’s the beauty of the thing. The Third Day is a show about the mysteries of faith that lets them remain mysterious. The point — aside from being scary, which the show frequently was — is to probe at our own feelings of exclusion and belonging, whether in a community or a family or both. What are we willing to sacrifice for that sense of belonging, and is it worth the sacrifice? The Third Day doesn’t answer that for us because it can’t. Only we know, and it’s up to us to tell our secrets; or to keep them until the day the world forces our hand.

I reviewed the finale of The Third Day for Vulture. This was really well-done folk horror, and Jude Law is tremendous.

I appeared on the Crazed by Wolves podcast to discuss the first season of everyone’s new sci-fi fave Raised by Wolves—listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

The first thing we should talk about when it comes to this week’s episode of Fargo (“The Birthplace of Civilization”) is the last thing that happens in it. As the lights flicker and fade around the dead body of Loy Cannon’s consigliere Doctor Senator, shot dead by Gaetano Fadda’s button man Constant Calamita, Jeff Russo’s grandiosely melancholy Fargo theme—absent from the entire season until now—comes roaring in on the soundtrack. It’s as if series creator and episode co-writer (with Francesca Sloane) Noah Hawley is sending us a signal: The real show is about to begin.

I reviewed last night’s episode of Fargo for Decider.

That “Sh-Boom” singalong is a solid stand-in for Lovecraft Country and its season finale, “Full Circle.” I see what they’re going for—in this case a moment of levity before the horror and desperation of the final battle sinks in. I get it, in theory. But the delivery is just a bit off: The smiles feel forced, the shared connection too neat, the scene too much of a scene instead of something that feels like it emerged organically from the characters involved. Similarly, I get what Lovecraft Country wants to do; I just don’t think it did it.

I reviewed the season finale of Lovecraft Country, a nobly intentioned, well-acted, poorly executed show, for Decider.