TV Reviews
Andor Season 1 Told the Star Wars Story We Need for Times Like These
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of Andor.] A lot of major plot points are packed into the Season 1 finale of Andor, but really, one of the year’s most powerful episodes of television came down to a speech from a dead woman. Fiona Shaw’s work was the definition of Emmy-worthy in the back half of the season, as Cassian Andor (Diego Luna)’s adoptive mother, fully aware that she was nearing the end of her days, became fully committed to one goal: doing whatever she could to combat the rise of the Empire. Her passing in Episode 11, as seen from the point of view of her loyal droid B2EMO, was already a heartbreaking moment for the show — the childlike sadness of “I want Maarva” jerking tears from anyone who’s ever lost a loved one. But then came her sp...
Murky Truths and Murky Waters Collide in the Compelling 1899: Review
The Pitch: Several years ago, German creative/romantic partners Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar made their mark with Netflix’s sci-fi/thriller series Dark. Centered around “A missing child [who] sets four families on a frantic hunt for answers as they unearth a mind-bending mystery that spans three generations,” it was heavily praised by critics and audiences. Thus, the roughly two-and-a-half-year wait to see what the duo would do next has been tough, to put it mildly. That brings us to their second succinctly-yet-enigmatically-titled show for the streaming service, 1899. This time, “multinational immigrants traveling from the old continent to the new encounter a nightmarish riddle aboard a second ship adrift on the open sea.” Along the way, various truths and connections are discovered ab...
Welcome to Chippendales Is True Crime at Its Most Compelling and Unexpected: Review
The Pitch: If you don’t live under a rock, chances are you’ve heard of Chippendales: the elegant, trailblazing first-ever all-male strip-tease troupe that has been bringing delightfully scandalous thrills to audiences since the 1970s. What you may not know, however, is that the burlesque’s history is brimming with conspiracy, racketeering, arson, and murder. Over the course of 10 episodes, Welcome to Chippendales, Robert Siegel’s limited series based on K. Scot Macdonald and Patrick MontesDeOca’s 2014 literary exposée Deadly Dance: The Chippendales Murders, shrewdly examines and unravels the club’s shocking, harrowing history. The show rigorously dissects the troupe’s inception, rise to fame, and subsequent descent into the deepest, most gruesome bowels of corruption. A Killer Strip Tease:...
The Crown Season 5 Review: Tragedies to Come Hang Heavily Over the Penultimate Installment
The Pitch: In Season 5 of The Crown, one unifying theme stands out — being royalty is not a good time. The stately Netflix drama’s penultimate run of episodes has now clearly reached the beginning of the end, as Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton, succeeding Olivia Colman) faces her age, Prince Charles (Dominic West, succeeding Josh O’Connor) and Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki, succeeding Emma Corrin) face their infamous divorce, and Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce, succeeding Tobias Menzies) faces… getting really into carriage racing. As grey and somber as ever, the fifth season continues the show’s march towards the one seismic event that will shake Britain to its core. But it takes its time, while continuing to explore both the symbolic power of the royal family — as well as the diffi...
I’m a Former Video Store Clerk and I Think Netflix’s Blockbuster Deserves to Go Bankrupt
It’s not a good sign that Blockbuster, a workplace sitcom set inside a literal metaphor for late-stage capitalism, feels the need to call out the problem with its premise seven minutes into the pilot episode. “Isn’t it ironic that the small business taking a stand against the big corporation in this scenario is actually a franchise of a once-huge corporation, named after the exact type of big corporate movies that killed off smaller movies?” Blockbuster employee Eliza (Melissa Fumero) says, as her boss Tim (Randall Park) tries to rally his underdog staff. I’m admittedly coming to the show with a bias, as a former video store clerk who spent about two and a half years behind the counter of independent stores — stores that always struggled to compete with the Walmart of the industry. But des...
This Year’s Treehouse of Horror Proves There’s Still Life Left in The Simpsons
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Simpsons, Season 34 Episode 6, “Treehouse of Horror XXXIII.”] The popular attitude for decades now is that The Simpsons, Fox’s beloved, iconic, and seemingly undying animated tentpole, is past its prime — despite regular renewals year after year, as a critic there very rarely feels like much urgency in checking in on the show. However, “Treehouse of Horror XXXIII,” arriving in the show’s 34th season, is full of genuine surprises, the least of which being that the annual anthology of horror tales seems like the show has found a spark of new creative energy. Okay, it’s primarily the second two parts of the episode which inspire that statement — not that the initial story, “The Pookadook” is bad, but it’s a pretty straightforward riff on...
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities Is a Horror Anthology Haunted By Creative Freedom: Review
The Pitch: A racist scavenger (Tim Blake Nelson) uncovers the ultimate score in the storage locker of a dead Nazi. A desperate grave robber (David Hewlett) gets more than he bargained for on his latest excursion. A medical examiner (F. Murray Abraham) autopsies a dead body from a mine explosion and finds a passenger hiding within the flesh. An awkward, frumpy bank teller (Kate Micucci) is tempted with the secrets of beauty by a mysterious skin cream. An art student in 1909 (Ben Barnes) grows obsessed with the horrific paintings of a strange new colleague (Crispin Glover). A desperate man (Rupert Grint) searches for his dead twin sister through the veil of spiritualism. A reclusive billionaire (Peter Weller) gathers a group of illustrious talents to view his latest otherworldly find. A...
House of the Dragon Season 1 Wasn’t Perfect — But It Was a Worthy Heir to Game of Thrones
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of House of the Dragon, “The Black Queen.”] Probably the most unintentionally hilarious part of House of the Dragon’s first season finale came at the very end, if you were watching with subtitles on: When Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), having just learned of her son’s death, turned away from the fire to reveal her grief-stricken face, the captions acknowledged a shift in composer Ramin Djawadi’s score like so: [Vengeful music plays]. It was funny because the captions really didn’t need to say anything — D’Arcy’s face said it all. It was all a jaw-dropping capper to a largely gripping season of television, because as we come to the finale, it can be said: If the goal was to create a new series that would please even ...
The Midnight Club Takes Big Risks and Gets Satisfyingly Creepy: Review
The Pitch: High school senior Ilonka (Iman Benson) has her whole life in front of her, which won’t be long. When she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her doctors say the treatment isn’t working, she decides to spend her remaining days at Brightcliffe, a hospice care center for dying teens, where all the tenants are wrestling with their mortality while trying to enjoy however much time they have left. But all is not as it appears at Brightcliffe, which at one point was home to a mysterious cult, and where every night the youths meet in the library to tell terrifying stories. Ilonka joins this “Midnight Club” and in this adaptation of a whole bunch of stories by Christopher Pike, soon reveals to them that she has secrets of her own, a special reason for coming to Brightcliffe, and a pla...
Reginald the Vampire Is Here for a Good Time: Review
The Pitch: Lonely, unfulfilled, and too insecure to tell his cute Slushie Shack co-worker, Sarah (Em Haine) that he’s into her, Reginald Andres (Jacob Batalon) is coasting through his twenties terminally disappointed with where his life has taken him. But while taking out the Slushie Shack trash at the end of one particularly long shift, Reginald stumbles into a hypnotic new friendship with a smooth operator named Maurice (Mandela Van Peebles), and everything changes. Overnight, and at the most inconvenient moment imaginable, Reginald finds he’s been turned into a member of the undead. This proves to be problematic for more reasons than just can’t go out in the sun, have to drink blood to survive — in Reginald the Vampire’s world, creatures of the night are vain, status-obsessed perfection...
A Friend of the Family Review: A Slow-Burn True Crime Series That’s Truly Harrowing
The Pitch: When Robert “B” Berchtold (Jake Lacy) moves with his family to a quaint, peaceful town in rural Idaho, he becomes an instant hit with the Broberg family. The Berchtolds and the Brobergs instantly become inseparable: they vacation together, dine together, and attend the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints together. The catch? B has a secret sexual obsession with the Brobergs’ eldest daughter, pre-pubescent Jan (Hendrix Yancey/McKenna Grace). Despite his charming, charismatic goody-two-shoes persona, B can only keep his infatuation hidden for so long. Based on the grisly true story that yielded the popular 2017 Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, A Friend of the Family sees B’s fixation on Jan spiral out of control, resulting in a whirlwind of abuse, deception...
SNL Kicks Off a New Era with Season 48 Premiere: Review
Saturday Night Live opened its 48th season with its biggest cast changes in decades. With eight cast members departing at various stages of their SNL tenure, and a ninth missing in action but supposedly returning later (Cecily Strong is doing a play in Los Angeles, and—unlike past temporary absences—wasn’t shown in the opening credits), the show is close to peak overhaul level (11 cast members left between seasons 20 and 21). Thee changeover was notable enough to warrant a cold-open sketch all about it, with Peyton Manning (host Miles Teller) and his brother Eli (Andrew Dismukes) offering live commentary on the season’s supposed kickoff: a self-consciously hacky sketch about Donald Trump (James Justin Johnson) and, well, whatever zany characters the writers decide to throw at him in an att...
