“I’ve seen the army of the dead.” Me too, Sam. Holy hell. ‘Hardhome,’ written by showrunners Benioff and Weiss and directed by Miguel Sapochnik, could easily coast on the strength of its stupendous final quarter, but instead it delivers a melancholic and anxiety-producing hour of television that doesn’t so much scale into insanity as it does […]
“Have you ever sowed the field, Lady Olenna? Have you ever reaped the grain?” Everybody in ‘The Gift” is trying to lend a helping hand, but from the irascible Olenna to the desperate ser Jorah they’re all operating with one eye squeezed shut against the unpleasant realities of their world. As Myrcella informs her uncle/father Jaime […]
“What do we do with the bodies after we clean them?” Two people are bathed in the course of ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.’ One is a corpse being laid to rest in the House of Black and White while the other is Sansa Stark, betrothed of Ramsay Bolton. Arya discovers that the bodies of those who […]
“I want to keep things as normal as possible, and you not being here is part of that.” ‘Person to Person’ is Mad Men‘s final hour, and it opens with Don driving as fast as he can through the middle of a blasted wasteland. He’s running for the sake of making distance, drawing out wild trajectories […]
Penny Dreadful‘s redeeming qualities are its sense of shlocky fun and its partially incredible cast. Its weaknesses are its lousy pacing, its uncertain characterization of several core cast members, and its pursuit of tasteless thrills disguised as, to quote creator John Logan, “pushing the boundaries.” When the show finds the balance between spectacle and humanity […]
“You think this town is bad? Wait until you can never come back here.” You can never go home again. Not because there’s a shadow on the X-ray, not because your husband broke your family, but because the past is a house that doesn’t exist. It folded up into nonbeing when the door closed behind […]
“Every time you wear something you made, you can remember her.” Myranda’s phony words of comfort to Sansa pluck uncomfortably at something every human struggles to reconcile within themselves. What claim do the dead have on us, and is it more important to honor their memory than it is to work toward a better future? […]
Stars: Michael Galante, Michelle Hendley, Jean Devereux Koester, Ethan Major, Scott Martineck, Christopher McHale, Benj Mirman, Randall Newsome, Jacob Perkins, Joseph Ricci | Written and Directed by Eric Schaeffer My gender identity is complex, but my life experiences intersect frequently with those of trans women and it’s a category I feel proud to be partially […]
“I could say that our minds are temples to the Seven and should be kept pure, but the truth is, I don’t like the taste.” Laws are what we make of them. In the High Sparrow’s self-deprecating explanation as to why he doesn’t drink wine is a deeper, darker truth: we obey laws for our […]
“We all know that man, because there are millions of him.” You know you’re in trouble when your descent into Hell begins with Meredith standing in for Virgil. In the windowless labyrinth of McCann-Erickson’s corporate belly it seems as though Don Draper has finally, fatally given up. “I expect you to bring things up a […]
“Sometimes you wanna go, where everybody knows your name.”
“It’s just fun to see yourself as a cartoon character.” Steven Universe has often and with mixed results made hash out of exaggerating the Gems’ defining traits, but in ‘Reformed’ the show digs with honesty and compassion into how Amethyst uses that exaggeration to combat her insecurities. Things get rolling when Steven’s attempt to get Amethyst to take a clickbait […]
“It’s only a name. Quite an easy burden to bear.” Let’s start with a temple. Its priests have no names, its god has no prayers, and the house jam is Mandel and Altman’s “Suicide Is Painless” on endless repeat. The High Sparrow is a paranoid, spine-tingling, and grotesquely enjoyable episode of television in which identities […]
“Stop struggling. You won.” The Sterling-Cooper dream team has died and gone to advertising heaven. Jim Hobart enunciates the name “Coca Cola” like he’s asking Don and the other partners how they enjoyed their simultaneous touchless orgasms, but in reality he’s stealing their name, tossing probably half their employees out into the street, and consigning them […]
Garnet: “Start with the letter N.” Connie: “Huh, okay. What next?” Garnet: “The letter O.” Steven Universe giving love at first sight the brushoff feels kind of shaky just a few weeks after the show waxed rhapsodical about it in ‘Story for Steven.’ Granted, Jaime the Mailman cuts an especially dismissable figure with his overblown confessions of […]
“Now matter how many times you call her “mhysa,” she is nobody’s mother.” Being a woman in Westeros is a raw deal. Whether you’re a lowly wildling or a queen you’re going to live under the constant threat of abuse, war, kidnapping, and worse. No matter how high women climb, no matter how hard they […]
“They love the lobby, but the emptiness is a problem.” Mad Men very nearly pipes in a cymbal crash after Don’s real estate broker delivers her withering assessment of his empty penthouse. What she’s talking about, of course, is Don, and there’s no shortage of people lining up to inform him that he’s a smooth, good-looking huckster […]
“Vote For My Dad.” The stakes have never been lower, but Steven Universe thrives on the small stage. The episode’s plot is simple: Steven and Buck Dewey make T-shirts together, then disagree about what said T-shirts are for. It’s a light, sit-com-esque premise that leads into an earnest look at what growing up can take from […]
Stars: Matt Dillon, Carla Gugino, Toby Jones, Shannyn Sossamon, Reed Diamond, Tim Griffin, Charlie Tahan, Juliette Lewis, Melissa Leo, Terrence Howard, Hope Davis, Siobhan Fallon, Sarah Jeffery | Created by Chad Hodge “People are objects that aren’t really there.” It’s a line that’s used to describe a breakdown, a lapse in reality, experienced by the […]
“The future is shit, just like the past.” Tyrion Lannister punctuates his brief thesis on the value of life by bending over to vomit. In an episode that begins with a young Cersei slogging through what looks like a mixture of mud and offal and ends with a man being burned alive after leading his […]
“Can’t you see I don’t want anything?” Why do families blow up? Why can’t we just love each other, live with each other, understand each other? What happens if, in Pete Campbell’s frustrated words, “you never get past the beginning again?” What if you never wanted to? The episode begins with Don in pastoral bliss […]
“You’re awfully cute, and I really want to play with you…but your life is short, and you have dreams.” Rose Quartz is the structuring absence of Steven Universe. She’s the ducks flying north from Tony Soprano’s pool, the vacated desk of Laura Palmer, the hole around which the themes and characters of the series revolve and against […]
