“There is no name for what this man is.” Well, here’s a horse of a different color. Hannibal has jumped ahead three years, upending its status quo even as it calls back repeatedly to its pilot. Jack recruits Will to rejoin the FBI, Will visits Hannibal seeking an expert consultant, and Will visits a blood-spattered house […]
“It’s like uh, blue balls. In your heart.” ‘Other Lives’ is probably season 2’s strongest episode to date, which really isn’t saying much when you get right down to it. It finds some limited success in deepening its central mystery, the conspiracy of the rich and powerful finally taking on the air of menace it’s […]
“I’m just a Pearl. I’m useless on my own.” ‘Friend Ship’ isn’t a spotless episode. The animation feels choppy, the pacing is cluttered, and Peridot’s villain routine wore thin a while back, but that sequence between Pearl and Garnet in the Temple of Doom chamber is what Steven Universe is all about. Using the bulk of this […]
“I don’t want to think about you anymore.” Watching ‘Digestivo’ is like driving past a fatal car wreck where orchids are blooming from the mouths of the victims and a panel of comedians are cracking filthy jokes at the people who slow down to gape. For sure it’s got the show’s signature blend of psycho-sexual […]
“To be human is to be flawed. A real hero must struggle.” Steven Universe is in the middle of a quiet run after last month’s high-energy, high-impact slate. Including ‘Historical Friction,’ its last four episodes have dealt with daily life and the minutiae of emotional processing. ‘Historical Friction’ is a cute piece of work and a […]
“What can you do? Kids gotta express themselves.” Steven Universe, like many fantasy shows, is centered around a mystery. Over the course of two seasons that mystery has come to define the show, permeating its balletic action and complex character dynamics with a gnarled, inscrutable flavor of dread and uncertainty. I’m talking, of course, about the […]
“Not now.” ‘Keystone Motel’ is a small episode concerned with big things. It feels overfilled and sometimes unfocused, but if its look at a long-lasting queer relationship is uneven, it’s impressive that it’s happening at all. Garnet, looking for space in the wake of her fight with Pearl, rides along with Greg and Steven to […]
“Wherever we go, we go together.” ‘A Tale of Two Stans’ is an episode with a lot to live up to. The mid-season cliffhanger of ‘Not What He Seems’ left us staring at a doppleganger of the irascible and suddenly more-than-humorously-untrustworthy Grunkle Stan, a major upset to the show’s mystery of the week status quo. […]
“I’m just so excited to be here. You see, I haven’t exactly been myself lately.” ‘Cry For Help’ is a compact, emotional quarter-hour of television showcasing each of the Gems and how tentative their connections to one another remain even after a season of growth and change. Ameythst is the show’s eternal troublemaker, but in […]
“Right now there’s so many things to go about the wrong way, I’m losing my fucking vision.” ‘Down Will Come’ does exactly one thing right. When the grindingly stereotypical Mexican gangsters are dead, when the shell casing have stopped clattering, Ani and Ray don’t look like winners, they look like they want to puke and […]
Okay, so it’s time for one of those B-shows of the annual WWE calendar, Payback, a show that, on-paper, sounds okay, but isn’t offering too much in terms of fresh or exciting new feuds in my view. We’ll see how the matches go, shall we? The opening match of Payback sees Sheamus taking on Dolph […]
“You expect us to believe that you lost yourself in the hot darkness of Hannibal Lecter’s mind?” That visceral snap as the rubber cord Bedelia is using to tie off her arm pops out of her mouth is like a short, sharp shove off a pier and into a storm-tossed sea. ‘Dolce’ is in some […]
“Pissed myself.” True Detective lifted the lid on the mystery of Ray’s maybe death after an entire week of ferocious speculation to reveal Colin Farrell’s suicidally droopy mustache, a sight which avoids occasioning disappointment only in the respect that at least you’re not seeing it in the mirror. It’s not a worse show for having chickened out […]
“To the misfortune of the snail.” “Birds eat thousands of snails every day,” Chiyo tells us at the episode’s opening. “Some of those snails survive digestion, and they emerge to find they’ve traveled the world.” It’s an unearthly image, a story of mindless astronauts propelled into a boundless unknown, and it bears similarities to Will’s symbolic […]
If shows like Doctor Who prove anything, it is that BBC are good at fantasy. So it’s somewhat of a surprise that they haven’t tapped into the popularity of Harry Potter or at least done it sooner… but finally things have changed with Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. With magic a lost art in England, […]
Captions: (Crickets chirping) After a pilot episode with little to recommend it, ‘Night Finds You’ recaptures a bit of season 1’s driving-in-cars-shooting-shit character chemistry, meanders through introducing what might shape up into a compelling setting and plot, and then ends by swerving with alarming suddenness into what might be some honest to God interesting territory. […]
“Bella’s dead. That should change the view from these windows. It’s not right if the view stays the same.” ‘Aperitivo’ was an hour of small stories, a step back from the formless horror of Hannibal’s solo adventures in Europe and the protracted seance of Will’s pursuit. Il Mostro himself makes only a few momentary appearances, […]
“I welcome judgment.” Cool, Ray. You asked for it. True Detective‘s first season seemed to have the zeitgeist firmly in its swamp-mummy claws, an unexpected pulp hit hitched to live-wire performances by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, filmed by the thunderous Cary Fukunaga, and veined through with little rills and creeks of cosmic horror. It […]
“It’s easy. You just lie down, get nice and comfy, don’t move, and don’t think about anything…” Oops. The last time Steven Universe went this weird it was for the paranoia-driven ‘Rose’s Room,’ an episode built around the impossibility of wish fulfillment. ‘Chille Tid,’ by contrast, is as placeless and strange as its name. The Norwegian phrase “chille […]
WrestleMania 31, the WWE’s biggest event of the year is over and we arrive at Extreme Rules, the pay per view that WWE claim is their time once a year to “go extreme”. The PG era has meant that “extreme” in the current WWE climate is very different to what it meant back in ECW […]
“Get open, get honest. That’s fusion.” Most shows with fantasy conceits similar to fusion use it as part of an ongoing game of power creep, ratcheting up the stakes by combining existing characters into newer, shoutier, more powerful versions of themselves. Leave it to Steven Universe to make it an expression of connection and love, a sort-of-but-not-quite […]
“This room holds sound and motion, great snakes wrestling and heaving in the dark.” One by one the figurative dead are passing through the mouth of the cathedral at Palermo and into the vastness of Hannibal’s palace. What they seek there differs from person to person. Inspector Pazzi sees a chance to recapture glory by […]
