“I bet the only thing more horrifying than that sound will be the moment it stops.” Forrest MacNeil is the worst kind of faux-perpetual motion machine. He may run forever, he may in fact be incapable of ceasing to pursue his destructive path, but he needs an incredible amount of fuel to keep going, and his […]
“Try it again. What have you got to lose at this point?” Lucille’s dry words of encouragement toward Forrest’s dad as he shivers and sobs at the prospect of firing yet another arrow at his whey-faced son, already pincushioned with two, might as well be the tagline for the show’s promotional campaign. Forrest has left […]
“Well, let’s just try to keep it simple?” It’s a baffling decision on the part of whomever at Cartoon Network pulls the particular levers that determine these things to air two episodes about the overbearing mothers of supporting characters back to back. ‘Sadie’s Song’ doesn’t really cover any territory that last week’s ‘Nightmare Hospital’ didn’t […]
“Grandpa’s back, baby!” The monster in ‘Big Trouble Little Sanchez’ isn’t Coach Feratu. the vampire gym coach who dies off-screen about five minutes in, but the specter of Rick’s looming mortality. Oh, and also Jerry’s inferiority-driven projection of Beth as a cackling xenomorph queen. When Rick decides to switch his mind into the body of […]
“Do you know how many children I see every day who’ve cut off their faces playing with swords? None! Because they all have parents who love them and who don’t let them play around with deadly weapons like some sort of gang member!” Strong art direction can make even a mediocre episode of Steven Universe sing, and […]
“All our dumb horns can do is glow, point toward the nearest rainbow, and play rave music.” ‘The Last Mabelcorn’ takes a long, hard look at how mistakes can shape us without destroying our essential goodness while also giving us a scene in which Mabel, Wendy, Candy, and Grenda double-cross a gnome in a crooked […]
Money in the Bank has a history of being fun, especially the match itself which often tends to be chaotic. With WWE going through somewhat of a change for WWE: Money in the Bank 2015, it felt more refreshing and interesting. Especially with John Cena vs. Kevin Owens being one of the big fights of […]
“So he made a universe, and that guy is from that universe, and that guy made a universe, and that’s the universe where I was born? Where my father died? Where I couldn’t make time for his funeral because I was working…on my universe.” ‘The Ricks Must Be Crazy’ is an object lesson in the […]
“Soon all of this will be lost to the sea.” Hannibal’s final hour has come and gone, crumbling into the ocean like the bluff outside the title character’s seaside retreat and taking with it one of the most horrific and visually audacious shows ever to air. ‘The Wrath of the Lamb’ is not without its […]
“There is one final capstone to place on this monument of dishonesty.” ‘Catfish, Haunted House’ is relatively low-key for an episode of Review. It’s not because Forrest somehow has a normal set of experiences. In fact, he loses his life’s savings, perpetrates fraud on his ex wife, and is stabbed and knocked down the stairs by the […]
“HOLD ON TO THAT BRANCH OR DIE, CAT!” Every place-setter episode risks biting off more than it can chew on the way to setting up future adventures. ‘The Stanchurian Candidate’ is fun and lively for the most part, but it never quite has time to land any of its threads in a satisfying place. The opening […]
“It’s possible that we may have been correlating some things that were not related at all.” ‘Get Schwifty’ is a long way from Rick and Morty‘s best, an uneven twenty-odd minutes hewing closer to the tepid satire of South Park than to the show’s signature blend of gonzo adventure, ugly emotion, and I-don’t-give-a-shit alien names. The big-picture government […]
“It’s easy. You find some vulnerable people, you isolate them, you exploit them financially. Then, rivers of blood.” Lucille calls it right from the get-go. When a man about to open a CrossFit gym asks Forrest what it’s like to be a cult leader he might as well start chiseling tombstones. Forrest himself even admits, […]
What do you get if you cross a period drama set in the early twentieth century, and a medical drama? The answer is The Knick, a Steven Soderbergh directed television show at the deadly cutting edge of surgery… Set in New York’s Knickerbocker Hospital the show focuses on the lives of the people who work […]
“I don’t know what will happen in the house.” Motion and stillness are one, life and death are mirrors of each other, and to oppose your enemy is to be united with him. Hannibal has always been interested in blurring the boundaries between concepts, and between people, both in the minds of its addled characters and for […]
“We could be infested with these things, so we gotta keep an eye out for any zany, wacky characters that pop up.” ‘Total Rickall’ presents a race of alien parasites who mooch off of their hosts by insinuating themselves into their lives via the creation of false memories. They multiply in the fertile mental territory […]
“The farther you go, the smaller you get.” There can be no question as to whether or not Forrest’s journey to review life’s wonders and horrors is one of attrition. Piece by piece, bite by bite, Thursday by Thursday, Forrest MacNeil is dying before our eyes. The episode’s third act literally diminishes Forrest, first placing him […]
“If I wanted to be sober, I wouldn’t have gotten drunk.” One of Rick’s defining traits is his cultivated individuality, a combination of disdain for others and an intense desire to embody his own vision of his personality without limitations. He’s a man who literally passed on joining a club made solely of versions of himself. […]
“I didn’t even wear a suit until I was thirty-eight.” Goodbye, Frank. Your last pre-stabbing line was as intensely confusing as nearly everything else that came out of your mouth all season. For all that Omega Station begins with a promising morning after in which Ray and Ani (their morning clean-up and pillow talk smartly […]
“Did He who made the Lamb make thee?” In the dark recesses of his attic, staring into a crack-crazed mirror, Francis Dolarhyde assembles one by one the parts of speech he’ll need to show himself to best advantage in his imminent conversation with a certain doctor. Re-approaching the Serial Killer Call, a stock element in […]
“Well, I’m off to, uh, I’m off to cure a gay person.” With those words of trepidation, Forrest embarks on another adventure to do something he’s ignorant of in the extreme and clearly, deeply doesn’t want to do. His approach to “curing” Tim, a young man rejected by his family over his sexuality, is a […]
“Is this the game that’s mostly math and writing and isn’t anything like the picture on the box?” Shows like Adventure Time, Steven Universe, and Gravity Falls exist in a grey area when it comes to who, exactly, they’re made for. Ostensibly they’re for kids, but anyone with a Tumblr or who’s been to a con knows […]
