I too have been marveling at the fact that, for all people like to dump on L.A. for not really having any distinctive architectural features (except the Hollywood sign), these episodes of Lucifer have really outdone themselves with gorgeous establishing shots.

The second season finale, “Happy Anniversary,” has one of my all-time favorite stand-up-and-speak-the-truth-to-shitty-people scenes, but I was hooked much earlier. The hardest part of those really early episodes for me is how awful Moira is. I think it’s episode 3 or 4 where she finally does something unselfish for…

Lucifer tossing off an exact dollar figure of what it cost to do the prank had me wondering if it could be another Easter egg, like maybe the exact budget for this episode of the show. (There’s a meta-joke coming in the penultimate episode about a medium doing a reading for a Fox programming executive which is pretty…

I wasn’t sure exactly what was up until the end, but all the guest stars who were in on the conspiracy were playing things just a little too “big” for me not to suspect some sort of twist coming. Especially Arthur Darbinyan as Alexei the Russian mob captain — he was mugging like a silent movie actor in most of his…

For me, Lauren German has seemed to be the odd one out in the cast from the very beginning because, as Chloe Decker, she’s always so serious. I can’t recall a single scene of her ever laughing with delight, can you? Even Dan, our beloved schlimazl constantly getting hot soup dumped in his lap from all directions, has…

Speaking as That Guy who goes out to see all the superhero whiz-bang movies, IMO that first viewing in the theater in IMAX 3-D is still worth the price. Would I go see a sensitive character drama about a woman dying of a rare disease in the theater? Nah. But a massive spectacle gets a lot of value-add when it takes…

I’m a bunch of episodes behind (once I heard the series was over I decided to save the final run for a binge-watch) but I have to say one of the things I’ll miss most about Black Lightning is the fantastic soundtrack. As with Luke Cage over on Netflix, music cues is one of the elements that the show really had down…

I know this looks bad, but you need to understand the backstory before you pass judgement: https://trshow.info/watch/6TOiUZ1fvAw/seagull-buster-news-readers-adult-swim.html

She’s also about to star in George Miller’s Furiosa prequel, so you can probably pencil “action goddess” into her CV, too.

So help me, a decade-plus ago the History Channel (back when it was about history docutainments instead of pawn shops, I guess?) did a series about what would happen if human beings suddenly vanished from the planet, and the very first thing they mention is “BTW, all your pets will be dead within a week, most of them…

For me it means that Marvel has used up a lot of their most accessible storylines, but has created an insatiable appetite for their content and is now forced to get deep into the weird-ass Kirby stuff to keep the pilot light lit between ultramega-blockbusters. (Or write new material, but...)

IAWTC. I have only ever watched one episode of Sex and the City, but the writing Carrie Bradshaw is reading in V.O. at the end was so utterly cringeworthy that I cannot suspend enough disbelief to think that somebody a half-generation younger than her would have any interest in it (or her) whatsoever. It would be like…

Cecily Strong is a lovely young woman, but regardless of our shared personal tastes, I think you will also get a lot of takers for the idea that a petite blonde with kewpie-doll features is generally considered extremely attractive by default, in our culture anyway.

To be honest, with very few exceptions Fineman seems to be around just to play the hottest girl in the room. Nobody gets on this show by accident, so I’m willing to believe that she has comedy chops and they’re just being squandered, but other than her Britney Spears impression and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Ella…

Others have praised the Mike seasons over the Joel seasons as having sharper riffing, but my personal sweet spot is season 6. Bill Corbett is a decent Crow, but I like Dr. Forrester a lot better than Observer and Frank was the best second banana a Mad could ask for. Different strokes for different folks! So here’s my…

I am like nine Mortal Kombats (Mortals Kombat? whatever) behind, but I remain baffled by the decision to center Scorpion and Sub-Zero in the lore. Raiden is the best character all-around, and almost all of the others are more interesting than Slippery Ninja and Draggy Ninja. Why try so hard to get us invested in their…

Something I hadn’t appreciated as much about the MCU until that mention of the Power Broker is how establishing an actual continuity changes how you tell your story. In comics, storylines can stack on top of each other without much regard for what happened when — multiple would-be extinction-level threats just rise…

Thinking about the Blip too hard really makes the whole thing unravel. What we’ve seen on screen dwells on the half of humanity that was uncreated and then recreated (because that’s where the drama is), but Thanos didn’t just wipe out half of all humanity, he wiped out half of all life in the universe. That means half…

True, that has been the fashion of late. But it used to happen all the time decades ago — for example, Jeffrey Tambor played four completely different roles on Three’s Company in the 1980s.

I think Jonathan is low-key the most fascinating character on the show. He’s at an age where kids are keenly aware of status, and as the star QB son of a famous mother he had to have been an important figure at Metropolis High, but he seemingly made not a single complaint when asked to uproot completely from a life…