In our current “everything is a franchise!” world, it can sometimes feel like you’re watching a series of extended trailers for what will end up being even more extended trailers. And it turns out this year’s “Elseworlds” crossover—which started out strong but has had slightly diminishing…

If there’s an action that defines both the Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat eras of Doctor Who, it’s running. Both of their first Doctors had iconic introductory moments featuring the word “run” and both of their eras were full of images of the Doctor and his companions dashing through corridors and running down…

My fondest memory from this Thanksgiving was the night my mom and I tried to piece together the plot of a Hallmark Christmas movie we’d come into midway through and then only half-watched. It involved a guy who got amnesia while staying at a friend’s empty house and therefore thought he was the friend, which kept him…

Supergirl is a show that likes to ask tough questions and then answer them in earnest, somewhat simplistic ways. So when “Bunker Hill”—which functions as the show’s midseason finale since next week’s episode is part of the Arrowverse crossover—started to wrap up a whole bunch of plot threads, I…

As I mentioned in my review of “Demons Of The Punjab,” Doctor Who has made me cry about a lot of things. Characters dying. Friends being separated. Lovers being reunited. Real-world figures grappling with the weight of their place in history. But it’s never made me cry about the Doctor…

“The thing about documentaries is you can’t force them to end the way you want them too.” That’s just one of the many winking lines in tonight’s This Is Us fall finale, all of which are meant to warn viewers that the show’s ongoing mysteries might not resolve the way we’re expecting. (Other meta…

A group of Republican politicians in Ohio recently made headlines for sponsoring a bill that would not only ban abortions, but also make the procedure punishable by life sentences in prison and even the death penalty. Many were quick to point out the irony of a group being “so pro-life they’ll kill…

I’m as guilty as anyone of occasionally framing issues of onscreen representation in terms of how they might impact hypothetical kids watching and internalizing the messages. Yet I was also a kid who grew up having absolutely no problem juggling a deep love of Disney princesses with a staunch belief in gender…

“Six Thanksgivings” is an episode that delivers exactly what it says on the tin—glimpses into six very different Pearson-related Thanksgivings. The episode was actually originally going to be titled “18,615” after the number of people 17-year-old Randall estimates he’s met in his life (apparently some people are far…

There are plenty of adjectives you could use to describe the past three seasons of Supergirl: Inspiring, exhilarating, funny, earnest, and often times a little bit dumb. But there’s one adjective that’s never applied until now: Scary. Season four of Supergirl is genuinely terrifying, not just in…

“Kerblam!” earns its titular exclamation point not just because it’s fun to say, but because it’s an episode that takes a familiar Doctor Who format and hits it out of the park. “Kerblam!” is what I like to call a “socially conscious romp,” the sort of Doctor Who episode that balances the fun and…

Two moments prominently featured in the Instant Family trailer attempt to wring laughs from the image of an anxious foster kid getting violently smacked in the face with a ball. They speak to the worst impulses of writer-director Sean Anders, whose tendency to go for broad slapstick and cheap gags has carried…