Also, the working-class resistance only became violently authoritarian once the main characters got impatient with the universe where the Vox were a scrappy band of freedom-fighters and transited to a universe where they were armed to the teeth and on a rampage. It’s a commentary about Elizabeth and Booker’s lack of…

My initial guess was that the aliens are extraterrestrial equines who are outraged that their horse brethren are being enslaved.

It also sounds like the kinds of excuses NIMBYers always make: “I love affordable housing, just not this particular affordable housing development that happens to be IMBY.” There’s always some complaint—it’s in the wrong style, it obstructs someone’s view, that parking lot is a historic landmark, etc.—that offers a…

It’s great to see so much real Chicago in there. I actually almost walked directly into Elisabeth Moss’s shot while trying to catch the Brown Line in the Loop last summer.

Ha, my first reaction on seeing Teller’s big ol’ face at the top of the article was “Fuck, he’s not playing Robert Evans, is he?” Fortunately, Matthew Goode seems to be a surprisingly good match for Bobby boy.

Yep, and I probably would’ve found the new iteration funnier if it weren’t such a pale imitation of the earlier segments. Though I’m not sure anything can top Wiig and Forte’s final bit of shriek-singing in that Easter segment:

Yeah, Weiner’s assholishness seems much more specific than Whedon’s all-too-typical brand of “Fuck hot starlets and yell at underlings” egomania. Weiner is receptive to other people’s good ideas and gracious about sharing credit, but he’s apparently just awful to people when he thinks they’re taking credit for his…

Well, there are other showrunners with a writing-first, no-improv creative style that apparently aren’t raging assholes. Vince Gilligan’s shows, for instance, seem to be characterized by mature professionalism and cheerful collaboration, but his actors have made it pretty clear that part of that professional…

When Buffy was originally on the air, Marti Noxon certainly took the brunt of the criticism for the failings of season 6. (There’s a reason why her Twitter bio is “I ruined Buffy and I will RUIN YOU TOO.”) But even though I was never a fan of Noxon’s Buffy work, I always thought she got something of a bum rap in this…

The simple fact is that there are times when the interests of feminists and the interests of horny assholes happen to align. If it’s the 1960s and women are yearning for sexual liberation, and also a bunch of dudes want to ogle women’s legs, they might both be like, “Yay, miniskirts!”

I think there are a number of ways to read Dory’s final scene, some more positive than others. Does it show that Dory’s matured because she’s no longer trying to glom onto other people’s tragedies? Or indicate her growing understanding that her alienation makes her normal rather than special? Or is it a sign of…

He certainly wasn’t saying that J. K. Rowling is an anti-Semite or that the Harry Potter movies should be expunged from our collective memory. But he did talk about “how some tropes are so embedded in society that they’re basically invisible even in a considered process like moviemaking,” so it’s not like he was just…

It’s not that I don’t get the reading, it’s that I question whether it’s satisfying to produce seventy hours of serial drama and then land on a conclusion that “calls BS on narrative arcs.” If the point is that none of what the characters went through matters, because they’re just gonna end up being who they’ve always…

Rewatch the S1 episode “A Golden Crown”, especially the end, and tell me that those seeds weren’t planted from the very beginning.

Not sure that applies to a list that includes two other Apple TV+ series in their second seasons, Mythic Quest and For All Mankind. I’d say the issue is more that those series had really excellent sophomore seasons that built on all the best parts of season 1, whereas Ted Lasso, despite retaining considerable charm,…

What, in this instance, does ‘proceeded to sexually assault her’ mean? Butt grab? Full-on rape? Both of those are sexual assault, but there’s a pretty big gap in seriousness.

Yeah, to me this is exactly what separates the top tier of great TV from everything else: the interlocking structure by which each individual episode tells a specific story, that story contributes to a larger season-long arc, and the season-long arcs together outline a trajectory for the entire series.

I’ll only watch if it’s about Brenda and Billy as old-ass bohos getting on each others’ nerves in 2050s L.A.

Do I think it’s inappropriately weighty for a character analogized to a pop songwriter to be characterized in all seriousness as being devoted to “truth, beauty, and love”? I one hundred percent do!

I guess I see it as kinda the opposite: a movie that’s centrally about the colorful ebullience of the Moulin Rouge, only it’s weighed down by this bleak narrative about Nicole Kidman being menaced by an upper-class rapist and then dying of tuberculosis. A movie about old-timey party people could just be about . . .…