All the performances have their merit, but Ledger’s Joker was the only one who had no clearly defined backstory or desire. He didn’t want to be famous/adored and he didn’t seem to care much about running Gotham. The uncenteredness made him uniquely unnerving, along with the bedraggled makeup and hair. Nicholson was…

There is no ideal model. One type of viewer wants one big drop; another prefers the slow burn/buildup. Both have advantages and disadvantages for the viewer (which could be argued back and forth into infinity).

Freaky rocked (I love affectionate horror mashups like Happy Death Day), turning VV’s tiresome persona into something fresh and fun to watch. I’m sure VOD impacted it to some degree, but pre-vaxx America was also a super-tough marketplace.

Let’s name names. I’m guessing we’re talking about Joy, Passengers, Mother! and, perhaps most of all, Red Sparrow? 

Cracks knuckles, begins prepping lingonberry- and reindeer-based insults. 

I think that writing to the constraints of the network sitcom really worked in the early seasons of Harmon’s Community. It forced the show to be hyper-inventive and envelope-pushing. Streamers free creators but they also don’t force them to think on their feet as much, which can undercut the work. (Plus, I’m still a…

The tactility and believability of the fight scenes made Daredevil one of the best action shows. It had the (mostly) grounded physicality of the early Bourne movies and rich cinematic visuals. Why more shows cannot learn from its lessons I’ll never understand. Aside from Barry, few things have captured a real sense of…

Adding the IWTV name does most of the marketing work and likely made you and a lot of others watch this show immediately, rather than just noting it for some vague future viewing. This is the sad world of IP. If you cannot slap an existing name onto a project, people will be prone to skipping/waiting because the…

People with writer backgrounds tend to run the best shows. 

TV is a writer’s medium first and foremost. Which is why so much “television” is much, much stronger than the bulk of films in theaters or on streaming. Bringing tentpole film thinking to a series is just the wrong foot to start on. TV simply doesn’t need auteurs. It needs great characters, tension, stakes, pacing and…

TEIGHLOR. 

Problem solver!

It’s entirely fair to not like what you don’t like. But criticism that comes down to some imagined insincerity of the creator is really thoughtless and plays into lazy anti-intellectual tropes. The idea that creatives are pulling one over on people is one I hear a lot from anti intellectuals: Down-to-earth,…

Team DAG!

That’s not frumpiness. That’s just the 80s, baby!

Whether or not this show goes to s2, it’s still the end of peak TV. Every streamer is making smaller, safer bets. There will be fewer splashy, pricey things like this and, sadly, also fewer quirky shows that only could have happened on streaming. And that’s not even counting the back catalogs that will be cut back to…

Read the story, Marty! (Also, RIP.)

It would be great to do something around Sunnydale itself. Like an anthology series of life over the last 150 years in a little town above the Hellmouth. Then the direct comparisons to the highly original Buffy wouldn’t be so crushing, while giving opportunities to play in the universe. And, with aging tech you could…

Few filmakers have been so weirdly all over the place. Green Book is just insanely bad and headshakingly misguided. But then Stuck on You is a surprisingly sweet grossout film that’s truly underrated. Then you have the Heartbreak Kid remake, which is very problematic but actually does a fair job deconstructing its…

The time machine framing got down to what this show was about. Walter, in his own churlish way, pointed out the problem with a time machine premise. What use is such a device if you’re not able to make different decisions, if you cannot be a different kind of person? Jimmy got to remake his life several times over and…