Stretching (because we have to, with this show) but he clearly becomes a local fixture after S1, he could easily visit under the auspices of a volunteer law clinic for inmates, or whatever. In any case, I doubt we’ll be seeing Andre Holland again

I mean, who else would he be? He’s clearly some sort of magician or plane-hopping sorcerer with a plan. I wouldn’t put it past these showrunners to create a secondary, Snoke-esque Big Bad just for TV, but… why would you, when Flagg is already there?

I assume it would have leaked, were this show not lost in the rapidly swelling crowd of streaming television.

This episode makes a good case for plot - it’s hard to meander when you give yourself a timer, as they do here - but I wouldn’t say it makes a case for binge watching. I was only distracted from the waste of Evangeline/Joy’s mother by the feint toward this propulsive second rail of story, and in a binge scenario I…

As we’re dealing with multiverse fuckery, who knows. I think the assumption is that The Kid used his satan powers and Henry is dead. 

The showrunners haven’t shown particularly sharp storytelling instincts otherwise, honestly. It’s definitely in the realm of possibility.

She’s in it for just this one episode.

The thing is really that this season is doing what prestige dramas (and literature) are nominally supposed to do - revolve around central themes / questions / concerns on several levels- but it doesn’t have the juice to do them justice.

Joy was always going to be a stolen baby, but the mother being alive is at least a twist. Still, it’s a baggy one. We’re halfway through the season already, and with enough plot threads that the introduction of a character with a clear, uncomplicated, sympathetic bent almost certainly won’t have room to fulfill its…

I liked the first 3 hours of Disco Elysium I played but I probably won’t pick it up again for a long time, for a couple of reasons: because I have ADHD and the game is just so dense, yes. But also, it’s not just dense but LOUD. It is *always on* in a way that, say, Outer Worlds is also always on, but where OW just…

I keep thinking of this show as a kind of mirror of Breaking Bad, in that physical peril and life-or-death stakes are switched out for emotional peril and interpersonal relationship stakes. But also in that keeping your investment in the show is primarily dependent on your ability to forget that the lead has always…

I wasn’t really surprised at all, this show loves (has always loved) languishing and ruminating and navel gazing, going back and forth on Bojack, because that’s how depression works. Like depression, it gets dull to watch

That said, I’m curious to see where this devilry / bodysnatcher thing goes. It’s more interesting to me than vampires.

I’d be much more hyped abt this show if Annie Wilkes wasn’t the protagonist. I don’t really care about Dark Tower cosmological magic making it possible within the canon, or whatever, I just don’t think we need that baggage on top of all the Ace / Pop Merrill stuff on top of the Jerusalem’s Lot stuff. Misery looms over…

He’s a serviceable heavy, for as long as he lasts.

Appearing in a horror movie hasn’t been a marker for career success, historically

Celebrating the end of war and celebrating victory are meaningfully different things, especially in that context.

That was definitely the implication, with the “let’s go out to sea” / “I can’t, I’ve got a lot to do” - but it could be seen to break its own rules of magic if you don’t assume that Chester had his heart to heart with Henry before we enter the scene. Photographs visited through the ritual produce a ghost / spirit…

This is more or less my take as well. You’d think that an internment camp would end up a useful creative constraint (eg, an icebound ship in the arctic) but despite everything it is more of a period detail than anything anchoring the story and its preoccupations. This final episode gamely struck some chords re: loss / …

Yeah, it was more a frame (fitfully adhered to, admittedly) for the ghost story than an established parallel.