What a way to end the first season! Whether he meant to or not, Aemund has plunged the Blacks and the Greens into war. Lucerys is dead (although you know what they say, if you didn’t see the body…), Arrax is chomped, and the first season of House of the Dragon is over. There […]
Spoilers ahead, friends. I really want to make a ‘family’ joke (a la Fast and the Furious) about this week’s episode, but I’m coming up empty. Oh well! On to talking about the six year time jump, one of the last for the first season! Rumor has it this is the last/one of […]
Spoilers ahead, friends. I’m a big fan of funeral episodes. Grief is a complicated emotion – more than one emotion, even. Grief is so often mixed with joy, laughter, pain, confusion and a thousand other feelings. It makes for complicated character work, significant acting challenges, and unique opportunities for visual perspectives. Beyond that, the […]
Spoilers ahead, friends. Pilots are funny little things. Sometimes, in the case of shows like Firefly, they are only fully appreciated too late, when the show is cancelled and all hope for a reboot is dead and gone. In other cases, the pilot episode is inconsequential, poorly produced and altogether better forgotten – the […]
Spoilers ahead, friends. There’s nothing like a wedding in a high fantasy series. The dresses, the decor, the sumptuous feasting and above all else, the drama. House of the Dragon’s mid-season climax is the wedding of Laenor Valeryon and Rhaenyra Targaryen, and “We Light the Way” is all about setting up the friction, the […]
Spoilers ahead, friends. And some difficult sexual discussion. I feel, this week more than others, at a loss for where to start. Normally, I try and create a preamble, something to ease the reader in. But after the events of House of the Dragon this week, I find myself struggling to write a fitting […]
Spoilers ahead, friends. If you’ll recall from my earlier reviews, Game of Thrones suffered greatly from what I like to call the “mid-season slump.” Most seasons presented us with something new and exciting at the beginning, but then slackened as the season went on. TV is formulaic – the season finale is where you […]
When I was a child, I loved Quantum Leap. I watched it for the first time when I was at a neighbor’s house, catsitting for the largest orange feline I’d ever seen. He and I would stare at a little brown television, sprawled over the carpet, devouring episode after episode of time-jumping fun. House […]
“I am tired of watching women suffer. I am tired of watching their characters be written poorly or just written off. I am tired of watching a show raise women up to heroes, only to smash their heroism to pieces” – Vyasar Ganesan on House of the Dragon, Ep 1.
*Spoilers ahead* When I was growing up, I wanted, among many things, to be a knight. I daydreamed about fighting dragons, saving princesses and a suit of armor shining in the sun. In Texas, too, cowboys were contemporary knights, full of chivalric “ma’am” behavior and great acts of derring-do, and so I disdained the […]
One of my favorite panels from the ATX Television Festival was called “Resistance, Inclusion, and Creating Authentic Muslim Narratives.” Moderated by Vanity Fair’s Sonia Saraiya, the panelists spanned an impressive breadth of the industry. There was new director Nijla Mu’min, whose film Jinn has been a festival favorite for over a year. There was veteran […]
Hulu and Blumhouse have partnered up for a horror series called Into the Dark…
In my second time covering the ATX TV Festival, I knew I was in for a treat. The lineup this year showed that, while the festival is getting bigger and better and more inclusive, it’s also willing to get more serious, to host more panels and address bigger issues with greater honesty. There were panels […]
Well, this is it. The series is done. I started writing these articles in 2016, right before season six started. It seems like such a long time ago, three years and two seasons. Almost seems like a simpler time, when Jon was coming back from the dead and Dany was getting reintroduced to the Dothraki. […]
Honestly, I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell you about this week’s episode. I had to watch it again immediately after it was over. There’s so much to process, so much to go over, and I only get one article to do it in. It feels patently unfair, but God still hasn’t read any […]
With two episodes left, it’s very clear to everyone involved – the producers, the audience, the actors and the set designers — that we need to pump the gas on Game of Thrones. Great War down, Last War to go, no time for stray coffee cups on the dining table, it’s time to kill off […]
Yes, more than seven people died, but the episode was too dark to really see them. Yes, there’s a heavy amount of symbolism in that darkness, the fear of the Night King and the army of the dead being the same as the age old legend of the fear of the dark. Yes, the beautiful […]
It’s the night before the army of the dead descends on Winterfell. Since we’ve got a lot of characters and issues to resolve before our 83 minutes of bloodshed next week, HBO opts to present us with the slump of dialogue we’ve come to expect in the second episode of the season. Brienne gets major […]
I’ve been thinking about mirrors a lot, recently. As symbols, mirrors are often interpreted as portals, doorways, access points to realms beyond or just different spaces. They’re also revelatory, providing insights, opportunities for reflection, a stark look at who we are at the surface level. We place a great deal of trust in mirrors, to […]
I bought my first comic book in a shopping mall comic book store outside of Pittsburgh, PA. It was my freshman year of college, and I’d just made friends with a guy who shared all his torrented comic files with me. I was voraciously reading everything he gave me, partly to impress him, partly because […]
Well, this is it. One season left, then it’s off to whatever comes next…
Friends, critics, mortal enemies and comrades in arms…
I’ll come right out and say it: season four of Parks and Rec is my favorite season. Mostly, this is from being a political-campaign-lover, and Leslie Knope’s city council campaign is the organizing principle for the season. It should not go without mentioning, however, that the addition of Kathryn Hahn as Jen Barkley and Paul […]
Click Here to read the rest of our coverage from the ATX Television Festival. One of the big sponsors at the Austin Television Festival this year was Roku, and with good reason. The streaming company has been making larger and larger strides in the TV market, moving from a simple streaming player to manufacturing smart […]
At the ATX Television Festival, we got the chance to talk to lots of great TV-makers. One of our favourite experiences was with the people who make Genius for National Geographic. The anthology show is wrapping up its Picasso season tonight and the team is about to embark on their third go-round, this time exploring […]
Last week, my hometown was proud to host a four-day festival for all things television, and yours truly got an up-close look at how the sausage, or rather, the shows, get made. Directors, talent, industry pros and press- so much press, with laptops, zoom recorders, flashbulbs and paraphernalia- I haven’t been to a comic-con or […]