"Daredevil: Born Again," Year One

Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

The new "Daredevil" series on Disney+ is decent.  Despite all the chaos happening behind the scenes with showrunners being replaced and part of the season retooled, the resulting nine episodes that debuted on the service earlier this year are a perfectly acceptable continuation of the Netflix show created by Drew Goddard.  However, it's not the same by any means.  The first episode immediately breaks the old formula and sets up a changed version of Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock operating without his old support network.

The biggest problem with "Born Again" is that it decided to ditch Foggy and Karen, in favor of a new group of characters that are difficult to care about.  Murdock has a new girlfriend, therapist Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), who is boring and easy to ignore.  He starts a new law firm with a new partner, Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James), who is even more of a non-entity.  These are perfunctory attempts to show that Murdock still has some semblance of a personal life, except that nobody buys for a minute that these are people that anybody should be very invested in.  His arc this season is all about getting over the traumatic events of the premiere that have made him swear off ever becoming Daredevil again.  We know, of course, that he'll break this promise, because he still lives and practices law in crime-ridden New York City, which has a new mayor - and surprise!  It's Wilson Fisk.

Fisk has the more successful storyline this year, struggling to navigate the world of politics and avoid his own worst impulses.  His marriage to his beloved Vanessa has hit a rough patch.  There are some new flunkies around him, including a slimy up-and-comer named Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini).  Inevitably, however, he winds up employing all his old tactics to consolidate his power.  This includes putting together an anti-vigilante task force of loyal thugs, who target some of our favorite local heroes.  "Daredevil: Born Again" keeps its head above water because Murdock and Fisk are still both very compelling characters, and the show is pretty good about giving them both compelling things to do.  You can see some of the indecision about the show's new direction in the chaotic story structure.  Some episodes are stand-alone and feel like part of a network procedural.  Others are more tightly serialized, including episodes about a serial killer, Muse (Hunter Doohan), and Murdock representing another vigilante, Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes).  

Anyone worried that airing on Disney+ would mean a watered down version of "Daredevil" should have their fears assuaged by the amount of violence in the first episode.  This is a very adult series, despite a few loose connections to the more family-friendly parts of the MCU.  I don't think it's saying too much to confirm that Jon Bernthal is still around as The Punisher.  The fights are still bloody, and some of the villains are particularly brutal.  There's a graphic killing in the finale that wouldn't be out of place in a horror movie.  Having Disney's resources ensures that the production values are excellent, though the show doesn't do anything too stylistically ambitious.  Probably the only major difference from the Netflix "Daredevil" is the introduction of documentary style "man on the street" sequences, and these never really play into the actual plot of any episodes.     

It's been long enough since the original series that I don't mind too much that Disney has made major character adjustments.  A more cynical Murdock and media savvy Mayor Fisk feel like reasonable evolutions of these characters.  The new show is very uneven, understandably, but I like that the creators ultimately decided to stick with darker, more mature storylines and a bleaker, meaner version of New York.  I also like the greater degree of experimentation that means there's room for the one-off episodes like the one with Murdock caught up in a bank heist.  I don't think that "Born Again" is as good as the best of the Netflix series, but it's good enough that I'll keep watching and hoping that the show can straighten itself out a little more for next season.  

And I find myself very glad that there will be a next season.

---

My Top Ten Episodes of 2014-2015

Below, find my top ten episodes for the 2014-2015 television season, in no particular order.  Minor spoilers ahead, except for the "Halt and Catch Fire" entry.  I couldn't figure out how to write about that one without giving away the ending.  

Black Mirror, "White Christmas" - The "Black Mirror" Christmas special is one of the darkest, meanest pieces of television that I have ever seen.  The feature length installment is actually a triptych of dystopian science fiction stories, each more soul-suckingly evil than the last.  The celebrity guest stars are great, especially John Hamm as the genial "cookie" torturer - the first of many in "Black Mirror" as it turns out.  It's hard to imagine that this was once expected to be the last episode of the show.  

Game of Thrones, "Mother's Mercy" - The finale of the fifth season of "Game of Thrones" delivers a great capper to a very mixed season.  Cersei's brutal punishment is the centerpiece, featuring a stunning performance from Lena Headey, and introducing most of us to Hannah Waddingham as the "Shame!" lady.  This is also the episode where Stannis Baratheon finally gets what's coming to him and we have the big Jon Snow cliffhanger - the resolution of which is arguably where the series jumped the shark.   

Fargo, "The Crocodile's Dilemma" - I had a tough time picking which episode out of this season to write about since the whole season is pretty rock solid, and I settled on the premiere.  The introduction of Martin Freeman as the slippery Lester Nygaard, and  Billy Bob Thornton as the show's devil figure Lorne Malvo is note perfect.  Even better, Noah Hawley and company do an excellent job of setting expectations for how a series inspired by and based on the film "Fargo" is actually going to function.

Inside Amy Schumer, "12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer" - Make what you will of the fact that I'm writing about the "Amy Schumer" episode that features relatively little of Amy Schumer.  However, the beautiful absurdity of having a dozen beloved character actors parodying "12 Angry Men" while rigorously debating over whether Schumer is hot enough to be on television is undeniable.  Paul Giamatti getting all worked up about "a reasonable chub" will live rent-free in my mind forever.  

Person of Interest, "If- Then-Else" - I love a good format-breaking episode, especially for shows that take themselves a little too seriously.  This is the closest that the usually straitlaced "Person of Interest" ever got to a comedic installment, as it is entirely composed of The Machine running different simulations of what to do during a particularly thorny crisis.  Some of the simulations take some significant liberties with reality.  Also, "Fortune Days" by The Glitch Mob has been in my regular playlist ever since.

Better Call Saul, "Pimento" - There are two sequences in this episode that stand out.  The first is HHM making preparations for Chuck's visit by turning off the electricity and confiscating phones, underlining the power and influence he still wields in spite of his condition.  And we watch him use this power to squeeze Jimmy out, stubbornly clinging to his old judgement of his brother's character.  The other sequence is Mike taking on the bodyguard job, because Mike being competent is so cool to watch.

Halt and Catch Fire, "Up Helly Aa" - The highlight of the first season is the big trade show showdown in Las Vegas.  We have multiple storylines paying off, a last minute crunch leading to betrayals and relationship upheavals, and that poignant reveal of the Apple Macintosh at the end, signalling that the world is about to change.  The episode feels like the whole season in miniature, but it all boils down to that look on Lee Pace's face when he realizes how much he gave up only for none of it to matter.  

Mad Men, "Lost Horizon" - Again, I had too many good choices from the last season of "Mad Men," but something about the liminal nature of "Lost Horizon" stuck with me.  Peggy and Roger hanging out together in the detritus of the firm, getting up to antics while the merger is being sorted out, hits a chord.  And then there's Don beginning his existential journey across the country, looking for his path forward, hitting another.  Everyone knows the end is in sight, but they're going on their own terms.    

Wolf Hall, "Master of Phantoms" - The finale of the "Wolf Hall" miniseries covers the downfall and execution of Anne Boleyn, which Thomas Cromwell played a significant role in.  Mark Rylance and Claire Foy are so good in their roles I can't think of them being played by anyone else.  Foy shifts from antagonist to victim perfectly.  You really didn't need the follow-up series, because Cromwell realizing his own folly at the moment of what should be his triumph is an entirely satisfactory ending already.  

Too Many Cooks - Can I call this an episode?  Who cares.  Everything on Adult Swim defies easy categorization.  All I know is that "Too Many Cooks" is a cultural moment that cannot be ignored.  It's a warped, weird piece of video insanity that probably goes on for too long, and is very much a product of its time.  The subject of the parody is increasingly obsolete.  And the best way to watch this - stumbling over a broadcast in the dead of night when you're half asleep - is also a vanishingly rare activity.

Honorable Mention

Over the Garden Wall

---

"Chicken for Linda!" and "Louise by the Shore"

France has a long and storied history of producing interesting animated films.  I want to discuss two that I've only just gotten a chance to see - Chiara Malta and Sebastien Laudenbach's "Chicken for Linda!" and Jean-Francois Laguionie's "Louise by the Shore." 

First, we have "Chicken for Linda!" a rowdy, colorful, traditionally animated feature about a woman named Paulette (Clotilde Hesme) and her eight year-old daughter Linda (Melinée Leclerc).  Due to a family tragedy, there's been some difficulty in their relationship.  One day a misunderstanding causes Paulette to punish Linda for something she didn't do. To make it up to her, she promises to make Linda a beloved dish of chicken with peppers - but with a general strike going on it seems like it's impossible to buy any chicken.  Paulette is desperate, roping her sister Astrid (Laetitia Dosch) into the quest.  And a rookie police officer (Estéban).  And a truck driver (Patrick Pineau).  And a gaggle of Linda's friends and other neighborhood kids.  

I love the animation in "Chicken for Linda!"  The characters are drawn with black outlines and colored in with exactly one hue for each character.  Linda is yellow, Paulette is orange, their cat is bright purple, and a certain troublesome chicken is beet-red. Linda's friends come in sage green and chartreuse and violet.  This means you can easily track everyone on screen, no matter how crazy the action gets or how crowded the frame becomes.  And there is quite a crowd.  I was delighted to discover that "Chicken for Linda!" is an old fashioned slapstick comedy, full of chases and pratfalls and silliness.  The story has many unexpected twists and turns, and the cast keeps getting bigger and bigger as more people are drawn into the adventure.  And somehow there's room for everyone, even stressed out Astrid getting a song number about devouring sweets.  Even better, this is a comedy with heart, where the characters are messy and make lots of mistakes, but love and good food win the day.   

It's been a while since I've seen a proper film about community building - the kind that Preston Sturges or the Ealing Studios used to make.  Strangers meet in odd circumstances.  People from different walks of life connect and work toward a common goal.  Broken and damaged relationships get mended and renewed.  And of course the kids refuse to be left on the sidelines and try to fix the problem themselves.  "Chicken for Linda!" reminds me of how much I like these kinds of films, and is exactly the cinematic experience that I didn't know I needed this season.  It's a small and unassuming piece of animation full of exasperated women, befuddled men, riotous children, and poultry on the run.  And it's my favorite animated film I've seen in a long while.

Onwards.  You might know Jean-Francois Laguionie from  "The Painting," a lovely 2D/3D hybrid feature that was released in 2011.  His follow-up, "Louise by the Shore," is a much more slow-paced, modest effort rendered in simple traditional animation.  I found it very affecting.  We follow an elderly woman on holiday named Louise (Diane Dassigny), who misses her train and finds herself alone in a deserted seaside town during the off-season.  Resourceful and capable, Louise is soon building herself a new place of residence and exploring the shoreline, not ready to go home.  However, winter is coming and the weather is quickly turning bad.

The French title of the film is "Louise en Hiver," which translates as "Louise in Winter."  Here winter not only refers to the season but the stage of Louise's life that she is struggling to cope with.  The story is a metaphor for dealing with old age and everything that comes with it - loneliness, regret, and sometimes quickly changing circumstances.  As Louise explores her shoreline, she also takes trips into her memories of her girlhood and loved ones.  Hers is very nearly the only voice we hear in the film, usually through a grumpy, but tender inner monologue.  

Reality is a very fluid thing in "Louise by the Shore," with its dreamlike setting and unlikely premise.  Surely an entire town wouldn't be totally abandoned during the winter months, would it?  The painterly visuals and relatively lack of incident gives the film an existential air, but the atmosphere is light and the company is pleasant.  I don't know if I'm supposed to recognize Louise, but she's certainly a memorable personality, and I'm very glad that I got to spend seventy-odd minutes with her and her movie.       

---

The Age of the Video Game Movie

Well, it's official.  With the success of "A Minecraft Movie" ending the 2025 dry spell at movie theaters, and the recent successes of "Five Nights at Freddy's," "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" and the "Sonic the Hedgehog" franchise, movies based on gaming IP are the big new thing.  Many more are on their way, including the recently announced "The Legend of Zelda" movie, a new "Street Fighter" next year, and everything from "Death Stranding" to "The Sims" in development.  So, what does this mean?

First, gaming has become the dominant medium for pretty much everyone under the age of thirty, and is starting to encroach on the attentions of older people too.  I've watched with interest as gaming franchises have made up a bigger and bigger part of media fandom over the past few years - not just your AAA titles, but mobile games, gacha games, and everything related to them.  Gaming is a major component of the popularity of Twitch streamers, many Youtube channels, and other internet content.  Esports has grown from a curiosity in the 1990s to a billion dollar industry in the 2020s.  New game and console announcements are major events, and the impact of the recent Trump tariffs on the availability of the Nintendo Switch 2 made headlines.      

This comes at a time when the cultural impact of movies has significantly diminished, and television series aren't doing much better.  It's not clear now if movie theaters will ever recover from the pandemic, and the streaming wars haven't been good for anybody except maybe Netflix.  After nearly two decades of the comic book superhero boom, audiences seem ready to move on to something new, and the IP-driven nature of modern blockbuster filmmaking means pre-existing source material is a must.  Right now, the best candidates to entice young viewers back to the theaters are the video game franchises.  The Mario and Sonic games are the most famous, having been around for decades, with instantly recognizable characters who have been heavily merchandised.  It's no accident that the most successful movies based on games have been the ones that can lean on their familiar characters and reliable branding.   

Movie adaptations of popular games have previously been a very mixed bag, for a variety of reasons.  A lot of bad films have been made from good games over the years, including "Assassin's Creed," "Doom," and  the first attempt at a "Super Mario Bros." movie back in 1993.  The difficulty often stemmed from trying to translate stories intended for one medium into another, but really boiled down to games being considered either a niche hobby or strictly kids' stuff.   Most movie audiences were assumed not to be familiar with gaming conventions.  After many years of persistent attempts with one adaptation after another, this is no longer the case.  I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of the audience members who bought tickets for "A Minecraft Movie" are familiar with "Minecraft," and the movie is clearly made for the existing fans.     

Games becoming a popular source of IP for movies also signals an important shift.  Movies have traditionally adapted different mediums - there was the run of '60s TV show adaptations in the '90s, every Stephen King novel becoming a horror movie in the '80s, and stage musicals steadily becoming Hollywood musicals in the '50s and '60s.  The fact that this cross-pollination between games and movies and shows is finally paying off, is a sign that games are getting their day in the sun as a primary part of mainstream culture.  Their legitimacy is assured at last!  I don't know if we've actually had the first good movie based on a video game - which was a goal I remember being discussed in the past - but we've definitely had the first good show, HBO's "The Last of Us."  Frankly, that speaks better as to the artistic bona fides of TV series compared to movies right now.

Movies - well, as a medium their fortunes have waned before, most seriously with the rise of television in the 1950s, which led to a slew of new innovations.  Despite all the doom and gloom, I don't think they're going anywhere.  People like going to movies, and they remain cheaper than many other forms of entertainment.  However, I think the content is going to have to evolve, and the audience is necessarily going to look and behave differently.  The rise of the video game movies is just one of many changes we can expect coming soon to a theater near you.   

—

The 2024 Films I Didn't Watch

I write this post every year to acknowledge some of the movies that I've made a conscious decision to skip watching.  In some cases there's a reason, and in some cases there's just a lack of enthusiasm.  I've got very strong completionist tendencies, so I hope writing about some of these films this way will help me put any lingering doubts to rest.  So, here are eight films below that didn't make the cut this year.   I reserve the right to revisit and reverse my viewing choices in the future. However, I still haven't watched anything from last year's list. 

Mean Girls - Specifically, this is the "Mean Girls" musical adaptation that was originally supposed to be a streaming only release on Paramount+.  I'm glad that this did well for everybody involved, but I wasn't the biggest fan of the original "Mean Girls" and have no interest in a musical version.  The reviews were middling and there wasn't much of a marketing campaign.  I also skipped the filmed version of the "Waitress" musical released around the same time.  

Sasquatch Sunset - I like the idea of the Zellner brothers making an absurdist nature documentary spoof, following a nonverbal sasquatch family in the wilderness for a year.  I just don't have any urge to actually watch this, especially since some of the sasquatch hijinks involve getting drunk and various sexual adventures.  Reviews were good, and I'm sure that there's an audience for this, but I can't shake my suspicions that this is really a lowbrow sex comedy in arthouse drag. 

Bob Marley: One Love - I've been avoiding most musician biopics lately, and the only reason this was ever on my radar was because the box office for "Bob Marley: One Love" was unusually high.  I also generally enjoy Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch in just about anything.  However, the reviews were dismal with the consensus being that this was a very typical musician biopic that didn't do anything interesting like use Lego animation or replace Bob Marley with a CGI ape.    

Christmas Eve in Miller's Point - A tiny indie film about a family's holiday gathering that was championed by several critics, and roundly dismissed by others.  This seemed promising, but after watching the trailer, I just felt exhausted.  Endless family gatherings are something I don't particularly look forward to, and being stuck at someone else's family gathering for two hours seemed like a dire prospect.  So send my regrets to Michael Cera and company, but I'm declining the invitation.  

The Six Triple Eight - I can only take so many streaming prestige projects about the black struggle per year.  So I watched "Blitz" and "The Piano Lesson," and totally ignored Tyler Perry's star-studded "The Six Triple Eight."  Call me a snob if you must for not giving Perry a chance - especially with the movie getting very decent reviews - but I'd much rather watch the 2019 documentary about the 6888th than the dramatization.   Still, this is the film on this year's list I was closest to sitting down with.

Madam Web and Kraven the Hunter - I watch just about all the big action blockbusters because I use them as palate cleansers.  However, I finally reached the end of my patience with the Sony Spider-man adjacent films.  "Madam Web" and "Kraven the Hunter" have no shortage of talented people involved, and I just couldn't bring myself to sit through more movies that I knew were going to totally waste them.  I did, however, watch "Venom 3," which was better than I was expecting.   

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter I - I take issue with Kevin Costner trying to make me watch half of a six hour miniseries on the big screen instead of the small screen.  This was already going to be a hard sell because it's a western, and a "Chapter I," and three hours long, but Kevin Costner went and cast himself in the lead role.  Reviews were okay, and "Chapter II" is reportedly better, but this one just has too many strikes against it.  

---

It Was "Agatha All Along"

Minor spoilers ahead.  

"Agatha All Along" got off to a bumpy start.  It was already in a rough spot because it's a sequel to the "Wandavision" series, centered around a minor comic book character, and didn't have much of a budget to work with.  However,  it does boast an excellent showrunner and cast, led by Kathryn Hahn as the anti-heroine witch Agatha Harkness.  She was a standout in the "Wandavision" series, and gets the spotlight in her own show this time around.  

The plotting is very messy, but the story isn't too hard to piece together, even if you haven't seen "Wandavision."  In the aftermath of her battle with the Scarlet Witch, a de-powered Agatha has been stuck in Westview and enchanted into thinking that she's the protagonist of a "Mare of Easttown" style police drama.  A wannabe fanboy of Agatha's (Joe Locke) tracks her down and manages to break the spell she's under.  He asks her to take him to the Witches' Road, a legendary magical trial that requires a full coven to traverse.  Agatha recruits the card-reader Lilia (Patti LuPone), potion expert Jen (Sasheer Zamata), and protector witch Alice (Ali Ahn).  Agatha's normie neighbor, Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) is also roped into the trip to be their "green witch."  They have to face not only the Witches' Road, but several foes who are intent on killing Agatha - another coven called the Salem Seven, and Agatha's ex Rio (Aubrey Plaza), with whom she has a complicated history. 

Most episodes of "Agatha All Along" involve the witches coming across a new trial on the Witches' Road - which usually operates like a themed escape room - delving into somebody's backstory, and displaying some magic to advance.  There are several ongoing mysteries, such as what really happened in Agatha's past with Rio, and why is Agatha so hated?  And why is Joe Locke's character under a spell that prevents him from telling anybody his name, prompting Agatha to just call him "Teen"?  Who is he, really?  We get some answers, but not all of them, and some viewers will not be happy that some big plotlines are left totally unresolved.  The finale is an oddly anti-climatic episode about Agatha and her son Nicholas (Abel Lysenko), who she had in the 1700s.  It's also one of the best final episodes of any MCU series to date.

"Agatha All Along" is refreshingly unconcerned with fulfilling audience expectations or servicing the larger Marvel Cinematic universe.  It has its own stories that it wants to tell on its own terms.  A key element is a "Down the Witches' Road" ballad written by Robert and Kristen Anderson Lopez, which we hear multiple versions of in different episodes.  There's a 70s hippie episode and an 80s horror movie episode, and one where everyone is in fairy tale cosplay.  Agatha, Rio, and Teen are all unambiguously queer characters.  Also, in an unusual move for a comic book series, the dead characters almost all stay dead.  The individual episodes are a lot of fun, but at the same time "Agatha" sneakily manages to have some strong, interesting stakes and delivers a surprising amount of emotional heft.  Not everything works, but I appreciate the urge to not play it safe.

The show's big failing is trying to do too much.  All the different pastiches and costume changes every week distract from the fact that a lot of the characters are underserved - Lilia, Alice, and Jen in particular.  I can't quite get my head around Rio either - she definitely could have used her own spotlight episode, or at least some additional exposition clarifying how she functions in this universe.  Plaza is perfect for the part, and I'm very receptive to what she's doing, but not all the pieces are clicking here.  Part of me wonders if the writers are saving parts of the story for a second season of "Agatha All Along," which seems like an awfully big risk considering the state of Marvel Television at the moment.  

Kathryn Hahn and Joe Locke end up being the show's biggest assets.  Hahn in particular is fabulous at being tragic one minute and frightful the next.  I was rooting for her every step of the way, despite knowing that she was up to no good.  This is the first major thing I've seen Joe Locke in, and he's great - his spotlight episode is easily my favorite.  Minor spoiler here - we'll likely see him again in the "Vision" series being prepped for 2026.  Hopefully Agatha and Rio will show up too.  

---

"Black Bag" Snaps

I was a little worried about seeing Michael Fassbender playing another intelligence operative in "Black Bag" so soon after I'd seen him in "The Agency."  However, the two characters and the two projects are completely different.  Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play married MI6 agents George Woodhouse and Kathryn St. Jean.  We first meet them when they're throwing a dinner party for two other co-worker couples from British Intelligence.  There's Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela) and Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), whose tempestuous relationship is on the rocks.  There's psychologist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naonie Harris) and Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) who are more recently linked.  Also, one of the people at this dinner party is a leak, who may be responsible for putting a cyberweapon in the wrong hands.

"Black Bag" is an espionage thriller, but one that is very small scale and very tightly focused on the interplay among a small number of characters, all of them connected to each other through various personal relationships.  As George hunts for the leak, he stress tests all his suspects, including his wife, who has always disagreed with him on the subject of their finances.  Their fascinating relationship is at the heart of the film.  How do they manage to maintain their marriage and their careers in a field where nobody can trust each other, and everyone around them has made a mess of their love lives?  We listen to the pair exchange pillow talk and promises, some that we're meant to take at face value, and some that we're not.  George says he'll never lie to Kathryn.  Kathryn says she'll never lie to Greorge - unless she has to.  

I expected "Black Bag" to be more of a standard spy thriller, with the chases, fight scenes, and other showy set pieces that I associate with the genre.  What director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp have put together is a lot sparser and more down-to-earth, built around conversations, interrogations, meetings, and some very tense dinner party games.  It's more stylized and definitely more sexy than the soberly paranoid spycraft of John LeCarre, whose work is alluded to in various ways, but it doesn't bother with the flashy business of going on missions or putting on false identities.  Wardrobes are aspirational, but reasonable.  There's a little bit of globetrotting, a few shots fired, and one satisfying instance of incendiary vehicular carnage, but otherwise the performances are the main event.  And of course the performances are great.  Fassbender and Blanchett have loads of chemistry, and we get to see it up close and personal.         

   

It's really extraordinary how Fassbender and Blanchett have both played similar characters before, but George and Kathryn feel entirely unique, and in conjunction with each other they're a different organism altogether.  I've seen a few reviews of "Black Bag" reference "The Thin Man" movies, which star another effortlessly suave crimebusting couple, but like everything else in "Black Bag," more is done with less.  George and Kathryn aren't showy or demonstrative, but their obsession with each other is plain.  Unlike the other couples in the story, their romance is very much alive, and their seduction of each other is ongoing.  I appreciate that it's an unfussy romance for adults as well.  There's a remarkable degree of self-control and letting the silences speak, which does so much to cultivate the air of mystery around our leads.  

What keeps me from wholeheartedly falling in love with "Black Bag," is that I saw Soderbergh's "Out of Sight" recently, which has a similarly low key, mesmerizing love story playing out.  And that highlights the one thing about "Black Bag" that I felt fell somewhat short - the score.  The irony is that the composer is David Holmes, who did the score for "Out of Sight," and many, many other Steven Soderbergh films over the years.  Much as I love the "Black Bag's" commitment to minimalism, there were some scenes where I just needed a bit more.  Then again, I've only seen "Black Bag" once, and I suspect this is the kind of movie that improves with repeat viewings.  In any case, it's not one to miss.

—

"What If…?" Year Three and "Creature Commandos"

I did "Rank 'Em" posts for the first two seasons of "What If…?" but I don't have much to say about the individual episodes of the third season.  And since this is also the concluding season, I thought I'd put down some final thoughts on the series as a whole.  

So, this season of "What If…?" feels like an afterthought.  Most of its eight episodes are spent on oddball pairings of characters from the MCU's Phase Four, like Shang Chi and Kate Bishop, and Agatha Harkness and Kingo the Eternal.  We get another original character, Byrdie the Duck (Natasha Lyonne), who is the daughter of Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) and Howard the Duck (Seth Green).  The episode explaining how Darcy and Howard got together is far and away the best episode of the season, because it's something so weird and nutty that it could only happen in this series.  The slapstick humor premise, where all the biggest baddies in the universe end up chasing Byrdie's egg, actually works.  

Like the previous season, there's an ongoing plot involving the Watcher that ultimately turns into another big multiverse-spanning fight involving Captain Carter, Kahhori, and other recurring characters.  It's completely unnecessary, but in the interest of giving the series a definite ending, I guess it's fine.  I have more of a bone to pick with the lackluster individual plots this year, like "What If… the Emergence Destroyed the Earth?" which spotlights Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) in a post-apocalyptic universe, or "What If… the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?" where a motley collection of second stringers fight kaiju.  The ideas aren't bad, but the execution is lackluster, and it's very apparent that the show  is trying to boost the profiles of some characters it wants us to care about.  Meanwhile, hardly any of the original Avengers lineup even show up for a cameo.  There are a few surprises and the humor is generally better, but this season of "What If…" appears to have been severely limited in its choice of material, and it's something of a relief to see it go.  The series as a whole has been an interesting experiment, but always felt very constrained by studio politics.

Meanwhile, over in another comic book universe, the animated "Creature Commandos" on Max is the first official project to come from James Gunn's new creative leadership on the DC superhero franchise.  It's essentially "The Suicide Squad" with monsters.  Under the command of Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo), Task Force M is made up of dangerous individuals who aren't technically human but capable of heroism.  These include G.I. Robot (Sean Gunn), the radioactive Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), Frankenstein's monster (David Harbour) and the Bride (Indira Varma), the amphibious Nina Mazursky (Zoe Chao), and the Weasel (Sean Gunn).  James Gunn wrote every episode and is very gung-ho about this being a launching point for all kinds of media to come.  Unfortunately, "Creature Commandos" completely failed to win me over.

I think if I had seen this series a few years ago, before the "Harley Quinn" series and before "Invincible," I would have found it more interesting.  Unfortunately, after the most recent batch of edgy animated series based on comic books, "Creature Commandos" can't help but feel derivative.  None of the characters particularly stand out.  The production values are decent, but nothing special - the animation, action scenes, and level of violence are all fairly middling.  Despite the big names in the cast, I didn't particularly like any of the characters.  They're all extreme personalities who eventually learn to get along and bond with each other, while fighting much less interesting villains.  Each episode fills in the backstory of one of the Taskforce M members, which are all predictably tragic and violent.  

I've liked most of James Gunn's comic book movies up to this point, but the tone is something I've had to get used to.  There are always a lot of juvenile assholes and hostile reprobates trading one liners, and everyone seems to have a lot of pent-up aggression.  While everyone eventually becomes like family to each other, the learning curves can be pretty steep, and the universe is far too grim and mean for the show to be a good time.  This approach is perfect for "Creature Commandos," a show aimed at angry adolescents, where everyone has an awful backstory and plenty of excuses to behave badly.  However, I'm not an angry adolescent, but a bored elder Millennial who has seen this kind of thing too often.  Good luck to Gunn, but I can recognize when a piece of media is definitely not for me.       

---

My Favorite Shirley Clarke Film

Shirley Clarke was a Jewish female filmmaker who came to prominence in the 1960s, which meant she was almost unique.  She started out as a dancer and choreographer, who moved in independent and experimental film circles when she crossed over into filmmaking.  Her later work in the '70s and '80s consists almost totally of live video projects and dance-related endeavors.    When she was active as a feature filmmaker, her work was almost totally unknown in the mainstream, and it was only after significant restoration efforts by Milestone Films that much of Clarke's work became available to the wider public in 2012.  

Though some of her short films won awards and were well received, her features were not.  Perhaps this is because so many of them were about African-American men.  As Clarke put it, she didn't know how to deal with the "woman question," and found that she could relate better to the struggles of black men - a Harlem gang member, a beloved jazz musician, and a fascinating gay hustler and performer, who goes by the name Jason Holliday.  Holliday is the subject of Clarke's 1967 film "Portrait of Jason," and I don't know whether to call it a documentary or not, because I have no idea how much of what we see is real and how much is a performance by the title character.  

Jason Holliday is the only person we ever see in "Portrait of Jason," as he's being interviewed by Clarke and her partner Carl Lee, who can be heard offscreen.  The interview took place entirely in Clarke's living room, during a shoot that reportedly lasted for twelve hours.  The film cuts the footage down to 105 minutes.  During this time, Holliday reels off stories about his life and adventures, several of them salacious and shocking.  He frequently appears to be inebriated.  He giggles, rambles, and seems to be on the verge of tears at one point.  He spars with the interviewers, who call him out for his bad behavior, becoming more and more emotional as time goes on.  There's been a lot of conjecture about what really happened during the course of that marathon all-day shoot.  Was Clarke's goal to get Holliday to break down on camera?  Is the film exploitative?  Is it in bad taste?  Holliday himself seemed to be delighted with the results in interviews, or at least with the attention and the notoriety the film brought him.       

How much of what Holliday is telling us, is the truth?  His stories certainly have the ring of authenticity to them, giving us a glimpse of the usually invisible lives of sex workers, LGBT individuals, and others on the lowest rung of the social ladder.  What's so striking here is Holliday's attitude.  He speaks about controversial, and at the time what would be considered indelicate subject matter, with great pride and wit.  He's not ashamed of who he is and what he's done, even when challenged by the interviewers.  He styles himself as an aspiring cabaret performer, sharing his observations on life and love with his audience.  Jason Holliday is a persona, but it's a persona that has been chosen wholeheartedly.  

Shirley Clarke had a fascinating career, and by her own admission it was only possible because she was rich and privileged, with the connections to get things made that other filmmakers couldn't.  However, she used that privilege to put the lives of black men, heroin addicts, the unseen, and the ignored on screen.  Her first feature film (which also happens to be the first found-footage film), "The Connection," was the subject of a pivotal censorship lawsuit due to its realistic use of vulgarity.  Most of her narrative films blur the lines between truth and fiction, telling their stories through the improvisations of non-actors, usually to a jazz soundtrack.  "Portrait of Jason" has more in common with these films than her straight documentaries, which is why I'm still hesitant to put it into either category.  

Finally, I want to make a quick note that Andy Warhol tried to make a movie with Jason Holliday before Shirley Clarke did, which never came together.  And this is probably the closest I'll ever come to covering Andy Warhol's work on this blog.   

What I've Seen - Shirley Clarke

The Connection (1961)

Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World (1963)

The Cool World (1963)

Portrait of Jason (1967)

Ornette: Made in America (1985)

---

"The Last of Us," Year Two

I want to state up front that I haven't played either of the "Last of Us" games.  Spoilers for the first season, but not the second ahead.

"The Last of Us" is one of the HBO shows that has been the most affected by the WGA and SAG strikes, and the behind-the-scenes turmoil going on at Warners.  The second season is only seven episodes, down from nine in the first season.  It's based on "The Last of Us 2," but apparently covers less than half of the story from that game.  I suspect that these issues would have already been testing the patience of the audience, even before we got into the various adaptation decisions that irrevocably changed the nature of the show.  In short, this is a risky and difficult season of television, but it's not without some rewards.

Without getting into too many details.  Season two of "The Last of Us" is a transitional year, where Ellie eventually emerges as the main character of the series, and a lot of new characters are introduced.  We open on Ellie and Joel living in Jackson, Wyoming with Joel's brother Tommy (Gabriel), in relative safety.  Other members of the community include Ellie's love interest Dina (Isabela Merced), her ex Jesse (Young Manzino), Tommy's wife Maria (Rutina Wesley), a therapist named Gail (Catherine O'Hara), and her husband Eugene (Joe Pantoliano).  New villains include Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), members of a paramilitary group based out of Seattle.  There are still plenty of the Infected around, and they're as significant a threat as ever, but the major antagonists this year are all human.

There's a time skip between the seasons so Joel and Ellie aren't quite the same as when we last left them.  Their relationship has become much more complicated, as Ellie is now an adult who is doing her best to distance herself from Joel for a variety of reasons.  The events of the season one finale are a major component of the rift, and both of them are still dealing with a lot of guilt and trust issues.  Revenge is another major theme for several different characters, but most prominently Abby, who has connections to last season's Fireflies.  I understand that she's supposed to be one of our new POV characters, but she doesn't get as much screen time this year as I was expecting.  Neither does Pedro Pascal as Joel, which really leaves a void.  Bella Ramsey is a solid performer, but she's better when she's playing off of Pascal, and pairing her up with newcomer Isabela Merced for so much of the season instead is a significant downgrade.

Still, there are a lot of great moments this season.  I love that there's room for some of our veteran character actors like Wright, O'Hara, and Pantoliano to have some extremely affecting moments.  Nothing is quite on the level of Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett's episode from the first season, but the potential is certainly there.  "The Last of Us" has an extremely deep bench of talent, and I kept spotting familiar actors like Hetienne Park, Ariela Barer, and Danny Ramirez in minor roles.  It's impossible to predict where any episode is going to go, and even who's going to survive the next five minutes.  The shrinking episode numbers aside, "The Last of Us" still boasts a large budget and prestige television production values.  A massive scale Infected siege on Jackson is one of the major highlights of the year.  And yet it's nowhere near as impressive as an episode later in the season, made up almost entirely of intimate dialogue scenes.

However, there's no getting around that the season ends prematurely, and it feels like the show has turned a corner into much dicier territory.  Like "House of the Dragon" last year, the lower episode count is definitely a problem, but I suspect the real issue is that both series are trying to stretch out the life of their available source material.  "The Last of Us" could make it work with the talent that it has, but it'll be an awfully long time before we find out - maybe too long for some fans.  Season Three won't be here until 2027 at the earliest.  

---

Meet "Mickey 17"

Bong Joon-Ho makes two kinds of films.  He makes socially conscious Korean dramas with genre elements, like "Parasite" and "Mother," which are generally smaller scale and usually very, very good.  When he can get a larger studio to foot the bill, he also makes more elaborate allegorical science-fiction films, like "Snowpiercer" and "Okja," which are usually in English, more cartoonish, and I don't enjoy them nearly as much.  "Mickey 17" falls squarely in the latter group, a big budget sci-fi black comedy, starring Western actors, that seems very concerned with being broad enough to appeal to a Western audience.  It is by no means director Bong's worst film, but "Mickey 17" is far from being another "Parasite."  I liked it mostly for Robert Pattinson's performance, but I understand why other viewers have been less happy with the end results.

Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) has signed on to be an "expendable" employee on a space voyage to colonize the planet Niflheim.  Thanks to clone printing technology, his memories and consciousness can be transferred to a new body every time he bites the dust, which he is obliged to do over and over again.  He's given all the most dangerous assignments on the ship, used as a human guinea pig by scientists, and generally treated very badly by just about everyone.  However, during the voyage he does fall in love with the security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who makes things more bearable for him.  Others on the ship include the immoral expedition leader Marshall (Mark Ruffalo in "Poor Things" mode), his calculating wife Yifa (Toni Collette), and Mickey's untrustworthy old friend Timo (Steven Yeun).  However, Mickey's worst enemy may be himself.  After his seventeenth clone, Mickey 17, is mistakenly left for dead on Nilfheim's surface, he makes his way back to the ship to discover Mickey 18 has already been printed.

Roughly the first half of "Mickey 17" is very good.  The worldbuilding is excellent, the dark humor is fantastic, and the performances are great.  Robert Pattinson is easy to root for as Mickey - a slightly dim working stiff who is unhappy with his lot in life, but very easygoing and loveable.  He's that perpetually accommodating loser who doesn't know how to stand up for himself, and ends up being bullied by everyone, including himself.  Marshall and Yifa are playing the usual selfish elites that usually show up in  Bong Joon-Ho movies - thoughtless, cruel creatures that can be fun if they're funny enough.  I wanted Ruffalo and Collette to go further over the top than they did, but I don't really have any complaints.  They fit right into "Mickey 17's" nightmare vision of space exploration, where the lower level workers are routinely exploited and deprived with frightening nonchalance, and Marshall and his too-perfect teeth cultivate a zealous cult of personality that keeps him in power.  Watching Mickey suffer and die in increasingly gruesome ways is morbidly funny and impactful.  

Where the movie loses its way is around the midpoint, when it feels like it's obliged to be a typical Hollywood action blockbuster, and find some way to engineer a happy ending for Mickey and Nasha.  This roughly coincides with the appearance of the "Creepers," the dominant alien life form on Niflheim, who look like giant pillbugs.  If you're familiar with "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind," they're dead ringers for the Ohmu.  Suddenly we're in a very different kind of movie, where the conflicts become very black-and-white, a few minor characters suddenly get a lot more screen time, and Mickey 17's existential quandary with his unwanted twin gets shoved into the background.  It's not bad, but it's not nearly as interesting as the movie that we were watching up to that point.  There's some messiness with shifting POVs and a weirdly structured ending that makes me suspicious that director Bong was forced to compromise on his finale.       

   

If you're familiar with Bong Joon-Ho's other films, "Mickey 17" fits right in with his other work thematically and aesthetically.  It's awkwardly trying to graft a lot of those elements on the structure of a typical blockbuster with mixed results, but I thought that there was plenty worth watching.  Pattinson in particular is a lot of fun as the Mickeys, and I hope he has a chance to work on something this big and weird again soon.  

—

"Lost," Year Three

Spoilers ahead for the first three seasons of "Lost."

The third season of "Lost" is a big improvement over the second.  It feels like the writers know where the story is going, even if that may not be the case.  The focus is narrowed to only a handful of characters, who finally get enough screen time to gain some more depth, and the story builds over the course of the whole season to a satisfying climax.  The season finale is the best episode of the show so far.

Having good, well-defined villains helps a lot.  We get a much better picture of Ben Linus and the DHARMA Initiative group, as Jack, Sawyer, and Kate spend the first several episodes imprisoned in their stronghold.   The one major new character this year, Dr. Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), is introduced as a villain and becomes more complex as the season goes on.  While I'm still not as interested in the captured trio as I am with characters like Locke, Hurley, Sun, or Sayid, at least this run of episodes fleshes out Jack, Sawyer, and Kate to the point where they feel like more well-rounded characters.  Sawyer in particular emerges at the end of the season with a very good arc.  DHARMA could be more threatening though.  Ben and Juliet's mind games are awfully tame by 2025 standards, and the stakes always feel very arbitrary for everybody - all the attempts to recruit Jack and Locke into the cult feel silly.  Still, I'll take the crazy cult over the smoke monster and random polar bear sightings.  There's still too much about the island that's way too mystery-baity.  

The best storyline of this year definitely belongs to Charlie.  I haven't written much about Dominic Monaghan's work in the show, because there simply wasn't much to the character aside from being an addict and glomming onto Claire to worrying extremes.  Desmond's premonition gives him a chance to finally make some meaningful decisions and be a hero.  I'm heartened that the show managed to stick at least one good exit for a character.  The worst storyline is probably the little experiment with Nikki (Kiele Sanchez) and Paolo (Rodrigo Santoro), two background characters who have their own running narrative in the background of other episodes.  While I like the concept, and I'm glad the writers are experimenting like this, it's just not done well.  We barely learn anything about these two before their featured episode, where they're killed off with surprising cruelty.  

And speaking of being killed off, I was not pleased to lose Mr. Eko, whose actor quit the show.  Unfortunately that means the only surviving character from the tail section group is Bernard, and all the black regulars are gone aside from Rose and some random flashes of Walt in the finale.  The cast keeps getting whiter, and the issue is glaring.  On the one hand, I don't think the "Lost" writers should have felt obliged to tie themselves in knots trying to keep up the characters and storylines that weren't working.  On the other hand, this is clearly a systemic issue.  Lindelof and company getting called out for this kind of thing was instrumental to getting us the much improved "Watchmen" and "The Leftovers," later on down the line.  

I like that the flashback-heavy structure is still being used, and especially that this allows backstories for some of the characters to be gradually deepened and given more context.  Flashbacks build on flashbacks, setting up the next season when we'll see how the characters' absences will affect the direction of their stories.  I like Sun and Jin's episode this year in particular, because it shows how much the two of them have habitually been keeping secrets from each other.  Then there's Locke, whose terrible father (Kevin Tighe) keeps coming back in more surprising and entertaining ways.  The flashbacks are also handy for fun guest star appearances.  It was nice to see Nathan Fillion as Kate's ex, Zeljko Ivanek as Juliet's ex, Bai Ling as Jack's ex, Cheech Marin as Hurley's dad, Beth Broderick as Kate's mom, and Billy Dee Williams as himself.  The production values continue to improve.      

I've been warned that the show peaks with the fourth season and it's all downhill from there.  All of the subsequent seasons are also shorter than the first three, so I'm actually well past the halfway point for "Lost."  I'm enjoying "Lost" enough that I'm going to see it through to the end.  However, at this point I'm glad that I didn't watch this while it was airing.  The ability to work through the episodes at my own pace is very important to bolstering my goodwill toward the show.  Also, having some foreknowledge of where the story is going is helping to curb expectations.     

---

"The Gorge" and "Companion"

2025 has been very good for original genre films so far.  A few minor spoilers ahead.

First, "The Gorge," which is an offbeat horror-action mystery movie, where the best thing about it is surprisingly the romance that develops between the two leads.  Miles Teller plays Levi, an ex-Marine who is sent by a not-suspicious-at-all Sigourney Weaver character to a mysterious gorge, which is guarded on one side by a lone American soldier, and on the other side by a lone Soviet counterpart, both in command of impressive military arsenals.  Their job is to keep whatever is at the bottom of the mist-shrouded gorge from ever getting out.  The two soldiers are forbidden from contact, but the Soviet turns out to be the lovely Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy), and both of them are bored, so of course they start flirting with binoculars and homemade signs.

I appreciate that we find out very quickly that there are eldritch monsters who keep trying to come out of the gorge, and have to be repelled with a lot of heavy gunfire.  The mystery is not drawn out at all, though there are the usual twists and turns about what's down under all that mist, for those who are here for the monsters and the action.  However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much of "The Gorge" is actually a romantic-comedy, featuring two capable, attractive young people who come up with a lot of different ways to carry out their romance, despite being physically separated.  Directed by Scott Derrickson, who mostly does horror, this is a fun digression from the usual formula, and I found it very enjoyable.  Well, until the film is obliged to be an action movie again.  

"The Gorge" is a pretty by-the-numbers monsterfest in the second half, when our leads are expected to go fight more CGI beasties and uncover the terrible secrets about the gorge.  Fortunately the actors are very good, especially Anya Taylor-Joy proving again that she's a solid action star.  The creature designs also feature some very creative and memorable abominations.  I think it helps that I went into "The Gorge" expecting a B-movie, and that's exactly what this is.  The romance is a nice bonus, but in the end the mindless violence takes center stage, and is both very mindless and very violent.  It's hard to get too upset with the film for doing exactly what it said it would from frame one.  Would I have been happier with a smarter, more thoughtful film that spent more time on the central relationship?  Sure, but that's not the movie "The Gorge" is trying to be, and I don't begrudge it any of its indulgences.

On to "Companion," a horror/thriller/comedy where I have to tread more carefully because it does have several big reveals that will directly impact audience enjoyment.  Let's just say that the film is about technology and romance, and involves three couples having a weekend getaway together.  There's Iris (Sophie Thatcher), who is nervous about meeting the friends of her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) for the first time.  There's Eli (Harvey Guillen) and Patrick (Lukas Gage), the friendly gay couple.  And then there's prickly Kat (Megan Suri), who is dating an eccentric Russian, Sergey (Rupert Friend).  Drew Hancock, previously of "Suburgatory" and "Blue Mountain State," is making his feature film debut here as writer and director.

"Companion" is one of those tricky little genre movies where the characters are playing cat-and-mouse and trying to outwit each other constantly.  The writing is clever, darkly funny, and occasionally lands a good zinger.  The young actors are a solid bunch who're mostly known for their television work, but easing into bigger film roles.  Sophie Thatcher, of "Yellowjackets" and "Heretic," is the standout.  Iris is our main POV character, and Thatcher is effortlessly genuine and relatable throughout, despite dealing with a lot of heightened, high concept material.  When things go south, she's easy to root for.  

This is the kind of premise that could have gotten very silly very quickly, without Thatcher's grounding presence.  Frankly, the movie still is silly a lot of the time, on purpose, but it also offers some decent observations about how technology can enable some of humanity's worst impulses.  But more importantly, it's a fun watch, and hopefully we'll see everyone involved continue to do good work in the future. 

---

"The White Lotus," Year Three

The response to the third season of "The White Lotus" has been much more negative than I expected, which puts me in the odd position of wanting to defend the show more than I might have otherwise.  If you've seen the first and second installments of "The White Lotus," you already know the gist here.  We follow various groups of rich, terrible guests of the White Lotus hotel, with someone guaranteed to be dead by the end of the last episode.  This time the setting is Thailand, in a White Lotus dedicated to health and wellness.  The themes of the season are spiritual rot, mortality, and some really screwed up family relationships.

There's a great set of characters this year.  Timothy and Victoria Ratliff (Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey) have built a family vacation around their daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook) wanting to visit and interview the leader (Suthichai Yoon) of a nearby meditation center.  Their sons Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lachlan (Sam Nivola) are also in tow.  Frenemy girlfriends Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), Laurie (Carrie Coon), and Kate (Leslie Bibb) are on a reunion trip.  There's depressed Rick (Walton Goggins) and his much younger girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), who end up trying to track down the man who killed Rick's father.   Of course we have the White Lotus staff, led by manager Fabian (Christian Friedel), and hotel owner Sritala (Lek Patravadi), though more attention goes to aspiring security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) and his co-worker crush, Mook (Lalisa Manoban).  Finally, you may remember Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) from the Hawaii edition of "TheWhite Lotus," who is on a work exchange trip, and becomes close to her local host, Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul).  Scott Glenn and Sam Rockwell show up eventually in roles I will not spoil the specifics of, along with another familiar face from a previous season.

For the most part I really enjoyed this season of "The White Lotus," about on par with season two.   The show's creator, Mike White, reportedly patterned several of the stories on Greek tragedies, so the threat of bloodshed and highly inappropriate relationships are everywhere.  However, I like that there's a nice mix of more typical, down to earth situations, like the frenemy reunion with its fairly realistic exploration of female resentments and jealousies, and the more absurdist stories involving murder plots and blackmail.  Sometimes there are strange tonal inconsistencies - Belinda's storyline gets increasingly wild as the season goes on - but the various plots and characters balance against each other well.  I never felt, as I sometimes did with the second season, that certain characters or actors were being wasted.  Not all the stories played out the way I wanted them to - the Ratliffs' in particular - but I thought they worked on their own terms.  It's never been more obvious, however, that the foreshadowings of death are only there to keep the audience around for the character drama, and Mike White has no interest in actually constructing a whodunnit or howdunnit.     

I think this year suffered a little from not having a larger-than-life performance at its center on the level of Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya or Murray Bartlett's Armand, though Walton Goggins certainly put in some effort as a man embarking on the worst revenge plot ever hatched.  Jason Isaacs got me to sympathize with Timothy, as he stands on the precipice of financial ruin, and gradually realizes how hopelessly unprepared his family is for bad news.  Piper Perabo is the most delightfully awful rich lady caricature I've seen in some time, with Patrick Schwarzenegger also doing great things as a walking masculinity crisis.   Aimee Lou Wood might be the season's breakout star, as self-deluding but ever-hopeful Chelsea.  All the frenemies are great, but Carrie Coon with a monologue is always a force to be reckoned with.  However, the monologue of the season is definitely Sam Rockwell's - again, I refrain from spoilers.

  

I do feel that the picturesque Thailand setting wasn't used to its full potential.  Most of the appearances of Eastern spirituality are really just window dressing, and it feels like the bulk of the season could have taken place anywhere else.  Of the Asian performers, the only one I felt got much of a chance to do anything was Tayme Thapthimthong as Gaitok, and frankly he gets about the most perfunctory and least interesting narrative out of anyone in the cast.  I could have used more of  Sritala, who at least has hints of hidden depths.  

All in all, this season of "The White Lotus" was on par with the previous seasons, but there was room for improvement.  I'd urge Mike White to let things percolate a little longer before the inevitable fourth season.  

—

How Streaming Broke TV Seasons

At the time of writing, "Interview With the Vampire" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" were both renewed for additional seasons over a year ago, but neither have started filming yet.  This is especially odd in the case of "Interview With the Vampire," because a brief promo for its third season debuted at last summer's San Diego Comic-Con.  We're not likely to see either show back with new episodes until 2027 at the earliest, which means a three year gap between seasons - a gap that has become increasingly common.    

I've touched on this issue a couple of times before, but since the pandemic and the industry strikes, it's become clear that this is looking like the new normal for some of the marquee streaming shows, and the viewers are increasingly unhappy about it.  I want to break down some of the hows and whys, and what we can expect going forward.  First, it helps to have some context.  The old model of network television shows that debut 20+ episodes a year, every year, is still alive and well on the networks.  "Ghosts," "Abbott Elementary," "Law & Order: SVU," and all the "Chicago" shows regularly have 22 episode seasons, and new seasons premiere every fall like clockwork.  This is achieved by having their crews working steadily throughout the year, with actual production and post-production on individual episodes rarely taking more than two or three months.  The situation for shows on the streaming platforms, however, is very different.

The changes started with the prestige TV boom in the mid-2000s, specifically on cable.  Because of the flexibility afforded by their different economic models, cable shows were able to make higher quality shows with more high-profile acting talent, usually by reducing their episode counts.  The norm was ten to thirteen episodes a season.  These still came back every year - when "The Sopranos" had an 18 month gap before its final season, people raised eyebrows - even if it meant sometimes resorting to tactics like splitting seasons into smaller batches of episodes.  Shows started becoming more expensive as genre series like "Lost" and "Battlestar Galactica" gained popularity.  More special effects meant longer post-production times.  The biggest game-changer was "Game of Thrones" in 2011, which had feature film quality special effects.  It maintained a schedule of ten episodes a year for six years, but was also far more expensive and logistically challenging than anything else on television.  Essentially the show was often three different productions working simultaneously.  The shoots took longer and longer as the show went on, and post-production demands followed suit.  The average time for production and post-production was seven months for most of the show's run.  If it had been on any other platform but HBO, "Game of Thrones" would have likely looked very different.

I haven't managed to confirm this, but it looks like "Westworld" in 2016 was the first major ongoing series that started releasing seasons every other year.  It was another big HBO production with expensive effects and a high-profile cast, featuring movie stars who were more difficult to schedule things around. Cable anthology shows like "True Detective" and "Fargo" were also starting to do this, though their seasons have self-contained stories, so they could function as stand-alone miniseries.  The streamers like Netflix and Hulu in the mid-2010s were just starting to gain some traction, but their shows generally followed the cable model.  They were doing a lot of experimenting with things like episode length and presentation, but the early hits like "House of Cards," "The Crown" and "The Handmaid's Tale" steadily delivered the standard ten or thirteen episodes every year, at least at first.  Episode counts started slipping a few years later, with shows like "Penny Dreadful" and "American Gods" having nine and sometimes eight episodes a season.  More popular shows like "Daredevil" and "Stranger Things" started airing every other year, but it was still pretty uncommon.   

Then came the major disruptions of the 2020 COVID pandemic and the 2023 WGA and SAG strikes, and things went sideways.  Every show saw major delays, compounded by more competition from new streaming platforms like Disney+, HBO Max, and Paramount+.  Where "Game of Thrones" was essentially the only show of its size during its run, now every streamer had multiple expensive shows being made on the same scale, competing for talent.  2022 saw the premieres of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," "House of the Dragon," "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power," "Interview With the Vampire," "Andor," and more.  Budgets ballooned and production times kept growing longer.  Many shows were forced to weather multiple delays, and then the streaming programmers made an important discovery.  Even if fans were forced to wait two or even three years, in the case of popular shows like "Stranger Things" or "The Mandalorian," it didn't impact their ratings when they came back.  And because the streamers were even less impacted by the traditional scheduling needs of the networks, they could program with much more flexibility, premiering shows year-round and at any time of day.       

       

Then the whole entertainment industry contracted sharply after rapid growth in the late 2010s, and suddenly everyone was much more risk averse.  Episode counts dropped again, to as low as six or seven episode seasons due to cost cutting.  The streamers started waiting to renew some shows until after a new season had aired and the ratings came in, so pre-production often couldn't get started until months later.  For the bigger, more complicated shows featuring lots of spectacle and CGI, like "Andor," pre-production times have also ballooned, so it can be a year before cameras start rolling.  Production itself can take up to a year, and then post-production is another year.  That's how we've arrived at these massive three year gaps between seasons of television.  The production cycle now looks closer to what we'd expect for blockbuster franchise movies than traditional television, because that's what we've been getting - shows featuring movie stars, with movie budgets and movie quality effects.     

I want to point out that shows like this are still the exception rather than the norm. Cheaper streaming offerings like "The Bear" and "Hacks" are still consistently delivering ten episode seasons yearly.  "The Pitt" got a lot of attention this spring for delivering a fifteen-episode first season, and promising another by January.  Note that "The Pitt" is a medical drama that only has one major set and no CGI blandishments that I could spot.  However, understandably it's the splashier "House of the Dragon" and "Stranger Things" sized shows that are getting more attention.

The streaming executives and showrunners and everyone working behind the scenes are well aware of their audience's discontent, and we've seen efforts to scale down some shows and keep production times shorter.  However, I'll caution that trying to speed things along usually doesn't end well when it comes to big, complicated shows like "Game of Thrones."  We all know what happened to the last season of "Game of Thrones."  There are going to be these behemoth productions that come back every couple of years for as long as people keep watching them, but there's also been a definite shift to make more television that, well, resembles traditional television.

Expect more shows like "The Pitt" and fewer like "The Rings of Power" for a while, at least until the streamers find a new equilibrium.  And given the way things are going, I don't think the industry disruptions are over yet.   

---