And What Didn't Make My Top Ten Episodes of 2025-2026

Boy, there was a lot of television this year.  I have a list of honorable mentions that's the same length as my actual Top Ten list, which isn't something that's happened before.  Like last year, I want to focus on the more notable shows and episodes I watched instead of trying to be comprehensive. 

Let's start with the big finales - "Stranger Things" and "The Boys," which got the most press.  There was an outsized amount of wailing and carrying on from certain parts of their fanbases, who felt let down that the big finales didn't live up to their expectations.  Frankly, my expectations for both shows were never that high, given the nature of the programs, and I found both endings reasonably enjoyable.  "The Boys" finale was probably the best episode of its season, with Homelander finally getting what was coming to him.   Apologies to "The Righteous Gemstones,""Hacks," "Outlander," and "Euphoria," but these were never in my rotation, and I'll have to catch up on them at a later time.

Some buzzed-about new shows that didn't make the list include "Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," which is a much smaller scale "Game of Thrones" spinoff with an excellent cast.  However, the limited scale and lower stakes means that it hasn't really had the opportunity to hit the dramatic highs of the other Westeros shows.  It's very charming, but I'm waiting to see what it will grow into.  "Alien: Earth" got some love, especially for its episode that homages the original "Alien," but I liked watching the hybrids and the recovered aliens week-to-week a lot better.  There's a ton of potential here that I hope "Alien: Earth" gets a chance to build on.  "Spider-Noir" is a weird curiosity that I'm glad got made, and it works better than I ever would have expected.  "Wonder Man" was a fun break from the MCU norm, but not really my thing.  Also, "Ironheart," "Smoke," "Margo's Got Money Troubles," and "Starfleet Academy" were uneven and got mixed responses, but I enjoyed them all..

Lots of returning shows had good seasons, but most didn't quite have the highs they had in the past, including "Slow Horses," "The Pitt," "Invincible,"  "Foundation," "The Artful Dodger," "The Diplomat," "Only Murders in the Building," and "The Night Manager."  As a former '90s kid, I also enjoyed the nostalgic returns of "King of the Hill" and "South Park" after long hiatuses, and the newest season of "Futurama."  "Gary," the surprise prequel episode to "The Bear" from this spring got more attention than the previous season from the summer of 2025.  "Gary" was fine, but I preferred the season finale episode "Goodbye."  I think the return of "Beef" also belongs in this category, even though the show is an anthology.   "Oh the Comfort, the Inexpressible Comfort" was my favorite installment, a sort-of evil mirror universe version of an episode of "The Pitt."

Two of the episodes that came closest to making the list were released at the tail end of May - the finale of the second season of "The Four Seasons," an episode called "Maratona" set in Italy, and an excellent "Rick and Morty" spin on the premise of "Severance," where we're introduced to the horror of Vacation Rick.  "Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake's" Karmic worm episode was also a contender for a long time, one of the weirdest and yet most comforting half hours I've seen in a while.

Finally, all my best to "The Late Show" crew for putting on several wonderful episodes in the closing weeks of the program, and everyone over at "Last Week Tonight" and "The Daily Show" for continuing the good fight.  I'm very aware that the most significant television episode of the past year was the
"60 Minutes" CECOT episode, which probably marked the true ending of the venerable news program for all intents and purposes.  It doesn't feel right to put it on a list like this, but I at least want to acknowledge it here.  

And while it's looking less and less likely that we'll get the full revival of "The Muppet Show," the special event version with Sabrina Carpenter was a wonderful trip down memory lane.  Seth Rogen, all is forgiven.  

That was my 2025-2026 season in television.  See you around.  

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2025-2026

The amount of new shows on this list is very high compared to previous years.  Maybe it's because this feels like a transitional year in a lot of ways.  Maybe it's because a lot of the returning shows hit some bumps.  In any case, it was a good year for television and I have a lot to talk about.

A quick reminder before we start that I watch a lot of genre television, I'm notoriously bad with comedies, and I have a neverending "To Watch" list.  I use the Emmy rules for cutoff dates, which means that this list covers everything from the start of June, 2025 to the end of May, 2026.   Entries below are unranked, and I'm limiting myself to one episode per show or miniseries. 

I will endeavor to keep spoilers to a minimum, but please watch your step.  

Dexter: Resurrection, "Call Me Red" - Let's start with some fanservice.  The first few episodes of "Dexter; Resurrection" do a nice job of setting up a new status quo for Dexter and son in New York.  However, it's when the past rears up unexpectedly in the fourth episode that the series feels like it's really sliding back into a familiar groove and hits its stride.  Peter Dinklage as a rich eccentric is also one of the highlights of a wonderfully macabre, pulpy season.  

Death By Lightning, "The Man From Ohio" - This miniseries about the election and assassination of President James Garfield in the 1880s feels wonderfully immediate for a historical drama, thanks to a bumper crop of excellent performances.  The opening episode introduces us to all the main players, and sees Garfield win the nomination at the Republican convention - depicted as a chaotic, unpredictable event where political fortunes are made.

Pluribus, "Grenade" - I love science-fiction shows that really think about the consequences of the world-changing "what if" scenarios they create.  "Pluribus" is about nearly all humans becoming a collective consciousness, the ramifications of which are explored over the whole season.  "Grenade" is the first episode where we really get a dialogue between our heroine and the "Others," leading to so many, many more questions.  And a grenade!

Paradise, "Graceland" - The season two opener is one of the show's exceptional character deep-dives, this one about a Graceland tour guide, played by Shailene Woodley, and how she spent the apocalypse.  With barely any connection to the rest of "Paradise" until the very end, the episode does a great job of creating new stakes and goals while introducing us to the heretofore unseen world of the post-Apocalypse United States outside of Paradise.  

Task, "Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing, There is a River" - "Task" is a crime miniseries carefully written to balance two stories on opposing sides of the law, and here's where they finally collide.  Though the ending feels inevitable, it turns out that our antihero figure, Robbie Prendergrast still has a few aces up his sleeve.  And I appreciate that the show's finale gives the surviving characters a measure of grace in spite of all of their losses.   

Widow's Bay, "Beach Reads" - Honestly, I wasn't really feeling "Widow's Bay" until this episode, where the perspective shifts to the character of Patricia, and we get a fantastic parody of folkloric horror media.  It's executed so beautifully, with all these little visual details and hints as to what's actually happening, plus the scary bits are actually pretty scary.  This and Patricia's later faceoff with the local serial killer were easily the best parts of a great first season.

The Lowdown, "The Sensitive Kind,"  - This episode wraps up all of the season's mysteries, and delivers a surprising amount of justice.  It could even be mistaken for a happy ending, thanks to Ethan Hawke's scrappy journalist character finally accepting that the best way to tell the truth about a dead man is to honor his wishes.  Of course, this still takes some work.  I have this in my notes as the one where Keith David's put upon PI ends up on bovine muscle relaxers. 

Heated Rivalry, "The Cottage" - If you want a feel-good ending, however, there was none better than the capper to the first season of "Heated Rivalry."  The show started out with steamy secret hookups, and ended with Shane and Ilya tentatively acknowledging that they're in a full-blown romantic relationship.  And the unexpected thrills and laughs that come with finally admitting this to themselves (and a few others) made for some absolutely sublime television. 

DTF St. Louis, "Missouri Mutual Life & Health Insurance Company" - How do I describe this episode or this show?  Let's just say it's about three middle aged people and their complicated relationships.  This one focuses on Linda Cardellini's Carol, whose efforts to save her husband from his own worst impulses seem to be doomed, possibly giving her a motive to kill him.  It also features the most unlikely and instantly iconic musical moment of the year.

Only in Monroe, "May 22 202" - The last episode of "The Late Show" with Stephen Colbert interviewing a Beatle was fine.  However, it feels like his return to hosting the "Only in Monroe" public television talk show, less than 24 hours later, was where he really got to let loose.  Featuring Jeff Daniels as guest, and Jack White as sidekick/musical director, Colbert spent an hour doing much more absurdist and free-form comedy than his old job ever allowed for.  And it was fantastic.

Honorable mention: The "Lord of the Flies" miniseries

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"Project Hail Mary" Scores

"Project Hail Mary" is the closest thing to a movie that I was guaranteed to enjoy.  It's comedic science-fiction, a genre I adore.  It's Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directing, with a Drew Goddard script based on the Andy Weir novel.  It stars Ryan Gosling as a perpetually scruffy middle school science teacher named Ryland Grace, who got himself kicked out of the scientific establishment years ago, but is now being recruited to help save the world.  A bunch of microscopic space critters called astrophage are feeding on the sun, you see, and causing it to dim.  The loss of energy spells doom for life on Earth unless they can figure out how to stop it.  But though the stakes are high, the movie is anything but glum, making great use of Gosling's comedic talents, and a boatload of fancy special effects.  And if you don't want any spoilers for the movie, you should probably stop reading here and go watch it.

Still with me?  I read Weir's Project Hail Mary a year ago in anticipation for the film, and enjoyed it.  The movie is a very good adaptation that left out a lot of the science, but surprisingly kept in almost everything else.  This means that the pacing is a little rough, particularly the sped-up ending, but there are also a few nice additions, like humanizing Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller), the implacable task force leader in charge of Project Hail Mary.  The biggest change is that the movie focuses more on the relationship between Grace and the alien he meets light years away from home, a faceless rock-creature that Grace names Rocky (James Ortiz).  The narrative is split between Grace in the present day on the Hail Mary spaceship, and his muddled but gradually returning memories of his work on Earth, and how he ended up on this mission.  Smartly, the filmmakers decide to skip most of the early introductory stuff in the book and just get straight to Grace and Rocky meeting, learning to communicate, and becoming best cross-species science bros.  

The Golden Globes got a lot of guff for classifying the last movie based on an Andy Weir book, "The Martian," as a comedy.   I don't want to hear any of those complaints about "Project Hail Mary" when this inevitably happens again, because it is absolutely a buddy comedy, without question.  The movie has its moments of spacefaring awe and wonder, but what keeps it so engaging is watching Grace and Rocky interacting on a personal level, and figuring out how to help each other in their shared missions.  Gosling's Ryland Grace leans heavily on goofy humor as a defense mechanism, which Lord and Miller enable wherever they can.  The slapstick is fun, but it's the subtler stuff that really got to me.  Grace's collection of dorky knitwear and thematically appropriate T-shirts is perfect.  

Rocky is already iconic, a cinematic alien that looks like no other.  He is essentially a mobile pile of rocks that is configured like a five-legged spider.  Rocky has no face, but is very articulate with his multiple arms, insectoid digits, and musical vocalizations.  Eventually he is given a human voice via Grace's translation program, but the most important part of his performance is physical.  He gestures.  He dances.  He mimics.  He gets across a wide range of emotions from happiness to fear to deadpan exasperation simply with body language.  Rocky was reportedly mostly performed with puppets and animatronics, which likely contributed to the very effective screen chemistry that Rocky shares with Ryan Gosling onscreen.  

"Project Hail Mary" works great as an optimistic, feel-good space adventure, and arrives at a time when audiences are very receptive to it.  And I think it's the optimism that's the important part, as someone who loves science-fiction but has been weary of the overabundance of dystopian fiction in recent years.  The more cerebral parts of the book mostly end up in the margins of the movie, which is probably for the best.  One thing about the film that caught my attention was that its pop culture references were pretty dated - "Rocky," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and the Beatles.  But then again, that is also fitting, as "Project Hail Mary" successfully evokes the spirit of that age of space exploration where we didn't automatically believe that the aliens were bad, or the mission was hopeless.  And we could certainly use more movies with that mindset going forward.         

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The 2025-2026 Television I Didn't Watch

In advance of my top ten episodes list for the 2025-2026 season (I use the Emmy eligibility calendar), I want to talk about some of the shows that I didn't watch this year.  There seem to be more and more every year, so the titles discussed below are only the most high-profile ones that I actually have something to say about.  I reserve the right to revisit these choices in the future, but I still haven't seen anything from last year's list.

"Bait" - This is the Riz Ahmed series about a British Pakistani actor who is auditioning for James Bond.  And that's one of the most interesting and daring ideas for a show that I've heard about in a long while, and kudos to Amazon Prime for letting him do it.  However, I've long had an aversion to shows about actors and showbiz satires (still haven't gotten around to "Hacks") and "Bait" was putting up a lot of red flags on that front.  So despite the good notices, it's getting a pass for now.  

"Chief of War" - Here's another ambitious passion project, a historical drama about the clashes among the various tribes of the Hawaiian islands.  Jason Momoa stars as a warrior chief in the late 18th century who would play an instrumental role in the unification of Hawaii.  The dialogue is largely native Hawaiian, and the cast features an impressive collection of Pacific Islander actors.  And do I like epic war stories enough to watch nine episodes of this?  Not really, no.  

"I Love LA"  I really like Rachel Sennott in everything that I've seen her in.   However, I'm still at that age where comedies about attractive young people trying to get their post-graduate lives together don't have much appeal for me.  I think I lasted all of three episodes of "Girls," and with "I Love LA" I already knew it wasn't going to happen.  The cast also features Odessa A'Zion who was so great in "Marty Supreme," Josh Hutcherson, and a ton of celebrity cameos. 

"IT: Welcome to Derry" - This should have been right up my alley.  I love Stephen King.  However, this is a prequel to the Andy Muschietti "IT" movies, and one of those was okay and the other was pretty bad.  I'm also wary of the shared universe style spinoff shows that aren't directly based on King's work, so I've put this one and the Hulu show "Castle Rock" aside for now, to possibly come back to after I've finished all the other King series I haven't gotten around to yet.  

"The Chair Company" - Well, I watched the Tim Robinson film "Friendship," and I didn't connect with it at all, so I don't think I'm going to do any better with his latest television series, which has been described as a paranoid thriller and absurdist black comedy about a guy who becomes obsessed with a chair manufacturing company.  I think I'd probably start with episodes of "I Think You Should Leave" if I want to dip my toes into the Tim Robinson universe again.

"Half Man" - I have heard some fantastic things about this series, which is Richard Gadd' follow-up to "Baby Reindeer."  Gadd is playing a completely different character here, one of two brothers who share an intense and troubling relationship.   The other lead is Jamie Bell, who has always been good in everything I've seen him in.  The trouble here is the sheer intensity of the content.  Just reading some of the episode synopses had me cringing, so I'm going to keep my distance.

"Rooster" - Bill Lawrence has created a lot of good shows, and Steve Carrell is a dependable leading man.  The ensemble, which includes Danielle Deadwyler, Phil Dunster, and John C. McGinley, is also very tempting.  However, this came out around the same time as the college campus romance "Vladimir," and not too long after I finished the college episodes of "Man on the Inside," and more middle-aged campus hijinks were just not something I had the mental space for.

"Young Sherlock" - I like Sherlock Holmes media.  But Guy Ritchie doing Sherlock Holmes?  A young, cocky, arrogant Sherlock Holmes whose intellect is submerged under about a mile of bravado?  Yeah, no thanks.

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"Wuthering Heights" and "The Bride!"

Emerald Fennell made a new version of "Wuthering Heights," and Maggie Gyllenhaal did a new take on "The Bride of Frankenstein" called "The Bride!" and I need to talk about these two together.  Both take the original stories and rework them into something different, using anachronistic elements, a lot of camp, and a lot of emphasis on style over substance.  Both function as star vehicles for their leading ladies - Margot Robbie and Jessie Buckley respectively.  I think one movie mostly works and one mostly doesn't, but both are so bold and display so much ambition that I have to offer my sincerest appreciation to everyone involved for getting the 2026 "Wuthering Heights" and "The Bride!" to the big screen in their current forms.  If nothing else, these movies are big, uninhibited, and more than a little bit bonkers.  And I love that.  

"Wuthering Heights" starts out mostly following the plot of the Emily Bronte novel, with the impoverished but headstrong Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) growing up with her foundling adopted brother Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) under the questionable care or Cathy's dissolute father (Martin Clunes).  To improve her family's fortunes Cathy marries a rich neighbor, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), though she really loves Heathcliff.  He disappears and returns many years later, unexpectedly rich, and Cathy finds her feelings for him have only increased.  And then the movie ditches Bronte and never looks back.  Cathy and Heathcliff's love affair is the centerpiece of the film, full of torrid imagery and scandalous behavior, but little actual sex.  Some of their encounters feel anticipatory of magazine photo spreads, with over-the-top costuming, dramatic color palettes, and increasingly campy, horny, and downright bizarre expressions of desire.  

And this all would have probably gone over a lot better if the movie wasn't called "Wuthering Heights," (the quotation marks are not optional) and the characters weren't called Cathy and Heathcliff.  As an adaptation, frankly the movie isn't even trying.  It tones down the notoriously cruel and damaged characters to the point of toothlessness.  It tacks on a hurried and compromised new ending that kneecaps any sense of the larger themes of the original novel.  If you have no familiarity with the original "Wuthering Heights," the new adaptation comes across as a messy, but fairly harmless bodice-ripper pastiche with a nice Charlie XCX score, inventive production design, and some amusingly trashy plot twists.  Robbie and Elordi do have some chemistry with each other, and understand the assignment - playing at a heightened, unhinged version of romance that doesn't need to make any kind of sense.  It would have probably been more entertaining if Fennell had fully embraced the darker, more sexually deviant elements that kept being hinted at, but alas this isn't "Saltburn," and nobody gets to be truly nasty in this universe.

On to "The Bride!" which is definitely guilty of trying to do too much.  Set in 1930s Chicago, Jessie Buckley plays a dual role as gun moll named Ida, and the spirit of Mary Shelley who possesses Ida one evening, full of rage and unfulfilled creative need.  This leads to Ida's tragic death and subsequent resurrection by Dr. Cornelia Euphronius (Annette Bening), who is working at the behest of a curious newcomer to the city named "Frank" (Christian Bale).  And I suppose it's not really a spoiler that "Frank" turns out to be the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein over a century ago, which means that both the monster and his creator, Mary Shelley, are characters in this movie.  The resurrected Ida, who I will now refer to as The Bride, goes on a journey of discovery exploring her identity, monstrosity, and capability for love and violence.  

"The Bride!" strikes out in a totally original direction from its very first frames, so we don't have to worry much about the source material here.  However, it's a very chaotic film that combines horror, gangster, camp, romance, and even musical elements with a big dose of metatextual commentary.  Trying to follow the "Bonnie and Clyde" plot feels like an exercise in futility, especially when a pair of detectives played by Peter Skarsgaard and Penelope Cruz show up to be boring.  However, when the movie is following Frank and The Bride, it's very watchable.  The performances are good - very good, even.  It's worth seeing the movie just to watch Jessie Buckley play The Bride with so much exuberant freakishness.  I've seen mixed reactions to the inclusion of Mary Shelley, who keeps breaking into the narrative with her rambling interjections, but I thought she was great, especially after I turned on the closed captioning so I could better parse what she was saying.      

However, the movie is simply too scattered and underdeveloped to leave much impact.  "Poor Things" was a much more subversive, more coherent take on a feminist "Frankenstein" narrative.  By comparison, "The Bride!" feels far too slick and surface level.  It's also often preoccupied with its references to Herman Melville, Mel Brooks, and 1930s movies, which are all jumbled up in increasingly obscure configurations.  I don't feel like "The Bride!" wasted my time, but I don't feel I got much out of it either, beyond a few good scenes in isolation and the most WTF needle drop of the year.  It's one of those movies that is so singular and strange that I'm happy it exists to be puzzled over, like "Megalopolis," even though I didn't vibe with it.   I also find it encouraging that Maggie Gyllenhaal got to make this at a major studio, which means that riskier films, made on this scale, are still occasionally possible.  

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"The Bear," Year Five

I was under the mistaken impression that the fourth season was the final season of "The Bear."  So imagine my surprise when eight new episodes were dropped a few weeks ago, plus an extra episode titled "Gary" that is about Richie and Michael taking a fateful day trip to Gary, Indiana.  It was probably meant to be a flashback at some point in this season, but it doesn't really fit into the flow of this batch of episodes anywhere, so I'm glad that they released it separately.  

 

Anyway, the fifth and final season of "The Bear" is required viewing if you enjoyed any of the previous parts of this show.  If you lost interest during the increasingly meandering and indulgent (but still very good) third and fourth seasons, it's time to get back in the kitchen.  Season five wraps up the whole series and pays off all the various character arcs, resolves some longstanding problems, and answers most of the big questions too.  The pacing issues are largely gone, with the show's creators taking a page from "The Pitt," and having seven of the eight episodes take place during one tense, nail-biting, stormy night at the The Bear where everything goes wrong, but the staff still has to pull off a miracle and keep the restaurant running through a full meal service.  The last episode serves as a coda that surveys the aftermath and lets everyone say goodbye.

What's great about this last season is that it shows us the characters at their best and working as a team at last.  After so many seasons of everyone being at odds, fighting their own personal demons, and only making progress in fits and starts, this final run of episodes lets them all succeed together.  There are still plenty of clashes and setbacks, and the writers engineer crisis upon crisis in the final push, but the characters get to rise to the occasion, showing all the ways that they've grown.  For those viewers who like "The Bear" because it lets them watch professionals work at the top of their game, this will be catnip.  I especially like the way that all these different, interlocking subplots develop involving the crew in the kitchen, the staff in the front of the house, and even Oliver Platt's Uncle Cicero, who gets to trudge around Chicago with a misfit crew on his own mission.    

I love that everything in this season feels like it's been taken back to basics.  There are still an array of impressive guest stars, but the show doesn't draw much attention to them.  The only major new character is the Computer's niece Cheese (Elsie Fisher), who tags along with Cicero's crew for the evening.  Some episodes run significantly longer than others, but not in a way that feels excessive or indulgent.  One of the longest episodes, "Caramel," is also the most tense and nerve-wracking, where we go through the process of creating every single course of the final dinner service, almost in real time.  The running time is close to a full hour, but it's an hour that flies by.  The humor worked for me throughout - even the Faks, who are deployed exactly as much as they need to be.  Also, the show backing off from being so singularly focused on Carmy helps it immensely.  You could absolutely make another season or two of "The Bear" with Sydney or Richie taking over at this point.  I don't really want that though - I feel like the show is already pushing its luck, and it would be a shame to undercut the finale.

Frankly, I'm a sucker for a happy ending, and that's exactly what "The Bear" gives us here.  Nearly every major character gets a win, even if it's coming to the decision that they need to throw in the towel. Best of all, the wins feel earned, never coming too easy and never feeling too telegraphed.  Sure, some loose ends don't get tied up, and I know there will be complaints about the resolution of Carmy's character arc, but I came away from "The Bear" thoroughly satisfied with the last course and inclined to leave a big tip.  

Check please. 

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So, About "Secretary"

I've spent a lot of this month clearing out my "To Watch" list.  One title that I've been eyeing for what feels like forever has been "Secretary," which has been pitched to me as the one good movie about a very verboten subject, sadomasochism.  "Secretary" was said to be the rare feature film that took the underlying relationship dynamics seriously, and dared to portray sadomasochistic behavior in a positive light.  This attitude was especially prevalent when "Fifty Shades of Grey" was popular, and I will disclose now that I've never read or watched anything from that franchise.  I have no particular issue with the content.  I just haven't gotten around to it.

Still, this means I built up "Secretary" in my mind to be something that it clearly isn't.  It is not a movie that depicts a sadomasochistic relationship realistically, with a clear-eyed, unbiased look at all the day-to-day give and take of making this dynamic work.  It's not an especially sexually explicit or prurient film, with most of the sensitive physical acts taking place just offscreen.  I can imagine the calls with the MPAA discussing shot lengths and camera angles.  The movie was released in 2002, mind you, which feels like a lifetime ago when it comes to content standards.  I'm pretty sure I've seen more nudity in random episodes of "Girls."  Oddly, there's not much direct acknowledgement of the sadomasochism in "Secretary" until almost the end, with no discussion of consent or boundaries before the leads get kinky - which I know that "Fifty Shades" at least made an attempt to talk about up front.

"Secretary" is pretty down-to-earth, and features characters who aren't fabulously rich or look like Dakota Johnson, but it's still operating in the realm of romantic fantasy.  Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lee, a meek young woman who just got out of a mental institution after a botched round of self-harm was mistaken for a suicide attempt.  She gets a job as a secretary to a demanding attorney, E. Edward Grey, played by James Spader of course.  The two gradually discover that their sternly authoritarian employer/employee work dynamic is something that they both enjoy, and as the relationship moves from professional to romantic, their workplace activities go from flirtatious to provocative to extreme.  However, while Lee finds masochism empowering, enjoying sadism seems to spook Edward, and neither of them are sure how far their new unorthodox relationship can go. 

Directed by Stephen Shainberg and written by Erin Cressida Wilson, "Secretary" doesn't push too many obvious boundaries or take any big risks, aside from the way it frames its subject matter as a love story instead of a freak show.  I want to emphasize that it is a very low-budget affair.  On the sign for E. Edward Grey's law office, there's a "Secretary Wanted" panel that lights up like a motel vacancy indicator.  This signalled to me that "Secretary" would have used more fanciful filmmaking elements and fantasy signifiers if it had the money for them.  Instead, it mostly looks like a typical indie romance from the early 2000s, with a couple of throwback elements like typewriters instead of computers, and dated women's fashions.  There's one brief, vaguely surreal dream sequence that looks like it was made with consumer video software, and probably wasn't anything close to what the filmmakers had in mind.   

Almost all of the film's effectiveness is due to the performances.  Maggie Gyllenhaal is fantastic, and the smartest thing that the filmmakers do is to put her front and center the majority of the time.  "Secretary" is very one-sided in its portrayal of the sadomasochistic relationship, showing us nearly everything from Lee's perspective as a masochist, and spending considerable effort to show us what she gets out of her interactions with Edward.  It's an old adage that the MPAA is terrified of showing female sexual pleasure onscreen, and "Secretary" must have been a nightmare for them, because so much of it is built around Lee's uninhibited reaction shots to what would be abusive behavior in a different context.

James Spader, by contrast, is clearly in a supporting role.  Though we get plenty of voyeuristic views of Lee in various BDSM scenarios, E. Edward Grey is a very closed off character.  More is suggested than outright stated about what's going on in his head, but Spader hasn't been in a ridiculously high number of erotic thrillers for nothing, and has no trouble getting across E. Edward Grey's conflicted feelings, shame spiral, and eventual self-acceptance. Spader and Gyllenhaal also pair very well, with plenty of screen chemistry.  I cheered for them to get together and continue their deviant antics, despite not being convinced that the sadomasochistic part of their relationship was actually healthy for either of them.  

But I don't think that was the point of "Secretary" in the first place.      

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