"Pluribus" For One and All

There are a lot of spoilers in "Pluribus" that make it difficult to talk about.  It's a science fiction show from Vince Gilligan starring Rhea Seehorn, it's very conceptual and deliberately paced, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  It's not going to appeal to everyone, because it's not in a hurry at all, but I loved the way that the first season unfolded, slowly giving us more and more information over nine episodes, and letting the characters work through various dilemmas at their own pace.  About 90% of the show is solely focused on Seehorn, playing our protagonist Carol Sturka, a difficult woman who is still a good person.  How much you like "Pluribus" may come down to how much you like spending time with her.  From this point on, I'll be spoiling the events of the first two episodes.

"Pluribus" is my kind of science-fiction, all about exploring a fantastical concept that isn't just an excuse for cool action sequences or power fantasies.  Rather, the focus is on how the world changes because of this new event, and exploring all the unintended consequences and unexpected issues that come about in its wake.  In this case, you have everyone on Earth, minus eleven people, becoming part of a single hive mind through an extra-terrestrial agent.  Gilligan and his collaborators have clearly spent a lot of time thinking this through, and a lot of the fun of "Pluribus" is watching them spend an impressive amount of Apple TV+'s money to realize the sweeping, grand scale spectacle of humanity's transformation.  You don't need a lot of society and infrastructure when everyone is in perfect agreement with each other, and you can get so much more done, more efficiently.  Some of the most unnerving images in the show involve groups of people simply moving or talking in unison, which must have taken a monumental amount of work to achieve.

I always liked Seehorn as Kim Wexler in "Better Call Saul," and she's similarly fantastic as the very different Carol Sturka.  The show is just as much an examination of Carol as it is about the hive mind.  She's a successful romantic fantasy writer who wants to write more serious books, but isn't good enough to do that.  She doesn't like people much, except her partner Helen (Miriam Shor), and takes the loss of her very hard.  And despite being a curmudgeon and world class grump, who ticks off nearly every other person on the planet over the course of the first season, Carol discovers that she needs other people.  Seehorn is often the only character onscreen for large amounts of time, and the role is often very physical and demanding.  She does such a great job of keeping us in her headspace as she goes through doubts, frustrations, discoveries, and the grieving process.  Her relationship with the hive mind is fascinating to watch develop, since Carol is often stubborn, prickly, and downright mean, while the hive mind, usually embodied in the form of Carol's assigned "chaperone" Zosia (Karolina Wydra), is nothing but kind, generous, and accommodating.  I love that there's a real ambiguity as to whether Carol's resistance to "The Joining" is actually a good thing for her and the rest of humanity.    

  

"Pluribus" is the rare kind of show where I have no idea what's going to happen in most of the episodes, and I love it.  Most of it takes place in Albuquerque, but "Pluribus" also regularly goes globetrotting to Morocco, Peru, Colombia, and other far-flung locations.  Multiple episodes open with characters I don't know, speaking languages I don't speak, and I'm instantly caught up in figuring out what's happening every single time.  Vince Gilligan and his collaborators have earned the benefit of the doubt from me after all those years of "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul."  But even if they hadn't, "Pluribus" is executed so well, and the material is so consistently interesting that I'd be hooked regardless.  Of all the shows that came out in 2025, this is easily the most distinct, unique, and ambitious.  And it has my full attention.    

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Catching Up With "Slow Horses"

This write-up covers the second and third series of "Slow Horses."  I watched the first one back in 2022, but never wrote a review for it.  I haven't revisited it since then, so I'm playing fair and leaving it out of this post.  However, so far each series has functioned pretty well as an individual piece of media, and you could easily watch them in isolation from each other.  And if you like British crime series or spy series, "Slow Horses" is definitely one to seek out.

Gary Oldman played spymaster George Smiley to perfection in the most recent film version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," but the spy he'll likely be best remembered for is Jackson Lamb.  He's the head of Slough House, whose members have been nicknamed "slow horses."  This is the unit where the problem children of MI5 are banished, home to those who haven't erred seriously enough to be outright fired.  Its members include the screw-ups, the insubordinates, the addicts, and a few who have fallen through the cracks.  Lamb is a cynical, slovenly man of awful habits and worse hygiene, who has a long history in intelligence, and knows all the major players.  He is also secretly very good at his job, which is why Slough House keeps getting involved in stopping major threats to national security despite its reputation.

  

Oldman's performance is the main event, of course, with Lamb befouling the atmosphere and throwing zingers at everyone unlucky  enough to cross paths with him.  However, I like the whole ensemble.  The second lead is Jack Lowden, who plays River Cartwright, a former star agent and grandson of a famous spy (Jonathan Pryce), whose flair for heroics tends to go wrong.  He badly wants out of Slough House, but keeps getting into one catastrophe after another.  Other members of the team include ex-alcoholic administrator Catherine Standish (Saskia Reeves), formidable field agent Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar), family man Marcus Longridge (Kadiff Kirwan), spitfire drug addict Shirley Dander (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) and sleazy techie Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung).  Their bosses include the totally amoral MI5 leaders Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Ingrid Tearney (Sophie Okonedo), and MP Peter Judd (Samuel West).

I like that "Slow Horses" offers a little of everything.  Based on a series of novels by Mick Herron, the tone is darkly comedic, but the spy adventure elements are solid.  We get plenty of twisty John LeCarre power plays and conspiracies to untangle, and major characters are killed off with surprising regularity.  At the same time, the show has been steadily increasing the number of raucous James Bond-style action sequences, with the third series climaxing in a protracted gun battle.  Physical humor and pratfalls are not uncommon, though deployed with care, so as not to undercut the thrills.  Though our heroes can be counted on to do the right thing, and can be surprisingly competent in a pinch, they're also prone to making bad calls and being easy marks.  Cartwright has all the making of being a great spy, except that he takes things at face value too quickly, and is thus easy to manipulate.  Up against half the cast of "The Darkest Hour," he's totally outclassed, and it's such fun to watch him flounder. 

It was also a pleasant surprise to discover that the show is managing to deliver a full series yearly, with the sixth one due this year.  Also, six hour-long episodes is a perfectly good length to cover a novel's worth of material.  So far, each series has ended with a preview for the next one, and there are enough "Slough House" books still coming out that "Slow Horses" could easily run to the end of the decade adapting them all.  This depends on Gary Oldman sticking around, of course, and thankfully he seems to be having a very good time being very awful as Jackson Lamb.  

Keep an eye out for write-ups of the remaining series soon, because they're not going to last me very long at the rate I've been watching them.  

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The 2025 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 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.

It's Never Over Jeff Buckley - I generally like music documentaries, but I've found that I have little interest in the ones about musical artists where I'm not familiar with their music.  Jeff Buckley is an obscure singer-songwriter who put out one album and gained a cult following.  I'm sure the documentary about him is very good, but I'm also sure that I'm not likely to get much out of it.  

Ballad of a Small Player - Edward Berger directs a gambling film starring Colin Farrell, in scruffy loser mode, set in Macau.  A few critics I like are adamant that this is a hidden gem, but I remain wary.  "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Conclave" were respectable, but I didn't particularly enjoy either.  What really sank this one for me, though, were the totally unimpressed reactions this got at Toronto and Telluride early in the season.  

The Assessment - I generally watch every weird, high-concept science-fiction and speculative fiction film I hear about.  "The Assessment" is supposed to be about a future world where couples have to pass an interview to have a child.  However, this is just an excuse for a movie where Alicia Vikander gets to screw with Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel for two hours.  Once I saw the trailer, which looked insufferable, I dropped it in spite of positive reviews.

Magazine Dreams - This one had Oscar buzz when it originally premiered at Sundance back in 2023, but the allegations against Jonathan Majors quashed them.  After changing distributors, the film finally got a very limited release this year, and reviews were very positive, but this was never the kind of film that I was going to enjoy, due to the punishing subject matter.  Once it was out of contention for the major awards, I took the excuse to ignore it.  

Good Boy - I like the concept.  I get the concept.  However, watching an entire movie of a poor dog in danger from supernatural forces struck me as an experience I had absolutely no interest in having.  This was also a tiny production made for $70,000, helmed by a relative newcomer, so I wasn't keen on having to deal with shoestring aesthetics on top of everything else.  I'm glad people enjoyed this, but I'm also very sure about my decision to keep my distance.

Eleanor the Great - This is Scarlett Johansson's directing debut, starring June Squibb as a newcomer to New York who is accidentally mistaken for a Holocaust survivor.  The situation snowballs into a learning experience for everyone involved, and the trailer didn't do anything to convince me that the movie was any better than its tiresome plot.  The critical response was fine, but everything about "Eleanor" comes across as too contrived for me to take.     

Christy - Sydney Sweeney plays a female boxer who deals with domestic abuse.  I promise that I steered clear of all the culture war uproar around the film, and I'm avoiding it simply because this is a female-led awards hopeful that doesn't have much going for it except a lead performance that hasn't really made any waves.  I skip a lot of similar films like the Daniel Day Lewis starrer "Anemone," and I don't feel too bad about skipping this one too.  

Keeper - I'm a fan of Tatiana Maslany, but I've given Osgood Perkins enough chances.  After "The Monkey," I need a break from his brand of horror for a while.  And there were more than enough excellent horror films this year to keep me occupied. 

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"The Plague" Gets Under Your Skin

First time filmmaker Charlie Polinger has made a nerve-wracking film about a group of twelve and thirteen year-old boys at a water polo camp.  Everett Blunck stars as Ben, who runs afoul of the established group dynamics of the other boys, where a kid named Jake (Kayo Martin) has started a cruel game to treat the oddball Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) like he has contracted a mysterious "plague."  Desperate to fit in, Ben initially goes along with the ostracism, but also finds he enjoys being around Eli, who doesn't seem bothered by the negative reaction.

There have been many films about bullying and the way that adolescent growing pains can turn kids into monsters.  However, I've rarely seen a film like "The Plague" that lays out the forces at play so clearly.  The kids' cruelty looks harmless, but is extremely hurtful, even in the earliest stages.  It's immediately obvious that all of the boys involved in the game are vulnerable in some way or another, and most are like Ben - going along because nobody wants to be in the target role.  The ringleader, Jake, is the kind of smirking little instigator that seems Machiavellian to Ben, but later scenes make it clear that this is a child who is processing a lot of negative emotions very badly, and his cruelty is learned.  He has no real idea of the consequences of his behavior, or that the game will end up spinning out of everyone's control.  

The performances from the young leads are very good, and the writing is perceptive enough to nail the behaviors and dynamics of kids this age, even if the specific vernacular might not be right.  Ben is guileless enough to say exactly what he's thinking most of the time, and when he tries to feign amenability or aloofness, he's bad at it.  Eli seems to have no self-awareness, which seems odd for a kid his age, but not unlikely.  I found myself getting frustrated with Ben and Jake, and had to keep reminding myself that these were seventh graders who may have never been away from home for an extended period before, and whose social skills were rudimentary at best.  The kids being so young certainly increased the emotional intensity of the film throughout, and I found myself hyperaware in even the most innocuous dialogue scenes.    

You have to suspend disbelief about some aspects of "The Plague."  For instance, the only adult presence at the camp seems to be the coach Daddy Wags (Joel Edgerton), who is aware of the bullying and does his best to intervene when things get out of hand.  However, the lack of supervision was something that I couldn't help fixating on.  This is a horror/thriller, largely told from the subjective point of viewpoint of a prepubescent kid, so was this an artistic choice?  Was Daddy Wags the only adult around because that's what it felt like to Ben, and the other adults simply didn't register for him?  Was this to suggest that the camp, despite catering to the kind of rich kids who would have the money to play water polo, was financially cutting corners?  Or was this simply because the "Plague" is a low budget film and couldn't swing the cost of more adult actors?

My instinct is to go with the first option.  "The Plague" does a lot with a little, whipping up some potent horror imagery out of swimming pools, darkened bathrooms, and institutional corridors.  I especially like the opening underwater shot, where the boys appear to be headless as they tread water.  The sound design is a marvel, using human voices as part of the soundscape in places where you might not expect them.  Water is a recurring motif, naturally, standing in for the subconscious.  

Horror fans may come away disappointed because there's only one real moment of gore, most of the chills are strictly psychological, and the story stays mostly grounded in reality throughout.  However, I came away extremely impressed with everyone involved.

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"The Night Manager" and "Fallout" Return

I'm grouping the reviews for the second seasons of "The Night Manager" and "Fallout" together, because they're both short ones, albeit for different reasons.  In the case of "The Night Manager," it's a good season with plenty to talk about, but the spoilers are unwieldy, and I feel that saying less is more.  As for "Fallout," the new season is worth some acknowledgement, but I don't feel that I have that much to add that wasn't already covered in my review of the first season.  So, here we go.  

First, the second series of "The Night Manager" comes ten years after the first, and really should be treated as a self-contained sequel.  Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) and Angela Burr (Olivia Coleman) parted ways after the death of arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper (Hugh Laurie), and Pine has been quietly working in intelligence under Rex Mayhew (Douglas Hodge) at the Foreign Office.  Contact with a woman named Roxana (Camila Morone) brings Pine to Colombia, where a major arms deal appears to be in the works.  The key figure is the mysterious Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), who turns out to be a protege of Roper's.  We also get a new villain played by Indira Varma, and a new ally played by Hayley Squires.

We've swapped out directors, so Georgi Banks-Davies replaces Susanne Bier, but David Farr is back to script the whole series.  I'm happy to report that the quality hasn't fallen off at all, and the second season of "The Night Manager" is every bit as good as the first.  Thorny personal relationships and a very intense menage-a-trois are again at the center of the story, but the dynamics are different.  Hiddleston and all the returning cast are great, as expected, but the actor who really grabbed my attention this time around was Diego Calva, who I last saw in "Babylon," channeling a young Javier Bardem here to very good effect.  The new tropical setting is also very helpful in distinguishing this season as a different animal, with lots of excuses for everyone to get sweaty and disheveled.  As I mentioned previously, I do want to steer clear of spoilers, but I want to give the last episode special kudos for being one of the very best season cappers I've seen in a while, with a lot of good surprises, and the best set-up for a possible third series that may never happen.  And if it doesn't I won't even be mad. 

On to the second season of "Fallout," which follows Lucy, Cooper, Maximus, and Norm on their various adventures.  There's less of a piecemeal approach to exploring the "Fallout" world this year, and more of a commitment to sticking with the various storylines that are playing out.  Hank (Kyle McLachlan) and Steph (Annabel O'Hagen) become more prominent characters who also get their own narratives, and there are some fun new recurring characters, including those played by Kumail Nanjiani and Macaulay Culkin as prominent members of the Legion.  As promised in the last episode of the prior season, there's a lot of time spent with Lucy and Cooper in and around New Vegas, who learn that there was a Vault specifically for management located there, and Hank may be restarting certain experiments.  

Frankly, I wasn't too interested in the plottier parts of the season.  It's clear from pretty early on that the showrunners aren't going to provide any major payoffs, and they spend a lot of time setting up bigger conflicts down the road.  We have several factions preparing for war again, scuffles for leadership in both the Vaults and the Legion, and more revelations via flashback as to what Hank and his cohorts were up to in the past.  Cooper and Lucy are briefly on the outs with each other when their priorities clash.  Everybody makes some incremental progress - most notably Lucy, who becomes more comfortable with violence on her quest to bring her father to justice - but mostly it feels like we're playing the side quests.  

Eight episodes is enough to build up some stakes, so that the big, violent, season finale feels kind of meaningful, and one of the major characters gets a pretty good exit.  And that's not too bad for a show like this, which is still very dependent on the spectacle and the action.  The shock value of the gore and black humor have worn off a bit though, so this season isn't as fun.  However, it's still fun enough that I plan to keep watching.  

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"The Boys," Year Five

Parts of "The Boys" fandom seem to have vocally turned against the show in its last season, which is getting weirdly common with genre media these days.  I find this a little mystifying, because "The Boys" has been pretty consistent in quality throughout its whole run, and has even been released on a reasonable schedule - five seasons across seven years.  My pet theory is that it's the same old story.  Some of the fans expected the show to be something that it never was, and handled the disappointment badly.  "The Boys" did decrease in quality the longer it went on, ran short on ideas, started repeating itself, and had to juggle the same issues that all long-running shows do.  Still, I thought it ended just fine - better than "Supernatural," or "Preacher," other genre shows from the same creators.

The fifth season has its ups and downs.  Like "Daredevil: Born Again," events in "The Boys" mirror current events in 2026 to a startling degree.  However, "The Boys" has been purposefully reflecting the rise of MAGA and the alt right since the beginning, with Homelander standing in for Donald Trump.  Still, it's wild how some of the extreme escalations in Homelander's tyrannical behavior look an awful lot like what the Trump administration is actually doing, starting with our heroes incarcerated in a "freedom camp" in the season premiere.  The season's biggest storyline involves The Boys hunting for the means to create a plague that will only affect people with superpowers, and to prevent Homelander from obtaining Compound V, a substance that will potentially give him immortality.  After establishing total control over the US government, Homelander finds he's still miserable, so he turns to religion.  With the help of the superpowered televangelist, Oh Father (Daveed Diggs), he decides to create a new American belief system with Homelander himself as the supreme being.  

Beyond this point, there will be spoilers.

I suspect that one of the reasons certain fans of "The Boys" were so unhappy is that this season, is that it stays pretty small scale throughout.  There's no epic spectacle, no mass casualty events, and a fairly modest amount of property damage.  We do get our big showdown in the last episode, but it's not any more impressive than the showdowns we've seen in previous seasons.  The pacing is also fairly slow and meandering, not really building up to a major climax.  Instead, the season could be called a collection of false-starts, abrupt endings, and lots of indulgent nonsense that the creators wanted to try while they still had the chance.  There's an episode that's essentially a bunch of one-shot character shorts that at one point involves a lot of random celebrity cameos and a few "Supernatural" alums.  It's also very apparent that the creators are setting up storylines for other shows in "The Boys" universe - we're at three spinoffs so far.  This means some characters like Solider Boy really wear out their welcome, and nobody bothers to explain who any of these kids from the "Gen V" show are.  

Still, I was satisfied with the way things shook out, even if the season felt like it was running short of material.  This time there is no more pulling of punches or ducking out on the consequences.  The bill comes due and there are a lot of major character deaths.  Some of them should have probably happened earlier, but none of them feel cheap.  Endings are difficult, and I thought that the showrunners did the right thing choosing to focus on the characters instead of the carnage.  My favorite storylines this year had to do with the Vought toadies like Ashley and Firecracker dealing with their complicity in Homelander's reign of terror.  Ashley becoming Vice President and literally growing a second face on the back of her head (Who has her own personality!  And is telepathic!) is so much fun. 

Sure, there are missteps.  Everything involving Soldier Boy and Sage is pretty underwhelming.  Kimiko being able to talk felt kind of pointless, though clearly it needed to happen.  I wish some of the big character moments, like Hughie finally standing up to Butcher, were given some better buildup.  Honestly, I haven't been very invested enough in the show since the first season, so its slipping quality simply didn't bother me much.  The ending was telegraphed long in advance, and the fact that they stuck it was all I really wanted.          

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2006-2007

Below, find my top ten episodes for the 2006-2007 television season below, in no particular order.  And a few spoilers ahead, including that one episode of "The Wire."  I'm also cheating and counting a certain two-parter as a single episode.

30 Rock, "Black Tie" - Let's start off with the episode of "30 Rock" where we meet Jack's ex-wife, played by Isabell Rossellini, and Paul Reubens shows up as a degenerate Habsburg prince.  This was the first episode of the show that really clicked for me - the absurdity, the character dynamics, and of course the amazing use of the guest stars.  This is also the episode that got closest to putting Jack and Liz together, which thankfully never went anywhere.

Heroes, "Company Man" - The first season of "Heroes" was a phenomenon, and the best episode of that season was the spotlight episode for Jack Coleman's shady Noah Bennet character.  Written by Bryan Fuller, it's a villain/antihero origin story that shows how Bennet operates as a morally ambivalent agent of "The Company," who is nonetheless a good father who will make big sacrifices as needed.  Alas, the show was never this strong again.  

Battlestar Galactica, "The Occupation" - I really liked the New Caprica arc.  This season premiere clues us in on what's been going on with all the characters, and the new status quo and conflicts that have developed.  Gaius is a collaborator, Tigh is leading the resistance, and Starbuck is in prison under the thumb of a Callum Keith Rennie Cylon who is in love with her.  Lots of real world parallels and gutsy ideas are in play here that I really enjoyed. 

Dexter, "Born Free" - This episode was spoiled for me, as I didn't see it until the network broadcast in 2008, but I adored it.  The first season of "Dexter" is still probably the best one, and the truth about the Ice Truck Killer was one of the show's best reveals.  The performances are key to the episode's intensity, with Michael C. Hall and Christian Camargo taking no prisoners as a season's worth of tensions finally all pay off in the bloodiest way possible.    

Doctor Who, "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" - And here's that two-parter.  What would happen if the Doctor became human?  And in the face of an implacable threat, what would it mean to sacrifice that human existence?  This would be my pick for the best David Tennant era "Doctor Who" story, where the Doctor barely appears, but the consequences of his actions are far-reaching and deeply impactful for everyone involved.

How I Met Your Mother, "Slap Bet" - Let me clarify that this is the first "Slap Bet" episode, the one that sets up all the ones that followed and where Lily is appointed Slap Bet Commissioner. However, the highlight of the episode is the Robin Sparkles reveal, which is such a wonderful, nostalgic bit of nonsense that is somehow both celebratory of and deeply insulting to Canada.   This is likely the best episode of the show, just based on all the callbacks to it. 

Venture Bros. "Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?"- It came down to this or "Escape to the House of Mummies Part II," but I'm going with the State Dinner based on the quality of the dialogue and the character interactions.  I may have never laughed harder than at Mrs. Manstrong's come-ons to Brock, or Dean being possessed by the Ghost of Abraham Lincoln.  What's certain is that  I can never watch "The Manchurian Candidate" with a straight face again.  

Extras, "David Bowie" - It's one thing for David Bowie to put in a guest appearance on your sitcom.  It is quite another to have him show up to compose your own personal diss track and lead a sing-along insulting you to your face.  Of course, Ricky Gervais wrote the lyrics himself.  I wasn't a regular viewer of "Extras," but this episode and the clip of Bowie's appearance achieved near-universal acclaim almost instantly, and still brings a smile to my face.

Lost, "Through the Looking Glass"  - "We have to go back!"

The Wire, "Final Grades" - The fourth season of "The Wire" is one of the best seasons of television ever made, bar none.  I was completely gutted the first time I saw the finale, and the fates of the four boys we'd been following all year were revealed.  Never was it more apparent that the kids never had a chance, only reaching good outcomes through extraordinary intervention.  And in the case of Carver and Randy, even that wasn't enough.  

Honorable Mention

The Lost Room

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