2026 Summer Movie Wrap Up

Here's the domestic box office rankings for this summer:

1. Spider-man: Brand New Day

2. The Odyssey

3. Toy Story 5

4. Obsession

5.  The Devil Wears Prada 2

6. Backrooms

7. Minions & Monsters

8. The Mandalorian and Grogu

9. Moana

10. Disclosure Day 

Here's what I predicted back in April:

1. Spider-man: Brand New Day (10 pts)

2. Moana (1 pt)

3. The Odyssey (7 pts)

4. Minions and Monsters (3 pts)

5. The Devil Wears Prada 2 (10 pts)

6. Toy Story 5 (3 pts)

7. The Mandalorian and Grogu (7 pts)

8. Backrooms (5 pts)

9. Disclosure Day (7 pts)

10. Supergirl

Wild Cards: Masters of the Universe, Scary Movie 6, Mortal Kombat II

53 points!  I don't think I've ever done this well before.  Only one of my predicted titles wasn't somewhere on the final list, and several of my iffier guesses came much closer than I would have thought, like "Disclosure Day," "The Mandalorian and Grogu," and "The Devil Wears Prada 2."  For the record, "Supergirl" ended up being 13th after "Scary Movie" and "Mortal Kombat II."  However, probably my best move was correctly pegging "Backrooms" as one of the big horror titles this year.  I regret not paying more heed to the pre-season rumbles about "Obsession" being a possible breakout, but I don't think anybody predicted the heights it would reach.  

Looking at the bigger picture, it was a very good summer at the movies.  Lots of good movies did well, while the more mediocre programmers, like the live action "Moana" and the "Mandalorian" movies, underperformed significantly.  Several titles I didn't expect much from, like the new "Spider-man," "Toy Story," and "Minions" movies were much better than I expected.  Even "The Devil Wears Prada" sequel was actually trying to be about something.  It was a great surprise to see "Obsession" and "Backrooms" climb the charts, signalling a new generation of filmmakers coming in, and proving that movie theaters are not dead.  Sure, inflation is a big reason why the box office numbers were up, but lots of smaller films like "The Invite," "Hadestown: The Musical," and even "Coyote v. ACME" did well.  And while "Obsession" and "Backrooms" got so much coverage for being the work of internet creators, we also shouldn't overlook the finale of webseries "The Amazing Digital Circus" racking up over $36 million worldwide over its very limited run.  The theatrical experience lives on, and this means that there will be many summer movie seasons to come. 

Five decades after "Jaws," it feels like Steven Spielberg is finally reaching the end of his cultural relevancy.  I appreciate the big swing that "Disclosure Day" was, but I'm not surprised that it didn't connect with audiences.  "Supergirl" was a strange beast, a movie that seemed deliberately pitched at the sensibilities of twenty-something men, and wound up alienating the younger superhero audiences that James Gunn's "Superman" managed to win over last year.  "The Mandalorian" and "Minions & Monsters" both took some risks that were not rewarded, sadly, though I expect that their respective franchises will be okay in the long run.  "Star Wars: Starfighter" is one of the big titles being readied for the summer of 2027.  And though the live action "Moana"dramatically flopped, a live action "Rapunzel" is on its way in 2028.

"The Odyssey" is easily my favorite film of the summer, which came with a significant amount of culture war controversy from multiple fronts.  I guess this is to be expected in the age of the outrage-loving social media algorithms, but it was also telling that the movie's box office performance seemed entirely divorced from the online vitriol.  "Obsession" and "Backrooms," on the other hand, seemed driven primarily by younger, very online audiences who finally had movies that aimed directly at their cohort.  And though the superhero genre is definitely seeing an ebb, "Spider-man" movies always make money, and "Brand New Day" was no exception.  Though there are currently no plans for future installments, I expect that Tom Holland will be swinging back to our screens soon enough, regardless of whether the rest of the MCU remains viable.

 

Finally, I was happy to be proven wrong about the "Toy Story" franchise still being able to generate so much interest.  I feel like I've slipped out of the target audience for this series over the past few years, but it's nice to know it's still having an impact, and PIXAR is still handling it so well.

Next year, Bluey, Shrek, and Superman will be in the mix.  Until then, happy watching!

   

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Your 2026 Emmy Nominations

The Emmys are a barometer of who's hot in the television industry, more so than the Oscars are for the movies.  This is because television shows stick around longer, and the same names tend to come up year after year.  It's no great surprise to see "Abbott Elementary," "The Bear," and "Hacks"  in the race for Outstanding Comedy Series, for instance.  What's really intriguing are the newcomers - this year those familiar titles are joined by "Widow's Bay" and "Margo's Got Money Troubles," both from Apple TV+.  Over in Outstanding Drama Series, the newcomers are "Your Friends & Neighbors," "Pluribus," and "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms."  This is a rare year where I've actually seen more of the Drama nominees than the Comedy ones, and only two of the five Limited/Anthology nominees.

Frankly, the inclusion of  "Your Friends & Neighbors," and "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" in Outstanding Drama is a little odd, because neither series got any other major nominations in acting, directing, or writing.  It looks like "Task," which did get nominations in all those categories, would've been the next in line.  Meanwhile, "Widow's Bay" got a whopping nineteen nominations on its first time out, including one of Matthew Rhys's two lead performance nominations (the other is for the Limited Series, "The Beast in Me.") I'm very glad to see Kate O'Flynn and Dale Dickey in Supporting Actress too.  It looks like "The Chair Company" and "The Comeback" were other major contenders for Outstanding Comedy, from their nominations in other categories too.  No comment on Limited series until I see more of the contenders.  I guess I've got to subscribe to Peacock again for "All Her Fault."

The one-off nominations always offer some fun surprises.  The acting categories are full of them - Yahya Abdul Mateen II for "Wonder Man," Chase Infiniti for "The Testaments," Sally Field for "Remarkably Bright Creatures," Riz Ahmed for "Bait," and Nick Offerman for "Death By Lightning" - too bad that last one didn't get more recognition.  Bowen Yang, alas, is no longer with "Saturday Night Live" and no longer eligible.  However, the one I'm really intrigued by is Mary Lou Belli getting a directing nomination for an episode of "The Ms. Pat Show," a sitcom which is currently on its fifth season on BET+.  This show is so completely off my radar, I didn't know it existed.  And thus, until I did some digging it totally escaped my notice that this is Mary Lou Belli's fourth consecutive nomination in the category.  Good grief, talk about blind spots.

It looks like "The Pitt" is the new "Succession," with its sprawling ensemble cast dominating the Supporting Actor categories.  They won last year's Outstanding Drama trophy, and I expect that they'll win this year too.  In Outstanding Comedy, it's going to come down to the last season of "Hacks" versus "The Bear," which isn't being nominated for its last season that just came out, but the fourth season from way back last spring.  I expect "Hacks" will take it this year.  "Widow's Bay" is getting a lot of attention, but I expect that it's too much of a genre show for some of the older voters to handle.   I'll refrain from making predictions about the other categories, except that I expect that Stephen Colbert and "The Late Show" are going to be getting a lot of love.  

I don't want to spend too much time on snubs, but they are unavoidable.  "The Boys," "Stranger Things" and "Spider-Noir" only got nominations in the tech and craft categories.  I'm genuinely surprised that "Alien: Earth" and "Lord of the Flies" were almost totally ignored.  The lack of "The Lowdown" and "Industry" is just plain rude.  The Outstanding Movie (previously Television Movie) category feels like whatever Netflix and Prime felt like promoting when the nomination submissions were due.  

Also, disappointed fans should be aware that "Heated Rivalry" is a Canadian production and not eligible for Emmy consideration, unfortunately.  Connor Storrie's nomination is for hosting "Saturday Night Live."  They are, however, eligible for the Las Culturistas Culture Awards, and were prominently featured in the opening number of the most recent ceremony.  

The Emmys are on NBC this year, with Mariska Hargitay (nominated for Outstanding Directing For A Documentary/Nonfiction Program) hosting.  Happy watching!  

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My Favorite Oscar Micheaux Film

There are directors I write about because I admire their talent, and there are directors I write about because I want to examine their impact on film history.  In that second group, there are a lot of the early film pioneers that I've been trying to figure out how to best feature, and today I'm going to try and check a big one off the list.  

Oscar Micheaux is arguably the most important black filmmaker of the twentieth century, the first major African-American director with real artistic freedom.  He formed his own production company based in Nebraska in the silent era, and produced dozens of films with black casts, featuring the talents of many of black filmmakers behind the scenes.  Though Micheaux successfully transitioned from silent to sound films, it's his silents that have best stood the test of time.  Of the few surviving ones that are still in circulation today, I find "Body and Soul" the most watchable, a melodrama about a mother and daughter pair who are deceived by a phony reverend.  The reverend and his twin brother are both played by Paul Robeson in his first screen appearance.  

To modern eyes the story and performances are unremarkable at first glance, and the filmmaking falls short of the technical sophistication of Hollywood features.  However, if you're familiar with silent films, Micheaux's work is a stark departure from the kinds of features that were being made at the time about African-Americans.  They totally eschew the grotesque stereotyping of the black characters that was popular in the era, and the performances have a dignity and poignancy to them that white directors' attempts to portray African-Americans too often lacked.  Even Robeson's monstrous convict in disguise evokes sympathy as well as scorn when he meets his tragic downfall.  One of Micheaux's major goals in creating these films was to help uplift black audiences, as well as entertain them.  He used plenty of the tropes common in Hollywood films at the time - biracial coded characters were always having miraculous last-minute revelations about their parentage - but to his own ends.  He was also determined to show black life as it really was, reflecting his own experiences.        

Many of Micheaux's plots center around the plight of unfortunate women in some fashion, who fall victim to a terrible crime or injustice, or occasionally choose the wrong path in life and have to face the consequences.  "Body and Soul" stands out for centering the mother and daughter relationship, with the ignorant but loving mother, played by Mercedes Gilbert, unwittingly orchestrating her own unhappiness by pushing her daughter to marry the false reverend instead of the man she truly loves.  Neither woman is idealized, which grounds them wonderfully.  The daughter, played by Micheaux's sister-in-law Julia Theresa Russell, is mousy and awkward.  Her mother is rough and overbearing -  at one point the daughter timidly chides her for using a racial slur.  All the performances in the film are very exaggerated and theatrical, which was typical of silent films, but they also feel unusually modern.  These women wouldn't be too out of place in a Tyler Perry movie made today.  

Because of the unflattering portrayal of religious elements and instances of violence and vice, "Body and Soul" encountered some controversy from both black and white audiences.  The original version of the film, now lost, was nearly twice as long as the surviving edited version.  Many of Micheaux's films were similarly challenged, as he often explored themes of crime, corruption, and racial unrest.  In his quest to show that African-Americans could be better, he also showed the darker sides of their lives.  And he was never one to shy away from confronting social injustices as he saw them.  Micheaux's best known film is an earlier silent picture, "Within Our Gates," which has often been characterized as the anti- "The Birth of a Nation" for portraying KKK members as destructive villains.

I prefer "Body and Soul," however, which is smaller scale, more focused, more intimate, and gives the three leads the space to create more emotionally complex characters.  Micheaux was obliged to give their story an unreasonable happy ending, but manages to depict a few moments of heartbreak and humanity that are right up there with the cinema greats.  

What I've Seen - Oscar Micheaux

Within Our Gates (1920)

The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920)

Body and Soul (1925)

The Exile (1931)

Ten Minutes to Live (1932)

The Girl from Chicago (1932)

Murder in Harlem (1935)

Underworld (1937)

God's Step Children (1938)

Swing! (1938)

Lying Lips (1939)

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2004-2005

Below, find my top ten episodes for the 2004-2005 television season below, in no particular order.  A few spoilers lie ahead, including for the third season of "The Wire" and the first season of "Lost."  

Veronica Mars, "Pilot" - This has long been one of my go-to examples of a perfect TV pilot.  Here's our heroine.  Here's what ruined her life, and here are the three mysteries we'll be investigating this season.  It's amazing how much information Rob Thomas was able to fit into just forty minutes.  And kudos to Kristen Bell for immediately nailing the tone, the attitude, and the wonderful wry verve of her character and her universe.    

Battlestar Galactica, "33" - I think that this episode has been a little overhyped.  The premise is fantastic, the suspense is unrelenting, and I love it when the characters are in crisis mode like this.  However, a lot of the early effectiveness of "Battlestar" is a matter of keeping the momentum going from the miniseries.  Still, the fate of the Olympic Carrier is harrowing to watch unfold, and definitely set expectations for "Battlestar" going forward.

Doctor Who, "The End of the World" - While we're on the topic of revivals, the return of "Doctor Who" didn't really sink in for me until the second episode, where we learn more about this alien time-traveller and what he's capable of.  The creators pulled out all the stops to make this one feel big and epic and really weird, and it works.  However, the best thing onscreen is Christopher Eccleston, who is secretly still probably my favorite Doctor.  

Arrested Development, "Motherboy XXX" - The obscure references!  The product placement!  The running jokes!  The legal disclaimers! The Michael and Buster team up!  And Carl Weathers and Amy Poehler return!  Every single performer is firing on all cylinders, and the writers no longer have any interest in bringing newcomers up to speed.  At this point you have embraced the madness of the Bluth family or you're very confused.

The Office, "Diversity Day" - The first season of "The Office" had some growing pains, but the writing was pretty sturdy right from the start.  Michael doing something insensitive prompts Dunder Mifflin to hold a diversity training seminar.  And Michael retaliates with his own diversity training seminar, complete with a video presentation and everyone being forced to wear index cards on their foreheads.  I'm not big on cringe humor, but who could resist? 

Samurai Champloo, "Baseball Blues" - The show's episodes are so different in tone and temperament that it's difficult to pick an exemplar.  I initially considered much more dramatic alternatives before arriving at the funniest, silliest episode of "Samurai Champloo," where the fate of Japan will be decided with a baseball game.  It definitely fulfills the show's promise of mixing cultural influences, but this one also enjoys some good old culture clash.

Carnivale, "New Canaan CA" - I've heard grumbles that the show ended too early, but I thought that it found a good stopping point, letting the carnies and Brother Justin have their big showdown in the finale.  And what a showdown.  I love that all the secrets are out at last and everyone is working together to defeat the forces of evil.  There are consequences of course, which leaves the fates of several of our major characters forever a mystery. 

The Wire, "Middle Ground" - There are many episodes I could have picked for the third season of "The Wire," but the big, climactic Stringer Bell showdown stood out for me.  The shock of what happens is so great, because it's absolutely been telegraphed far in advance, but comes at a point where so much feels unfinished.  I can't say enough about the performances here - Not just Idris Elba, but Michael Potts and Michael Kenneth and too many more to list.  

Lost, "Exodus" - The big action finale of the first season of "Lost" is impressive for its scope, its ambition, and for paying off so many different storylines that had been accumulated over the course of the first season.  And the first season of "Lost" was always the best one.  The finale being pulled off with such aplomb was the cherry on the cake.  It's no wonder that this one lingered in the pop culture consciousness for such a long time.

The Venture Bros., "Are You There God? It's Me Dean" - The Monarch finally captures the Ventures on his birthday, but there's a twist, literally.  Dean has a case of testicular torsion, requiring some awkward medical intervention from Billy Quizboy and Pete White.  As everyone's plans go further and further awry, the situation just keeps getting funnier.  And like all responsible cartoons, it ends with a public service announcement.

Honorable Mention

House, "Three Stories" - I was determined to get this series on one of these lists, because it was such a big part of its era.  I think there were better episodes in some of the later seasons, but this one undeniably helped set the bar.

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"Prison Break," Year One

"Prison Break" is a FOX drama that ran for five seasons.  I watched the first one, and will not be watching any of the others.  It's not a bad show, but I'm definitely not the right audience for this one.  After many years of enjoying prestige crime dramas with much higher budgets and more resources, a pulpy, melodramatic prime time network show from 2005 simply doesn't work for me the way I want it to.

There's plenty to like about "Prison Break," and the first season lives up to its reputation as a thrill ride.  Each of the 22 episodes follows Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) in the fictional Fox River State Penitentiary, as he works to bust his wrongly convicted brother Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) out of the joint before he's executed.  The cast is a bonanza of character actors, including Peter Stormare, Stacy Keach, and a young Frank Grillo.  Other standouts include Amaury Nolasco, Robert Knepper, Muse Watson, and Silas Weir Mitchell as inmates, and Wade Williams as the primary correctional officer villain.  Famously, the show was largely shot on location in the former Joliet Prison and nearby Chicago, and it looks fabulous.  

On the other hand, "Prison Break" is a soap opera.  There are over-the-top dramatic twists left and right, and the scripts are written so that your average twelve year-old can follow along without difficulty.  There are subplots devoted to Michael's lawyer Veronica (Robin Tunney) unraveling the conspiracy behind Lincoln being framed, and Lincoln's teenage son L.J. (Marshall Allman) being driven to a life of crime by the baddies trying to ensure his father is executed.  There's nothing wrong with any of this, except the execution is so lacking.  There are multiple instances of bad ethnic stereotypes and poorly used prison vernacular, and way too many cases where prison officials are willing to bend protocol so that Michael or Lincoln can get away with something just in the nick of time.  The show is also shot and edited in the most overbearing, obnoxious way possible, with the Ramin Djawadi score blasting over every cut to commercial, like reality programming.    

The characters are extremely shallow.  Michael's a brilliant, insightful mastermind who has obsessively planned the escape, and yet keeps taking stupid risks and tends to choose the most elaborate and circuitous ways of doing things.  He also falls in love with attractive prison doctor Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies), who conveniently also happens to be the governor's daughter.  I feel for Dominic Purcell, because Lincoln is written as an absolute lunkhead, who shouts his feelings in any dramatic situation, and Purcell has little opportunity to inject any subtlety or complexity into his performance the way some of the other actors were able to. There's a scene where Lincoln literally berates the warden to let him go look for his missing son, despite being days away from his execution.  The rest of the ensemble can be more fun, especially the actors who get to be more theatrically villainous, like Knepper and Williams. 

Part of my disappointment with the show is that "Prison Break" has a great premise, and many of the people involved are very talented.  However, the end result is so compromised and diluted by the demands of television at the time, and I found it pretty disposable.  Even the parts that were good, dumb fun kept being undercut by elements that I found so contrived, it completely broke my suspension of disbelief.  A big part of the problem is that I know enough about how the justice system actually works that the more idealized characters who do the right thing often struck me as far too naive and unbelievable.  2005 was before the prestige TV era and all those antihero protagonists really came in, so Michael is still expected to be unreasonably morally upright, despite being surrounded by convicts.

I'm glad that I watched the first season of "Prison Break" for context, if nothing else.  As I've been working through my Top Ten TV project, it's been enlightening to trace the trends and expectations of episodic television back through the years.  "Prison Break" is a show very much of its time - ambitious and novel in many ways, but also very beholden to the programming demands of broadcast television.  

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"Tuner" and "Pressure"

This past spring was awfully light on memorable new releases, so I'm highlighting a few of the smaller titles aimed at grown-ups that you might have missed.  

"Tuner" is the narrative feature debut of Daniel Rohrer, who made "Navalny" and several other well-regarded documentaries.  It's a thriller about an apprentice piano tuner named Niki (Leo Woodall), who suffers from hyperacusis.  This means that his hearing is so sensitive to noise that he has to constantly wear earplugs and headphones, but it also unexpectedly gives him the ability to break into safes.  

This is an old fashioned kind of thriller, in the same vein as other character-focused heist movies like Michael Mann's "Thief."  Niki becomes involved in a life of crime almost by accident.  His beloved mentor, Harry (Dustin Hoffman) takes ill and needs the money.  And then he falls in love with a pretty music student, Ruthie (Havan Rose Liu), who becomes another point of leverage.  Of course, he trusts the wrong person, in this case an Israeli alarm system installer named Uri (Lior Raz), who brings Niki in on more and more dangerous jobs.  I like that Rohrer takes his time showing us how Niki functions and the progression of his relationships long before the safecracking element comes into play.  I would have been happy to watch an entire film that was just about Niki and Harry being piano tuners, making their trips to a series of rich people's houses to lovingly tune all the fancy pianos that are barely ever played.      

I wouldn't call "Tuner" slow, with its rapid-fire montages of safecracking attempts and the use of anxiety-inducing soundscapes that torture Niki when his jobs become more dire.  However, the pacing is very deliberate and patient, giving the quieter performances the time to breathe.  I like Leo Woodall as Niki, and his presence here wouldn't be half as effective if he didn't have a director who was willing to give him the space to exist onscreen the way he does.  I also like the use of music - we get to listen in on several piano and orchestral performances for decently long stretches of time, which allow us to actually take them in and appreciate them more fully.  Frankly, I can't remember the last time that happened, and I appreciate "Tuner" all the more for it.    

Now on to "Pressure," a movie I didn't have high hopes for.  There have been so many films about WWII and D-Day in the last few years, covering it from every possible angle.  I was a little exasperated to find that director Anthony Maras and writer David Haig had somehow managed to make a movie about the D-Day weather forecast.  Seriously, the movie is about Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott), the meteorologist who predicted inclement weather and got the Normandy invasion delayed by a day, averting possible disaster.  It didn't help that Brendan Fraser was blustering around the screen as  Dwight D. Eisenhower, threatening to make the movie look even more like a parody of typical Oscar bait.  Fortunately, despite doing absolutely nothing original in the script or direction, "Pressure" is still a perfectly good watch.  It's executed well, Andrew Scott's performance is excellent, and there is something to be said for knowing exactly what you're getting.

Of course the story of James Stagg is exaggerated for the big screen. I highly doubt that Stagg was pitted against his fellow meteorologist, Colonel Irving P. Krick (Chris Messina), who is set up as a brash American rival.  Nor would he have needed championing by Eisenhower's secretary, the lovely and sensible Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon).  Surely Stagg didn't need to deliver an impassioned defense of his forecast to Eisenhower and the other top brass in charge of Operation Overlord.  However, a good melodrama is helped along by all of these things, and though I can see this movie exasperating history buffs, it's also nice to see a minor historical personage getting a little more attention.  And as D-Day approaches and the storm clouds gather, and the music gets more intense, it's perfectly enjoyable to see the whole drama play out, knowing that everything works out all right in the end for the good guys.  

So, this isn't particularly sophisticated or groundbreaking entertainment, but it does the job.  Some good actors get a chance to deliver some stirring monologues, and the archival footage we've all seen before gets trotted out again, spruced up a bit for yet another bit of WWII silver screen mythmaking.  And if this sounds like the kind of movie you would enjoy, surely you wouldn't want it any other way.

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"The Vampire Lestat" is Calling

Of the Anne Rice novels I've read, and I admit did go through that phase in high school, "The Vampire Lestat" is the one that I know the best.  It recenters the narrative begun in "Interview with the Vampire" on the character of Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), as he decides to embrace the modern age by flouting the vampire rules and becoming a rock star.  The television series adaptation does the same thing.  The title has been changed, but this is essentially the third season of AMC's "Interview With the Vampire" series, created by Rolin Jones, with all the major cast members returning.  It's also not easy to follow what's going on if you haven't seen the earlier seasons.

However, "The Vampire Lestat" feels like a significant break from the narrative so far.  Since we've swapped narrators from Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) to the much more chaotic Lestat, the storytelling follows suit.  Most of the action takes place in the present day as Lestat and his band are on tour, with only very limited, often inaccurate flashbacks to Lestat's earlier life and history.  It's evident that the budget was a limiting factor, as several of the book's most memorable events are only described rather than depicted, and the season ends right before a major cataclysm - was a planned finale cut for some reason?  However, that's not really what the adaptation wants to focus on.  Instead, it's giving us a good, long, look into the messy psyche of Lestat, who is constantly lying to himself, self-aggrandizing in the extreme, and courting disaster as he keeps seeking the spotlight.  He and Louis have had another falling out since the release of the book Daniel (Eric Bogosian) managed to write based on his notes from last season, and Lestat is in the throes of emotional turmoil.  He's hired Daniel to make a documentary about him, which means bringing him on tour to be his sarcastic confessor and interrogator.  Also his mother, the vampire Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle), has resurfaced after a long absence, bringing more mess into the situation.  

I really like this version of Lestat de Lioncourt, who is absolutely not the same character from the books.  Anne Rice's Lestat was a bratty rebel who pushed back against the vampire establishment because he wouldn't be constrained by their rules.  Sam Reid's version is a walking trainwreck, screwed up by centuries of trauma, abandonment, epic mommy issues, and unprocessed grief.  Where the book Lestat was effortlessly a superstar, the screen Lestat is a mediocre musician at best, with songs composed by Daniel Hart.  The tour is not going well at the start of the series, and it's a running joke that the band regularly gets terrible reviews. (Personally the music isn't really to my taste either, but it works in the context of the show, so no complaints here).  What looks like rock 'n' roll impetuousness and provocation is really a combination of clumsy self-destruction or maybe very badly applied self-help.  However, those moments when Reid takes the stage and starts riling up the crowd are frequently electric, and if this is all just Lestat's idea of therapy, at least it's wonderfully entertaining to watch.  The dialogue remains very sharp, and Lestat's narration, full of terminally online social-media speak, is also frequently hilarious.      

 

There's also the matter of keeping all the regulars from "Interview With the Vampire" around for the new season, so reasons are engineered for characters like Louis, Armand (Assad Zaman) and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) to keep making appearances, which I will not spoil.  We spend far more time with them than we do with characters like Nicholas de Lenfent (Joseph Potter), Magnus (Damien Atkins), Marius de Romanus (Christopher Heyer Dahl), and Akasha (Sheila Atim), who all had considerably bigger parts in the book.  At least all of them are here, setting up future events in what I hope will be multiple seasons to come, but several of the introductions are very rushed.  The big exception is Gabriella, who has controversially been turned into a more vicious, calculating presence with her own agenda.  She's not quite an antagonist this season, but has the potential to be, which is very exciting.  

I'm not quite disappointed in the ending since I know that there's more coming, but it's hard to parse a season that feels so unfinished.  There are several episodes that I adore in isolation, with a few specific scenes and performances that are absolutely worth taking the trouble for, but there are also many conceits and ambitious reaches here that just don't pan out.  "The Vampire Lestat" is a daring, creative season of television that I'm so glad exists, but it also left me wanting far more than what I think the series is ready to provide.     

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