Ranking the Seasons of ‘The Wire’
Years after its conclusion, The Wire continues to top best-of-TV lists. With each season's unique story arc, each viewer is likely to have favorites.
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Of Purges and Prescience: On David France’s LGBTQ Documentary, ‘Welcome to Chechnya’
The ongoing persecution of LGBTQ individuals in Chechnya, or anywhere in the world, should come as no surprise, or "amazement". It's a motif undergirding the history of civil society that certain people will always be identified for extermination.
It Does Happen Here in HBO’s ‘The Plot Against America’
The organic growth of everyday American fascism and the understanding that pogroms are not a uniquely European phenomenon is rendered in stark and terrifying detail in David Simon's adaptation of Philip Roth's alternate historical novel, The Plot Against America.
For Valentine’s Day, the End of Anti-Miscegenation Laws: ‘The Loving Story’
The Loving Story's tale of this Supreme Court victory lays out both its legal and moral import, and then turns back to Richard and Mildred Loving in intimate, evocative images.
In HBO’s ‘Watchmen’, the Devil Doesn’t Disappear
Watchmen, is less a show about hunting down the bad guys than it is about the twisted turns and stubborn legacies of racist trauma in America – and the resistance to atoning for it.
The Willful Child in HBO’s ‘My Brilliant Friend’
HBO's My Brilliant Friend feels almost radical for its raw and un-romanticized depiction of female friendship and resistance in all its emotional complexities.
Never Ending Endings in ‘The Avengers: Endgame’ and ‘Game of Thrones’
In both The Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones, the key conflicts are not between good and evil, as one might think, but between the beginnings and endings of their stories.
‘Room 104’ Season 2 Throws It All Against the Wall – Let’s See What Sticks
HBO's anthology horror series, Room 104, offers glimpses of promise and bizarre insight, but often feels constrained by its half-hour timeframe.
Mirroring Humans through Westworld’s Othered Artificial Intelligence
In the fantasy world of AI-populated Westworld, unchecked humankind regresses into violence toward the "Other" -- just as we do in the chaotic real world. Is that the essence of human nature, to always reject its' self as seen in the visage of the Other?
HBO’s ‘Camping’ Doesn’t Know What It Wants to Be
Camping is halfway through its first season. Are Girls, Lena Dunham or Jennifer Garner superfans the only ones still watching?
‘Filhos do Carnaval’ and Rio’s Abandoned Sons
Brazilian miniseries Filhos do Carnaval (Sons of Carnaval) deserves more attention for its portrayal of the bitterness that marks the country's race relations and the beauty that exists alongside it.
‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ S9 Couldn’t Find Its Rhythm
Curb Your Enthusiasm's well-established characters are reacting to their former selves, rather than inhabiting or reinventing themselves. Thus, it loses the rhythms and inflections that once made the show so consistently, diabolically funny.