Category: 2020
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Nine months before the murder, we discover what a great kid thirty-four year-old sixteen year-old Kyle Gallner was before drugs. This episode doesn’t just—finally—give Joanna Going something to do as the eventual murder victim, it also introduces the history between Peter Sarsgaard and Gallner. See, Gallner goes to the cops to report his girlfriend (Morgan…
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Continuing whatever this season is doing with its creative Arrowverse accounting, Dominic Purcell and Caity Lotz mostly sit out this episode. Lotz is in Star City on some kind of bland personal business, which leaves Jes Macallan in charge. Macallan, who used to run an extra-dimensional time agency, gets very worried about captaining the Legends,…
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Now let’s rewind “Interrogation” to the second episode and see what would be getting introduced if you watched the show in episode order and not randomly, even though the timeline is fractured randomly in regular episode order too. This episode takes place in 2003 and fully introduces Vincent D’Onofrio. His interview—not “Interrogation”—with Kyle Gallner is—again,…
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As I continue putting way too much thought into “Interrogation,” this episode stands distinctly in the “anti” non-linear department. This episode sets up both the pilot—so the penultimate episode loops back to the first—but also seems to be setting up the next—last—episode. It’s all about P.I. Andre Royo interviewing Emma Caulfield Frost, who has a…
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There’s no “Interrogation” this episode. Nothing based on a recording or a transcript, just one hundred percent dramatization. “Interrogation” is like a true crime show only with recognizable (if not better) actors and no interviews with the actual people. It’s an exemplar of how not to do a show like “Interrogation.” This episode jumps all…
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“Legends” does a double homage this episode–Slay Anything is simultaneously an eighties John Hughes homage and an eighties slasher movie homage. High school prom killer Garrett Quirk is the latest condemned soul sent back to Earth to reign Hell or whatnot. So what does a spree killer become once Hell-powered? A telekinetic slasher, out to…
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It’s a Valentine’s Day episode and romance is in the air around the courthouse. Maybe a little bit too much romance because “turns out they didn’t forget about her” D.A.’s office law clerk Audrey Corsa is back and she’s got her eyes on J. Alex Brinson, who’s starting his clerk job in the D.A.’s office…
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This episode serves as a possible pilot for sixth “Grantchester” and a second full season for new vicar Tom Brittney. Lots gets resolved, both in regards to recent events and season-long subplots. The show’s sparing in the schmaltz, instead going for knowing smiles and warm feelings, and it feels as good as a show about…
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Let’s get the elephant out of the way: show co-creator, episode single credited writer, and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon. He’s really, really, really bad at writing dialogue. At some point in this episode, I realized Akiva Goldsman—the profoundly hacky screenwriter of Batman & Robin, iRobot, and I Am Legend who is also a…
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The year is 2005, so twenty years after the first episode—1983—and, therefore, Kyle Gallner playing closer to his actual age. It doesn’t really help with his performance. With his shaved head and serious prisoner eyeglasses and seventies porn ‘stache, every once in a while—when he’s not talking—you imagine they must’ve wanted someone else for the…
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The reason you can watch “Interrogation” in any order you want—according to the opening titles—is because cold case detectives don’t pick at old cases linearly. So, by watching “Interrogation,” you’re a cold case detective too! Eye-roll emoji. This episode doesn’t feature any recorded interrogations for the show to faithfully dramatize. It’s all historically questionable stuff,…
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Poor Kyle Gallner. Thirty-four years old and still playing a seventeen year-old, which—at one point—would’ve been some kind of record (or near one). But playing half his age is nothing compared to Gallner’s wig. It’s 1983 L.A. and Gallner’s got a full… what would it be called, metalhead? He just found his mom dead and…
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It’s a strong episode. Like, really strong; great pacing too. It starts with Constantine (Matt Ryan), who teleported to Hell at the end of last episode, getting to Hell and having a chat with lost soul turned season villain Olivia Swann. It’s a welcome scene not so much for the content—Swann is better in her…
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It’s an exceedingly unpleasant hour of “Grantchester,” full of revelations and character developments, some to the point where it’s hard to imagine what next week’s episode is going to bring. Will (Tom Brittney) ends the episode in a rather dark place, which is to be expected given how things go in the episode, but dark…
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This episode ends where the second episode should’ve ended, with the Jerry Goldsmith Star Trek: The Motion Picture theme (i.e. “The Next Generation” theme) and a starship going into a very boring warp. It took Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his band of sidekicks all episode to get into space; apparently you can teleport everywhere in…
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This episode is series story editor Mellori Velasquez’s first episode as the credited writer. And, wow, either she’s really and at the dialogue or they went exceptionally cheap on the supporting cast. For example, Chelsea Rendon’s murder trial defendant. There’s no reason Rendon should be bad and she certainly seems earnest in her performance, but…
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Thank you, “Evil,” for forcing me to realize I don’t know how to spell Baphomet. Oh, wait, I do know how to spell Baphomet. Apple just doesn’t know how to spell Baphomet. Seems like something for the Satanic Temple to investigate, whether or not Apple has deity spellings for other religions. Anyway. “Evil”. The season…
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“Grantchester” is definitely not going to be one of those shows where they take out a lead character, drop in a replacement and it’s about the same. The show has been reminding Tom Brittney isn’t just a brunette version of departed ginger(?) James Norton, but it triples down throughout this episode. First, there’s so much…
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I was expecting a lot of fan service this episode and it definitely did not provide. But instead of doing fan service—outside confirming Riker, Work, and LaForge are all still alive—this episode just kills forty-five minutes or so until the next one. “Picard” has a ten episode season and Maps and Legends is utterly disposable.…
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Lots ends up happening this issue, even as the episode starts with Tom Brittney getting returned mail from his estranged mother. In fact, there’s going to be something for everyone this episode—except Leonard (Al Weaver); Leonard is background. Will (Brittney) doesn’t just have a murder case—a very Sherlock Holmes affair involving a murdered cinema projectionist…
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The most peculiar thing about “Picard” is how much it plays like a sequel to Star Trek: Nemesis. Not because Tom Hardy guests as Patrick Stewart’s unlikely Romulan clone or… wait, what else happened in that movie? Oh, yeah, Troi got mind raped… again. No Troi (Marina Sirtis) in this episode, thank goodness. Not thank…
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Good “Legends” is both bad and obvious, and obvious. When the show hits the right notes, it keeps ringing the bell through the end of the episode. Once an episode of “Legends” clicks, it stays in that higher gear. This first post-Crisis episode means there can be all sorts of new changes in addition to…
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So it looks like Peter MacNicol is going to be a regular guest star, which is fine. He exudes a lovable, not too problematic old white guy energy as Simone Missick’s new judge pal. He shows up for a single scene, to talk to her about the case she’s got going, then disappears again. I…
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There’s a lot going on in this episode of “Evil” but the only important thing—the only truly important thing—is it guest stars Gbenga Akinnagbe. It utterly wastes him in a “let’s not examine this too hard” plot about him being a radio comic in nineties Rwanda who encouraged the genocide. Emayatzy Corinealdi plays a Tutsi…
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I consider myself fairly capable with British Isles accents; it’s always been undubbed Trainspotting or Full Monty for me; I figured out Ulysses on my own; I could watch “Monty Python” and understand them; but “Sinjin” actually being “St. John?” Whatever. I mean, I knew it had to be weird because “Sinjin” seemed too much…
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Given how much work these Arrowverse crossover events make for the show’s creative teams—just imagine if they had to bother with good writing, better direction (though this episode isn’t too bad), and good guest stars—you’d think they wouldn’t have wasted twenty-percent of Crisis on Infinite Earths with this utterly superfluous episode. Outside the big bad…
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So. Confession time. During the harder-than-normal sci-fi opening to part the fourth of Crisis on Infinite Earths, I thought the crossover might have a chance. I thought if they split the first three into the one arc, then the second two into another… I thought it might work. For a few seconds in the cold…
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It’s nice to have “Grantchester” back, especially since Robson Green doesn’t appear to have a complete jackass arc for this season. Though it’s arguably too soon to tell and he does bring in his mother-in-law (Paula Wilcox, I think) without consulting wife Kacey Ainsworth to help out around the house since they’re both so busy…
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I resent how affecting this episode of “Evil” gets because it doesn’t deserve to be. The stuff about Katja Herbers and Aasif Mandvi discovering how the guy who attacked Mike Colter before hiatus is the same guy who posed as a creepy little girl in AR to stalk Herbers’s kid early on in the series……
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This episode of “All Rise”—the first after hiatus—seems like a return to form. At least as much form as “All Rise” has ever had; in terms of guest stars, it means the pilot. “All Rise”’s guest star caliber has dropped since then. Not anymore. This episode doesn’t just have Peter MacNicol as a “I know…
The Stop Button 