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Evil (2019) s02e03 – F Is for Fire
This episode opens with an added for Paramount+ (presumably) bit of nudity as Katja Herbers has a sexy dream out of a “Red Shoe Diaries” commercial. That superfluous nudity, plus Herbers dropping an f-bomb in what seems again to be ADR, is how “Evil” is upping its game from broadcast to streaming. And while those… 📖
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Loki (2021) s01e04 – The Nexus Event
Lots happens this episode. It’s “the episode where fill in the blank happens” then happens again. Then happens again. Then maybe happens again. But probably not another time because they don’t actually show Tom Hiddleston and Sophia Di Martino making out—they’re time line variants of the same entity (you know, “Loki”) but Di Martino’s from… 📖
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Miss Hokusai (2015, Hara Keiichi)
Miss Hokusai is the story of real person Katsushika Ōi. Well, stories of real person Katsushika Ōi. The anime is an episodic memoir mostly about Ōi (voiced by Anne Watanabe) and her younger sister, O-Nao (voiced by Shimizu Shion). The film doesn’t specify but they’re half-sisters, daughters to famous Japanese Edo period artist Katsushika Hokusai… 📖
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Frasier (1993) s05e24 – Sweet Dreams
It’s a season finale but a season finale with a big cliffhanger. Kind of a big swing for the next season. Kelsey Grammer—pissed at himself for abandoning Jane Leeves after getting her in trouble and doing a coward run—decides he’s going to put his foot down when it comes to new commercial reads at the… 📖
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Frasier (1993) s05e23 – Party, Party
Despite last episode’s big changes for at least one of the characters (not to mention a party plot line), this episode does the same thing. Well, not big changes for anyone, just another party plot. This time it’s Kelsey Grammer’s birthday and he’s stuck trying to get out of two parties so he can go… 📖
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Frasier (1993) s05e22 – The Life of the Party
This episode’s a very pleasant surprise and not just because it’s the return to form for director Jeff Melman. The story takes a big shift in the middle and it all comes together very nicely in the end, particularly for Peri Gilpin and Kesley Grammer, but everyone gets a great showcase. Suzanne Martin and Jeffrey… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e08 – Stressed Western
So it doesn’t look like Fist City, the Old West town where the Legends end up this episode, was a real place. Director and star cameo David Ramsey (from “Arrow”) does play a real guy, however; first Black deputy U.S. marshal Bass Reeves. The real guy’s mustache looks better than Ramsey’s fake one. But only… 📖
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Kevin Can F**k Himself (2021) s01e04 – Live Free or Die
This episode ends on a big cliffhanger. A make-or-break cliffhanger. “Kevin” can eke out a decent series if they fumble the resolve, just because it’s so well-made and well-acted, but they’re halfway through the show—early for where you’d expect this cliffhanger if it weren’t going to change the show’s trajectory; but if they make it…… 📖
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Evil (2019) s02e02 – A Is for Angel
I don’t have this feeling often with “Evil.” Maybe ever. I can’t remember what kind of potential the show had at the start; but what if it’s good. Like what if “Evil” can get actually good. What if it can not waste its lead actors. Because after a somewhat rocky beginning where Mike Colter is… 📖
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Frasier (1993) s05e21 – Roz and the Schnoz
I’m not sure how to talk about this episode. How much emphasis to place on the mean-spirited body-shaming of it all. After trying to dodge them, Peri Gilpin finally meets the parents of her baby daddy. The age difference (the not-in-the-episode baby daddy is twenty) doesn’t come up because everyone’s way too busy trying not… 📖
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Frasier (1993) s05e20 – First Date
First Date is a sequel episode to Moon Dance, the season three episode where Niles (David Hyde Pierce) lucks into a perfect date with Daphne (Jane Leeves), full of high romance but still entirely safe for the then married character. I mean. From network and pop cultural norm viewpoints. The Maris thing is misogynist. Anyway.… 📖
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Loki (2021) s01e03 – Lamentis
On this episode of “Doctor Who”—wait, no, wait, it’s actually “Loki,” sorry, sorry. And I guess “Doctor Who” has yet to do a buddy sci-fi action flick where the Doctor is paired with a gender reversed version of himself. Or herself. Or themself. Though let’s not give the BBC too much credit. (Wow, “Loki” must… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e07 – Back to the Finale: Part II
This episode packs in a lot. The action beats are numerous, suspenseful, and intense. The difference between the second two adjectives being “suspenseful” means the plot is engaging while intense means the scenes in the plot are engaging. It’s also maybe got Caity Lotz’s best acting in the series to date. She’s very much the… 📖
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Kevin Can F**k Himself (2021) s01e03 – We’re Selling Washing Machines
And here’s where “Kevin Can F**k Himself” elevates. I’m not sure what I was expecting from last episode’s combination cliffhanger and reveal, but I didn’t imagine the show was going to open up to include Mary Hollis Inboden in the reindeer games. Though I did have an inkling Inboden would be able to handle it… 📖
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Evil (2019) s02e01 – N is for Night Terrors
“Evil” is back and it hasn’t been gone anywhere near as long as I thought. The last episode of the first season aired in February 2020, pre-Rona lockdown, pre-Catholics killing babies and dumping them in mass graves (well, pre-discovery of it, but “Evil” won’t care). But it’s only felt like a while. The episode picks… 📖
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Kevin Can F**k Himself (2021) s01e02 – New Tricks
“Kevin Can F**k Himself” apparently isn’t going to go as dark as I was expecting. Even though the show’s about how Annie Murphy experiences her marriage to Kevin Petersen as a sitcom and her reality is a lot starker and drearier (and her sitcom existence isn’t great either), the show has a couple opportunities to… 📖
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Kevin Can F**k Himself (2021) s01e01 – Living the Dream
AMC released the first two episodes of “Kevin Can F**k Himself” streaming early, which is great and all except it means you have to wait longer for more episodes. But it also means they clearly don’t care about maintaining the trailer’s illusion, which I really remember implying the show was about Annie Murphy as a… 📖
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Loki (2021) s01e02 – The Variant
I have a list of the things I don’t like about “Loki” after the second episode. The show isn’t a “Doctor Who” riff, but it wants to use whole “Who” devices to get certain jobs done. Certain jobs the MCU might want done if actors are going to keep aging and maybe get sick of… 📖
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Loki (2021) s01e01 – Glorious Purpose
So when Tom Hiddleston signed up for Thor, I can’t remember if former costar and movie director Kenneth Branagh convinced him to do it or didn’t think he should do it. Hiddleston was a star on the rise and the idea was you’d do your Marvel movie for scale plus and then the resulting roles… 📖
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Nobody (2021, Ilya Naishuller)
Wouldn’t it be funny if Bob Odenkirk were an action movie hero? Like a kick-ass one who doesn’t just use machine guns, but also does a lot of hand-to-hand fighting? If you’re unfamiliar with Odenkirk, let’s just say it’s a “cast against type” situation to the extremis. Only it doesn’t matter because action movie special… 📖
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Frasier (1993) s05e19 – Frasier Gotta Have It
“Frasier” has always walked a really fine line with David Hyde Pierce’s crush on Jane Leeves, never letting it get too creepy—usually keeping Kelsey Grammer around to rein him in or just to have Hyde Pierce and Leeves to have a sincere moment to eschew the romantic—but the joke in the end tag of this… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e06 – Bishop’s Gambit
The episode opens with a great tracking shot of Matt Ryan walking around his British manor and seeing how the “needing a place to crash” Legends team is wrecking havoc. Who knew the (further) secret to making John Constantine click was to make him lovable? Unfortunately, it’s kind of the only impressive work director Kevin… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e05 – The Satanist’s Apprentice
This episode goes far in reminding how much better Olivia Swann is at being likable than villainous. It’s her episode—and sort of Matt Ryan’s—recapping what she’s been doing all season since she hasn’t been with the main cast. She’s been suffering in Ryan’s giant mansion, which is falling apart and doesn’t have internet and the… 📖
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Submarine (2010, Richard Ayoade)
I didn’t know Submarine came from a novel going in. I didn’t know it came from the “Great Welsh Novel” until a few minutes ago. I was checking to see if the novel—written by Joe Dunthorne—was YA. Turns out it’s literary fiction, which makes the film adaptation, screenplay by director Ayoade, slightly more interesting, slightly… 📖
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Wrath of Man (2021, Guy Ritchie)
When did Guy Ritchie get so enthusiastic about his actors’ performances? Wrath of Man is a lot of things—and a little much—but it’s a middling cross between revenge and heist picture where the cast gets a great showcase. Sometimes too much of one, with the script way too talky in the first act. Man’s based… 📖
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Mare of Easttown (2021) s01e07 – Sacrament
My favorite part of the “Mare of Easttown” finale is the unrelenting, abject mediocrity of it all. It’s a bad resolution. It goes on way too long, not doing multiple endings but instead doing a series of epilogues—including turning the series’s big “twist” (it’s not a twist if both the creators and the show are… 📖
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Departures (2008, Takita Yôjirô)
Departures suffers for its DV photography. Suffers. Hamada Takeshi cannot figure out how to light for the video and, as a result, the film never looks good. Maybe if director Takita were somehow taking it into account, but no, Takita just pretends it doesn’t look like an ornate Hi8 camcorder production. With some competent mise-en-scène,… 📖
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All Rise (2019) s02e17 – Yeet
“All Rise” wraps it all up, giving the entire regular cast some closure (save Marg Helgenberger, presumably because they couldn’t book the necessary guest star on short notice). But even Reggie Lee is back—he got suspiciously promoted off the show either last episode or the one before—but he’s just there to say hi. The episode’s… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e04 – Bay of Squids
Let me get it out of the way so it doesn’t come bubbling up later. After some previous hints, it turns out alien abduction survivor and gun nut Lisseth Chavez is actually “Legends”’s outreach to the right leaning audiences. She loves guns—she and Tala Ashe have a painful “2nd vs. 1st amendment” banter—she hates Commies… 📖
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The Equalizer (2021) s01e10 – Reckoning
Yeah, I knew Joseph C. Wilson credited scripts weren’t good, which is a real bummer because this episode deserves better. Queen Latifah gets a case close to home when daughter Laya DeLeon Hayes and her friends become collateral damage in a drive-by shooting. The episode becomes a race: will Latifah get justice for the victims… 📖
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Frasier (1993) s05e18 – Bad Dog
It’s time for the Seabees again—the Seattle broadcasting awards show where the cast can reliably have antics once a season—this time with Kelsey Grammer emceeing the event. We get a lot of exposition real quick—Grammer, Dan Butler, and Peri Gilpin are waiting for coffee. We find out Butler’s nominated too, Grammer and Gilpin don’t have… 📖
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Frasier (1993) s05e17 – The Perfect Guy
As much as I’ve liked Billy Campbell over the years, seeing him guest on this episode of “Frasier” reveals his weirdly affable lack of network charm. His timing is just off or something. He lacks rapport with the costars. He’s fine, but he’s not great in what seems like a very Billy Campbell way. And… 📖
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Mare of Easttown (2021) s01e06 – Sore Must Be the Storm
Thanks to “Mare of Easttown,” I’ve realized a “Why did you say ‘Martha’” is just the natural extension of an “It’s not your fault.” Writer Brad Ingelsby and director Craig Zobel riff on it poorly this episode, as they reveal major characters and major character backstory details five episodes late. Sore Must Be the Storm… 📖
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Red Room (2021) #1
Red Room is a revolting revelation. Intentionally. Both my alliteration and creator Ed Piskor’s infusing every page of the comic with something deeply disturbing. There’s a single character in the comic who isn’t in some way vile. Everyone else is in some way or another gross, including the preacher throwing shade about a thin funeral… 📖
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Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)
Psycho is a masterpiece of color. After forty joyfully plodding minutes of Janet Leigh going from fetching spinster in a torrid lunch hour romance to grand larcenist in precise black and white (and then another few minute as she moves to close that character arc), director Hitchcock and Psycho put Leigh in the color of… 📖
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Pi (1998, Darren Aronofsky)
The incredible thing about Pi is how well director Aronofsky is able to compensate for his lead. Pi is about mathematician Sean Gullette discovering a pattern hidden in the stock market—or so he thinks—and trying to navigate the repercussions of his discovery. Wall Street firm lady Pamela Hart is after him for the equation, so’s… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e03 – The Ex-Factor
If there’s a cohort who hears the Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've) and think it’s a cover of the Fine Young Cannibals song until they remember the FYC song was the cover… I am in that cohort. The episode opens with Matt Ryan and Tala Ashe having a booty call (because… 📖
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Fear Case (2021) #3
Wait, Fear Case only runs four issues? I thought it ran five. Unfortunately, having one less issue and doing a double-decker bridge issue with the penultimate one is even worse than doing a double-decker bridge issue in the middle of a five issue series. There’s some fine art. Tyler Jenkins gets to do… well, he… 📖
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All Rise (2019) s02e16 – Leap of Faith
Once again, “All Rise” seems prepared for change. It’s not going to get change—CBS cancelled the show in between the previous episode airing and this one—but they’re once again primed for it. Everyone’s got something going on for the future, whether it’s Wilson Bethel once again feeling distressed at the D.A.’s office (at the end… 📖