TV Reviews
This Year’s Treehouse of Horror Proves There’s Still Life Left in The Simpsons
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Simpsons, Season 34 Episode 6, “Treehouse of Horror XXXIII.”] The popular attitude for decades now is that The Simpsons, Fox’s beloved, iconic, and seemingly undying animated tentpole, is past its prime — despite regular renewals year after year, as a critic there very rarely feels like much urgency in checking in on the show. However, “Treehouse of Horror XXXIII,” arriving in the show’s 34th season, is full of genuine surprises, the least of which being that the annual anthology of horror tales seems like the show has found a spark of new creative energy. Okay, it’s primarily the second two parts of the episode which inspire that statement — not that the initial story, “The Pookadook” is bad, but it’s a pretty straightforward riff on...
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities Is a Horror Anthology Haunted By Creative Freedom: Review
The Pitch: A racist scavenger (Tim Blake Nelson) uncovers the ultimate score in the storage locker of a dead Nazi. A desperate grave robber (David Hewlett) gets more than he bargained for on his latest excursion. A medical examiner (F. Murray Abraham) autopsies a dead body from a mine explosion and finds a passenger hiding within the flesh. An awkward, frumpy bank teller (Kate Micucci) is tempted with the secrets of beauty by a mysterious skin cream. An art student in 1909 (Ben Barnes) grows obsessed with the horrific paintings of a strange new colleague (Crispin Glover). A desperate man (Rupert Grint) searches for his dead twin sister through the veil of spiritualism. A reclusive billionaire (Peter Weller) gathers a group of illustrious talents to view his latest otherworldly find. A...
House of the Dragon Season 1 Wasn’t Perfect — But It Was a Worthy Heir to Game of Thrones
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of House of the Dragon, “The Black Queen.”] Probably the most unintentionally hilarious part of House of the Dragon’s first season finale came at the very end, if you were watching with subtitles on: When Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), having just learned of her son’s death, turned away from the fire to reveal her grief-stricken face, the captions acknowledged a shift in composer Ramin Djawadi’s score like so: [Vengeful music plays]. It was funny because the captions really didn’t need to say anything — D’Arcy’s face said it all. It was all a jaw-dropping capper to a largely gripping season of television, because as we come to the finale, it can be said: If the goal was to create a new series that would please even ...
The Midnight Club Takes Big Risks and Gets Satisfyingly Creepy: Review
The Pitch: High school senior Ilonka (Iman Benson) has her whole life in front of her, which won’t be long. When she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her doctors say the treatment isn’t working, she decides to spend her remaining days at Brightcliffe, a hospice care center for dying teens, where all the tenants are wrestling with their mortality while trying to enjoy however much time they have left. But all is not as it appears at Brightcliffe, which at one point was home to a mysterious cult, and where every night the youths meet in the library to tell terrifying stories. Ilonka joins this “Midnight Club” and in this adaptation of a whole bunch of stories by Christopher Pike, soon reveals to them that she has secrets of her own, a special reason for coming to Brightcliffe, and a pla...
Reginald the Vampire Is Here for a Good Time: Review
The Pitch: Lonely, unfulfilled, and too insecure to tell his cute Slushie Shack co-worker, Sarah (Em Haine) that he’s into her, Reginald Andres (Jacob Batalon) is coasting through his twenties terminally disappointed with where his life has taken him. But while taking out the Slushie Shack trash at the end of one particularly long shift, Reginald stumbles into a hypnotic new friendship with a smooth operator named Maurice (Mandela Van Peebles), and everything changes. Overnight, and at the most inconvenient moment imaginable, Reginald finds he’s been turned into a member of the undead. This proves to be problematic for more reasons than just can’t go out in the sun, have to drink blood to survive — in Reginald the Vampire’s world, creatures of the night are vain, status-obsessed perfection...
A Friend of the Family Review: A Slow-Burn True Crime Series That’s Truly Harrowing
The Pitch: When Robert “B” Berchtold (Jake Lacy) moves with his family to a quaint, peaceful town in rural Idaho, he becomes an instant hit with the Broberg family. The Berchtolds and the Brobergs instantly become inseparable: they vacation together, dine together, and attend the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints together. The catch? B has a secret sexual obsession with the Brobergs’ eldest daughter, pre-pubescent Jan (Hendrix Yancey/McKenna Grace). Despite his charming, charismatic goody-two-shoes persona, B can only keep his infatuation hidden for so long. Based on the grisly true story that yielded the popular 2017 Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, A Friend of the Family sees B’s fixation on Jan spiral out of control, resulting in a whirlwind of abuse, deception...
SNL Kicks Off a New Era with Season 48 Premiere: Review
Saturday Night Live opened its 48th season with its biggest cast changes in decades. With eight cast members departing at various stages of their SNL tenure, and a ninth missing in action but supposedly returning later (Cecily Strong is doing a play in Los Angeles, and—unlike past temporary absences—wasn’t shown in the opening credits), the show is close to peak overhaul level (11 cast members left between seasons 20 and 21). Thee changeover was notable enough to warrant a cold-open sketch all about it, with Peyton Manning (host Miles Teller) and his brother Eli (Andrew Dismukes) offering live commentary on the season’s supposed kickoff: a self-consciously hacky sketch about Donald Trump (James Justin Johnson) and, well, whatever zany characters the writers decide to throw at him in an att...
Entergalactic Review: Kid Cudi’s Next Album Is Also a Low-Key Charming Animated Rom-Com
The Pitch: Jabari (Kid Cudi, or Scott Mescudi, as he’s credited here) is a street artist on the cusp of great things, as his original character Mr. Rager, featured in graffiti art all over New York City, has been tapped by a major comic book company for a potential series. He’s even got a great new loft in Manhattan, which just so happens to make him new neighbors with Meadow (Jessica Williams), a photographer who’s also getting ready for a big professional leap with her first major show. Neither Jabari or Meadow are particularly looking for a big epic romance, but keep finding themselves spending time together after a late-night encounter, and their mutual interests plus a natural chemistry quickly accelerate them into relationship territory. However, insecurities on both ends, escalated ...
Dahmer Review: Ryan Murphy’s Serial Killer Drama Puts the Victims First
The Pitch: What often gets lost in the lurid stories of America’s most infamous serial killers is how profoundly they expose the cracks in our democracy. Such is the case for Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters), a lonely and disturbed young man who murdered and dismembered 17 young men between the years of 1978 and 1991. The horrific details of those murders gained Dahmer immediate fame when he was finally arrested in 1991 and eventually sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment: this was a necrophiliac, a cannibalistic child molester, a gay man who drugged and killed other gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic. When the Milwaukee Police Department searched Dahmer’s apartment, they found so many severed body parts that the chief medical examiner described the experience as “more like disman...
Interview With the Vampire Review: AMC Delivers a Proudly Queer Take on the Anne Rice Saga
The Pitch: Vampires are back! Really, our bloodsucking undead brethren never truly go out of style, but it’s been a few years since the sparkly Twilight boom and it’s time for the original kings of the genre to make their way to the forefront. Hence AMC throwing a lot of money behind a lavish adaptation of Anne Rice’s multi-million best-selling gothic saga, The Vampire Chronicles — starting with her most famous work, Interview With the Vampire. The late Rice essentially reinvented the modern vampire, turning them into baroque creatures of sensuality and emotion, and with it, she inspired intense devotion from her fans. It’s no mean feat for any creator to take on this saga for the big or small screen, given that it encompasses hundreds of characters, thousands of years, a total r...
House of the Dragon Episode 5 Recap: The Worst People in Westeros, Ranked
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for House of the Dragon, Season 1 Episode 5, “We Light the Way.” To read last week’s ranking, click here.] Game of Thrones was a show that became famous for the shades of grey to be found in its heroes and villains alike, and so far the prequel series House of the Dragon has shown every indication of following in that proud tradition. Thus, Consequence is happy to bring you Who’s the Worst Person in Westeros, a weekly ranking of House of the Dragon‘s most important characters, and just how unsavory they ended up being each week. Everyone on screen, including dragons, is eligible for this list (though expect for the show’s series regulars to be heavily featured from week to week). Advertisement In “We Light the Way,” there’s a minimal amount o...
Atlanta Season 4 Remains One of TV’s Most Imaginative and Subversive Series Ever: Review
The Pitch: Since 2016, FX’s Atlanta has proven to audiences that it has no intentions of playing by any rules. Created by and starring multi-hyphenated talent Donald Glover, the story about a broke Ivy League dropout who manages his cousin’s burgeoning rap career while their wacky and aimless friend tags along does not seem like it would become one of television’s most imaginative, subversive, and thought-provoking shows of all time. After four seasons of following Earn, Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), Darius (Lakeith Stanfield), and Earn’s baby’s momma Van (Zazie Beetz), however, that’s exactly what Atlanta has become — and its farewell season is no different. In the fourth and final season of Atlanta, the characters have all fully evolved from the financially unstable and emotionally lost...
