TV Reviews
Better Call Saul Series Finale Review: This Is How They Get You
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the series finale of Better Call Saul, “Saul Gone.”] Sometimes you hit play on an episode of television and see the runtime and groan to yourself, “This did not need to be longer than an hour.” But with the Better Call Saul series finale, coming in at a cool 70-plus minutes (per AMC+, anyway), every extra second of goodbye was quite welcome. After Gene Takovic (Bob Odenkirk)’s unsuccessful attempt to flee the law, as summoned by that nice old lady Marion (Carol Burnett), the identity of Gene is shed forever (following one last diligent phone call to Krista at Cinnabon). Instead, Saul Goodman suits up (eventually literally), using his formidable weaseling abilities to weasel out of “life plus 190 years” for the many, many crimes he com...
Archer Season 13 Retains the Show’s Signature Amusement and Absurdity: Review
The Pitch: Typically, the longer a hit program goes on, the harder it is for it to maintain its quality and relevance. Thus, Archer’s ability to mostly preserve its trademark wittiness, ridiculousness, and audaciousness across 12 seasons (and 12 years) is commendable. Admittedly, some fans and reviewers feel that it’s fallen from grace in some ways — and maybe it has — but it’s hard to deny that the show remains immensely clever, fun, and (at times) moving. The Season 12 finale “Mission: Difficult” cemented all of that very well. For one thing, it found its lovable band of dysfunctional spies dishing out plenty of biting quips and explosive action before ultimately being acquired by a rival company called the International Intelligence Agency, or IIA, run by British mogul Fabian Kingsworth...
Tales of the Walking Dead Somewhat Succeeds at Putting Fresh Paint on a Fading Franchise: Review
The Pitch: The Walking Dead, the flagship show of the long-running zombie apocalypse franchise, is finally coming to an end later this year after 11 seasons. But the Walking Dead universe is showing no signs of slowing down, with multiple spin-offs on the horizon, including ones for fan-favorite Daryl as well as Maggie and Negan, but the first to premiere is the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead. The series, created by Walking Dead honcho Scott M. Gimple and franchise stalwart Channing Powell, gives a level of freedom never seen before in the Walking Dead universe, allowing new writers, directors, and stars to tell stand-alone tales of the zombie outbreak. As with any anthology, quality can vary wildly between entries, but the three episodes provided for review are more good than ...
A League of Their Own Review: The Series Adaptation Remixes the Classic Film From Overlooked Points-of-View
The Pitch: You might think you know this story… but you don’t. The Penny Marshall film A League of Their Own, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, was a landmark production as well as a damn great sports movie, chronicling the inaugural season of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, despite the 1943-era sexism that had men chanting from the stands, “Girls can’t play ball!” As groundbreaking as the original film was, 1992 was a long time ago. So in creating a new take on A League of Their Own as a TV show, co-creators Abbi Jacobson (Broad City) and Will Graham (Mozart In the Jungle) have effectively made a remix of the original film, fully centered in the underrepresented voices that, in the movie, only lurked at the edges of the frame. The story is still focused on h...
Better Call Saul Review: The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Better Call Saul, Season 6 Episode 12, “Waterworks.”] As we reach the finish line on Better Call Saul, a theme has emerged from these final episodes: How tragic it is, and the tragedies that can result, when someone lives in fear. That at least seems to be Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn)’s takeaway from the last several years of her life, as we see how making contact with her ex-husband Jimmy/Saul/Gene (Bob Odenkirk) caused her to return to the scene of her crimes — even if she may not end up actually having to pay the price for them. Written and directed by Vince Gilligan, “Waterworks” is a masterclass in making the mundane seem both important and suspenseful. The action begins with a tour through Kim’s black-and-white state of existence — a n...
The Sandman Review: Netflix Brings Neil Gaiman’s Dream to Life
The Pitch: What if amorphous concepts like Desire, Despair, and Death had anthropomorphic representations, and had realms over which they ruled? What if, amongst them, one of the most powerful was Dream (Tom Sturridge), who oversaw the land to which all living creatures come when their eyes slip shut and their minds take flight? That’s perhaps the simplest place to start when describing the premise for The Sandman, Netflix’s highly anticipated adaptation of the graphic novel series written by Neil Gaiman, with artists including Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, Bryan Talbot, and Michael Zulli. Perhaps one of the most iconic examples of “sequential art” ever created, the ten-volume graphic novel series, despite many attempts over the decades by Hollywoo...
Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 Captures Unknown Horrors of the Three-Day Disaster: Review
The Pitch: The world of documentary film seems to believe in one thing: Why have just one documentary covering a disastrous music festival when you can have two? Unlike the paired Netflix and Hulu documentaries which investigated the wildness of Fyre Fest, though, Netflix’s new docuseries Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 at least has a good year or so of distance from HBO’s Woodstock ’99, while rehashing much of the same material. It’s Not a Three-Hour Movie: Trainwreck (previously known as Clusterfuck, and streaming today on Netflix), does have a distinct advantage over the HBO doc — rather than compressing the full breadth of the three-day disaster into one 110-minute film, the series consists of three episodes, structured to mirror the three days of the actual festival. While the episodic stru...
Better Call Saul Review: The Past Is Present
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Better Call Saul, Season 6 Episode 11, “Breaking Bad.”] On April 26th, 2009, a television show called Breaking Bad aired an episode called “Better Call Saul.” Thirteen years later, a television show called Better Call Saul aired an episode called “Breaking Bad.” Here we are at a full-circle moment for one of television’s great creative achievements, and yet the significance of Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul’s long-promised return as the iconic Walter White and Jesse Pinkman manages not to overshadow the action just now revving up in Omaha, Nebraska. The elegance of this new episode’s name choice, which is split between two very different periods of time for one Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman/Gene Takovic (Bob Odenkirk), cannot be overstated, es...
Paper Girls Is Prime Video’s Paper-Thin Attempt to Make Their Own Stranger Things: Review
The Pitch: It’s Hell Day 1988 — the waning hours of Halloween Night, and four girls are out on their paper route in a sleepy Cleveland suburb. There’s Mac (Sofia Rosinsky), the chain-smoking rebel whose haircut and leather jacket are giving 1991 Edward Furlong; KJ (Fina Strazza), the young Jewish girl from a well-off family; Tiffany (Camryn Jones), an adopted Black girl and certifiable tech nerd; and Erin (Riley Lai Nelet), the shy daughter of Chinese immigrants who just moved to town. They don’t know each other very well, but they’ll have to band together after the sky turns purple and they’re suddenly shot into the far-flung future of… 2019. Turns out they’re caught in the middle of a war between feuding factions of time travelers — the orthodox “Old Watch” and the rebellious STF, o...
In Better Call Saul’s “Nippy,” The Future Is Now: Review
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Better Call Saul, Season 6 Episode 10, “Nippy.”] In its fourth-to-last episode, “Nippy,” Better Call Saul executed its most abrupt pivot yet. From just the title, we knew something different was in store, as a totally different naming scheme was in play (Saul does switch up its approach to episode titles from season to season, but within each season they typically remain consistent). But after seeing Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) in all his sleazy glory at the end of the previous episode, “Fun and Games,” it was clear that whatever was going to come next would be a departure from the past. However, this episode, written by Alison Tatlock and directed by Michelle MacLaren, catapulted us viewers a lot further forward than we might have e...
Better Call Saul Reminds Us That This Was Never a Love Story: Review
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Better Call Saul, Season 6 Episode 9, “Fun and Games.”] For the past few episodes of Better Call Saul, a pretty dark pattern has emerged: As the countdown towards the end of the series continues, each week we’ve seen one of the show’s primary characters, who we always knew didn’t appear in sequel series Breaking Bad, be eliminated. Episode 7 ended with the casual execution of Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian). In Episode 8, Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) laughed his last laugh after a fierce firefight with Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). And Episode 9, “Fun and Games,” also ended with a casualty: Specifically, the death of Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), with the shell of Saul Goodman left behind in his place. Advertisement Of course, another...
Netflix’s Resident Evil TV Adaptation Stumbles by Serving Two Timelines: Review
The Pitch: Taking on a new installment in the sprawling Resident Evil media franchise is a daunting task. Since the groundbreaking survival horror video game was released in 1996, there have been more than a dozen games that provided source material for six Milla Jovovich-starring films, three animated movies, and a CGI Netflix series. With such a rich backstory to pull from, Netflix’s new live-action series, simply titled Resident Evil, centers around one of the franchise’s most memorable villains, Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick), while creating a new set of characters around him. In 2022, Wesker moves his twin teenage daughters Jade (Tamara Smart) and Billie (Siena Agudong) to the sterile corporate housing of New Raccoon City to be closer to his work for the nefarious Umbrella Corporation ...
