The Diplomat is an absolute triumph of storytelling. Debora Cahn's brilliant political thriller incorporates the best elements of her most high-profile TV work to date, mixing the relentless pacing of Homeland, the complex relationship portrayals of Grey's Anatomy, and the resolutely smart dialogue & sky-high audience expectations of the Sorkin years of The West Wing. Throw that into a brew along with a flawless cast and you get a show that is nigh impossible to stop watching mid-binge.
Keri Russell's return to TV after her iconic run on The Americans does not disappoint. Here she portrays yet another strong, brilliant woman in a position of power but this time she's out of the shadows and on the most public of stages. She deftly shifts between a rigidly formal diplomatic persona and her foul-mouthed, cutthroat private life, sometimes in the space of a couple of sentences, yet her humanity shines through. She grapples with imposter syndrome as she's thrust into an unexpectedly high profile position, but never loses sight of her strengths. She knows that she can stand toe-to-toe with her legendary-in-diplomatic-circles husband. (In fact, she warns her new colleagues that she's the only one who can help them decode or resist his charms.)
Watching their sometimes partnership / sometimes rivalry unfold across the 8 episodes is mesmerizing as both she & Rufus Sewell mercilessly chew up every scene. They're both preternatural acting talents who are used to stealing the camera from other actors, and their slow circling of each other is like a dance with words. Sewell shines as the other Ambassador in their marriage who's grappling with a crumbling relationship that he wants to save, but doesn't seem to know whether it's because he loves his wife or if she offers him a new pathway to power.
The overarching mystery of the series blends seamlessly with the evolution of their relationship, with neither feeling forced or unrealistic. And the area where so many shows can falter - the supporting roles - is yet another where this one rises above expectations. All of the secondary players shine, with the only ding against the series being the underutilization of Jess Chanliau's Ronnie. But, then again, the hallmark of the series seems to be making sure that you always want to see more. Here's hoping that we get to see more of Ronnie in (a hoped-for) season 2.
An adaptation from a novel that actually feels like a novel, The Last Thing He Told Me is a slow burn. And while that usually pisses me off, I found myself sucked in by the story and engrossed by the characters. Except for Bailey. (She annoyed the crap out of me- though, to be fair, that was exactly the point. So kudos to Angourie Rice, I guess?) I thoroughly enjoyed the deliberate pacing and incremental unraveling of the mystery. Jennifer Garner's Hannah is pulling at threads in desperation, and her grounded performance is what makes the show work. Her moves from clue to clue never feel like they've been pulled out of thin air, or like Sherlock Holmes-ian strokes of genius; rather, she always looks like a normal person just trying to make sense of the tragedy and chaos that she's fallen into. I also appreciated the structure of embedded flashbacks. Sometimes they were there to provide story details for us, while at other times they served to illustrate what the characters were thinking. In just about every case, the context they provided felt earned and none of them were wasted.
When the show started to lose me, however, was when the mystery finally gets solved. The performances don't drop off - if anything they get more intense and affecting - but the motivations shift from "What the hell is happening?!" to "How do I deal with all of this emotional stuff?" It can make for great storytelling, but the slow pace starts to feel more like a liability after that shift happens. But by the time I was getting impatient I was closing in on the story's endgame, so it didn't detract too much from my enjoyment of the piece as a whole.
A final note about my overall rating. I had an average rating of "7" for all of the episodes (all "7s", save for a single "6" and one "8"), but I added an extra point for the consistency of quality. There wasn't a bad episode in the bunch, and I only felt the urge to skip through scenes a few times throughout. That's quite an accomplishment in this day and age.
With one of the all-time great pilots, Orphan Black gets off to a smashing start. Subsequent episodes give viewers little time to catch their breath as the plot moves relentlessly forward with twists and turns everywhere. It's a masterpiece of a story, with Tatiana Maslany giving a mesmerizing, mind-bending performance- 4 times over. With impossible sky-high expectations, season 2 drops off slightly in quality, as the writers seem to have been as surprised as everyone else at the show's success.... but the step down is slight. It's still an engaging, enthralling watch. Unfortunately, each subsequent seasons feels like a step backwards, as the curse of the mystery box series begins to creep further in from the edges of the screen. The need to constantly reveal more layers and complexity of the mythology end up sending the story down ever more absurd paths. The glue that holds everything together, however, is Maslany. She carries the show single-handedly through to the end with raw talent and acting that can be argued to be among the greatest in the history of television. And that's not hyperbole. By the end I was shaking my head at the plot, but Maslany kept my eyes glued to the screen.
Full of gorgeous cinematography and some tear-inducing acting by its cast, especially a surprising breakout performance by Alice Halsey, Lessons in Chemistry is a better-than-serviceable but too-trite-to-be-great miniseries that is, despite its faults, absolutely worth your valuable time.
Brie Larson is magnetic as Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant wishcast of a woman whose talent and ambition are stifled by all of the sexism and ignorance of 1950s America. As insidious as all of the offenses against her are, and as affecting as her performance navigating them is, at times the scenes feel like a checklist of problems that women trying to break through into male-dominated workplaces in a male-centric society face. Ironically, it's during her scenes with other women when the real malevolence of gender discrimination comes through and when she loses many of her battles.
But what starts out as the premise of the show is quickly overshadowed by the love story between Larson's Zott and Lewis Pullman's Calvin Evans. They have a wonderful, um, chemistry, and the twist that sends the show down a totally different pathway is gut-wrenching, to say the least.
The appearance of Madeline gives the show another boost, and Alice Halsey simply mesmerizes in the role. Her brilliance and precociousness suck up every scene that she's in to the point where the parts that she wasn't in felt unnecessary. Who cares what happens to Elizabeth's show? I want to see what Mad is up to!
And that's the irony of this show: The parts that are good are startingly good; they make the parts that feel too contrived or too convenient, or too formulaic stand out all the more. There's a great show buried within the series, but it's surrounded by to much fluff to ever break out and truly shine.
While the tension at the heart of the story hinges on two of the main characters making choices that go against their nature (Adam & Maddie's relationship is clearly strong enough for him to have revealed his brief involvement with Kara 15 years ago + Maddie is way too smart to ever go along with her CIA agent friend), Treason is an otherwise fun ride with lots of twists and turns. The action set pieces and plot twists all entertain, and since it's a British production, the acting is, for the most part, terrific. Charlie Cox is a joy to watch as a good guy stuck in (what is to him) an impossible situation. Or is he a double agent trying to cover his tracks? And Olga Kurylenko does a great job as Kara Yerzov, either the scorned mastermind of a scheme to take control of MI6 or a vengeful Russian patriot looking to right an old wrong. The show's quick runtime means that it never drags, though character development does end up feeling a bit rushed at times, as some of the side players could have used a little more fleshing out. The writers have clearly chosen to focus on the main plot, though, and in that sense they succeeded in making an inherently binge-able show, even if you're left wanting a bit more in some spots. Besides those crazy character choices at the heart of the story, the show's most glaring weakness is Tracy Ifeachor's CIA agent Dede Alexander. As is so often the case with British productions, when they need to include an American character it's usually the worst of the ensemble, as the baseline talent of the UK's population of actors is so far superior to that of the US that the gap in quality between their performances is almost laughable. (Just take a look at all of the bit players in season 1 of Andor to see what I mean. "Pockets!") The other acting quibble that I've got is with Oona Chaplin's choices for her performance of Maddy Lawrence. She's supposed to be a veteran of Afghanistan, yet comes off as just a bit too waif-ish, even at the end. I feel like there could have been more weight and dread behind her eyes as she realized what she was mixed up in and what skills/knowledge she would have to reactivate in order to get through it. But in the end the story kept me guessing right until the credits rolled, and the main players - flawed choices aside - all had me rooting for them, even as I questioned weather I should. I had a good time watching Treason, even if it wasn't quite all that it could have been.
The Defenders was Netflix' answer to the Avengers, except on the small screen and with a group of gritty, street-level heroes. While this culmination of nearly 2 1/2 years of world-building delivers on the fun & fan service, it also feels like it was less than it could have been. It would be going too far to call the series "disappointing," but in spite of some great plot-mapping and production design (the scene transitions between characters in the first 3 episodes are a great touch), some of the pieces never quite fit, and Finn Jones sticks out like a sore thumb as the weak link among his clearly superior co-leads, Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter, and Mike Colter.
The show smartly resists the urge to bring everyone together quickly, instead giving each member of the (eventual) team time to work their respective mysteries until they all meet up at the same place. And when they do, the fun really starts. The action set pieces are all done well. The production team has even figured out how to (mostly) shoot around Jones' ineptitude when it comes to martial arts. On the negative side, while Krysten Ritter plays Jessica Jones well, the writers never give her enough space to shine. Jessica isn't a "team" kind of person (none of them are, really) but her skillset is never required to move the story forward once her case leads her to her first Hallway Fight Scene. Also, beyond Misty Knight & Colleen Wing (who have important roles in the comics that they inch closer towards here), none of the supporting characters from each of the Defenders' own shows has any reason to appear beyond a passing scene or two, yet precious time is wasted on them, extending the series longer than it needed to be.
Unlike with their previous appearances, The Hand's ultimate goal is one that makes sense, and the stakes are high. (Ironically, the MacGuffin at the center of it may feel like it's coming out of nowhere until you've watched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which didn't hit theatres until 4 years after this series was released.) What's disappointing is that more breadcrumbs weren't laid out in Luke Cage and Jessica Jones' first seasons. That would have gone a long way towards making their joining of forces feel much more earned. Instead, they each make useless arguments against getting involved that play out less like drama and more like wastes of time. By the time I finished my rewatch, I felt fulfilled as a fan and like I'd had fun, but that The Defenders just didn't quite live up to the high standards set by Jessica Jones season 1 and Daredevil seasons 1 & 2. Here's hoping that Disney gives them another chance to do it better.
It's inevitable that any documentary about a soccer team will be compared to Welcome to Wrexham, so to get it out of the way: No, it's not as good. But it's not bad at all. It's also doing something different. Sure, Angel City is executive produced by one of the subjects (Natalie Portman), just like Wrexham is produced by its owners, but the mission of Angel City's ownership group isn't to rebuild a storied team or rejuvenate a Rust Belt town- it's to change the very nature of professional sports in America. The stakes feel bigger, and the pressure on everyone involved is greater. And while it's not a true documentary in the sense that it's not providing a dispassionate, objective retrospective of the team's first season, it does a great job of capturing the emotions of everyone involved... up to a point. I was thoroughly entertained and by the end was happily rooting for A.C.F.C. & the entire NWSL. At the same time I wish that the media savvy ownership group had been confident enough to provide full access to a filmmaker they didn't control to document their story. It would have resulted in a more complete film that didn't feel like an airbrushed highlight reel. Founding a startup is messy. Founding a startup within a floundering, scandal-ridden, twice-folded, third-tier sports league is an epic potential-disaster-waiting-to-happen that I couldn't help feel like I wasn't really being told about. At multiple points I could tell that something was being glossed over here, or a major conflict was merely hinted at over there; it gave the series a hollowness that all the great production values and heartfelt earnestness of the athletes couldn't mask. Like A.C.F.C.'s inaugural season, this series was nice to watch but I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed by it at the same time.
With Echo Marvel got things half right. The good stuff is very, very good, while the bad stuff was, well, par for the course for the studio these days.
They took a big swing story-wise by centering the Choctaw side of Maya. They also didn't shy away from her disabilities. The series is a triumph of inclusion, presenting viewers with perspectives that are all-too-often ignored or overlooked in mainstream entertainment. The extended sections with no (or little) sound force us to consider Maya's worldview and the story is all the better for it. And the actors... The entire cast is a Murder's Row of talent, with Alaqua Cox managing to hold her own among heavyweights like Graham Greene, Tantoo Cardinal, and Vincent D'Onofrio. Chaske Spencer also stands out with a great turn as a criminal with a heart of gold. The music is killer (holy crap that opening title sequence!) and the overall production value is a testament to the love and care that went into crafting the show.
All of those good things said, the Marvel Machine can't seem to let a story pass through itself without mucking things up. The first episode is unfocused and the finale is a morass of forced mythology and performative climax. Had there been as much effort put into the plot's overall structure as there so clearly was into the multilingual & multicultural elements, there could have been a battle that stretched across multiple episodes that made more sense. (Why not have Maya's powers manifest in the scene in episode 4 while they were alone and have her psychic connection reinforce Fisk's evil instead of cut off in a confused, unresolved way? The final siege at the powwow would have been him lashing out in a way that made sense instead of it being the out-of-nowhere, formulaic set piece that it was.) For as brave as the rest of the series was, there was a distinct lack of courage in making Maya's power set ambiguous. One of the cool things about her character has always been that her intense focus gave her an ability to mimic anything that she saw. That was something that came from within; it's a sign of strength. There wasn't a need to infuse her with a mystical heritage only to see in manifest in a way that made no sense. (Is she super strong? Can she possess people around her? Can every woman in her lineage summon power via the palms of the hands?)
I'd love to see these characters - and actors - again, so here's hoping that the new "Marvel Spotlight" imprint gives us more... but better.
It's hard to be objective about Star Trek: Picard. Given all of its narrative promise as the first show to revisit the TNG/DS9/Voyager era with modern production values, expectations were high for each season, so the inevitable letdowns - the vapid dialogue, absurd plot twists, and stilted storytelling techniques - tended to make me angrier than a mediocre/borderline bad show would. And that meant that the flashes of gorgeous production design and heartfelt acting tended to make me even angrier, as they showed what was possible. The showrunners seemed to prioritize fan service and embedding "classic Trek" elements into each episode instead of constructing seasons that were consistently engaging. Watching this series, along with its contemporary on Paramount+, Star Trek: Discovery, made it seem like there is a finite amount of "good" Star Trek that is possible, and that amount of "good" was getting spread thinner and thinner with each of the first two seasons... and then it all got transferred over to Strange New Worlds, as the third and final installment was the worst of the run. (How many times are they going to finally defeat/destroy the Borg, anyway?) After 30 episodes I may have worn out my skip button after avoiding all of the inane banter, meaningless debate scenes, and utterly predictable, formulaic plot advancements. For this Star Trek fan Picard felt like a prison sentence; it was time that I'd been sentenced to do by the franchise's corporate overlords. And I kind of hate them for it.
Alaska Daily was a (possibly) great show that was trapped on - and had been dumbed down for - broadcast network TV. Had it been on Netflix, HBO, or Showtime maybe it would have been given the quality control that it deserved. Instead, it's a waste of the talent & ambition of everyone involved in making it. The complex themes at its center have been smoothed over, and the vocabulary simplified. The scenes have no room to breathe, and the background characters in positions of power have zero depth. There's barely any acting on display, as Hilary Swank's choice for Eileen Fitzgerald is to play her as emotionally vacant, which results in flat line reads and dim eyes. She's supposed to be intimidating, but the only thing she ever says with any kind of urgency or energy is, "What if we write a story about..." whenever a source is stonewalling her. After the third time that gets pretty boring. (Michael Keaton in Spotlight she is not.) And the supporting cast is no better. They could all be as talented as Swank, but they get little to work with. They're forced to plow through stilted dialogue within too-short or too-corny scenes. On the plus side the production is lovely; Burnaby and its environs are a gorgeous stand-in for Alaska. The team behind the cameras obviously wants to capture The Last Frontier in all of its glory and griminess. In that, it showcases the breathtaking landscape and the rugged individualism of its people, but it doesn't shy away from the poverty or the plight of the indigenous. And the mission statement of the show is a powerful one. I just wish that all of this had a better vehicle to be carried in. The worst thing about shows that have all the right ingredients but are stuck on the wrong platform is that watching their mediocrity is more infuriating than watching something that is just plain bad. In the end, Alaska Daily is a tragedy of unrealized potential.
Excruciatingly boring. An absurd plot. Insipid character arcs. With Secret Invasion, Marvel/Disney has officially entered the abusive stage of its relationship with fans. With each offering we keep telling ourselves that they've changed, that this time it will be different ("This will be Marvel's Andor!"), but we just keep being disappointed.
Even worse than the story, Kevin Feige & Co. waste really great performances from a murder's row of acting talent. Samuel L. Jackson makes some terrible scenes sing, never more so than when he goes toe-to-toe with an otherwise wasted Don Cheadle; Kingsley Ben-Adir mesmerizes, especially in his chilling final soliloquy; and Olivia Colman is irresistibly delicious, leaving the audience thirsty for more of her. Even Ben Mendelsohn has some nice moments. Instead of lifting it up though, their scenes serve as peaks from which we can see the depths of the series' valleys.
This show was an empty promise from the start. "Secret Invasion" was a massive, world-changing comic crossover event. Disney was never going to be able to pull off anything of that scale or importance with a six-episode miniseries. To avoid having to pay for the massive list of stars & endless special effects they'd need in order to come anything close to a true adaptation, the writers insult the audience's intelligence by putting in two throwaway lines about how they can't get The Avengers - or any other superpowered person - involved in the fight against this existential threat to humanity. "It's my war," Nick Fury says. And that's not even the most ridiculous plot point.
Disney's superhero division needs a massive reset, because just like when Marvel started flooding the market with endless variant covers for their increasingly silly comics in the 90s, I'm no longer buying what they're selling.
