PicoBlog

Tracks: 1) Colour Slide; 2) Once You Know; 3) Without You It Is Night; 4) That’s The Way; 5) I Want To Be Free; 6) How The Mighty Have Fallen; 7) Have I The Right?; 8) Just A Face In The Crowd; 9) Nice While It Lasted; 10) Me From You; 11) Leslie Anne; 12) She’s Too Way Out; 13) It Ain’t Necessarily So; 14) This Too Shall Pass Away.

There’s a contradiction at the core of “Cary Pays Off His Student Loans” when it comes to Shulie. On the one hand, she’s Brooke’s voice of reason. Incensed by the thought of Lance simply being so good that People acknowledged him as the Sexiest Man Alive, Brooke is obsessed with proving it’s actually a sign that he’s obsessed with being famous. And as she evolves from breaking-and-entering to petty theft to arson, Shulie’s the person she calls each time to update on how things are going.

Our discussion of The Regime in last week’s comment section basically amounted to a collective effort to understand what kind of show this is meant to be. It’s clear that this is a show that wants us to be destabilized, but is that actually a cohesive narrative strategy, or a scattershot approach to satire without a clear plan? The opening of “The Foundling” is effectively a middle finger to these questions, jumping forward three weeks into another new mania defining palace life.

As I write this review, HBO has just announced The Righteous Gemstones Season 4. But when I watched this two-part finale, I had to wonder if it was the end of The Righteous Gemstones. No cliffhangers, no ominous portents. Everything resolved. And for the record, if this had been goodbye to the Gemstones, I would have loved the way we went out. Several weeks ago, in the first review of this season, I made a flippant comment about how Gemstones is Succession, but with less chance of redemption.

Released in 2023 as part of the YRF Spy Universe, Tiger 3 pits Salman Khan's Tiger against a foe from the past who carries a very personal grudge. Tiger 3’s cast is more than capable to provide a fun and exciting project. And they all do fine with the material they’re given. Unfortunately, a bland narrative, and some confused direction by Maneesh Sharma, lets makes this the worst of the Tiger movies, and arguably the worst film in the YRK Spy Universe.

As it turns out, no one was really exaggerating during last week’s premiere when they mentioned Danvers being a little difficult. Over the course of this episode, she manages to piss off just about every single character—even loyal Pete gets screwed again when she demands he pull an all-nighter that mostly consists of babysitting duty for the corpsicles from Tsalal research station. Even when she’s just trying to do her job, she’s running roughshod over anyone, no matter how undeserving they are of her rudeness.

Wounds is not a subtle film. It opens with a quote from Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness: “…it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception… and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed within him because he was hollow at the core.” I chuckled at this during my rewatch, knowing what I know now about the film.

Myles here. With Showtime’s Yellowjackets emerging one of 2021/22’s breakout hits, and rife for speculation and discussion, it’s likely that many of us will be catching up on or revisiting Season 1 ahead of its return in late March. Accordingly, as its debut just preceded Episodic Medium’s arrival, Ben Rosenstock (who covered The White Lotus for us in the fall) will be covering the 10-episode season in the months leading up to Season 2.

Since the pilot, Shauna Shipman has been the closest character this ensemble has to a protagonist. Her tumultuous friendship with Jackie provided the overarching structure for the first season’s wilderness story, and in season two she was the first character to resort to cannibalism, a moment the whole series was building toward. Still, at times Shauna has drifted from focus, especially in recent episodes. If I had to say what this season was “about” on a character level, I’d say it’s the push and pull between Lottie’s spiritual teachings and Natalie’s skepticism, with various characters moving between sides, including Lottie and Nat themselves.