What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From Ready Steady Cut: https://readysteadycut.com/2021/06/17/recap-black-summer-season-2-episode-4-netflix-series/

Black Summer S2 Ep 4: Cold War

Daniel Hart

June 17, 2021

Episode 4 brings a thrilling battle from different perspectives as a few lead characters find their lives dangerously at risk.

This is another good chapter from an action perspective; the production crew put in the effort for “The Battle at the Manor.”

Episode 4 opens with Sun waking up in the snow; there’s an explosion in the distance, and the militia faction she’s with tells her to get up and walk. It looks bitterly cold as the leader Ray takes a cautious approach. Suddenly, a zombie sprints towards them, but Ray and his faction bring it down with ease. They have reached the manor, and one of the men gives Ray insight into what he saw inside, including the dead bodies. Sun is asked to wave a cloth outside the manor — they tell her if she runs, she is dead.
Outnumbered

The title screen, “Truce,” pops up; Rose and Anna are frantically looking outside the windows, and they are both concerned. Freddy wants a gun, but Rose tells him to look outside the window. She then asks Anna to hide and stay quiet. Rose hears gunshots and starts shooting at the men, but Freddy asks for a gun. She refuses to give him one and asks the man to cover the backdoor; Freddy knows they are outnumbered and wants to surrender.

Suddenly, a man shouts to the manor, telling Rose that they are outgunned and outnumbered — they warn if she takes another shot, everyone dies in the house; they start counting to ten, and then multiple shots start firing at the house. Rose is petrified, knowing she is unable to fight this off. She looks behind her, and Freddy has been shot — she throws Freddy into the basement.

Episode 4 then brings the same scenario from a different perspective, as this series repeatedly does.

The title screen, “Headshot,” pops up. There’s another group of people approaching the manor, and they can see the military faction approaching the place. One of the men from the third group approaches the house slowly, but he’s nearly hit by gunfire. The militia faction and the other group end up in a firefight. The man ends up in the basement, and he’s attacked by Freddy, the zombie. After a ferocious fight, the man kills the zombie. Then, as the man has been bit, he shoots himself in the head.

The title screen, “Relief,” pops up. The militia faction is making progress towards the manor, and one of the soldiers makes sure Sun is safe with the group. They manage to make it inside the manor, and Sun is tied to a banister. Ray shows no mercy with his men — if he suspects they are a bit, he shoots them square in the head. However, Ray misses a zombie, and Sun finds herself tied up facing one, so she has to find a way to escape it. She continues moving around the house and avoiding gunfire — a woman ends up saving her, but Sun has to attack a zombie to save her back.

A plane is heard overhead, and someone jumps out of it in a parachute. When Sun turns around, she’s faced with Ray, and she walks slowly towards them. The woman that saved her earlier points a gun at her, so Sun closes her eyes and begins to cry, but Ray grabs her cuffs and drags her away. The woman who was on the other side, join the militia.

The ending of Black Summer season 2, episode 4

The title screen “Breach” pops up, and it returns to Rose and Anna, who are hiding upstairs. They take out one of the attackers, but Rose is struggling with her ammo. The two women hide in the bath as the battle inside the manor keeps going. The man who has been hiding in the manor walks into the bathroom and tells them both to be quiet. One of the soldiers finds them, so they surrender. Once they hear a plane, the soldiers walk off. The man hidden in the house tells Rose that he knows how to get to the plane and begs her not to shoot.

Rose asks the man to back up as he leads the way. The trio leaves the manor; the war is over.

Episode 4 brings a thrilling battle from different perspectives as a few lead characters find their lives dangerously at risk.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From the Review Geek: https://www.thereviewgeek.com/hightown-s2e5review/

14/11/2021 by Greg Wheeler

Hightown S2 Ep 5: Dot Dot Dot

Episode 5 of Hightown Season 2 starts with Daisy returning to see Jorge. Sporting a nasty black eye, Jorge makes some excuses, claiming he’s been stressed. Handing over expensive jewelry to sweeten the deal, he promises Daily he’ll never hit her again. For now, it seems she’s on board, deleting messages from Jackie.

Alan continues on the hunt for Charmaine, intending to track her down before it’s too late. Osito though rings Char and learns she’s got a “flurry” coming in. As Osito gets off the phone, he continues his physical therapy with Janelle. Thanks to his progress, Osito asks Janelle for more yard passes, which of course is so he can work the drug shipments into the prison. Foolishly, Janelle approves.

Ray and Alan feed back what they’ve learned to Jackie, who in turn mentions Daisy. With all three guys working together now, Jackie receives a call regarding a “great white” down on the docks from Ed.

A boat owned by the Scrodfather has intercepted the package. It seems the plan here is to load the drugs onto a truck bound for New York and then off-load it at a processing plant in Brooklyn. Ed though intends to intercept the package before that can happen. Jackie is invited along for thee ride.

Alan runs into trouble at work when his superior learns about Ray smacking up Frankie. He warns Alan and implores him to cut ties and let it go. With his words still stinging his ears, Alan heads back to Ray and warns him not to get involved. Despite Alan throwing him a bone in this, it’s now got to the point where if he continues on, things are going to take a nasty turn. So naturally, Ray ignores that and winds up in deep trouble with Ethan.

The play here was initially for Ray to meet Ethan and get intel on Charmaine but he has a big grudge against Ray, especially since he put him behind bars. In a secluded parking lot, Ethan and his father both beat Ray down to a pulp.

Meanwhile, Renee gets cold feet about her abortion and decides to keep her child after all. At the club, she continues to act in denial, clearly wound tightly and wearing thick layers of makeup. When Frankie shows in his office, Renee broaches the idea of kids with him but he simply walks away, too busy to discuss this now.

Elsewhere, Jackie heads on her stakeout but she’s distracted, constantly messaging Leslie. With Ron in the back and Ed driving, Jackie receives a photo and follows it up with the message “I love you so much.” Tellingly, Leslie doesn’t message back. Oof. Jackie does her best to play damage control, ringing her lover and playing it off as if she loves all of her friends. However, they’re all distracted by the truck arriving at the warehouse.

Ed and the gang intercept the truck but all of the packages are completely clean. Jackie hits out after and claims Ed is slipping up and losing it. That’s pretty rich though coming from a woman who nearly killed someone. Ed is quick to remind her of this fact too, as they head back emptyhanded.

That evening, Frankie shows up at Jorge’s new place and puts a bullet between Daisy’s eyes. It’s a shocking moment, and one that comes off the back of her admitting the truth about Jorge’s abuse to him. Frankie lays down the law, keeping his brother in line.

If that wasn’t shocking enough, Jorge heads back to see Renee in her office, flaunting his stuff and threatening her with a gun. Renee grabs a gun of her own though and accidentally fires, shooting Jorge right in the chest. She thinks twice about ringing Frankie though, instead letting him bleed out.

With Jorge dead, Renee strikes a deal with the two cleaners at the club, agreeing to pay them 30k each in exchange for cleaning up Jorge. With the deed done, Renee shows up on Ray’s doorstep and tells him she loves him.

The Episode Review

Two shocking deaths and a whole lot of drama; Hightown returns with a very dramatic episode that blows this case wide open.

Osito getting back into drug dealing is perhaps obvious, although Janelle letting her guard down and giving him yard passes is not. Surely she would suspect there’s something afoul here but nonetheless, it’s a pretty stupid move.

Meanwhile, Jorge and Daisy both dying is a great way to shake things up and are bright patches in what’s otherwise a bit of a frustrating episode. The reason I say that is because Jackie, who was doing so well up until this point, has slipped back into old habits.

She’s completely unprofessional, messaging Leslie the whole time she’s supposed to be on a job. And even worse, she then takes out her frustrations and anger on Ed when he follows bad intel. Maybe it’s just me but her scenes were dreadful this episode and really paint her in a negative light again.

However, that blemish is not enough to dampen what’s otherwise a very enjoyable hour of TV. This has definitely been a better season than the first, and that ending hints that we’ve got a dramatic flurry of chapters coming up.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From Den of Geek: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/black-sails-season-2-finale-review/

Black Sails S2 Ep 10

By TS Rhodes

March 29, 2015|


This is it – the last episode to a season of Black Sails that was much too short. It didn’t quite have the historic conflicts of last year, but it did have a solid ending, with alliances changed and storylines concluded with promise of more conflict to come.

Vane’s character has always gone against type. Looking at him the first time we were led to expect the senseless violence of a one-dimensional bad guy. He’s shown us much more than that. Alone of all the pirates, Vane understood what the piratical ideal of “freedom meant. And now Vane has come to truly understand the full depth of the truth. That “those people”: the governors, the admirals, the army officers and the mob of sheep that follow them, see pirates as pirates, with no differentiation between Vane or Flint or Rackham.

This is also the episode when we see Flint’s heart broken. He wasn’t quite “Flint” before – not quite that substance that has been described as “cold stone that never struck a warming spark.” I had thought that, in the last episode, Miranda’s death came much too quickly. One blast from a gun, a surprised look, and she was gone.

That was a good move. We saw, and to some extent felt, Flint’s shock and horror. When she died, his last ties with his old life, and his last chance at a happy ending, died with her. This episode, we see what we need to see to get closure for ourselves. We also see the end of Flint’s old life. When the crowd throws garbage at Miranda’s corpse (a lovely 18th century touch) the last of Flint’s heart turns to stone. We see it in his eyes.

Vane’s turn into a rescuing angel (a fallen angel, mind) is both smart and brave. Vane, in spite of the danger, has nothing to lose. That’s because Vane’s story was never going to end happily. It was just going to end someday, and Vane was going to live the best life he could before that happened.

So Flint and Vane are now brothers, in spirit if not in fact. Their escape from Charlestown reminded me oddly of Jack Sparrow’s escape from the hangman at the end of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. A lot more explosions (why do movies insist that cannon balls explode when they hit?) and a lot more blood, but the same feel, somehow.

In line with pirate teaming up, we get good closure between Rackham and Bonny. I loved the line, “When I said my name, they knew my name. The first thing they said every time was your name.” Anne says she can’t marry Jack… And I wonder if history will deal into this, the way it has feed into so many plotlines in Black Sails. The historic Anne Bonny couldn’t marry the historic Jack because she was already married to James Bonny.

But we certainly get a beautiful scene with the sun over Bonny’s shoulder and the wind in the rigging.

The plot which is leading us toward Treasure Island is likewise moving forward. Silver’s betrayals and machinations are coming home to roost. Selling the details of the Spanish gold to Rackham might have worked better if Silver hadn’t been in the middle of Flint’s crew. But his guilty secret, in spite of murder committed, is still between Silver and one last co-conspirator. So easy to betray.

The point is that Silver has finally found himself in a place where he can’t talk his way out of a problem. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

The scene moves too fast, I think. Rather like the scene with where Miranda dies. The show would have benefitted by having one more episode. The torture is effective, thought I think that shooting Silver’s friend was just a plot device. A much more believable and subtle one than many we’ve seen. The loss of his confidant leaves Silver free to spin the truth again, any wah he can get away with.

I like historic accuracy. The attack on the fort made a great deal of sense. It was lovely to see the town’s guns turned around and used against it. It’s proper tactics, and for once the fighting was done with a thought to how these things could really happen. No one can complain that the pirates forgot how to pirate in this episode.

We end this sequence on a bombardment, revenge, and on Silver losing his leg. Flint’s really a pirate now, the bitter and vicious man that haunted the dreams of his old crew in Treasure Island. And we have once again moved closer to the book. Silver’s is now one-legged, and quartermaster, though not at presently of the Walrus.

Still thinking, our John Silver, though. He’s got a plausible reason now to tell Flint about the sale of the information. I don’t think Flint believes him, but I don’t think it matters to Flint now.

Did anyone else notice that Lord Ash is still alive? I hope his daughter comes back, too. I liked her.

Once again, though, we end with Spanish gold. Rackham and Bonny have it. Max will get her share, and now she owns a powerful lot of island business. But Flint’s coming for it, and Vane is on his side. Roll credits, with a nice savage skirl of music.

What’s next? I’ve heard rumors that Flint will now turn into Blackbeard, but the announcement that the show has hired Ray Stevenson to play the part of Blackbeard. Pirate stories work best when it’s three sides against each other. So it’ll be Blackbeard vs. Vane/Flint vs. Rackham/Bonny/Max. We’re also overdue to meet Mary Read, who in history was the “ahem” companion of Rackham and Bonny. I’ve been wanting her to make an appearance for two years now. Maybe we’ll see it at last.

Any way it comes out, however, I think we’ve got a good year ahead of us. Black Sails has proved itself a class act. Here’s to next year.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from the Review Geek: https://www.thereviewgeek.com/dopesick-s1e5review/

27/10/2021 by Greg Wheeler

Dopesick S1 Ep 5: The Whistleblower

Episode 5 of Dopesick begins with a woman named Marianne Skolick working tirelessly through the years to try and get someone – anyone – to look into Purdue Pharma. Following the death of her daughter at the hands of Oxy, she’s determined to try and get her justice. Thankfully she finds that through Rick Mountcastle, who rings and asks to talk.

Meanwhile, Finnix continues to slip further into addiction. In fact, he’s up to over 400mg a day. It’s shocking and his nonchalance toward the dosage is telling unto itself. If that wasn’t enough to show how addictive this drug is, Betsy sells her mother’s jewelry to fund her addiction too.

Unfortunately, this Oxy epidemic is about to get a whole lot worse. Richard Sackler intends to launch a new 160mg pill. He also wants to put himself up as the president of Purdue in the process. This would bring billions in profit – but only if they vote for him.

Now, given Purdue are pushing reps to dangerously sell higher of OxyContin onto people, Rick and Randy begin sifting through all the notes sent in from sales reps about their concerns. There are numerous call notes (hundreds to be precise) from reps who have reported instances of the drug being abused through crushing and snorting pills.

Now, apparently all the sales reps knew that the drug was more addictive than other opioids but that FDA label was enough to convince them otherwise. One of the reps even signed an NDA with her severance package too, which appears to be a common occurrence given no one wants to talk to the pair.

Back in 1999, Udell’s secretary, Maureen Sara, is tasked with investigating Oxy through the chatrooms. What she finds is shocking. Numerous people are cheating the system, addiction rates are through the roof and there’s even tips on how to get the biggest high. Sara immediately sends an email exhibiting her concerns, CCing in all the executives in the email she sends about her findings.


Finally the message gets out and with OxyContin becoming ever-more addictive, the government jump in and decide to investigate this for themselves. Well, it turns out the aforementioned whistleblower is Marianne Skolick, the woman from the first scene of the series. This gives more context to what’s going on and it turns out she’s been collecting merchandise from Purdue as well to show their deceptive marketing schemes. And that seller? Howard Udell’s secretary, Sara.

Elsewhere, Finnix prepares to do surgery but obviously he’s still feeling the effects of Oxy. He completely botches the procedure and as blood pours out the wound, he calls for an ambulance. When the man is taken to hospital, Finnix acts shadily and even asks for Oxy from one of the doctors, which inevitably sees him arrested.

Another character that’s struggling badly is Betsy. After selling her mother’s jewellery at the pawn shop, Betsy arrives home to find her parents absolutely distraught. Her father drops all the pills down the sink as Betsy goes completely insane, lighting her things on fire and hoping her parents burn in hell. And this, of course, gets her a one-way ticket to rehab.

Meanwhile, the press release has certainly ruffled some feathers so Bridget Meyer shows up and listens in to Richard Sackler and the others promising to do their best to stifle the flow of drug addiction. While everyone else pussyfoots around the crux of the issue, Bridget goes straight for the jugular. Given Richard is reading off notes, she refers to his feeble ideas as akin to putting a band aid on a gunshot wound.


People are dying and Bridget refuses to let this go. She’s going to do everything she can to get Oxy off the streets. As she and Richard lock eyes, the meeting is adjourned.

Bridget is determined to keep up the pressure, intending to go after the FDA again. Her tenacity is enough for her boss to give her the green-light in pursing this line of action.

Elsewhere, Randy and Rick go after Maureen Sara. It turns out she shredded all of the emails associated with the Purdue addiction issue and everything has been swept under the rug. She speaks of her harrowing ordeal, and the unfortunate addiction to Oxy she experienced shortly after getting in a car accident.

Udell encouraged her to go on OxyContin but she ended up getting addicted. If that wasn’t enough Purdue then fired her for being an addict.Upon learning that her testimony would be made in secret in front of the jury, she agrees to speak up against Purdue. Unfortunately, she also ends up relapsing from the stress later that evening, calling out for Oxy. Showing off her mental fragility, Rick and Randy realize they can’t use her for a testimony.


Meanwhile, Richard Sackler gets a big double sucker punch. Not only is he denied the opportunity of being president by Morty, he also finds out that Germany is a no-go. Off the back of this, Richard Sackler decides to press ahead and run with him being made president. He manages to convince Kathe to join him, as she helps swing the balance of power over to Richard. They usurp Morty, who’s absolutely mortified that he’s been played, as Kathe is made Vice president.

The Episode Review

The horrifying truth about OxyContin comes out this episode, exemplifying the sheer horror of drug addiction and how widespread this issue has become.

With both Betsy and Finnix falling prey to this drug, and it causing no end of problems across the community, it falls to Randy, Rick and Bridget to try and stop Purdue before it’s too late.

This whole dynamic is really well-written and works perfectly to help understand just how dangerous this drug is and how hard these men and women are working to stop it from spreading further. Not only that, it also shows the extent that Purdue will go to sweep all of this under the rug. Then again, with FDA approval for this opioid, it’s not exactly going to be easy to take them all down.


Ultimately, everything rests on the witness statements and we know from earlier in the season that Finnix is going to be one of those people. Who will join him? We’ll have to wait and see.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From TV Guide: https://www.tvguide.com/news/evil-season-1-episode-9-recap-exorcism-part-2/

Evil S1 Ep 9: Exorcism Pt II

Maggie Fremont

Dec. 5, 2019, 8:00 p.m. PT

It's getting hot in here, so take off all your turtlenecks. OK, that needs some workshopping, but the sentiment in regards to Evil's "Exorcism Part 2" rings true. First, let's talk turtlenecks: Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) has been rocking a tight t-neck all season long, so that's no big deal, but then David Acosta (Mike Colter) shows up neck deep in a thick sweater t-neck, and it is, I cannot stress this enough, CAMEL. This is the biggest of deals. Is this because he's been hanging out with Kristen so long and has feelings? Is this like the psychological transference mentioned elsewhere in this episode? Wow, science is cool.

If that development isn't enough for you, the heat index in this episode is really turned up by the arrival of Renée Harris (Renée Elise Goldsberry), an archdiocesan lawyer who is described as more of a "fixer" than a litigator (the new boss in town and Flannery O'Connor stan Bishop Marx [Peter Scolari] is fond of her because "she keeps our abuse victim lawsuits reasonable," a line that gives me the creeps more than any goblin baby could). She's here to take on a very pertinent case to our cause: Caroline Hopkins (Karen Pittman) -- she of first Evil exorcism fame -- has decided to sue the church, David, and Father Amara (Clark Johnson) for botching her exorcism. Renée volunteers for this job for one very specific reason: She knows David. She is Julia's sister. They seem very happy to see one another. And by "happy" I mean boiling over with sexual tension. So this is fun!

We still know very little about Julia, the late love of David's life, but Renée brings with her a few more details: Apparently, on her deathbed, Julia told both David and Renée that the Church needs them, which is what led David to the priesthood and Julia to take her badass lawyering to the Catholic Church. Renée is pretty confident she'll get the case settled during the deposition -- which is a big chunk of the episode. Fear not, ye of little faith, Robert and Michelle King have been making depositions exciting since 2009.

Another great talent the Kings have is that every character we meet is imbued with such a tangible personality. That's of course true for Renée Harris, a straight shooter to an incredibly quirky extent, but equally true for the prosecution's lawyer, Judith Lemonhead (Jennifer Ferrin). Yes, Lemonhead.

While giving Kristen some quick pointers for the deposition -- Kristen and Dr. Boggs (Kurt Fuller), you'll remember, completely disagreed with David and Father Amara proceeding with Caroline's exorcism, instead diagnosing her with dissociative identity disorder -- Renée informs her that Lemonhead is a tough prosecutor, and also she's angry about her ridiculous name and takes that anger out on the world. Renée isn't wrong. Lemonhead (I will only refer to her by her last name because it is a gift) isn't messing around with this depo. Caroline's psychiatrist, Dr. Lynch-Giles (Jeremy Shamos), testifies that his patient suffers from dissociative identity disorder, delusions, suicidal ideation, and malnutrition to boot, all because of this reckless exorcism, and he, A DOCTOR, has administered anti-psychotics to help her. Not a great start for David Acosta, priest-in-training!

Kristen is up next, and in a difficult spot since she wants to help David but is also under oath. She sticks to the concise truth: Yes, she and Dr. Boggs diagnosed Caroline with dissociative identity disorder and wanted to stop the exorcism, no she doesn't believe in possession, and yes, Renée told her that Lemonhead is pissed about her name. The questioning goes as well as it can. It's when Lemonhead begins to question David that things go south. I'm not going to say this downturn is because David's not wearing a camel turtleneck sweater, but I'm not not going to say that either, you know?

Lemonhead's strategy with David is simple: She gets him to admit that he decided to become a priest three years ago after two arrests -- one for possession of cocaine and one for assault, in which he punched a guy unconscious -- and multiple stays in rehab for substance abuse and sex addiction. Her point is that if David had disclosed his past, Caroline wouldn't have agreed to have him perform an exorcism in the first place. Lemonhead informs them that Caroline will settle for $8 million, as well as agreeing to remove Father Amara from the priesthood and not allowing David to ever be ordained. Just, like, those few little things.

When Renée goes to see her client in his room, she's not there to commiserate over their bad day or talk strategy going forward; she's there to inform him that she's always had a crush on him. I don't know which law school Renée attended, but I'd be interested in looking at their course catalog. Furthermore, she cannot freaking believe that her obstacle in regards to her feelings used to be her sister and now it's God. Terrible cards to pull, indeed! But not all hope is lost for her: When she asks David if he's ever thought about her that way, he nods. Still, when she walks over and gets so close she could kiss him (so! much! heat!), he tells her he needs to study. Truly, the nerdiest form of a cold shower there is.

In the end, it is Kristen Bouchard who figures out how to beat Lemonhead, which, honestly, is a feat since the woman has a lot going on at the moment: Her husband Andy (Patrick Brammall) is back and immediately shaves his sherpa beard before they can have sex while it still adorns his face (v. rude); a possible demon cat has appeared at their house to attach itself to the sweatshirt David gave Kristen during their ghost rave with his dad; and after hearing about Kristen's new job chasing demons, Andy thinks it just means she is craving the adventure of mountain climbing and tells her he'll stay home with the girls so she can go to Everest. Not to mention: She hasn't even had a chance to unload on someone, anyone, about watching one of David's step-mothers deliver a goblin in a cornfield while being on a hallucinogenic drug trip. But sure, she also has time to figure out that Dr. Lynch-Giles was prescribing Caroline antipsychotics that are known to cause suicidal thoughts because the pharmaceutical company was wining and dining (and cruising) him. She is a true hero.

Back at the deposition, Renée is able to use this info to get Boggs and Kristen to testify that Caroline's ill health could have easily been due to the antipsychotics she was prescribed. Renée is also able to say the phrase, "sounding a little bitter there, Miss Lemonhead," which is a blessing for all of us. The deposition devolves until Lemonhead calls Renée out for probably having a relationship with David, because Lemonhead is both a stellar prosecutor and a human sexual tension detector. Eventually, she shows up to inform the church that Caroline has changed her tune and just wants her medical bills covered. Those bishops and priests are like, yes, this is super cool, we can do that. Anyway, justice for Lemonhead someday!

David returns to his room to find Renée putting to practice some of the lessons she must have learned in her advanced courses: She's sitting in the dark, draped over a chair, and tells him that she's not going anywhere until he touches her. You'd think nothing could temper that heat, but it's as if David hears that challenge and is like "hold my consecrated wine." "I have to lead a prayer group," he tells her. Oh boy, the coldest of cold showers with this dude. Still, David does not leave the room, so perhaps he can't turn down Renée for a second time. You guys, if Renée turns out to be a demon sent to tempt David, I'm going to be so mad!!

Elsewhere in this episode, our Demon-in-Command is making some headway with his plans. I've been avoiding getting into Leland's (Michael Emerson) storyline this week because I'm still in a bit of shock. Honestly: Did you guys see that?

Leland's "therapy sessions" with his little incel-in-training Sebastian (Noah Robbins) are still going strong, and now Leland is having Sebastian turn his focus on a women-only gym. He wants Sebastian to go there and pretend to shoot the women there with his finger. OK, so that sound ridiculous when typed out, but trust me, when Sebastian finally goes there and performs this exercise, it is deeply unsettling.

Once Sebastian completes that task, Leland, a proud demon therapist, wants Sebastian to move on to the next stage in his healing process: doing it for real. Sebastian is in the process of buying an entire arsenal of guns, and Leland introduces him to Adam (Graham Rowat). Adam is an expert marksman, one of the 59 people Leland trusts in the world, and yes, the ICE Detention Center guard who threw out our prophetess' drawings of the demon hierarchy map. After spending time with Adam at the gun range, Leland deems Sebastian ready to carry out his mission -- only he doesn't want his target to be the gym anymore. He wants him to go to a local prayer group... led by David Acosta.

While Sebastian waits for his signal from Leland, he starts getting geared up and practicing with his guns. And then he accidentally shoots himself in the head. He's found dead with his arsenal of guns, a bigger tragedy mercifully avoided. Once again, this show reminds us that sometimes the scariest thing isn't a ghost or goblin; it's a human being's capacity for evil.

Sebastian may be dead, but Leland's not calling it quits. Of course, initially he's enraged. Like, flipping desks enraged. But then he calms himself and sets off to find the next person he can manipulate into doing truly evil deeds.

Ugh, remember when we started this thing talking about people rocking turtlenecks? Things were much more fun back then.

Evil airs Thursdays at 10/9c on CBS.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_(season_1)

Dexter S1 Ep 8: Shrink Wrap

 An unexplained suicide of a wealthy and powerful woman leads Dexter to suspect that her psychologist, Dr. Emmett Meridian, may have killed her. But he gets a shock when a visit to the suspect reveals dark secrets from Dexter's past. Elsewhere, Rita becomes warmer towards her ex-husband Paul, who claims to have reformed. She wants to become more intimate with Dexter, who is afraid of physically consummating their relationship, but then he is able to have sex with her and once they have finished, he is worried that he might have scared her. Meanwhile, Debra is falling in love with her new boyfriend Rudy. At the end of the episode, the audience finds out that Rudy is the Ice Truck Killer, while unknown to the characters.

From Vulture.com: https://www.vulture.com/article/fargo-recap-season-4-episode-8-the-nadir.html

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

Fargo S4 Ep 8: Nadir

By Keith Phipps

At the end of the previous episode, it was pretty obvious what was going to happen. Loy let Gaetano loose after letting him know Josto had left him to die. You don’t get over that sort of thing if you’re a hot-tempered Italian gangster, right? And, as “The Nadir” opens, it looks like Gaetano’s pursuing the obvious path. Josto returns to Joplin’s and finds a bloodied Gaetano surrounded by the rest of the Fadda gang. He charges Josto and beats him, hard. It’s lights out for the KC capo and maybe worse. And then Gaetano lets Josto know how proud he is of his big (but significantly smaller) brother. A man who could allow his own brother to be killed to secure power, and who could arrange for the murder of a child to ensure that death? That’s a real man.

It’s a surprising development, or would be if Fargo didn’t already set up Gaetano’s values. He loves his family, but if anyone within that family isn’t putting the business first, are they really family at all? Josto’s willingness to shed blood — both Gaetano’s and Satchel’s — to keep a hold on power so impresses Gaetano that he swears his everlasting loyalty to Josto. They make a great team: Gaetano can be the forceful bull and Josto can be the clever python (or chameleon or whatever). It’s kind of sweet, really, in its perverse, criminal way, and it makes the Faddas once again a force to be reckoned with. Loy had a plan. This part did not go according to it. His next move needs only a one-word description: “Fargo.”


Josto needed a win. In the opening scene we learn that he and Oraetta are not only still very much a thing, their relationship has intensified considerably. Their bedroom games have gotten even more dangerous and Josto thinks he might be falling for the woman he playfully calls “Minnesota.” Oraetta’s not having it, though. She doesn’t like that he plans to marry Dessie, Milvin the alderman’s daughter. (In case you’d forgotten, that’s still a plan, although Milvin and Josto can’t seem to come to terms concerning when the marriage will take place.) And she doesn’t seem all that interested in the whole love thing in the first place.

Maybe her background explains it. She tells Josto that she was a sickly child, in and out of the hospital with a “kind of malaise” doctors described as a “failure to thrive.” She could barely keep food down and who knows what might have happened if her saintly mother hadn’t been there with her “special juice”? (If this is going where it seems to be going, her backstory would make Fargo yet another series featuring Munchausen syndrome by proxy. But does Oraetta know that?) Josto tells a story of his own. The Irish boss with whom he lived for three years as part of a power-sharing arrangement was “the devil,” a man who did things to Josto no one should ever do to a child.

Oraetta cuts him short, flustered by the news that Dr. Harvard did not die of her poisoned pastry, despite all appearances to the contrary. But Josto and Oraetta aren’t the only ones delivering backstory this episode. Though action dominates the second half, in the first half we get a seemingly heartfelt explanation from Odis about how he became the man he is. Mocked throughout his life for his tics and OCD (though he doesn’t have that second term to use), he’s discovered they worsen when he feels out of control. But, as a cop, he feels in control. Except the compromises he’s made with the Faddas and the Cannons make him feel like he’s surrendered much of that control, so his symptoms have worsened again. It’s complicated, but he tells Deafy he’d like to make it less complicated by going straight. And as he says this, there’s little evidence of his compulsive tendencies. He seems to have seen the light, justifying Deafy’s faith the goodness and righteousness can prevail over evil.

Stay tuned to see how that pans out. But first we get another where-I’m-coming-from conversation, this one between Dibrell Smutny and Buel Cannon. Buel explains that she won’t be able to help Dibrell, no matter what Dibrell thinks she can do. But Dibrell suspects otherwise, relating the history of King of Tears mortuary and how it fits in with her thoughts of Ethelrida, the daughter who has, as she puts it, “dreams that take my breath away.” The talk resolves nothing between them, but they seem to understand one another by the conversation’s end, when Buel asks Dibrell to hold the service for Satchel, Buel’s still-presumed-dead son. Elsewhere, other members of the Smutny and Cannon families start to forge a bond thanks to Lemuel and Ethelrida talking, flirtatiously, about their jazz preferences. “He’s your captor,” her mother warns. “Not your friend.”

Ethelrida might soon need all the friends she can find, however. Oraetta discovers she’s on the verge of being in deep trouble. Not only has Dr. Harvard survived, he’s recovered and been taken out of state for his own safety. That can happen when strychnine shows up in blood tests, and given that Josto had already threatened Dr. Harvard’s life, it must have seemed like a good idea to whisk him away. But it’s not good for Oraetta, who attempts to pack her bags and get out of there before she’s found out. In the process, she finds the notebook Ethelrida left behind and matches the handwriting to the anonymous letter insinuating that she might be a murderer. This can’t be good for Ethelrida.

Loy’s having a tough day, too. Deafy’s investigations bring him to Loy’s doorsteps and, after Deafy lays some critical words about alcohol on him, saying it’s like “your friend, with a knife,” he follows them with some thoughts about the criminal mind. Their identity, see, is based around getting away with things. And in place of morality they employ a code, a kind of poor substitute by Deafy’s reckoning. In an episode filled with origin stories, Deafy offers a kind of overarching theory about what drives the various factions of the Kansas City underworld, one that’s less concerned with its members’ individual identities than how they operate as a type. It’s an unflattering description, and yet Loy hardly disproves it when he sells out Zelmare and Swanee in order to save his own skin.

And so we’re off to Kansas City’s Union Station for a big shootout. And if it looks a little familiar, that’s because Fargo shot the scene at Chicago’s Union Station. Even if you’ve never been there, if you’ve seen Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, you’ll recognize it as the setting of a gunfight that gives the movie its most famous set piece. It’s no accident that the battle in this episode evokes that famous scene, from its long set-up to its exaggerated soundtrack to its strategically deployed slow motion. (There’s no baby carriage rolling down the stairs Battleship Potemkin-style, however.) If the scene doesn’t come close to topping its inspiration, it gives the episode yet another moment that complicates our feelings toward its colorful criminals.

Zelmare and Swanee are some of this season’s most charismatic characters, but their escape attempt leaves a lot of innocent victims in its wake, as Odis discovers when he finally works up the nerve to join the raid. Seeing all those bodies, which include women and children, makes rooting for them feel extremely uncomfortable. Not that what follows provides a clearer rooting interest. Though late, Odis is still able to kill Swanee and Deafy, who dies with an accusatory look still on his face, but can’t stop Zelmare from getting away. There are no good guys here.

And, though it’s fun to watch Josto and Gaetano make up for lost time by behaving like boys again, there are no good guys at the Fadda compound either, which, in the episode’s closing moments, becomes a battleground that leaves the Fadda matriarch dead when the men Loy has summoned from Fargo show up. Is this the nadir of the title? Because it seems like things are about to get even worse.

OK Then!

• RIP Deafy. At least, thanks to The Mandalorian, one of the marshals Timothy Olyphant played this fall survived. Olyphant delivered a fun performance, somehow making a prig seem both charming and wily.

• RIP Swanee, who went out guns a-blazin’ just as she hoped to — but not before recounting how much fun she had killing Italians with Zelmare. Again, these are not nice people.

• So where is all this going? Fargo’s traditionally been good with propulsive action scenes and dialogue-driven character moments, but much of “The Nadir” plays like a shapeless collection of the latter capped by the former. It’s not a bad episode at all, though the familiarity of the shoot-out is a bit much. (Where much of the series is an act of creative derivativeness, the scene feels a bit too close to the original.) But we’re getting into the home stretch and it’s hard to see how the many strands of his season get tied together. Not that they have to. The season’s offered a lot of pleasures in the form of atmosphere, strong performances, and colorful characters. But it’s unclear whether it will end up forming a cohesive story or whether its 1950s Kansas City will simply serve as a playground for some new variations on familiar Fargo themes.

• Speaking of strong performances, Oraetta spends much of the episode in a state of near-panic. But her face while suffocating Josto as she pleasures him is eerily peaceful.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From Showsnob: https://showsnob.com/2021/05/16/the-girlfriend-experience-season-3-episode-4-recap-shuffle/

The Girlfriend Experience S3 Ep 4: Shuffle

by Mads Lennon

The Girlfriend Experience Season 3, Episode 4, “Shuffle,” hinges on Iris’s increasingly uncanny relationships with her clients as she continues to hone the perfect girlfriend experience. The episode opens with Iris lounging in bed with Georges. She notices the wedding ring on his finger, and he tells her about how he and his wife grew apart after being together for so long.

Iris tells him she noticed the version of him in a recent television appearance was a deep fake. She could tell because the fake didn’t let his pinky lift, all prim and proper while drinking. Georges seems amused. He segues into a new topic, asking Iris if he could have her for a full 24 hours, day and night.

With Paul, Iris is much different, less poised and more prone to anger. They’ve established a shorthand and easy chemistry. Paul gifts her a pair of gold earrings and requests they meet more often. Iris suggests she contact her booker, but Paul gives her his personal number, just in case.

Before leaving Paul’s apartment, Iris catches a TMZ-style broadcast on television of a reporter hassling NGM CEO Christophe (Frank Dillane), who mentions his tech goals being forged by society’s collective mind. Paul asks if Iris knows him. She says no, but he’s “making her really mad.”

Iris’s other client this week is Zaheer (Sia Alpour), a wealthy Saudi Arabian man used to getting what he wants. Zaheer wants to call Iris something other than “Cassie,” so she tells him her real name. They fool around in his car, and then the date turns into a street race with another thrill-seeker.

After meeting with Zaheer, we see a strange, dream-like sequence with Iris meeting Emcee and chatting with her at NGM. She suddenly wakes in the backseat of her car. It’s unclear if the meeting really happened. Leif warns her that a black SUV has followed them. Iris requests he holds off on investigating but keeps her in the loop if it happens again. Is the V having her followed? Or someone from NGM?

Between juggling her duties at NGM and the V, Iris finds time to meet with the spokesperson for an experimental Alzheimer’s treatment and study (insert Meredith Grey flashbacks). The organization is a global effort with a focused, interdisciplinary study and holistic approach. They have a lengthy waitlist.

In the early hours, Iris gets awakened by a call from her dad. He doesn’t realize what time it is in London compared to America. Iris hops on Facetime to chat with him and her sister. During the call, Iris’s dad fails to recognize her. He speaks fondly of his daughter, unaware of who Iris is.

Tawny returns this week for a phone call. She calls Iris to vent about a client. Tawny feels upset that she crossed a line with him. Whoever this client is, put her on a leash and treated her like a dog. Tawny says she’s covered in bruises from walking around on all fours. Iris advises her to stop seeing him if the situation isn’t serving her. “Someone grew up fast.”

Iris tries to get Tawny’s advice about how she’s using her clients to study human behavior for her AI project, but it doesn’t go the way she planned. Tawny questions if Iris is recording her clients, reminding her that it is their job to turn a blind eye to any skeletons these clients might have. Iris changes the subject.

Later, at work, Iris and Hiram get to the topic of desire and trying to find a strategic way of making their AI understand it and appeal to its users. Hiram introduces the concept of shuffling, a random ongoing function, like a playscript. Once you press play, it’s impossible to predict what comes next. It keeps you wanting more, an ideal asset to an AI simulating desire.

On her way out of the office, Iris receives a notice that she’s been “summoned” to the NGM offices.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From Den of Geek: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-expanse-season-3-episode-5-review-triple-point/

The Expanse S3 Ep 5: Triple Point

By Michael Ahr|

May 10, 2018|

This is one of those episodes of The Expanse that’s hard to judge. On the one hand, the cooler heads prevailing in war was inspirational, but on the other hand, the death and destruction caused by an admiral desperate to hold onto his power threw everything into chaos. Placing more reflective moments for Naomi, Prax, and Alex beside this military drama was disorienting even though the insights themselves were quite welcome. So while “Triple Point” is a win for compelling action and emotional depth, it’s a bit of a misfire in terms of pacing and cohesion.

The most cathartic scene happened also to be the most out of place, paradoxically enough. Naomi’s decision to share the fact that she had a child with an idealist in the OPA to explain to Holden why she shared the protomolecule with Fred Johnson was heartfelt, and Holden’s reaction was admirably both full of understanding and muted by the still fresh betrayal. But this bit of back story felt like The Expanse was shoehorning in a bit of Naomi’s past from the novels, and it didn’t feel all that persuasive other than the sincerity with which Naomi apologizes, not for what she did but for the way she did it. Those hoping for reconciliation for the couple were at least partially placated by Holden’s concession, “I can’t hate you for doing what you thought was right.”

Holden likewise had a scene that was no doubt meant to carry more weight between him and Avasarala, but it ended up just marking time. Certainly Avasarala’s admission that Earth needs a sample of the protomolecule is important both for Holden’s truce with Naomi and for the overall political game in which Avasarala is involved, but the banter about adults and children feels a little self-indulgent here. Avasarala admonition to Holden doesn’t really tell us anything new: “You are not a child. I suspect you never were. So stop acting like one. It doesn’t become you.” If that was supposed to push Holden back towards wanting to save humanity again, fine, but in this case bold actions speak louder than pretty words.

The sense of impending but unfulfilled action permeates the rest of the crew, too, with Alex receiving words of encouragement from his son, Melas, carrying through on a background story that helps us engage with the Martian pilot but also makes us wonder where these family details are leading. The same is true for Amos; as he teaches Prax to shoot, you can see the worry on his face that he has turned this compassionate scientist into a cold revenge-seeker. Their interaction likely foreshadows a decisive moment to come in the assault on the Helium-3 refinery. Viewers have to simply file these details away for later fulfillment.

But that’s hard to do in an episode filled with mutiny, fits of conscience, and military regulations among both the MCRN and the UNN. Make no mistake, the tension created by Captain Kirino of the Hammurabi trying to decide what to do with the Errinwright recording was executed brilliantly as was the mutinous discussions among Souther, Mancuso, and Shaffer on the Agatha King. How shocking for Nguyen to go from carefully exercising his authority to gunning down his fellow naval officers in the CIC! It was as surprising a turn of events as we’ve seen on The Expanse.

The back and forth was particularly disorienting — in a good way except for, as mentioned above, the tendency to be distracted by the emotional moments elsewhere. Kirino initially dismisses Sinopoli’s characterization of Avasarala as trustworthy, but she eventually sends the evidence along to Souther anyway, against the advice of her XO. Souther cautions his team against encouraging a revolt at first but is then the first to go down. Even the guns being pulled on Agatha King’s bridge trade hands a few times in dizzying fashion. When Nguyen destroys one of his own ships and finally sits down at the weapons console to fire off the hybrid pods, the audience is giddy with entertained confusion.

Presumably all of those hybrid pods contained mindless creatures such as those on Ganymede and not the more advanced type like Katoa who “can’t stop the work,” but who knows? Where those pods are headed is anyone’s guess as is what it might mean for Mei that Strickland and Mao intend to experiment further on her. Because Holden and company have only begun their infiltration of the Mao-Kwikowski facility, it wouldn’t be crazy to predict that a race to save Mei, guns a-blazing, is imminent. But Nguyen has made it impossible to predict, delightfully so, what the consequences for his actions will be.

So again, it was a great episode of The Expanse: entertaining, plenty of action, and forward movement on several story arcs. But the intimate beats for Alex, Naomi, Holden, and Prax got lost in the mayhem and even in isolation, certain aspects of those scenes felt forced. The performances from the actors, especially Dominique Tipper’s remorseful confession, were wonderful, but aside from Prax’s Amos-like composure, which applied directly to their mission to Io, none of those moments built further on the story at hand. Nevertheless, even this small stumble can’t keep The Expanse from being the most exciting space drama on television.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From Decider.com: https://decider.com/2021/10/15/you-season-3-episode-4-recap-hands-across-madre-linda/

You S3 Ep 4: Hands Across Madre Linda

‘You’ Season 3 Episode 4 Recap: “Hands Across Madre Linda”
By Tara Ariano @TaraAriano

First, the good news: Gil isn’t dead. Thus concludes the good news.

In You Season 3 Episode 4, Love has, once again, left Joe to clean up her mess. Their current plan is to see if Gil — in the basement cage Joe tells him is for proofing dough — will accept a very sincere apology from Joe, on Love’s behalf. Love and Joe won’t tell anyone about Gil’s anti-vaxx stance endangering Henry’s life if Gil will agree not to tell anyone (including the cops) how Love caved his head in. Gil tries to stand on his (groundless) principles regarding vaccines, but when he can see that his rap isn’t working on Joe, he quickly agrees that they can part friends. However, Joe doesn’t believe him, so he sets up Henry’s baby monitor outside the cage and tells Love his new plan: mutually assured destruction. If they confront Gil with a secret he won’t want getting out, it’ll ensure he keeps theirs. From what Joe can sleuth on Gil’s social media, though, Gil’s clean; all Gil can think of is a time he and a fellow parishioner gambled away $600 raised for a needy family in their church…then replaced it from their own savings. This isn’t salacious enough, so Love puts the Quinn family PI on the case.

Meanwhile: Sherry has taken charge of a community search for Natalie, or evidence, around the area where her ring was found. Out back, Love overhears Matthew and Theo fighting about participating — Theo knows Sherry thinks Matthew killed Natalie and doesn’t want to “help the villagers sharpen their pitchforks” — but Love tells him to quit being a brat and go for the optics, if nothing else; she’ll even be his search buddy. (This scene also brings back the matter of a weak slat in the fence between the Quinn-Goldberg and Engler, which already admitted a runaway bunny in “So I Married An Axe Murderer”; we should keep this slat in mind, it seems!)

And at the library, Joe figures out why Marienne seems so disdainful of him: she assumed he’s been removing the rare books because he’s a rich kid heedless of their value. She softens on him once he explains that he grew up in poverty and came to love books thanks to Mr. Mooney’s care of him, but now he knows she’s aware of what’s in the rare books collection, and he will probably have to take a break stealing them to re-sell for Ellie.

Then Sy the PI reports in, and Joe and Quinn confront Gil: he cheated to get his son Alan into Dartmouth, with faked transcripts and SAT results and a $50,000 donation to a fake charity. Based on Gil’s horrified reaction, and remembering a news report from the school where Gil taught for a suspiciously short time, Joe figures out this is more than a mere Operation Varsity Blues situation: Alan sexually assaulted a student on Gil’s previous campus, and when he did it again in California, Gil’s wife covered it up behind Gil’s back; the cash went to the survivor of Alan’s crime. Love and Joe leave Gil to think about whether he’ll accept the mutually assured destruction deal now…

…but probably should have checked in more often on the app: when they weren’t watching, Gil fashioned a noose from his t-shirt and hanged himself in the cage. Joe is paralyzed with guilt for having driven Gil to suicide, despite Love’s insistence that they aren’t responsible…and then it’s time for her to go make an appearance at the search. On her way out, she gets an idea…

The search seems, at first, just to be a new setting for the characters we know to do what we would expect. Sherry makes herself the main character in public…


…then privately shit-talks Matthew: if she were married to an “unfeeling robot” like him, she’d take off. Theo overhears and confronts her, at which Love intervenes, making sure Sherry is okay (lol) and encouraging Theo, who’s “having a very hard day,” to apologize. But when no one is looking, Love finds a grove in which to nestle the axe, onto which we see, in a flashback, Love and Joe have pressed Gil’s palm print.


Theo and Matthew are both dismayed that the search has been unsuccessful, though Matthew does concede, to Det. Falco, that anything they had found would probably indicate Natalie is dead. Theo, at the bakery with Love, asks her what he should expect from his life now that he’s been part of a nationally publicized tragedy. He also kisses her, though she quickly stops him. And then, as we cut between Natalie’s family members and also Joe, planting a printed suicide note and Gil’s glasses in his empty house, we see Love’s plan come to fruition: officially, it seems as though Gil had an affair with Natalie, grew angry when he realized she wouldn’t leave Matthew, killed her with an axe, buried her at sea, then came home and confessed it all in his note before hanging himself from a stair rail.

In the dénouement, we see how perfectly it all went off. Theo is returning to school, no longer to torment Love with his youth and novelty. Sherry has sent Love a gigantic floral arrangement in thanks for defending her with Theo, and even calls her “friend” on the card. Joe has inherited Gil’s library job and will be reading to the kids from now on; Marienne is so far from suspicious of his motives in handling the rare books that she puts a very old David Copperfield into his hand herself. But then, chatting in a friendly way, she starts playing with the pendant on her necklace, and Joe’s internal monologue starts wondering if she — calling her “You” — is flirting with him.


Joe recognizes, as we do the significance of this pronoun choice: “I cannot be thinking about You like this, no. No, no, no. This is bad.”

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/the-morning-show-recap-season-1-episode-5-no-ones-gonna-harm-you.html

The Morning Show S1 Ep 5: 
No One's Gonna Harm You, Not While I'm Around

By Maggie Fremont

And just like that, everyone has survived Bradley Jackson’s first week as co-host of The Morning Show. Barely. Like, no one has physically died, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear for morning-show standards. The latest episode picks up in the closing seconds of the Friday edition of TMS, you know, the one with that bombshell interview with a Mitch Kessler accuser in which Bradley steered toward implicating the show and the network in a cover-up culture. And if you think that by the end of the show Alex is over Bradley questioning whether she knew about what Mitch was up to, you are extremely wrong.

Back at the anchor desk, all of our on-air staff closes out the show with some cutesy banter, but as soon as they’re off the air, Alex leans over to her co-anchor and says quietly but forcefully, “Don’t you ever, ever question my integrity in my own house again.” Daaaaang, Reese Witherspoon, be worried!

Just as the TMS crew is TGIF-ing all over the place, ready to celebrate that they’ve made it out of this hellish week alive, they are met with a surprise visitor: Mitch Kessler has returned to the studio! He shows up to tell his former colleagues and friends that he loves them and misses them, and then he asks if, in light of a New York Times article that will be coming out with additional allegations, anyone will speak up for him. He knows they want to, he says, and he knows it’s scary, but they are the people who know him. When everyone stays silent, he gets angry: “This is my fucking life!” he yells at them. You guys, do not feel bad for this man — who, by the way, still refuses to admit any guilt. What did he think was going to happen?

Most likely he did NOT think that as he forlornly walked into the elevator, Bradley Jackson would slip in just before the doors close to ask him who else knew about what was going on. “Who do you think?” he responds. So, it looks like Bradley is not at all scared by Alex’s threats to drop the story. She is a journalist, after all. And now her curiosity is piqued.

Surely Alex must be feeling claustrophobic these days, as she’s dealing with an overload of emotions. The guilt over being implicit in The Morning Show coverup culture, the fear that people will start not just whispering about her involvement but pointing it out in very clear terms, and on top of that, all anyone can talk about is how great Bradley is. All of these feelings come to a head at the Broadway Development Fund Charity Fundraiser she hosts at her apartment.

As much as I’d like to simply detail the delightful bop that is Cheyenne Jackson singing “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” so much goes down at this party. Alex’s main mission, aside from helping the theater kids of course, is to corner Maggie Brenner, the New York Magazine reporter who just that afternoon spoke with Bradley for a profile. Alex is all smiles and sincerity when she talks about how great Bradley is and that, oh, have you heard, she’s the one who brought Bradley in because she knows what The Morning Show needs: a strong feminist slant ushered along by Alex herself, who is now able to make things better for all women at the show. But Maggie sees right through her bullshit. There’s no way she’s writing a “feminist puff piece about a woman who turned a blind eye to the sexual misconduct of her co-host.” She pushes in further: She knows why Alex is doing this, that she must be afraid of getting lost in this mess, afraid that her replacement is sitting right next to her. (Marcia Gay Harden is just so, so good here.) So consider this mission of Alex’s a failure.

She moves right from that emotional bomb into whatever the hell Cory is doing. Cory and Fred are on edge at the party due to the impending Times article that may or may not include quotes about how the culture at UBA allowed Mitch’s behavior to go on. Fred has made it clear that Cory won’t come out unscathed should that happen. Those two are like the Odd Couple from hell. Whatever Cory has planned — you know he has something planned — the next step is to cozy up to Alex.

To prove to her that he wants them to be a team, he forces her into a duet at the piano. Musical theater fans will know that his choice of “Not While I’m Around” from Sweeney Todd works on multiple levels. At face value the lyrics do seem to convey the message that Cory is on Alex’s side, that he will protect her from the “demons [that will] charm” her. But in the musical, this duet is between young Tobias and Mrs. Lovett. Tobias is sincere in his desire to protect Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd. She sings the same comforting words back to him, but he doesn’t know that she’s actually working with Todd. The scene is quite unnerving. What are Cory’s true intentions? Is he really an ally for Alex or does he want to shove her in a meat grinder and put her into one of his human pies, metaphorically speaking? No one really knows just what he’s up to, but what I do know is that we are all Yanko, who describes this duet as such: “It’s weird and fascinating and I’m super into it.”

Alex is a theater buff, so she definitely knows the context of that song. By the end of their little duet, Alex is so overcome by, well, probably everything that’s gone on that evening, that she runs off and tells her poor husband Jason, who definitely deserves better, that she needs to go see Mitch.

And that’s how she ends up driving around Manhattan in the passenger seat of Mitch’s car. Let us just take a moment to note that Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carrell are overflowing with chemistry and I’d like for them to be in all the things together. Alex misses her best friend and the two instantly get back their easy rapport. Mitch even sort of jokes (sort of doesn’t) that they could finally get together. “I think the world holds me to a higher standard than that,” she says. But the two of them are very sad and they hold each other and then, if you can believe it, Mitch kisses Alex. She pulls away and before they have to have an awkward conversation, their phones buzz: The Times article is out. And, well, that changes everything. “You knew all about this stuff,” he tells her when she is shocked. “I knew about it in theory,” she says (!!), but reading about it, seeing all of his misdeeds laid out so plainly makes it more than Alex can take. And she wants to go home.

This Just In!

• Just when you think Bradley’s won the week, she gets a call from her father that throws her, ends up getting wasted at Claire’s birthday party, calls her dad back and has an emotional conversation with a man she is still clearly angry with for reasons yet to be revealed, takes the hot bartender in the back room for a hump session, and then ends up drunk and in the arms of Cory, who lives in the same hotel as her. That’s one way to cap off your big career break.

• Claire’s birthday party gets a little heated when they naturally broach the topic of Mitch. The ladies all have different outlooks: Claire sees things very black and white — what Mitch did was deeply disturbing and they should cut off his balls; Hannah tells them that if they were men, they’d be doing the same thing because this is what men do and it’s never going to change (very dark!); Mia gives them all an emotional speech about how complicated the situation is and even lets slip that she feels bad for Mitch before excusing herself. Cool party, Claire.

• Wow, how drunk does Chip get, huh? He knows that if the Times piece implicates UBA in any way, he’ll be the fall guy, as evidenced by Fred keeping him out of the loop on everything. In a last-ditch effort, he goes to his friend, an editor at the Times, and begs him to protect him in the story. When he says he can’t do that, Chip replies with a frustrated “after what I gave you?” which, um, hi, IS VERY INTERESTING. Chip also tells him he knows where his skeletons are buried. That seems to do the trick, and eventually the Times drops the big quote from Mitch’s ex-assistant about a coverup culture, in a trade for the story about Mitch coming to the studio. Chip and UBA can breathe a sigh of relief … for now.

• Audra’s back! She wants Daniel to defect to Team YDA in the worst way and tells him as much at the charity event. Something tells me Daniel’s allegiance to TMS might not last too long. Audra’s very persuasive!

• Yes, Alison and Daniel with the Annie Get Your Gun duet. I’m always here to learn what Broadway tunes fictional characters would choose to sing if given the chance. Just so you know, Yanko would do “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” from The Pirates of Penzance, and I’m okay with that!

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

From ew.com: https://ew.com/recap/the-sinner-season-3-episode-4/

The Sinner S3 Ep 4

By Matt CabralFebruary 28, 2020 at 01:19 AM EST

As The Sinner’s narrative midpoint approaches, we’re offered some meaty details on the events that lead to Nick Haas bleeding out on the hood of a car. The fourth episode opens with the doomed antagonist and Jamie chatting in a cafe. It’s the night the two met in Manhattan, before taking that fateful drive down the private access road.

Nick, sporting a freshly bandaged hand from the pair’s earlier altercation in the hotel restaurant, is badgering his old college buddy. “You want to feel the truth like we did in school. That’s why you called me.” He orders his emotionally fragile friend a second drink, tells him he has everything they need in his car and pulls out that ubiquitous paper fortune teller. “Pick a number.”

Current-day Jamie is roaming the streets, following his on-foot escape from Ambrose last week. He boards a commuter train, slouches comfortably into his seat, and stares at a sleeping passenger. While glaring at the oblivious woman, he grabs a piece of scrap paper from the floor … and begins folding it into a fortune teller. His coordinates are being tracked by the diligent Detective Soto, though, who passes the intel onto Harry.

He’s headed to the city, out of Ambrose’s jurisdiction, but that’s not stopping him from pursuing his loose cannon suspect. “If he does something tonight, it’s all on me.” In the city, Jamie yells at a woman for dragging her child through the crowded streets before ignoring a call from his worried wife (poor Leela).

Upon nearly running down a pedestrian, Harry decides to park his car to better track Jamie. Burns has ducked into an art gallery, however, where we meet Sophie Greenfield, “Class of 2014,” and former student of Mr. B’s. She tells Jamie every girl in school had a crush on him, then snaps a selfie with her former favorite teach and has him send it to his phone.

After getting on the horn with Soto, Harry’s able to pin his mark at the same swanky hotel restaurant where Jamie was forced to drive a steak knife through his college bud’s palm. Ambrose’s sciatica is still acting up, but it doesn’t deter him from limping up to the roof, where Jamie’s once again enjoying the view from its precarious ledge. Harry tries to talk him off, but Burns breaks out the fortune teller. The folded paper’s forward arrow tells him to jump, but he settles for dangling one foot over the edge. A frustrated Jamie — “I can’t do anything” — runs off, but not before Ambrose promises to stick with him all night.

The detective keeps his promise/threat, joining Jamie at a bar and questioning him about the “game” he and Nick play and Sonya’s unfortunate role in it. Jamie says Sonya was chosen randomly, that it’s all a game of chance dictated by the fortune teller. “That’s why Nick liked it.” He then gets on one of his now-familiar tangents, saying Nick was the most honest person he knew, while everyone else is a scared sociopath afraid to face death. He tells Harry anytime you get really honest with anyone, they turn on you.

He then attempts to prove this point by engaging a couple of well-dressed dude-bros. He befriends the pair, helps hook them up with a couple of females who’d been flirting from afar, then introduces them to his by-the-book “Uncle Harry.” They all end up in a hotel room, where the booze and drugs flow as freely as Ambrose’s awkward demeanor. As the partying rises to illegal levels, Jamie flashes to the night at the gravesite. This time he’s doing the digging, while Nick’s gathering supplies, including several planks of wood and that length of hose we’ve seen so much of. Burns looks uneasy and says he’ll need a minute before they start. Nick replies with a sinister surprise. “We’re gonna do things differently this time.” He then informs his friend of a house up the road owned by a woman. “We need to stop there first. We’re gonna bring her down here … for good.”

This fresh wrinkle doesn’t sit well with Jamie. “I’m not about to kill some random woman.” But Nick’s determined to convince him to take “the next step” to “breakthrough.” Jamie senses this isn’t his friend’s first foray into senseless murder. Nick gently touches Burn’s face, reminds him of the bond between them, and rattles off some of his favorite Nietzsche philosophies to bring him on board. “You have to look death in the face, and once you do, trust me, you’ll be 

Back in the hotel room, the debauchery is in full swing. A very reluctant Harry is receiving a stress-reducing, standing massage from one of the women, an act that’s caught on her friend’s camera. But Jamie quickly kills the vibe by dropping some Nick knowledge on his new friends. “We’re all scared. There’s this big, yawning void, and we’re stuck in the middle just grabbing onto anything we can.” That lovely sentiment gets Jamie and Harry’s party invites revoked. The situation is much worse in Burns’ head, however, as he imagines killing just about everyone in the room with a knife, Harry’s gun, and a very hard table surface.

Fast-forward past a plate of french fries covered in blood, and Ambrose and Burns are back on the street. This gives the two a bit of time to have a heart to heart. Jamie relies on his usual crazy-talk, but Harry’s had it with his “dark thoughts” BS. “Just do something! You’re gonna act out, you’re not gonna act out. Do it!” Jamie calls his bluff, gets in a cab, and takes off to another party.

He hits a gathering Sophie Greenfield, Class of 2014, invited him to. It’s a house party, complete with a medium/psychic who’s helping guests connect with deceased loved ones. When Jamie enters the room of this gifted individual, the man senses something. “An old friend is trying to reach you. He’s so close to you it’s like he’s attached to you.” Jamie’s pretty impressed until the medium utters a line from T.S. Elliot’s The Hollow Man, the same “…prickly pear…” passage Nick and Jamie recited on the hotel roof’s ledge in episode 2.

Under the guise of making a beer run, a freaked Jamie leaves the party with Sophie. The girl begins to get suspicious when he speeds past the bodega. Mr. Burns assures her he just wants to play a game, “kind of a bonding thing.” Of course, it’s not long before he turns the conversation to “facing death,” while pressing the vehicle’s accelerator to the floor. The girl begs him to stop, Harry pursues them — complete with flashing lights — and it seems Burns could be involved in another vehicular homicide. Things quickly escalate into a game of chicken between Jamie and Harry, until the two swerve at the last minute.

While a collision is avoided, the next scene revisits the story’s central car-crash mystery. Nick’s at death’s door, splayed on the car’s hood, intermittently moaning in pain. He seems at peace, though. While the life slowly drains from him, we again hear Kevin Morby’s “Come to Me Now” playing on the radio. Nick actually begs Jamie — who’s kneeling on the ground before him, tears in his eyes — not to dial 911. Jamie doesn’t want him to die, but his friend pushes him to let fate play out. “You’re almost there. Just wait.” Even with only a few breaths left, Nick is manipulative and controlling. “Promise me you’re gonna keep going.” Jamie nods yes, but Nick follows with “it’s in my back pocket,” possibly suggesting he wants his friend to retrieve the fortune teller and finish what they started.

Returning to Harry and Jamie’s eventful night, we find the two in the detective’s car. Ambrose is driving him home, where he wants Burns to tell his wife what’s going on with him. But Jamie’s struggling, craving a comforting sign from Harry that he’s not crazy, that he’s not the only one who feels lonely while the rest of the world seems oblivious. Harry tells him what he wants to hear, reclines his seat, and pops a couple of pain pills — despite his usual no-pill policy. We get one final shot of Jamie, as he enters his home and smacks his head in anguish, clearly not satisfied with Ambrose’s response to his existential crisis-curing questions.

The next morning, Ambrose awakes in his car, still outside Burns’ place. He retrieves a voice mail left earlier by a friend in the NYPD. There’s been a homicide at the same address where the previous evening’s house party was held. Bracing for the worst, he crosses the police tape, ascends the stairs, and enters a bedroom. Face-down on a carpet caked in blood is the medium who spooked Jamie the night before.

Hopefully, Harry enjoyed that snooze in his car, as it looks like he’s got another long day ahead of him.

From Ready Steady Cut: https://readysteadycut.com/2021/08/25/recap-clickbait-episode-7-netflix-series/

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

Clickbait S1 Ep 7: The Son

By Jordan Russelll Lyon

8/25/21

During family dinner, Pia tells them that she doesn’t believe Simon killed Nick. Quickly, Sophie takes Pia to one side as she wants to keep Ethan and Pia out of it. Pia agrees but does reveal that she knows Nick didn’t tell Sarah to kill herself as their father killed himself. Sophie, who had thought their father died of a heart attack, is hurt by not knowing: “I thought I was a part of this family”. With the family dinner over, Kai is the only one eating, with Ethan more interested in messaging AL_2005.

After Ethan watches media clips of Nick’s other women, one of them claims to not even know a Nick Brewer. After contacting Pia, Ethan begins to speculate whether a “catfish” was involved. (Ok, so maybe Ethan didn’t kill Nick after all). Following Kai’s fight, Sophie meets with the principal (and her boss), Elaine. As Michael’s father wants to press charges against Kai, Elaine wonders if due to the situation whether it’s the best fit for Sophie to still be at work.

Whilst Ethan is contacted relentlessly by AL_2005, he wants to help Pia find the catfish. But after what Sophie said during dinner, Pia is somewhat reluctant. But after learning about what they are doing anyway, Sophie soon argues with Pia. Pia claims that Sophie needs Nick to be the bad guy. Sophie tells her that Nick was right; Pia does destroy everything she touches. Sophie then bans Pia from seeing Ethan and Kai.

With Pia chasing the catfish lead, Det Amiri appears more preoccupied with a new case, whilst Emma maintains that she did have a physical relationship with Nick. Pia meets with Vincent, as Pia thinks that the catfish must be someone that Nick knew. She asks him to help track that person down. Although, she’s sure it’s linked to someone from the volleyball team.

After receiving more messages from AL_2005, Ethan goes to see her. When he does, he learns her name is Alison. Alison/AL_2005, who has social anxiety and is not good at IRL (In Real Life), tells Ethan that he might have more luck speaking to Emma than Pia, as he’s Nick’s son. The attempt works, and after Emma doesn’t recognize Nick’s voice, she finally admits that she never met Nick.

Pia meets with Tara, who had fought with Nick before quitting the volleyball team. Getting more information than when journalist Ben Park tried, Tara reveals that she fought with Nick as he didn’t want her to quit the volleyball team. After an ex posted pics of her online, she didn’t want to go to the police in fear that she would become a target. After Pia asks how it relates to Nick, Tara reveals it because her ex is Matt Aldin: Nick’s colleague.

Storming to Nick’s workplace, Pia tells the receptionist Dawn to unlock Matt’s PC. When she does so, Pia finds several photos of Nick on it. The same images that got used on Nick’s dating apps.

Emma emails Ethan with some pictures, so he sends them to Alison/AL_2005, who starts a process to track them down to an address. After Sophie’s reveals that charges won’t be pressed against Kai, she also adds that they should all leave Balfour. Following on from this, Ethan plays the clips where Emma confesses to not meeting Nick. In the background, Kai acts very suspicious as he listens before he snoops on Ethan’s email. He finds the address that Alison/AL_2005 tracked using Metadata.
The ending

Pia rings Det Amir and tells him what she’s found on Matt’s PC. She speculates that Nick must have found out that Matt was behind the apps and paid him a visit after fleeing from Simon and Daryl. Returning to her flat, Matt sits waiting for her. He claims it was a consensual relationship with Tara Wilson and denies posting nude images of Tara. He starts getting angry at Pia for snooping on his PC, but when her roommate returns, he leaves.

As the night draws in, Sophie checks on his son. But Kai isn’t in bed. Armed with a bat, Kai is heading to the address he got from Ethan’s email.

What did you miss? For a review of the last episode, click HERE

from The Review Geek: https://www.thereviewgeek.com/blacksummer-s2e3review/

Black Summer S2 Ep 3: Card Game

17/06/2021 by Greg Wheeler

Episode 3 of Black Summer Season 2 begins inside the manor with Rose and Anna seeking refuge. With Freddie standing on the outskirts, we’re introduced to Sonny, Mom and the rest of this ragtag group.

Sitting next to the fire, Rose and Anna confirm they’re heading north – which is the same direction this group of survivors are going too. They’ve been communicating with pilots via a radio scanner upstairs, and they know there’s a supply drop nearby. As they sit together, the group try to work out whether to go or not.

Rose votes that Freddie volunteers, while Sonny exhibits concerns about letting her boy out of her sight. While the pair stare one another down, Anna heads off to use the bathroom.

As the camera swings around, a man happens to be hiding out in the office, breathing heavily. Just as a quick heads up, we find out this guy is called Boone later on in the season. Anyway, Anna makes it back downstairs without being jumped.

Mark eventually heads outside, ready to hit the supply drop while the others hold tight inside, playing cards and casually chilling. Mark evades a zombie and heads out on his snowmobile.

Rhonda returns to the radio and tries to communicate with the plane. However, Sonny is completely unreasonable and and forces her up and away from the console. As they look set to head back downstairs, the group realize that there’s an axe missing from the doorway.

Tensions begin to flare inside, eventually leading to Freddie forced outside to get firewood. With a torch in hand, he hurries across to grab some wood but he’s quickly ambushed and forced to scramble up a tree.

Back inside the house, radio static brings Sonny upstairs to speak to Rhonda. Sonny doesn’t trust her though and eventually shoots the girl in cold blood. She inevitably turns, leading to an all-out skirmish inside the house. It’s dark and difficult to see anything, but Anna is the one to hit the killing blow and thwart the threat.

Sonny eventually flies off the handle and destroys the radio as static comes through. The static voices however, are accompanied by zombie snarling. Mutiny soon grips the house as Anna and Rose kill Mom and Sonny in cold blood and remain the two survivors…but for Boone.

The next day, our axe-wielding survivor creeps through the manor, peeking Anna asleep on her bed.

The Episode Review

The trouble with a slow-paced episode like this, that’s supposed to be wracked in tension, is that we know the outcome already. We know all these people die while Anna and Rose survive. Because of this, there’s absolutely no mystery and the whole episode flatlines. The first episode is the biggest culprit here though, and in a way it feels completely unnecessary and does more harm than good.


It’s such a shame because there’s actually a lot of uneasiness with these segments and you feel like it could explode at any moment.

However, this episode does shed light on Mark and Freddie and how they became separated from the group.

Much like the first season though, you do need to suspend your disbelief with this one a fair amount, with lots of eyebrow raising sequences that defy belief.

However, the story is still gripping this time around and the ending certainly hints at some dramatic episodes to come.