By most measures Amy Schumer is an unlikely It Girl. She is crude and often vulgar. She does not look like or present herself as a vapid, bleached-blond wastrel. She speaks bluntly and frankly about the very system that regularly anoints It Girls, and what she has to say is sharply critical. And yet here…
HANNIBAL -- "...and the Beast from the Sea" Episode 311 -- Pictured: Hugh Dancy as Will Graham -- (Photo by: Ian Watson/NBC) As Hannibal has adapted Red Dragon proper, it has been as consistently great as we’ve come to expect from the series, but it has also been something new: conventional.…
Given its parallel title, it should be no surprise that "And the Woman Clothed in Sun” is, more or less, a direct continuation of the preceding episode, even more so than this highly serialized final run of episodes. Mostly, what’s here is further explication of Francis Dolarhyde, specifically and more generally, a further explication of…
By now, the project of what is essentially Bryan Fuller’s version of a Red Dragon miniseries is abundantly clear: Hannibal is portraying two parallel and intersecting stories about the lasting effects that a man like Hannibal Lecter and his various, horrible misdeeds can have on the world around him. That’s a thread that runs through…
HANNIBAL -- "The Great Red Dragon" Episode 308 -- Pictured: Caroline Dhavernas as Alana Bloom -- (Photo by: Brooke Palmer/NBC) There’s really no getting around the fact that with “The Great Red Dragon,” Hannibal has become an entirely different animal. While it’s always had elements of adaptation to it, especially in…
HANNIBAL -- "Contorno" Episode 305 -- Pictured: (l-r) Fortunato Cerlino as Inspector Pazzi, Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter -- (Photo by: Sophie Giraud/NBC) “Contorno” presents an interesting question with regard to episodic television writing. To wit: how much does an absolutely killer final act compensate for an episode that otherwise doesn’t…
It wasn’t until after I had already watched this week’s episode of Scandal that I learned the episode was titled “A Few Good Women,” a play on, of course, Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, an altogether superior tale of abuse in the military. Of course, Scandal is dealing with a different type of abuse—rape, here, as…
Well, wouldn’t you know it? It’s another great episode of Shameless! The show isn’t necessarily firing on all cylinders even now, but in all honesty, even at the heights of the fourth season there were still missteps here and there (and one pretty big misstep named Matty…). So while not everything in “Drugs Actually” is…
“You Can’t Take Command” is the sort of finale that, as you’re watching it, is pretty damn entertaining. But the second it’s over (and, really, during any commercial break or even just a pause in the episode’s action), and you think about any of its components in any sort of detail, the whole thing threatens…
By the end of “No More Blood,” Olivia Pope is back in Washington where she belongs, and everything has changed. Or at least this is the note on which Scandal would like to leave us at the end of this long ordeal. “No More Blood” brings the kidnapping of Olivia Pope to a somewhat natural,…
