The Normal Heart arrives on HBO with somewhat lofty expectations, and yet, being a Ryan Murphy production, I wouldn’t blame anyone for approaching it with a healthy measure of skepticism, as well. It’s in many ways a spiritual sequel to Angels in America, another adaptation by HBO of another well-regarded period piece about the AIDS…
In its final season, Mad Men is determined to come back to basics, and indeed, throughout these seven episodes the audience, and our characters, come face to face over and over again with the idea that happiness, however we define it, is inherently unattainable. Happiness is caught up in desire, and no matter what we…
Louie returned this year after a longer than usual hiatus. When we last left our fictional Louie, Parker Posey had collapsed on the subway and died suddenly, and he flew to China alone for New Year’s Eve. It was a surprisingly melancholy season finale, especially following the “Late Show” three-parter that preceded it. Now in…
Where does one begin with House of Cards? It so clearly (I might even say desperately?) wants to be a prestige drama, and it has many of the hallmarks of such series. High-profile director and executive producer from the film world? Check. Even higher-profile movie star making the switch to television? Check. Famous, older film…
The fourth season of Game of Thrones is wildly, frustratingly uneven. On the one hand it features series highlights such as “The Lion and the Rose,” “The Viper and the Mountain,” and “The Children,” but on the other, the premiere is excessively dull, and outside of these jam-packed episodes, there is not very much that…
Whatever your opinion of Breaking Bad (there are apparently some of you out there that don’t enjoy it?), it’s hard to deny that these final eight episodes are triumph of television storytelling. With the final shot of “Gliding Over All” Vince Gilligan and team set into motion an endgame that is marvelous to behold. There…
I’m on record as giving effusive praise to the first half of American Horror Story: Asylum, the second season of this bananas television series, and while I never got around to writing up the second half, I loved it even more. The finale was a thing of beauty. Todd VanDerWerff puts it best over at…
