Let’s get the record straight immediately: I am all about this episode of Scandal. “Baby Made a Mess” feels like a direct response to my biggest criticism of the season (and the series) to date, which is that the show has leaned too heavily on Olivia’s romantic life at the expense of her professional life.…
While there are still some issues with American Horror Story: Freak Show, there’s no doubt in my mind that “Pink Cupcakes” is the first truly great episode of the season. It has immediately proven true that, with the introductions and lengthy preamble out of the way, the show can now launch headfirst into the stories…
“What a Piece of Work Is Man,” indeed. This week’s episode is still over-stuffed, and the pacing is drawn out at times, but it at least features periodic jolts of excitement in most of the ongoing stories. It at least raises stakes, and at least bothers to feign forward momentum on the season’s major arc. The…
I’m not going to lie, that “three months later” title card pretty much blew my mind the first time I watched this episode. Not because anything particularly shocking happens as a result of it, but because it's the sort of thing that Parenthood wouldn’t typically do in previous seasons. Between seasons, maybe you would see…
This week, Olivia Pope devotes her energy to proving the innocence of a man who stands accused of attempting to assassinate President Cooper, who is the Scandal universe’s analogue to Ronald Reagan. The notion of innocence is an elusive one in Olivia Pope’s Washington, and so it’s fitting that the case of the week here…
With the second half of its Halloween two-parter, American Horror Story: Freak Show continues its exploration of its characters backstories, before arriving at a conclusion that seems to signal, at last, the “real” beginning of this season. The major flashbacks this episode focus on Elsa and on Twisty the Clown. While these feel serve to…
“Do you understand what an accident is?” Technically speaking, 'The Separation of Crows' is better than last week’s “Greensleeves.” There is one genuinely great, tense dramatic centerpiece, and many of the scenes surrounding that are also good, creating mood, developing character—in other words, doing a lot of the work that, on occasion, Sons can forget…
Television is a tricky medium, especially in its current form. A series evolves over time, takes detours, scenic routes, tantalizing tangents, flights of fancy with supporting characters that, for even a moment, hold more interest and more promise than the stars of the show. Things change in a television series. But in the era of…
On a weekly basis, Parenthood has to juggle so many characters and stories that individual episodes can feel less like cohesive story units and more like a selection of scenes required to advance each storyline, without regard to how well the scenes fit together. There are so many characters to serve that, even when some…
While this episode is ultimately a step down from last week, by the final scenes, I can confidently say that the Scandal I know and love is finally back for a while. “The Key” is by no means a perfect episode, but whatever missteps it takes, there’s no denying just how exciting its final third…
