Boardwalk Empire Review: \"Friendless Child\" (5×07)
Boardwalk Empire is exceedingly good at doing finale episodes, and its track record with penultimate episodes is equally great. Season two’s one-two punch of “Under God’s Power She Flourishes” and “To the Lost” is looking primed to go down as the best pair of episodes in the series’ history, and in fact, with its focus…
Bleachers "Strange Desire" Album Review
Jack Antonoff is a busy man. In addition to being the guitarist for the pop band fun., he also wrote songs with Carly Rae Jepsen, Tegan and Sara, Sara Bareilles, Christina Perri, and Taylor Swift (the song "Sweeter than Fiction" was nominated for a Golden Globe). However, he takes a slightly different route with Bleachers. The…
Album Review: The Gaslight Anthem, \"Get Hurt\"
“Everything has chains.” That’s hard-learned wisdom from Brian Fallon, The Gaslight Anthem’s frontman, on “Selected Poems”, a latter-half album cut from the Jersey quartet’s latest album Get Hurt. It’s been a particularly hard year for Fallon, as he divorced from his wife of ten years. But he’s also had to deal with the aftermath of…
Emmy Spotlight: \"Mad Men\"
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…
Scandal Review: “Inside the Bubble” (4×03)
With “Inside the Bubble,” Scandal is just about back to the breakneck pace that we know and love. What’s less certain is whether all of the very many things transpiring here are as interesting as the show believes them to be. I’m thinking specifically of the revelation that Rowan arranged for the murder of Fitz’s…
Book Review: “The Book of Life”
Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy began with A Discovery of Witches in 2011 (which is wickedly funny since the title-drop in that novel is, “It began with a discovery of witches”). The magical trilogy follows the romance between Diana Bishop and 1500-year-old vampire Matthew Clairmont, but hold your horses—Diana is not a love-struck teenager, but…
Parenthood Review: "A Potpourri of Freaks" (6×04)
When I was writing about Parenthood last season, I came rather quickly to the realization that it’s a very difficult show to write about weekly. Owing to its realistic, slice-of-life approach to family drama, there are often episodes where very little happens, at least externally. Many of the stories contain such subtle moments, and are…
Riot Games presents Pentakill\'s \"Smite and Ignite\"
Riot Games is the group behind the online multiplayer battle arena game League of Legends, which has more than 2 million players. Filled with colorful, playable characters that have their own unique personalities within this universe, there are five characters that have formed the virtual band Pentakill. Riot decided to release actual music from these characters…
Scandal Review: "Like Father Like Daughter" (4×04)
Scandal’s fourth season may have gotten off to a bumpy start, but this week’s episode is proof positive that delaying certain story developments can have rewards down the line. Fitz and Olivia’s almost-reunion is by far the strongest scene of the episode, and of the season to date, owing almost entirely to the amount of…
Boardwalk Empire Review: "Devil You Know" (5×06)
After five episodes of slow, careful build-up, Boardwalk Empire explodes into a violent burst of chaos. By the end of “Devil You Know,” we are careening full throttle into an all-out gang war, and all bets are off. This is one of those episodes that will be judged primarily for one or two significant…