Category: Television

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m still waiting for this season of Shameless to get a move on already. It’s by no means bad, but the sum of the parts is not quite adding up to a cohesive whole, at least not yet. That in itself isn’t a sin, but there’s also not enough sense of forward momentum, not enough promise that, eventually, this is going to all add up to something.

So, what to make of this? “The Two Lisas” is perfectly alright, but it continues a trend of stagnation, like the show can’t shake this malaise that seems to have settled in over the hiatus. Is it because things got so heavy at the end of last season? Maybe. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet to be honest, but the pulse of this season is not as strong by a long shot, and it’s hampering my enjoyment a little more each week.

A lot of the issue is that several of the stories feel trivial. Frank conquered death itself last season; now he’s brewing some truly potent beer and ambling around the South Side like some demented soothsayer, warning of the perils of gentrification. Now, gentrification in itself is a really smart thread to weave throughout the season, especially given how very important a sense of place is to Shameless. But until the show starts grappling with the concept directly, rather than paying it lip service and easy jokes, it won’t be able to reap the full benefit.

Even Fiona’s storyline this week is meh-inducing, as she more or less by accident falls into the arms of a good guy, who is the band mate of the bad guy that she will almost certainly fuck instead in two episodes’ time. Not only does this feel an awful lot like going through the motions, it’s also going through motions that we’ve been through before. Again, I think a big part of the problem, insofar as there is a problem here, is that we’re coming down from a super-dramatic, high stakes season, and so far Shameless is not interested in building up to that fever pitch again. That’s fine, but nothing equally worthwhile, regardless of its tone, has sprung up instead.

The other main thread of the week follows Kev and Veronica, as the Rub and Tug is permanently shut down, leading V to employ what appears to be every hooker in town as part of her new breast milk farm business venture. It’s an outsized plot to be sure, but one rooted in the central conflict of her and Kev’s marriage, and his outburst to her at the end of the episode carries real weight as a result. For the third week running, these two are the best part of the show, which is not something I ever thought I’d say about either character. They’re so often used for comic relief that it’s actually a nice change of pace to see them and their relationship given equal time, especially as the more prominent characters take some time on the back burner.

That said, I don’t necessarily want the more prominent Gallaghers to take time on the back burner. As Carl and especially Debbie get older, it’s natural to want to give them more to do. But given a choice between Debbie and Lip’s stories this week, I would much rather have spent more time with Lip. His lone major scene is with Mandy, and it is gorgeous and heartbreaking. He tells her every good thing about herself that no one has had the decency to say to her before, and she tells him she loves him, and he can’t even say it back. The next day she skips town. In a few scenes, Shameless lands one doozy of a emotional sucker punch. Debbie’s story is similarly heartbreaking, but in a more twisted and, I think, less effective way. It’s almost impossible to sell Matt in this situation. I am vaguely interested in the almost role-reversal approach the episode takes with Debbie’s (unintentional?) rape of him, but Matt is too problematic of a character, and the situation still too icky (for lack of a better or more effective term) for the turn of events to really hit home.

Now, given that by episode’s end Frank blows up Sheila’s home and she takes off in an RV, it stands to reason that the pace picks up after this. It’s certainly a surprising turn of events, one that jump starts Frank’s story in an interesting way, and one that comments on the note of gentrification in typically Shameless fashion. (If the show has any sense, Sheila is gone for good, if not at least for a good long while.) But the season is way too uneven, and at times perilously boring, and “The Two Lisas” doesn’t do anything to change that.

Stray Observations:

• Frank whores Sammie out in exchange for brewery equipment, which leads to his falling out with her as well. Sammie has become a total cartoon this season, but now that we’ve reached the breaking point, one hopes the dynamic here will improve.
• That said, “I don’t wanna make the same mistakes I have with the last thirty or forty guys I’ve been with” is a pretty funny line.
• Frank’s Dangers of Gentrification: This week it’s gastro pubs and stores for dog clothes
• Chuckles, staring at Frank as he works. Chuckles, effortlessly hilarious.
• “We call him Carl-lingus. I’m going back for seconds.”

Say what you will about Scandal, but Shonda Rhimes and her team know how to do a mid-season opener right. “Run” is energetic, tense, revelatory, and downright pulse pounding for early every minute of its running time.

Seriously. “Run” is definitely a season best and mostly a series best episode. I didn’t get to watch it live, but it was impossible to avoid the cavalcade of accolades being heaped upon Kerry Washington across social media throughout the night. None of those people was wrong. Washington is a powerhouse in this episode, commanding every scene she’s in even as Olivia Pope is backed into a situation of near total helplessness. She is phenomenal, carrying the episode so forcefully and effortlessly that you won’t notice until they show up about two-thirds of the way in that the supporting cast has been largely absent from the episode. “Run” is essentially an Emmy reel, and one that deserves to pay its star dividends come September.

The episode is structurally strong, and often even inventive. The opening is hugely energetic, playing through the winter finale’s excellent closing moments multiple times, with an ever increasing sense of dread. After that, the episode maintains a tight focus, eschewing the typical trappings of a Scandal episode for some pretty gripping psychological drama instead. The structure here is so atypical for the series, and yet nestled within it is an extremely typical Olivia/client relationship. Throughout the episode she is “handling” her own damn kidnapping, and her slowly deteriorating resolve is something to behold.

“Run” words so very well entirely because of its restrained scale. It is close, focused, unconcerned with conspiracy or with explanation, and it mostly rocks as a result. Given its strengths, it is somewhat disappointing when the episode’s final twist rolls around and brings us right back to the oblique conspiracy theorizing that has come to define the series at its worst.

I’m not inherently interested in the identity of Olivia’s kidnappers, or what their relationship is to Lizzie Bear and company back in DC, who are thankfully completely absent from the episode What I am interested in is Olivia herself, and how she reacts to these extreme circumstances. So when “Ian” is murdered to punish Olivia, it’s a rare moment of failure on her part, an acknowledgment and rebuke of her hubris, of her total conviction that because she is Olivia Pope and for no other reason, she will triumph. The reveal that her cellmate was playing her all along robs the earlier sequence of some of its power.

That hardly ruins an otherwise stellar episode, though. “Run” sets the stage for an exciting back half, and even if the question of Olivia’s kidnapping may not be the most exciting about the show at this point, the fact of her kidnapping is fertile dramatic ground. Al that “Run” really needed to do was get us all pumped for Scandal again, and it achieves that in spades.

Stray Observations:

• “Batty dream sequences under duress” is a bit overplayed, but Olivia’s rescue fantasy at least reveals itself as such more or less immediately, and also provides the impetus for her getting out of the prison by her own damn self, rather than waiting on either of her men. (Of course, freedom is short-lived, but the moment is still a triumph in itself.)
• “You make jam for a living now? Do you know how to use a Dutch oven? Do you know how to turn on a regular oven?” Even in improbably dream sequences, Abby is the best.
• That said: I’m not sure how funny the dream is actually meant to be, but some of the lines and deliveries in the Vermont sequence especially had me laughing out loud, not least Washington’s enthusiastic declaration of “boysenberry!”
• Echoes of “Bitch Baby” probably were not meant to make me laugh out loud, but they did kind of deflate that moment for me.
• So that these aren’t all about the dream: Jake calls Huck and Quinn for help tracking Olivia. Quinn immediately suggests she has simply run off to an island with another man, and is clearly angling for a role as New Abby.

After six long years, the last few of which were rather unexpected, Parenthood draws to a close in solid if unsurprising fashion. So much of this finale has been more or less locked in since the season premiere, if not even before then, that it’s hard to really consider this episode as anything other than the final flourish on a pretty flagrant victory lap of a season. Even for Parenthood, the stakes are relatively low. There is no Big Bad, no final crisis—even the conflicts between Adam and Crosby or Joel and Julia are subdued, halfway resolved before the opening credits even roll. Even Zeek’s death (spoiler alert, but come on) is a tragic grace note, rather than a central event.

But, as the bottom of my review notes read: I mean, who can complain about that? And at the end of the day those are my sentiments still. Finality is not a construct that is familiar to Parenthood, which has always been a show about the process of life rather than any of its specific moments, even if those moments are milestones like birth, marriage or death. “May God Bless and Keep You Always” is a collection of such moments, but it’s not an event—it’s just another day in the life. It’s a structural mess in the exact same ways as “We Made It Through the Night,” yet for some reason I am not as bothered. In fact, the finale is even more of a mess in some ways, a formless menagerie of montages and songs, but because it is a finale, and a finale of a show that has often been supremely unconcerned with plot in any conventional sense, it’s hard to really hold that against Jason Katims’s script.

The real test of “May God Bless and Keep You Always” is whether it is emotionally satisfying—has the show brought this leg of the collective Braverman journey to a good enough close? The answer, unfortunately, is that it depends on which Braverman. The cast by now is so sprawling that it would have been impossible to do right by every single one of them in the space of forty-two and a half minutes. But I mainly came away from the episode like most of the Bravermans got short shrift, and some of them unforgivably so.

Is there really any excuse for how far on the back burner Kristina was placed this season? How much of a non-entity Jasmine became over time? Or good lord, Camille, who gets I think two or three lines in this entire episode? Parenthood’s sixth season made some curious narrative choices, including a prolonged focus on Hank’s family, along with on the travails of the Luncheonette, and it seems at the end that these came at the expense of characters and stories that we are arguably more invested in. Not that the Luncheonette story doesn’t fulfill a purpose—it brings Crosby’s series arc to a really touching close, and I love that it’s Zeek who is the one to finally have faith in him and instill some confidence in him. But we reached this conclusion well ahead of the show, two or three episodes ago, and the plot has been running in circles since. I would rather have gotten more time with other characters, in the limited time that remained to us.

Speaking of. The limited time remaining to us, as a concept, obviously runs throughout the episode, both within the narrative and without, as Katims so clearly struggles to include at least a moment with each major character. And let’s give credit where it’s due—he pulls it off. I don’t know how “good” per se this finale is, but I watched much of it with a big smile on my face anyway. The centerpiece montage (in an episode that, seriously, is chock full of montages) is the wedding photo series, culminating in one gigantic cast photo. The wedding sequence, including the lovely song that plays as Zeek walks Sarah down the aisle, is beautiful, and the reception captures the kind of family-friendly, forced fun one finds at these events.

The episode is peppered with little moments designed to warm the heart, and they do so. Max finds a girlfriend maybe! Amber moves in with Camille and Zeek! Sarah is Zeek’s favorite child! Victor has a surprise half-sister and Joel and Julia are adopting her too! Haddie lives! And if we are measuring by these moments—and there is no good reason not to, really—then “May God Bless and Keep You Always” is a success.

After the wedding, just when the episode is winding down and you think, oh hey, maybe no one will die after all!—Zeek dies quietly at home. The episode closes with his funeral, which appropriately enough is a family baseball game. The memorial is beautifully bizarre, and a perfect coda, a final statement on this family’s and this show’s strange and yet familiar aesthetic. It’s not maudlin, not a tear-inducing cryfest (as Vulture might term the series overall), and it shouldn’t be, either. Mixed in are little flash-forwards, giving us the tiniest glimpses of the various Bravermans, not in their old age, but just a few years down the line, as life goes on without Zeek, and is perfectly okay, because the family sticks together. In many ways the Bravermans are his legacy, and what a fine one to leave behind.

I mean, who can complain about that?

Stray Observations:

• The grade below is for the season. The episode grade is a B, on the strength of heartwarming fuzzies. The series grade is a B+. I found Parenthood to always be a solid family drama, and I’m disappointed that there is no immediate heir apparent on television (Transparent may be the closest, honestly), but it also never reached the dazzling heights of similar shows like Friday Night Lights.
• Which, while we’re comparing: This is nowhere near as good a finale as “Always,” although really, what could be? I ultimately find myself thinking that the fourth season finale, “Because You’re My Sister,” was the place to stop here, but I don’t begrudge the good moments of the last two seasons anyway.
• Max leaves us with some gems: “Your complexion is far too pale. You make a terrible assistant.” Or, even better, “You cannot take a selfie, selfies are ruining my industry.”
• Haddie shows up, which is always nice, but then she gives this super forced speech about how Max made her a better person, simultaneously constructing and closing a character arc in the space of two minutes.
• Joel and Julia’s flash forward reveals that not only did they adopt Victor’s secret half-sister, they also had another baby of their own! Not pictured: Chris, just outside the window, drunk and homeless.
• Adam’s secret for chopping onions without crying is to wear goggles, because of course it is.
• Kristina trades her fake job for another fake job, and gives her old fake job to Adam, and the Braverman financial crisis is resolved. Goodbye, strange, economically walled off world of Berkeley.
• Jason Street makes a cameo but hot damn I barely even recognized him. That said, in the future Amber is co-parenting with the Dillon Panthers lineup, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
• Did Drew Holt Get a Haircut? The final word is no, he did not, and he’s got some unfortunate facial hair going on now too. Shave for your mother’s wedding, Drew!
• I really did love this show, even if it’s more on the level of, like macaroni and cheese or grilled cheese or other cheese-based comfort food than it is, like, the gourmet cooking of Friday Night Lights. But it was a pleasure to watch and be reminded of my own family in sweet and often unexpected ways, and as always it’s been a privilege to have you along for the ride. May you all stay forever young.

The penultimate episode of Parenthood is in the curious position of both needing to tie up outstanding stories in time for the finale, while also not really having very much in the way of outstanding stories to tie up. The result is an episode that is emotionally if not narratively satisfying; an episode that in earlier seasons, or even earlier in this season, would not quite work, but that here is able to still rise above its weaker moments.

The strongest episodes of Parenthood are united thematically, even across the many disparate threads they may follow. I don’t think that “We Made It Through the Night” quite achieves this goal, and so the episode can be a little disorganized and chaotic at times. With no clear connection between the characters, the episode instead jumps from scene to scene, often without any particular logic or reason. This possibly is the result of sloppy editing rather than a poorly organized script—though more likely, it is a combination of the two.

What makes the episode curious is that for all its faults on these technical scores, its individual units are not nearly so problematic, and several scenes are actually high watermarks for the entire season. I’m thinking both of small, incidental scenes, such as Kristina’s pissy argument with Jasmine, and of major, emotional powerhouses such as Sarah’s wedding announcement to Zeek. It’s these moments, more than any particulars of craft or plot, that are the heart of Parenthood, and when an episode delivers on these scores, it’s hard to fault it for much else.

On the one hand I wish this episode was more focused, but on the other, I can’t really think of any specific scenes that could be cut—and if the reward for a somewhat sloppy episode here is a tightly focuses finale, then all the better. Even something like Career Day at Chambers, which is easily the episode’s most superfluous bit, provides a necessary touchstone for Max’s arc, which is pretty likely to be marginalized next week. The scene where Kristina and Max reassure him of his career prospects, and the amazing progress that he’s made over the course of the show, is unquestionably shoehorned into the episode, but it resolves an emotional arc that has been with the show, if inconsistently, since day one, and is therefore the sort of necessary business that the show must get to at this stage in the game. Plus, the story allows for Max’s lovelorn glance toward Dylan toward episode’s end, a blink and you’ll miss it shot as well as a fantastic piece of acting from Max Burkholder.

Everything else continues to build from previous episodes. Most notably, of course, is the birth of Amber’s son, also named Zeek, perhaps with premature morbidity. The first trip to labor at the episode’s beginning is, of course, a false alarm, one that brings all of the Bravermans descending upon the hospital once again. (The staff must really hate this family by now.) If I were Amber, the absolute last thing I would want at the birth of my child was my entire extended family, and yet the utter chaos of this opening scene is yet another Parenthood moment that is remarkably true to life. (Another—Julia’s nonchalant observation to Joel that there’s no rush to get to the hospital, confirming that Julia is absolutely my spirit Braverman.) Amber’s second trip to the hospital is the real deal, though, and is a beautiful moment that is shared just between her and Sarah, appropriately enough. Another tear-jerker: Zeek setting eyes on his namesake for the very first time. I think that closing shot is a wordless decision to get the surgery after all—we’ll see after next week, but it’s a testament to Craig T. Nelson’s abilities that the moment is filled with such complexity.

In fact, Nelson can’t be praised enough for his work in this episode with any number of scene partners. As Camille paints Zeek’s portrait, Nelson sits there stony-faced, Zeek on the left of the frame and the portrait on the right, and it’s almost as though the painting has more life in it than Zeek does. Or when Sarah tells Zeek about the upcoming wedding, and Nelson lays in the bed and lets his body just sink into it, practically backwards out of the shot. It’s a tremendous physical performance; Zeek is just old now, and old and frail are not characteristics we’re used to applying to him. It’s heartbreaking, especially as it motivates Sarah and Hank’s decision to greatly speed up the impending nuptials.

The other big component of “We Made It Through the Night” is the continuing trials of Joel and Julia’s reconciliation, which turns out to be slightly more complicated than it may have previously seemed. That’s typical Parenthood though; the show gets by far the most mileage out of digging into these moments, into what happens after “happily ever after,” so to speak. It’s a series about life itself, what surrounds the big moments and makes those big moments worthwhile. Amber having her baby or Zeek nearly dying are the milestones, but what we’re actually here for is Sarah and Amber singing with each other and strumming the guitar, and Zeek laying eyes on his great-grandson and namesake for the very first time. Parenthood has always intuited that and delivered on it, and so here we are.

Stray Observations:

• Can you believe the finale is next week already? Will Haddie return? How about Ryan? (We already know Seth will not, sadly.) Might we perhaps catch a glimpse of Piecat?
• Did Drew Holt Get a Haircut? I don’t know; apparently the birth of his nephew does not rate an appearance.
• Adam and Crosby continue to go back and forth on the Luncheonette this week, and while I still appreciate the way that the story has become about their brotherly relationship, things end on such a dire note that reconciliation next week seems all but inevitable.
• I know I am not the only person to note this, but The Newsroom has ruined all “Ave Maria” montages forevermore.

If there’s one thing that Netflix has proven, it’s that original programming for streaming services cannot be ordinary. Instead of pumping out run of the mill big-network dramas, we instead are treated to shows such as Lilyhammer, Orange is the New Black, and House of Cards. These high-class dramas currently outshine nearly anything else on network television, being successfully risky in the issues they can present. And forget about any cheap or cheesy sitcoms; the company has already taken under its wing two of the greatest and most influential sitcoms ever produced: Trailer Park Boys and Arrested Development.

Amazon Prime has finally realized this, stepping up its content game with the thought-provoking comedy-drama Transparent.

Retired professor Mort Pfefferman has been living as a closeted transgender for his entire life, until he decides to come out to his three children. His oldest daughter, Sara, is unhappily married with two children. Son Josh is a lonely, struggling music executive who jumps from woman to woman attempting to find solace. Ali, the youngest sibling, is a child genius grown up to be jobless and penniless, frequently engaging in drug-fueled escapades. Shelly, Mort’s ex-wife and mother to his three children, lives unhappily in a retirement community with her senile new husband.

Assigned to be a male at birth, Mort has lived his life acting through the societal expectations of a male, while identifying internally as a female. Coming out to his family, he begins to dress, act, and live as woman, adopting the name of “Morah”. In respect to the character, she will from this point forward be referred to with her preferred female pronouns.

In the same vein as Orange is the New Black, Transparent provides a brutally honest approach to Morah’s story. It doesn’t sugarcoat anything, nor does it try to force a lesson in our face. It simply presents reality as it is, which makes for a fascinating story. Also unusual is the portrayal for a practicing Jewish family. There’s a bar mitzvah, a Shabbat dinner, and a rabbi, and they are all accurate without bending to stereotypes. The show isn’t trying to teach anybody about Judaism; the Judaism is just there, as it would be in real life.

Obviously, we are not only going to follow how Morah’s life changes as a result of her coming out, but also how her children react. Most interesting is the insight that their reactions give us into the backgrounds of the various characters. For example, Josh is barely able to handle the news, not being able to understand the father’s decision. The betrayal he feels provides valuable back commentary about the lack of father figure that was in Josh’s life as he grew up. The resentment from that is now escalated as he loses what little of a father he had left.

This is where a lot of the realism about a transgender character comes into play. When many shows attempt to deal with issues such as this, they tend to put too much emphasis on just the issues themselves. The Pfferferman story isn’t only about a father who is suddenly revealed to be a woman; it is about seemingly unrelated elements that come into play because of this revelation, and even the smallest changes it makes to the status quo.

Because of this direction, Morah’s three children are each given nearly equal screen time to Morah herself. The beauty of this ensemble is how connected everybody’s lives really are. The entire family is on a struggle to find happiness in their lives, after living through lies. In the same way that Morah had to live a lie about who she really was, Sara has lived the lie of being in a happy relationship, as how Josh has been living a lie of a perfect dream life, and so on.

This connection has the added benefit of giving normalcy to Morah. It would be very easy to “freak show” her, make her into an exotic character that we cannot possibly figure out. By pointing out the parallels between Morah and her family, we see that she is not much different from the wider cis-gender community. Instead of focusing on her transexuality, we are able to simply focus on a great story.

Major credit must be given to the actors who bring this story to life. I was a tad worried about how I would be able to take Jeffrey Tambor seriously; as a huge fan of Arrested Development, I am so used to seeing him in his George/Oscar Bluthe dual role (one that has had him cross dress on occasion). But you immediately forget about this as soon as he enters the screen here. Tambor completely embodies the role of Morah, beautifully executing every complex emotion of a transgender woman beginning her journey.

As the three children, Amy Landecker, Jay Duplass, and Gaby Hoffman all do excellent job of honestly portraying the flawed nuances of their characters. What impressed me the most, however, was the sibling chemistry that they all had with each other. From the casual banter during a quick meet up, to some intense fight scenes, you get the feeling that these three have actually grown up together for the past thirty years.

In terms of visual production, the show is a beauty. The cinematography is gorgeous, with coloring and framing that is both artistic and based completely in realism. The directing is, once again, going for a sense of realism, going from fast and fun to harsh and cold when needed.

In a television market severely lacking in truthful depictions of the LGBT community, Transparent is a welcome, refreshing, and well-needed addition to the current television lineup. Perfectly nailing all the issues of transexuality in combination with a top-grade production, you are treated to a gripping, emotional, and sometimes comedic story. Yet to break into the mainstream, Transparent is poised to become a groundbreaking classic.

Wow.

Let’s just all take a minute to consider “Curtain Call,” which is an astoundingly, thuddingly bad conclusion to a season that, while not great, wasn’t necessarily a disaster.

Well, leave it to Ryan Murphy to rewrite history at the eleventh hour. “Curtain Call” is awful: tone deaf, flat, boring, ridiculous—take your pick. It is among the worst hours American Horror Story has put us through, which is at this point a rather tall order. It is easily the worst episode of Freak Show.

The episode divides rather neatly into two halves. The first concerns Dandy’s takeover of the Cabinet of Curiosities. As the episode opens, Dandy lords over the freaks, and they rise against him, seemingly too easily. And of course it is too easy—before long Dandy is silently strolling around the camp, shooting the freaks dead one by one. RIP Grace Gummer the Fork-tongued Tattoo Monster, dead without consequence like every other woman on this show. Coven may have trivialized death by making it a temporary, stakes-free status for most of its characters (Nan just stayed dead). But Freak Show commits an arguably greater skin by robbing death of its necessary dramatic weight. Dandy’s massacre of the freaks underlines a point that needs no further expounding, and comes at the expense of characters in whom the audience could not possibly be expected to have any investment. Even Dandy, despite Finn Wittrock’s game performance, has been absent so long and so underwritten overall that his motivation beyond “is a murderous psycho” is non-existent. There is some beautiful cinematography throughout the sequence, but that’s just surface (albeit a gorgeous one). Far from shocking or moving, this turn of events is mean and violent and totally empty. Even Desiree’s anguished embrace of Jimmy upon their discovery of the bodies rings hollow, even though it theoretically checks every box it needs to. In Freak Show, grief and violence and loss are all surface, no depth.

From there we have an abrupt cut to the wedding of Dandy Mott to Bette and Dot. If I weren’t committed to reviewing this show for Smash Cut, I would’ve shut off the television at this wedding scene. No joke. Of course the twins are playing a long (well, not very long) con, but fuck it, who cares? By the time Bette and Dot and the surviving freaks (just Desiree and Jimmy at this point) have drugged Dandy and dragged him back to the circus, I have completely checked out. I think my major issue with this whole thing is that this final confrontation begins in this episode—it doesn’t build from anything that came before, even despite some hamfisted attempts to pull everything together such as Desiree’s speech. “You may look like a motion picture dream boat, but you are the biggest freak of them all.” You don’t say!

As with Coven, the season arc has done a heel turn to be about something that isn’t tangential—in fact, the rest of the season was the tangent—but which is entirely without consequence anyway. In this instance, it’s the notion of Dandy wanting to own the freak show, which was nominally raised in the first episode and then promptly abandoned in favor of literally a million other things. The funny thing is, this is true of all the show’s seasons: both Murder House and Asylum made similar eleventh hour turns that revealed the stories to be about something different than expected. The difference is, those seasons revealed the stories as being about something more than expected, too. Freak Show’s ending is reductive, unexpected only in how thoroughly unsatisfying it is.

Anyway, then Bette and Dot and Desiree and Jimmy trap Dandy in a Houdini-esque tank and drown him to death, all the while sitting there and munching popcorn and cracking wise. And so, what? Are we supposed to feel good about this? Is this supposed to be a triumph for these characters—that they, too, are horrible murderers?

And then suddenly it is 1960, and Elsa is famous (sure) and has a variety hour (okay) and is married to David Burtka (alright, fine) and she won’t perform on Halloween because she doesn’t do that because Edward Mordrake. Do you remember Edward Mordrake?

Just to be clear: the entire remainder of the episode is an extended rhapsody on the nadir of Elsa Mars’s fame, which has apparently all along been the heart and soul of the season. Eventually the hardcore German murder-porn videos of Elsa’s past come back to haunt her, and also Massimo is dying of lung cancer, and so she decides that maybe she will perform on Halloween after all, and so she sings David Bowie’s “Heroes” (poorly) and Edward Mordrake shepherds her soul away on national television, accompanied by Twisty. Do you remember Twisty?

Wait. It gets stupider. Edward Mordrake decides that Elsa Mars isn’t made for his Gang of Ghouls or whoever the fuck and so instead, Elsa passes into Freak Show Eternal and there’s the fucking ghost of Ma Petite and Grace Gummer the Fork-tongued Tattoo Monster and yes, even Ethel, and they all hug and make up and Elsa sings “Life on Mars” to an audience of ghosts, happily ever after. I’m not kidding. This is how American Horror Story: Freak Show ends. What a spectacular nosedive into the asinine for a season that’s been content to tread the line of mediocrity for so long.

Merry Christmas, Noodle Mouse. See you next year for Amish aliens from the future or whatever.

Stray Observations:

• As always, the grade below is for the season. The episode grade is 3/10, and that only because some of the actors are trying really hard and a few shots are very pretty.
• Shout out to Finn Wittrock, who was by far the MVP of Freak Show, and a more than worthy addition to the repertory. Here’s hoping that if he’s back for more, it’s a more deserving script.
• Neither Maggie nor Dell warrants any mention in a finale that turns out to be extremely preoccupied with ghosts. This may suggest something about the superfluity of, oh, say five or six episodes in the middle of the season.
• Per reports from TCA week, American Horror Story is going to be radically re-invented for season five. Given that this is a Ryan Murphy show and so the phrase “radically re-invented” is pregnant with literally boundless possible meanings. Perhaps it will be re-invented as a “good television show.”
• My primary motivation for reviewing American Horror Story this season was my hope that it would ascend to the terrible, laughable heights (sure, we’ll call them heights) of Coven, and so mostly I’m bummed that it turned out to be too little, too late. Imagine if we had hit this high water mark around episode eight! Anyway, The Americans takes over the time slot next week, so if you need a palate cleanser you could do worse. Thanks for following along on this dumb journey with me!

As with “Milk of the Gods,” this week’s episode of Shameless is something of a mixed bag. There’s quite a bit of good material here, but the show is doling it out very slowly, and as a result much of “I’m the Liver” repeats the beats of the premiere, without adding any depth or creating any further complications. Even the instances that do develop new wrinkles this week (I’m thinking mainly of Fiona here) are still baby steps forward in a season that is in no rush to make its point.

Again, Shameless has more than earned this sort of measure storytelling. There’s no reason not to be confident that the season is building to something, and that much or all of this early work will pay off down the line. But when aspects of the episode are as trying as aspects of this episode are, it can be difficult to be as patient as one would like with the storytelling.

Once again, the bulk of the episode is spent with Frank and company, and once again, I’m left to wonder if this isn’t a mistake. The broader comedy on this show can be hit or miss, and Frank’s story this week exemplifies both extremes. There is some excellent physical comedy—in fact, Sheila casually squirting Sammie with the hose is side-splitting—but also some misguided attempts at black comedy that ultimately forget they’re meant to be telling a joke. The Father’s Day luncheon to which Frank and Sheila are invited, hosted by the parents of the donor whose liver Frank is now abusing, is dark to the point of discomfort. By the time the donor’s mother is cringing in horror at the head of the table, the audience is way ahead of her. It’s not funny enough to warrant how very dark the scene is, and so it ends up gross and even somewhat exploitative, too weird for its own good. Wrapped up in all of this is Sheila and Sammie’s continued feud, which is, like so many things with these characters, too outlandish to achieve any sort of pathos; and without the pathos, the comedy falls flat, too.

Lip and Ian are both stuck in retreads of the premiere. Lip has his first day of work on the demolition crew; he puts on a brave face, pretending to be this strange, idealized version of himself that he holds in his head, like he can still be the blue collar, working class South Side hero. But he’s not that guy, and after a hard day of work, he rounds the corner and collapses. The story is well-told in its few scenes, but divulges no new information, nor does it change Lip’s status quo, not even when he briefly crosses paths with Mandy. Still, it’s a sight better than Ian’s story, which is equally repetitive but less well done, featuring an (admittedly accurate) caricature of the Westboro Baptist Church and an increasingly heightened manic episode of Ian’s that is never quite believable or engaging. It may just be that Cameron Monaghan is better at playing the depressive episodes than the manic, but something in the combination of performance and writing just doesn’t work this week.

Much more successful is the C-plot featuring Debbie and Carl, which starts out as a light-hearted, standard teen-movie romp, through the lens of Shameless, before turning into a more careful study of Debbie’s continuing journey into adolescence. Her scenes with Svetlana are comedic gold, as are Debbie’s studied attempts at sexiness at the public pool. Svetlana is pretty much always awesome to have around, but tonight’s scenes are a good reminder of just how well rounded the character has become.

But what’s truly best about this particular thread is the way it dovetails so neatly with Fiona’s, leading to a devastating final scene that sneaks up on the viewer, so that you don’t realize its horror until it’s too late. Fiona spends much of the episode flirting back and forth with Sean, newly free of her ankle monitor and suddenly (or perhaps usually?) flush with options with regard to men. But after a violent encounter with a diner who was rude to Fiona (and I mean, super fucking rude), Sean hits the brakes. He might have seemed like the responsible and respectable option, but is in fact the same kind of conflicted, bad news guy that she’s always into. And he confirms every scary thing that Fiona has ever thought about herself. “I’m not just chaos,” she pleads, but he knows better.

And so she takes her fourteen year old sister, dressed like a hooker, to a 21-plus concert, puts her directly in harm’s way with some gross pervert, punches a guy, draws the singer of the band into a fight, and runs like hell out of there lest she violate her probation. Chaos with a capital-C, sweetheart. This is a great note to end the episode on, not just narratively speaking, but also just with the composition of the shot. Debbie is foregrounded, giggling with excitement, finally off on an adventure with her big sister. Meanwhile Fiona is behind her, exhilarated as well, at first, until she realizes just how much trouble she is.

It’s this ability to turn on a dime that makes Shameless a better-than-average series. It doesn’t hit these heights often, and tends to only really be consistently sublime with regard to Fiona, but man, do moments like this one make the whole endeavor worth it. I’m still waiting, somewhat less patiently than before, for the rest of the season’s elements to coalesce; but as far as Fiona and Emmy Rossum are concerned, at least, I’m all in.

Stray Observations:

Little Chuckles continues to be an absolute delight, with his “Happy Father’s Day Gampa” sign and all.

“This is just like with the Jews.” “Today, the urban gentry is moneyed lesbians.” Frank’s thoughts on gentrification are typically complex.

Another great shot: just when I was feeling a little skeptical, Frank and Sheila are prancing down the street holding hands, and dare I say my heart melted a little a bit.

Kevin gets some great scenes in with Svetlana as well, as his and Veronica’s parenting troubles take a turn for the worst this week. Sometimes a haircut is not just a haircut.

“Surrogate. I rent uterus like youth hostel.” Svetlana is a treasure.

“You can’t wear the uniform and wield the cross as a weapon, soldier.”

As Parenthood draws to a close, its aims of a work of fiction haven’t really changed, but they have come into sharper focus. There is a scene late in this week’s episode, the aptly titled “Let’s Go Home,” where Zeek and Camille return to the old house to retrieve an old souvenir baseball. (First, just consider that enough time has passed for the Braverman house to become “the old house”.) They’re greeted with the sight of a young boy frolicking in the yard with his dog, and a fresh coat of paint in a color Camille never would have thought of. Life goes on, and we adapt and rebuild. They leave without with baseball, without even going inside.

“Let’s Go Home” is very much concerned with ideas of belonging, of going forward or going backward but keeping “home” in your sights regardless. It’s a more typical episode of the series than “How Did We Get Here?” in terms of structure, and it’s a stronger episode for that. Characters are paired off as usual, splintering away into their own stories, with no physical focal point such as the hospital, or even a family dinner, to anchor them to each other.

That turns out to be a good thing. Last week’s efforts to tie everything physically to the crisis over Zeek’s health meant that anything that moved away from that became a distraction. This week, the clan is allowed to sprawl as far away as they need to; home is an idea, not a place.

If the project of Parenthood is portraying this family unit as together and cohesive, through thick and thin, always and forever, then “Let’s Go Home” is largely an episode that puts those pieces into a place for a final statement on a theme in the coming weeks. The series is not reinventing the wheel at this point, nor does it need to. I loved this episode; it’s one of my favorites of the season. (Yes, even the business with the Luncheonette.)

Much of the episode is about characters building things or fixing things. You first notice this when the show smacks you over the head with it—Amber and Sarah can’t figure out how to put together the crib that absent dad Seth mailed. But soon a pattern emerges throughout the episode, of characters sitting on the floor together, wondering how to rebuild the fragmented or simply forgotten pieces of their lives. Julia and Sarah do strange-looking crunches on the grass and weight the pros and cons of getting back together with Joel, or of saying yes to Hank’s proposal. Adam and Crosby wonder whether to go out on a limb for a shared dream, or to play it safe by giving up. Sarah and Hank sit by the finished crib and map out the next phase of their lives, together.

It should come as no surprise that in every instance, Parenthood endorses risk taking, endorses reunion, endorses any course of action that brings the Bravermans together. It’s the same drum that the show has been beating all this time, and to its credit, it hasn’t really gotten old. What sets this episode apart is its slightly different variation on this enduring theme. Parenthood has spent a fair amount of time now disassembling its various parts, a fact that is much more obvious in retrospect than it was as it was happening. Whether it’s Kristina’s battle with cancer, Adam losing his job, Zeek facing death, Julia contemplating divorce, Amber getting pregnant—the ties that bind the Bravermans have frayed but have not broken. With the end in sight, there is no longer a need to continue testing those ties—now the show can purely celebrate and reinforce them.

The result is a sweet and refreshing take on the usual Parenthood schmaltz (which I say with nothing but love.) It’s what gives us scenes like the unexpectedly romantic kiss on the ice between Julia and Joel, whose reunion just two weeks ago was my most dreaded outcome of the season. Their tentative steps toward fixing their marriage had a lightness of touch this week that is a gigantic benefit to the story, making it a delight to watch.

Even the Luncheonette story was not totally unbearable! I’ll quibble with Adam a little bit this week; after Zeek plainly tells him that Crosby is an adult and can handle the business on his own, Adam goes and continues to tell Crosby that, since Adam wants to back out, its lights out for the studio. Adam is the worst. But the situation with the Luncheonette this week leads to the best use of Crosby in some time, giving him something to be legitimately serious about, and creating a final test of faith for the rest of his family; instead of bemoaning his continued arrested development, I’m excited to see Crosby (presumably) rise to the challenge.

“Let’s Go Home” is more heartwarming than heart wrenching, which is a fine change of pace for the series in the home stretch. It’s one of the season’s finer hours, one that’s sure to leave you with a smile plastered onto your face. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by Sarah’s “yes” to Hank, or by Joel’s admittedly smooth moves in regaining Julia’s love and trust. This almost aggressively optimistic mode is one that only works when the question of future stories is removed, but it works well indeed, and it makes these final hours with Bravermans a well-earned pleasure.

Stray Observations:

• I was thinking how hilarious it would have been there was some tragic family secret hidden away on those rolls of film, but it turned out they’re actually the opening credits, which is even more hilarious.
• I’m happy Jasmine gets to do something here, even if it is just prop Crosby up.
• Semi-regular praise for Monica Potter again, who is so, so good. Her face after Adam tells her about Jasmine’s visit is running through eighteen different emotions simultaneously and they are all captivating.
• “I prefer actual silence to Aunt Sarah’s voice.” Max returns with a vengeance this week.
• Chris gets thrown under a bus this week without so much as a goodbye. Chris, we hardly knew you.
• He was always a cute kid, but this is the first time I’ve actually thought to myself that Miles Heizer grew up pretty fine. (Maybe it’s the haircut.)

Welcome to Smash Cut’s reviews of Shameless season five! This is one of my favorite shows on the air right now, and I am beyond excited to spend some time with the Gallaghers alongside you all.

This is a big premiere, touching on all of the main characters at least briefly, both recapping where we left of, and at least beginning to outline where we’ll be going next. As such, it’s a busy episode, and there isn’t as much substance as there could be here owing to the sheer shoe-leathery-ness of it all. In a way it’s fitting that any Shameless premiere would be a little messy, rough around the edges—and given the way that the excellent fourth season built to such a laser focus, it’s only fair to allow this season some time to build up speed.

It’s also worth noting early on the show’s skewed sense of morality. Traditional notions of right and wrong are right out the window here. Feel that swell of pride as Mickey dons a tie and heads out to work? Well he’s running a fake moving company and selling rich people’s shit. And so on and so forth.

The downside of a messy, rough around the edges premiere is that not everything lands the way it should. There’s plenty to admire here, to be sure, not least the episode’s somewhat surprising MVPs, Veronica and Kevin, whose struggles with new parenthood are a perfect blend of gooey sentimentality and classic Shameless raunch. It’s not always easy to relate to the characters on this show, but the script and actors work together here to find a real, beating heart in both v and Kev. Steve Howie especially is a powerhouse here, delivering on the comedy as always, but also delivering on an emotional level. Their conflict is real and raw, and a breath of fresh air given the cartoonish heights the episode occasionally reaches.

I’m partial to Mickey and Ian, so their story this week worked for me as well (even if it is breaking my heart to watch it unfold!). Noel Fisher is a great addition to the regular cast, and he and Ian have perhaps the most compelling relationship on the show at the moment. Cameron Monaghan is running with the bipolar material, and does a great job selling both the manic and the depressive moments. There’s likely going to be a few episodes of this waiting for the other shoe to drop, but “Milk of the Gods” does a fine job of establishing the stakes. What’s clear throughout the episode is the extent to which Mickey truly loves Ian—and so we already know just how much damage Ian is going to end up doing here.

Jeremy Allen White is also reliable as always, with Lip’s homecoming taking an unexpectedly melancholic turn. His return to the neighborhood is muted and disappointing for him, a fish out of water story in reverse. How far he has come in just a year away at school. The shots of Lip on the subway are really well done, creating a sense of claustrophobia and discomfort. Lip thought he had trouble adjusting to university, but he’s practically gone native now; it’s the South Side where he has trouble belonging.

That leaves us with Fiona and Frank, who unfortunately have the more underwhelming moments of the premiere. Fiona’s story isn’t bad so much as it’s stagnant. The arc of her brief rise and crushing fall gave definition to both the character and the series last season. Now she’s in the same place we’ve seen her so often, working a job that should be beneath her, flirting with an inappropriate man. She seems happier and more well-adjusted than during her spiral, and Emmy Rossum is lovely as always, but there’s no bite to this story right now.

At least Fiona’s story is steady and consistent, though. Everything involving Frank, as is too often the case, is stupid. After a transcendent arc toward the end of season four, it’s more than a little disappointing to see the writing for the character return to such juvenile, puerile nonsense. I get that Frank is meant to be reprehensible, but with his life on the line there was at least drama in it. Now it’s just more of the same, and it’s a complete waste of William H. Macy and Joan Cusack’s considerable talents. Sheila’s feud with Samantha is absolutely terrible, and has no dimension to it at all. Samantha’s complete heel-turn in characterization falls totally flat—in fact it’s almost embarrassing to watch unfold. There’s just no room for sympathy left with Frank as a character, regardless of the situations the writers concoct, after his magnificent “fuck you” to God. It’s a point that is only exacerbated by the entire Gallagher clan’s rejection of him. We have far too quickly arrived at the point where time spent with Frank only detracts from the other, more interesting characters; and this episode spends entirely too much time on Frank.

It’s not perfect, but season four was so good that it’s not quite fair to expect “Milk of the Gods” to reach those heights immediately. What’s good here is great, while what doesn’t work still has plenty of room to improve. One hopes the writing staff will figure out a better way to write Frank, and something more engaging for Fiona, but there’s plenty here to like aside from them. It’s good to have the Gallaghers back.

Stray Observations:

• We’ll have the Gallaghers around for a while yet, as the show has been renewed for a sixth season, as is Showtime’s wont.
• Watching the “previously on” had me immediately nostalgic for season four, which really was just great television through and through.
• “That Chuckie thing” is my new favorite way to refer to Chuckles, who is still inherently funny without having to do or say a damn thing.
• Dermot Mulroney has replaced Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Sam, which had me extremely confused for much of the episode, mainly because I was conflating Sam with Mulroney’s New Girl character for no reason that I can think of now.
• Sam’s relationship with Fiona, meanwhile, is kind of bland, not least because Jimmy/Steve is out there somewhere, gathering strength to ruin my enjoyment of this show once more.
• Stumpy, Lip’s friend with the new piercings, is disgusting looking.
• A real estate company is running around looking to buy up South Side homes on the cheap. I love when Shameless takes the unique opportunity to do stories about class, and I’m looking forward to its take on gentrification.

Parenthood’s hundredth episode is something of a miracle. The series, much like Jason Katims’s previous show Friday Night Lights, has never been a ratings success. It has held steady in its Thursday at 10 time slot, ostensibly a slot for prestige dramas, but renewal has never been a sure thing for the show. After an (ill-advised) full season order for season five, that the series is back for this victory lap is nothing short of amazing. (It helps that NBC has nothing better to put here, cc: Hannibal.)

The thing about Parenthood is that it is not a prestige drama. It’s not even quite on the level of Friday Night Lights; it lacks for example that show’s formal specificity, its realist edge. Parenthood is utilitarian, the last of the family dramas, not quite a soap, not quite prestige. It knows what it is, knows what it can do, and more often than not does it well.

The same is true of “How Did We Get Here?”, which encapsulates all of the things the show does well, along with some of the things it does annoyingly, if not quite poorly. It is in other words exactly what a hundredth episode should be, and it functions perfectly as a summation of the show. In fact, if not for a few outstanding threads of plot, “How Did We Get Here?” would serve as an excellent finale. As it stands, it sets the stage for the final three (!) episodes of Parenthood rather nicely.

What I love most about this one is the way it functions as a sort of bottle episode, containing all of the Bravermans in the hospital for the bulk of its running time. I cannot emphasize enough my joy at getting the whole cast in the same place again. Budgetary issues have meant leaving several characters out of episodes, and some of the show’s unique chemistry was lost as a result. That spark is back in full force here, and it shows. Right from the beginning, with an otherwise silent musical montage that is super effective, the script sets some of the highest emotional stakes the series has ever seen, and pulls the audience right back into the lives of the Braverman clan.

Zeek’s health issues have been by far the strongest thread this season, not least because they provide a means to bring the entire cast together. It makes sense that this milestone episode would put him in crisis once more. When we left the show before the holidays, it was on a note of cheap, telegraphed shock—but here, dealing with the aftermath, is where Parenthood truly excels. Emotional realism is what the episode has going for it in spades. The Bravermans are all sitting around helpless with the world rushing around them, and all they can do is react and lean on each other. Looking back, very little actually happens in “How Did We Get Here?”, but that doesn’t matter. It’s scenes of characters reacting, talking to each other and processing the fact of Zeek’s mortality, that are what we’re here for, and on that count, the episode delivers.

Take this week’s MVP, Bonnie Bedelia, whose Camille has her most substantial episode in ages here. Her wonderful chemistry with Craig T. Nelson contains within it decades of history; it’s impossible not to be moved when Camille breaks down in the chapel with Adam, or when her voice cracks with palpable relief when she learns that, for now at least, her husband is okay.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Miles Heizer also gets a couple great showcases here. Parenthood doesn’t always know what to do with Drew, and I felt that last episode’s conflict between him and Zeek was forced, to put it mildly—it didn’t really land for me that even Zeek would be quite so harsh to his grandson. But once again, the fallout from those harsh words provides fertile ground for drama here, as Drew worries that his last conversation his grandfather might be one where Zeek told him how he’d let him down. Is they symbolism of the Pontiac breaking down maybe a little too on the nose? Sure. But Heizer is great in the scene, and throughout the episode. He’s paired off with Hank at the hospital, which is a no-duh character pairing that the show hasn’t really mined yet. Like so many of the pairings in Parenthood, it’s an emotional goldmine. Ray Romano is practically a national treasure, and watching him navigate the latest Braverman family crisis is not without its humor—I love how he decides to stay because Joel is doing it, too.

Unfortunately the episode isn’t entirely successful. The Luncheonette has never been the greatest idea Parenthood had, but this ransacking-slash-burglary is even more unbelievable than the idea of the Luncheonette in the first place. What, the thieves loaded up the entire damn recording booth on their shoulders and just waltzed on out of there? It would take literally hours to do the damage we see. It’s absurd and immediately lets the air out of the story. What’s worse, a story that seemed like it was jettisoning the Luncheonette in time for the home stretch actually ends up reaffirming it as the driving force behind what will be Adam and Crosby’s final major storyline. Booooo.

Somewhere in between these two extremes is the ad hoc baby shower the ladies hold in the hospital waiting area for Amber. On the one hand, it’s a sweet scene, though it’s a little too saccharine even by Parenthood’s standards. On the other hand, it’s oddly placed at the end of the episode, as though it was tacked on simply to have the women share their reflections on motherhood as part of the hundredth episode festivities. A nice enough scene to be sure, but one that feels like it might belong to a different episode entirely.

Overall “How Did We Get Here?” is a strong return for Parenthood, and the missteps that it does make are minor. As a celebration of the show’s legacy, it definitely works, and as a set-up for the final episodes, it does a good job of setting the stakes and putting all of the pieces in place for a satisfying finale.

Stray Observations:

– Hank’s proposal to Sarah is so very typical of him, and it’s beautiful to boot. What a journey this character has gone on.

– “That was my first instinct, not to talk to you.” Hank is also very comforting.

– “You’re right that it’s practical, it’s practically not a Porsche.”

– Joel and Julia are now maybe getting back together, or something? Chris is, I don’t know, I guess he’s dead or something? I assume there will be more conflict yet to come on this front, but it’s all very swept under the rug this week in a way that’s off-putting to me.

And we’re back! I barely remember where we left off, so thankfully the episode begins on a narrative curlicue to “two days ago”, when Stanley convinced Jimmy to give him his left hand by way of an ipecac-fueled fake emergency. (He takes both hands because duh.) I’ve already expressed my annoyance at Freak Show’s continued insistence on double- and triple-tracing its narrative steps, and that holds true here, not just on the level of the opening scene here, but also on a macro-level, with “Magical Thinking” bringing the freaks back into conflict with the Jupiter police again-slash-still.

Fortunately there is new material in the episode as well, with Neil Patrick Harris showing up as traveling salesman/magician/general crazy person Chester. He’s carting along a ventriloquist’s dummy named Marjorie—it should come as no surprise that he talks to her like a real person, and that, by episode’s end, she appears to him as an outright human, played pretty awesomely by Jamie Brewer. “Magical Thinking” is straight up weird, and given the title, “weird” is a place Freak Show hasn’t gone to as often as you might expect. Harris jumps into the role with verve, and fits comfortably among the ensemble.

But the episode can be as weird as it wants—it doesn’t change the fact that it meanders like crazy. The pacing of “Magical Thinking” is mind-boggling. Characters flit in and out in large chunks of story; large swaths of the episode are dedicated to Chester’s backstory, which is doled out so slowly, in fits and starts, as to lose what little interest it held in the first place. So often, Freak Show is convinced of its own coolness, that it can just tell whatever story and its audience will eat it up (this also proves to be frustratingly true. We’re trapped in a feedback loop of shit.). But it just keeps telling and telling, piling non-sequiturs miles high, loading on new characters and complications, but entirely forgetting to use these complications to add depth, dimension, or even simple narrative value to the season arc or any of its characters.

To be fair, “Magical Thinking” does resolve (or at least it hints at resolving) the relative lack of direction that has so far plagued Freak Show. The confrontation between the Jupiter police and the freaks toward the episodes end, while a retread of a retread of a plot point, does at least escalate said plot point. Now, will any of this have consequence come next Wednesday? It’s basically a fifty-fifty proposition. But in the moment, it works.

In keeping with the abundant weirdness, Chester finds himself a pawn in Bette and Dot’s suddenly very urgent quest to lose their virginity to, well, anyone who is willing. It’s a super bizarre story, with plenty of (unintentionally) hilarious exchanges, such as this brilliant gem: “I said kiss me, not lick me!” “But I am French!” Raucously funny as shit like this is, you’ll be forgiven for finding the whole enterprise pretty gross. The idea of the twins as moon-eyed romantics is one that’s been with us since the premiere, but “Magical Thinking” puts a pretty icky spin on it that feels pretty unnecessary to me.

And yet, this week’s episode does the one thing that American Horror Story consistently excels at: having a batshit crazy awesome final five minutes that means, damn it, I can’t wait to tune in next week. First of all: the final scenes of “Magical Thinking” confirm my theory that Dandy’s presence correlates with awesomeness, as when the episode drops the twins’ nonsense and has Dandy take an interest in Chester, it’s a much needed jolt of excitement. Desiree’s confrontation of Dell is one of the more emotionally charged episode’s of the season, and hot damn, that final shot (pun intended) is great. Kudos to Jessica Lange—she brings Elsa to life this week in a way that I don’t know she or the writers have managed so far. In terms of emotional consequences, Ma Petite’s death has paid dividends, and that’s a pattern that seems likely to continue.

There isn’t really much more to say at this point. You know exactly what you’re getting with Freak Show, and “Magical Thinking” has the same strengths and the same weaknesses the season has displayed all along. So, you know, in other words it’s business as usual: glimmers of excitement, the occasional genuine moment of pathos, and a lot of unnecessary shit to slog through in between. Welcome back!

Stray Observations:

• Tight close ups of Evan Peters’s face all day long, please and thank you.
• “My friend Myrna was at that Tupperware party.” Only on American Horror Story, folks.
• Denis O’Hare is fantastic in the opening scene, chewing scenery and shouting with crazy, elongated-vowel-fueled manic glee. I wish Stanley was more firmly planted in the villain role, but that would require more narrative discipline than Freak Show is capable of deploying at this point.
• This episode was so close to 6.5ish territory, but I let myself be swayed by the last ten or so minutes, even if I know I’m just gonna be burned down the line.

Standing ovation for David Buckley. During the past two seasons so many episodes of The Good Wife have relied on the moods set by his score, but with a more aggressive and passionate score this time around, it’s hard to give anyone else the MVP award for this episode other than composer David Buckley.

The last time we had an episode this intense on The Good Wife (other than the one that shall not be named) was “Hitting the Fan.” The season five renaissance starter was a non stop thrilling ride from start to finish that was pitch perfect in its delivery and impact. The episodes are similar in that they both involve the entire cast and are fast paced Although this episode failed to reach the heights that “Hitting the Fan” reached, this episode proved once again that The Good Wife does deadlines like no other series.

First, I’m going to start off with the two side storylines. Although the show has quickly evolved past its title, it’s rare to see Alicia not be part of the main storyline. However, this episode we see characters actively trying to keep her out of it as she prepares for her debate. With a crazy english professor, Finn, and eventually Peter stepping in to stand in as Frank Prady, we see Alicia in all aspects of her preparation. From the good, the bad, the ugly, and the badass. Although the storyline somewhat detracted from the intensity of the episode, it was lovely to see Alicia dig into Peter yet again.

The c-storyline involved Cary prepping for prison with a consultant, Bill (Domenick Lombardozzi). It was a “cute” interlude to the story. It felt more like the comic relief of the episode, save for some emotional Kalinda scenes. However, what it did show us was Cary’s emotional state prior to his impending incarceration. He gets to have those quintessential “why is this happening to me?” moments that he so desperately needed from the first of the season. There of course was emotional impact before, but Cary didn’t seem to be taking his case as seriously as his coworkers and we were taking it. Yet another punch came when Bill asked him if he had any family to take his power of attorney. He didn’t. Instead he named two potential people: his friend Alicia, and his girlfriend Kalinda.

With a six hour time crunch, Diane, Kalinda, and pretty much the entire firm must race to find evidence that proves that the prosecution buried evidence that would have proved Cary’s innocence. Who is most determined of the group is of course Kalinda. She has been known to get herself in trouble throughout the series, but she made a decision that may or may not affect her character’s exit from the series. In an effort to protect Cary in prison, she goes to our favorite drug king pin Lemond Bishop to find someone on the inside for Cary to stick to. However, like everything else Bishop has done in the series it comes with catch. This time it’s a mysterious phone call that Kalinda simply has to answer. I’m sure we’ll come back to this later.

Kalinda spends most of the episode running around in high gear doing everything she can to save Cary from incarceration. However, she does spend one small moment to run back to the hotel where Cary is being prepped to sleep with him as per the instructions of the consultant. Kalinda is loyal to very few people. There’s Alicia, Diane, and of course Cary. However, her loyalty to Cary is something of a passion. Of all the lovers that she has had on the show, none of them have come close to having the Kalinda that Cary has.

In an act of desperation, Kalinda asks her computer programmer to teach her how to change meta data to reflect that detective assigned the case had read an email that proved the drugs were already in the country when Cary gave his “advice.” She of course didn’t have to use this when she found that the Detective’s partner had committed entrapment, but she neglected to tell Diane, who ended up using the meta data in court. Cary was free and everyone was happy. Except for Kalinda, who had mixed feelings. This is sure to play into her exit this season.

However, the most compelling and juicy part of the episode was that kiss. Alicia is naturally very controlled and calculating, however she has those moments of passion where she forgets about the repercussions of whatever she’s doing and just jumps. I like to cherish these moments like her quickie in “Hitting the Fan,” the elevator scene in “Closing Arguments,” and now her kiss with Danny in “Hail Mary.” Of course, it may not mean anything. I mean, her partner had just gone through months of trials, incarceration, and arrests, she would be happy. However, the only thing I could think was what that kiss would mean for the series. The Good Wife rarely does anything without further action prepared. Whether someone say them or Danny starts falling for her, I don’t know, but something is bound to happen.

Overall, “Hail Mary” was a fun episode that missed its full potential by thismuch. We weren’t treated to another “Hitting the Fan,” but I didn’t need another one. What I needed was another proper episode of The Good Wife and that’s what I got. However, I’m just looking ahead at what trouble lies in the rest of the season.

Stray Observations:

• There was a lot less Falicia in this episode (can we make that a thing?). However, the energy was still there. To the point where I just wanted them to do the deed right there by the podiums.
• Speaking of Danny, that argument with Eli was perfect. Literally perfect.
• I don’t understand at what point Kalinda become more than a f*ck buddy. Cary constantly refers to her as his girlfriend. Whether or not she feels the same way is yet to be seen.
• “My whole life I wanted to be one thing – a lawyer and I had it. I had it. I had it figured it out. Get to the top take the cases you want, help the people you want. Now, I can’t, I can’t figure anything out.” I said in my review of season premiere that Cary was odd choice as the emotional center of the episode. However, eleven episodes into this season Matt Czuchry proved he deserved it as an actor and Cary deserved it as a character.
• Stay Tuned for Scenes from Our Next Episode: Debate episodes are always fun, but I hope it doesn’t dominate the entire episode. I have more faith in the Kings than that, but what I’m more interested is the inevitable blow back from what ever happens during the debate. Perhaps revealing that someone did in fact see the Danny and Alicia (Dalicia?).

It’s the episode we’ve been waiting for since the Pilot and is a sign of the end for The Good Wife. Towards the end of “Shiny Objects,” Alicia takes the stage to announce her candidacy for State’s Attorney. However, the question posed throughout the episode was whether or not she would do it with Peter by her side. With Eli and her newly appointed campaign manager Danny breathing down her neck about the announcement, Alicia had little time to think about her case and the cyber attack on the firm. Yes, you read that right. A cyber attack.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, The Good Wife is unmatched by any network drama in its ability to grind on every detail of a storyline. This is best shown when Diane inadvertently causes a cyberterrorist to hack into the Florrick/Agos system and hold their files for ransom. With a 72 hour deadline, Diane enlists the help of Kalinda to try and prevent the deletion of their files. However, the storyline ended up being less about the ransom and more about Kalinda. Sadly, over the past couple of seasons Kalinda has been pushed to the sidelines in favor of more pressing storylines (*cough* Will Gardner *cough*), however with Archie Panjabi’s impending departure it seems that the writers are giving the character her due screen time.

With Kalinda’s relationship with Cary still in full view, she goes to FBI agent Lana Delaney to assist her in the case. Despite calling her out on only going to her when she needs something, Lana still helps Kalinda. Of course, it leads to where all of Kalinda’s storylines lead: in bed. As Kalinda listens to Lana tell her the story of her coming out, even being asked if she was out to her parents, she again closed up. Will we ever learn more about the mystery that is Kalinda? I have no clue, but I’m sure the Kings know we’re waiting.

The storyline also takes Diane to a different place than we would expect too. When the code that will save their files goes to her Lockhart/Gardner email address, she must go to David Lee to retrieve it. However, in usual fashion, he asks for the lease on the offices to be transfer to him and Canning. Of course, Diane calls his bluff and doesn’t take it in her usual fashion, but that coupled with the slowly deteriorating office conditions (as brought on by the brilliant plot device of a water leak) gives Diane the idea to take her offices back.

In this particular episode, the case of the week is delegated to the C-storyline. Emmy winner Carrie Preston returns to reprise her role as the wonderfully quirky Elsbeth Tascioni. However, like everyone in this episode, we dig deeper into her. Particularly her ADD. Or at least what I assume is ADD. She works against Alicia on a unlawful termination lawsuit that eventually leads to the government charging the company with theft of trade secrets, which forces both sides to team up to quash the suit. What this means for the series, I don’t know, but the last time a case went on more than one episode we lost a character. Hopefully, things turn out differently.

To see where Alicia has come is an absolute thrill for a fan of the series from the beginning, however this episode in particular. As Eli and Danny urge her to disinvite Finn from endorsing her at her announcement, she’s again faced with the familiar dilemma of doing what everyone is telling her to do versus what she wants to do. With a wonderful callback to the Pilot, she screams at Peter for giving her the ultimatum of dropping Finn or losing him as an endorsement during the announcement. It’s a stronger Alicia. Opposed to the woman in the Pilot who cried and slapped her husband after he announced his resignation, she now stands up for herself.

On the day of the announcement, we see an eerie similarity to Peter’s announcement in the Pilot. However, instead of Alicia standing beside her husband, he’s standing beside her cheering her on. My one gripe with the episode was the decision to end it with newspaper clippings with side by side images of the Pilot and this episode. While I understand that they wanted to point out the similarities, part of the charm of the series is their trust in the audience. The trust that we’re just going to get it. Either way, with a few more episodes to go in this half I’m interested in seeing how this storyline pans out for the season and the series.

Depending on how you look at it, Sons of Anarchy leaves on one of two notes. The primary note, the one that I ultimately think the series intends, is one of tragic regret, the weight of the characters’ history coming down to bear upon those left alive. But there is a secondary note here, one borne of the tonal miscalculations that have plagued the show’s final arc for some time now. For the bulk of its running time (which, yes, is still too long), “Papa’s Goods” treads carefully enough, but when it does make missteps, they’re enough to make you apoplectic.

After seven seasons, amounting to about five years of the characters’ lives, Jax Teller is finally made to answer for his many sins. But he does it on his own terms, and he dies regarded a hero by basically everyone else on the show (again, those who are actually left alive). This is a tricky spot, to say the least, though I don’t doubt that the show’s nigh-religious final moments ended up connecting with the bulk of the audience. I’m not nearly so convinced that that final shot works, with Jax meeting Michael Chiklis’s semi truck head-on, arms outstretched, a literal Christ figure, dying for the sins of SAMCRO.

The finale itself is concerned mainly with tying up loose ends. After all, the major emotional beats have by now been resolved, an all that’s left is Jax’s final fate. There is absolutely no question that we did not require two hours to get to it. “Papa’s Goods” suffers from the same overwritten, undercooked plottiness that has been such an issue throughout the past several seasons. One would think, for instance, that the writers would have remembered the show’s ill-advised sojourn to Ireland and decided the finale should not spend so much time with the IRA once more. On a significant stretch of the episode, Jax is off on a murder spree, clearing the way for the gangster’s paradise he plans to leave behind.

Now on the one hand, there’s something to the idea of Jax running around, his mind focused solely on club business, while Nero loses his mind and is left alone to deal with the fallout of every terrible decision the Teller family has made. But the finale is too concerned with sending the club, and Jax, on what amounts more or less to a victory lap. If I have one complaint about this finale, it’s the way it underserves the remaining members of the ensemble; and not just Drea de Matteo, whose Wendy is left to stand around, mostly silent, but also Kim Coates, whose Tig I think has gotten less attention this season than even Rat.

At times it seems the show is trying to have things both ways. After all, the episode opens with Jax burning all of John’s papers and photos. He visits the graves of our dearly departed Opie (where he leaves his SONS rings) and Tara (where he leaves his wedding ring). This is a man who has embraced the fact that he is a criminal. As he says to Nero, “The lies caught up to all of us. This is who I am. I can’t change.” In watching this episode and considering Jax’s arc to this point, something occurred to me that I hadn’t considered until now: in my frustration with the show, with the idea that Jax should have just left with Tara, should have gotten out of the club, is inherent the notion that Jax could be redeemed at all. In other words, in wanting Jax to wise up and leave Charming, the audience is giving him more credit as a moral human than the show or the character himself is willing to give. “Papa’s Goods” may make Jax a martyr, but it’s not to justify his actions. The finale is a condemnation of Jax Teller, of John Teller’s legacy, of the whole shebang, really.

Or rather it would be, were it not for that troublesome final sequence. Jax is finally brought to account for his sins, yes, but what has changed? SAMCRO goes on, still slinging guns, still trafficking drugs; Chibs’s veiled threat to Jarry before the Mayhem vote might be for show (so much of this episode, after all, is smoke and mirrors), but it also might be a final restatement of these men’s dangerous attitude toward women. Jax tells Patterson that at the end of the day, “the bad guys lose,” but Jax dies in communion with his father and with a smile on his face. I don’t see any bad guys losing here. Hamlet ends in blood, in the total ruin of an entire family; there’s blood to spare in Sons of Anarchy, but it pulls that final tragic punch, to the show’s detriment.

In the end Sons died as it lived, in a patchwork of cool action sequences, occasionally affecting drama, long-winded plots, and portentous symbolism, shot through with some of the best dramatic acting you’ll find on television. That is an insanely frustrating legacy for a series, and I imagine that I will shake my fists at the sky for years to come, imagining what a four or five season run of the show might have looked like. But ultimately when we look back on “Papa’s Goods” we will look back on the tremendous pas de deux between Charlie Hunnam and CCH Pounder. We’ll look back on two great car chases, and some really great camera work during the last bike chase. We’ll look back on a Mayhem vote that, though it turned out (like so many climactic moments on Sons of Anarchy) to be a ruse, did manage to put a lump in my throat after all.

And when we look back on Sons of Anarchy, we can remember a great second season, with a heart-stopping finale that is still one of the best in recent memory. We’ll remember episodes like “Hands”. (We’ll forget all about Romeo and the CIA, hopefully.) We can remember the miracle of an acting performance that Katey Sagal turned in, remember the moments that shocked but that didn’t make us roll our eyes. There was plenty to like about Sons of Anarchy, even here at the end—and with it all behind us, it’ll be that much easier to remember it fondly.

Episode Grade: 7.5/10

Stray Observations:

• In a moment that comes more or less out of nowhere, the club patches in T.O. I understand the impulse to address the club’s stance on race one last time, but considering that 1) I barely know who T.O. is, and 2) he vanishes from the episode after getting patched in, the impact is perhaps not as great as the show thinks. Plus considering that Juice’s long journey to a gruesome death began with his own race anxiety concerning the club, it’s also a pretty sad moment.
• How many tremendous guest actors has Kurt Sutter attracted to this show over the years? I can’t think of one off the top of my head that I disliked (I know that Ally Walker’s June Stahl was not so popular, but even she brought a demented psychosis to her role that was fantastic to behold). This season alone has highlighted CCH Pounder and Jimmy Smits, but even actors with smaller roles, like Annabeth Gish and, astonishingly, Marilyn Manson of all people, have done some good work with what they’ve been given.
• Much has been made of Abel’s fondling of Gemma’s ring in the car. I met the shot with a shrug; file it away under “portentous symbolism”. If the idea is to indicate that the kid is permanently fucked up from all this, well, that point’s been made sufficiently by now. Making it again with such a trite shot, in a scene where the kid is being (somewhat unbelievably) carted away to safety, is gilding the lily a bit.
• Seriously, what an up and down journey watching this show has been. I wouldn’t recommend anyone watch it straight through again, but it sure has one hell of a highlight reel.

I am, as always, of two minds regarding Freak Show. On the one hand “Orphans” is a simple, touching episode, one that uses a familiar but minor character to highlight the emotional journey the season, and the series, has taken on us on so far. On the other hand it plays as an overlong, lost episode of Asylum more than it does an episode of Freak Show. How you feel about the episode, ultimately, depends on your tolerance for Ryan Murphy’s attention deficit when it comes to blocking out a season of television. In the spirit of the holiday season (which is sadly not an excuse for a return visit by Murder Santa), I want to be as generous as possible to “Orphans,” which really is lovely for a bit. Pepper’s story is told in broad strokes, but the minimalist approach has maximum impact, in no small part owing to Naomi Grossman’s skilled, beautiful performance. There is no question that Pepper is a sketch of a character, here as fan service more than anything else, but that relative simplicity gives the episode’s final sequence an almost charming, storybook quality. That’s true of Mare Winningham as Pepper’s older sister, too; she fills in the barest of characters with an over the top personality that suits rather than overwhelms the story.

The episode looks great, too. As Elsa tells the story of how she first came to rescue Pepper from the orphanage, the scenes take on a blueish-white tinge, still bright, but a completely different palette than the series has used to date. The Briarcliff scenes, by contrast, slowly drain of color until everything is the washed out grey that Asylum so favored. The score, too, is wonderful, a fantastical, whimsical bit of music that is also rather unlike the season to date, and yet works more or less perfectly here. As a short story about this strange little character named Pepper, then, I would call “Orphans” mostly a success. As an episode of a serialized television drama, well, I can’t be so generous on that note. The voiceover early in the episode goes on FOREVER. The final third of the episode veers away from every ongoing plot, only to veer back in a last-second “shocking reveal”. What could happen over a decade that results in Elsa Mars getting onto the cover of Life magazine in 1962? I suppose we’ll spend the next three episodes finding out. It’s another frustrating instance of American Horror Story telling stories from moment to moment, with no regard for how these moments connect to each other. There’s a real sense of “what a twist!” storytelling here, with the magazine cover certainly, but also with the “reveal” that the various seasons are interconnected (which has by the way been so thoroughly reported by the entertainment news sites that enable this kind of lazy, shock-a-minute storytelling as to lose any element of surprise). Yes, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-and-even-then approach has been with the series, and with Ryan Murphy, since time immemorial. But it very quickly shifts gears from original and vibrant to hackneyed and cynical. Also in this episode Stanley chops off Jimmy’s hands and sells them to the freak museum, and Maggie and Desiree go to said museum. The show treats these developments as just such an afterthought, choosing to spend much, much more time on Pepper’s ordeal and the return of Sister Mary Eunice. In fact we do not even see Jimmy lose his hands, but just the aftermath. (The previews suggest we will double back next time, because of course we will.) These scenes are functional, pushing the season to the point it needs to be when we return in January. But they lack the artistic interest of the rest of the episode, and it makes you wish that the same amount of energy that goes into the strangest, most divergent ideas of this season (Twisty the Clown, anything regarding Dandy, and now Pepper’s trip to Briarcliff) would also go into the main characters and storylines.

Speaking of Dandy, he is absent again this week, and I’m beginning to suspect that the success of any given episode is directly proportional to Finn Wittrock’s screen time. Anyway, it’s the Christmas season and I don’t want to be the Scrooge to Ryan Murphy’s Tiny Tim. (Ryan Murphy would of course most identify with Tiny Tim.) This is a fun little Easter egg to those of us who are ardent fans of Asylum’s particular approach to the American Horror Story tropes, and indeed, the bulk of “Orphans” feels like a lost episode of Asylum. For that reason if none other I’ll count the episode a success—but it would really be nice for the producers to get a more even keel on the story they’re trying to tell.   Stray Observations:

• Elsa purchased Ma Petite for the low, low price of three cases of Dr. Pepper. There’s a great underlying current here of Elsa treating her “children” as commodities, same as Stanley, same as her audience. The bookend of the last scene begs the question: how many more of her freaks will Elsa cast aside in her (apparently successful) scrabble for fame?
• Maggie’s fortune for Desiree and Malcolm Jamal Warner takes a dark turn very quickly, and Emma Roberts does a nice job of playing the woman scorned; she’s wickedly comedic and dry in her line deliveries.
• I almost wonder if we will return to Briarcliff again before the season is up. I can’t necessarily think of any justification for it, but I also know that won’t stop Ryan Murphy.