Essays on TV and film — exploring stories, characters, and the choices behind them.
The mug is a good place to start. In a publicity photograph for The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, a bearded man stands beside a breakfast table on a boat, with calm blue water behind him. His gun stays at his waist while he holds his drink. It is an inviting image for a movie about … Read more
I finish a lot of prestige dramas, and I could not tell you, under oath, how most of them ended. Modern streaming runs on debt. Season two hands you a cliffhanger and expects you to still be holding it a year later, when season three finally turns up. Reacher owes you nothing. You can … Read more
A worn-out sheriff takes a quiet posting in a small Minnesota town called Normal, hoping to put some distance between himself and his own wreckage. The place is prosperous, polite, and far too calm. Then a bank robbery goes wrong, his own deputies open fire on civilians, and Sheriff Ulysses, played by Bob Odenkirk, … Read more