Essays on TV and film — exploring stories, characters, and the choices behind them.
Malcolm Spellman never wrote an episode of Snowfall. FX handed him the spinoff anyway, and what he came back with is not a tour of familiar streets. The Drop: A Snowfall Saga opens in 1990, four years after the parent show signed off, and it keeps South Los Angeles while swapping out the product. … Read more
For five seasons, The Bear kept asking the same question: does making something great have to cost you everything you have? Its series finale finally answers, and the answer is not the Michelin star the whole show had been chasing. All eight episodes of the fifth and final season landed at once on June 25, … Read more
The Bear returns for its fifth and final season on June 25, and the most revealing thing about it isn’t the premiere date or the episode count. It’s the premise. Carmy Berzatto, the character around whom four seasons of tension have been organized, has quit. He’s walked out of the restaurant he drove himself … Read more