Game of Thrones is such a straightforward adventure, always focused on characters and plot, that its keener moments of self-awareness slip by without calling attention to themselves. The seventh-season premiere, “Dragonstone,” is filled with them; they confirm that Thrones is as dedicated to self-reflection as its wisest characters.
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The Bold Type, a new series set at a Cosmopolitan-like magazine in New York City, is the best surprise of the TV year so far. It’s part journalism drama, part Sex and the City–style female-bonding comedy with sex and romance; it’s equally interested in being both things at once, to the best of its ability, and damned if it doesn’t pull it off more often than you’d think.
Read More Not much is known about the details of the life of William Shakespeare, and that’s very good news for Will. Although parts of it have the glossed-up blood-and-grime feeling of Braveheart or 1998’s Elizabeth (the latter directed by Shekhar Kapur, who executive produces this series and helmed its pilot), in the end it seems about as interested in faithfully re-creating its time and place as Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby were in theirs. Probably not coincidentally, this show is created by Craig Pearce, who wrote the screenplay for Romeo + Juliet with Luhrmann, and shares a lot of that movie’s heedless, postmodern willy-nilly quality. Will’s shocked immersion in London life is scored to the Clash’s “London Calling,” and the rest of the first episode likewise strains to assure us that there’s nothing stuffy or highbrow about Shakespeare, and that his work and his values are as relevant to modern life as anything you could see on that newfangled YouTube thingy.
Read More The third season finale of Better Call Saul was the kind of episode where you know what could happen, and whom it could happen to, yet somehow, you’re still shocked.
Clunk, clunk, clunk went the noise of Chuck McGill (Michael McKean) kicking the table until a lantern fell and caught his house on fire; the episode cut to black on a shot of the house as flames filled the windows. We may have recalled the time that Chuck’s brother, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk), warned him that, between all the books and legal papers and the gas and oil lamps he used to the light the place, death by fire was a real possibility. We might also have been reminded of the clever but not all that subtle signals strewn throughout the episode that registered subliminally on their own, but that added up to, “Chuck will commit suicide by fire tonight.” Read More Orange Is the New Black seemed to dig itself into a narrative hole at the end of season four with the brutal death of one of its most beloved characters, Poussey Washington (Samira Wiley), in a jailhouse dustup that echoed subjects of Black Lives Matter protests (the choking death of Eric Garner in particular). It was an event so harrowing that it pulverized the show’s delicate balance of social criticism, inspirational empowerment subplots, and R-rated sitcom tomfoolery. Where could Orange possibly go after such an emotional catastrophe?
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