HBO’s Watchmen Watches Over Trump’s America

Posted on October 16, 2019 by Andrew Bloom


More than 30 years after the globe-shaping events of the original Watchmen comic, the ripple effects can still be felt. Adrian “Ozymandias” Veidt is in seclusion somewhere far away and presumed dead. A group of Rorschach-imitating, conspiracy-touting white supremicists threaten the peace and the police at every turn. And the law enforcement officers of Tulsa, Oklahoma have donned capes, cowls, and masks in response, with some even assuming the secret identities that can come with them.

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Breaking Bad’s 10 Most Brilliant Schemes

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Andrew Bloom


Andrew joins Michael Roffman and Alex Huntsberger to celebrate the ingenuity of Vince Gilligan’s series by revisiting its greatest schemes.

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The Forgotten Arc of Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

The mild-mannered, middle-aged dad becomes a cold, remorseless killer. The put-upon chemistry teacher evolves into a vicious drug lord. As series creator Vince Gilligan famously put it, Mr. Chips turns into Scarface.

That transformation is the backbone of Breaking Bad and one of the most convincing and compelling character shifts in television history. With that, Walter White understandably takes up a lot of oxygen in discussions of the show. And yet, focusing on the slow, disquieting arrival of Heisenberg within the broader trajectory of the show ignores how it’s only one half of the grand irony and reversal at the core of the series.

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It’s Always Sunny Keeps Us Guessing In Its Record-Tying 14th Season

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

The Gang is back in action after one of their best and most ambitious seasons. As It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia ties The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet’s record for longest-running live action sitcom, it’s remarkable that the show is not only this good as it begins its fourteenth season, but how it’s managed to evolve and stay relevant. Season 14 doesn’t have the same cliffhanger to resolve or Dennis-shaped hole to fill like the last one did, but it does have to follow up last season’s jaw-dropping finale, which set a new bar for what It’s Always Sunny is capable of.

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The Simplicity of Predator Is a Blessing and a Curse

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

There’s a refreshing simplicity to the plot of Predator. You can boil it down to “Alien hunter picks off mercenaries in the jungle.” Technically, there’s a little more to it than that, with the mildest of ruses and a minor mission misdirect to contend with, but the gist of the film fits into an eight-word description. That seems remarkable right now in an age where every blockbuster and explosion-fest needs to have some convoluted conspiracy, twist upon twist, and a grand mystery to keep the audience interested. Predator, by contrast, banks on the basics of its premise to carry the day.

That’s a good thing, because there ain’t much of a story otherwise. As I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, Predator offers the wisp of a theme about the military-industrial complex seeing its soldiers as interchangeable parts, while the men themselves view one another as human beings. It gradually parcels out the inevitable deaths of everyone besides its major star (and its token female character) to fill the gaps between explosions and alien encounters. And it teases the appearance of the titular antagonist nigh-perfectly, letting the audience get glimpses of the creature and his work bit by bit before he fully emerges.

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The Simpsons Is Born Again in “She of Little Faith”

Posted on July 29, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

Season 13 was a time of transition for The Simpsons. The show would burn off the last handful of episodes overseen by superfan punching bag, Mike Scully. Al Jean (who’d supervised seasons 3 and 4 with writing partner Mike Reiss) would return to take the reins after almost a decade away. And the show gradually shifted from its manic decline to its comfortable persistence. The result, as I’ve discussed before, was a season of television that called back to the classic era Jean had been a part of, that still found itself subject to some of the worst habits of the Scully administration, and that previewed the steady anodyne march of years that would possess the show for the next [gulp] two decades.

But as I discussed on The Simpsons Show Podcast, the opening episode of Jean’s second tour of duty, “She of Little Faith”, gave fans a glimmer of hope. Make no mistake, the episode still has some of the telltale signs of the prior regime’s failings. The pacing is a little nuts. There are some overly cartoony gags. And at times, there is still the undercurrent of meanness that hurried along the show’s fall from grace.

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Veronica Mars Shows No Rust on Its Mystery Machine in Season 4

Posted on July 20, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

Veronica Mars is back and up to her old tricks! Five years after the events of the movie, Veronica’s settled in and made a new life for herself in Neptune. She’s working with her dad, living with Logan, and as the season’s cold open firmly establishes, she still knows her way around a locked door and a listening device.

But those skills are put to the test when a bomb at a seaside motel takes out a unique mix of libertine Spring Breakers and the exasperated people who serve them. The explosion’s victims include a standard party girl and a humble hotel owner, a lecherous douchebro and a nerd with dangerous family ties, as well as a true crime-loving pizza delivery man and the younger brother of a US congressman. From there, the season spins out its clues, connections, and potential motives with more than enough possibilities to fuel its central mystery.

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South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut Continues to Give and Point the Finger

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

Blame TV. Blame your parents. Blame movies. Blame society. Hell, blame Canada. But whatever you do, blame something, and quickly, before someone thinks of blaming you.

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut turns 20 this weekend, and for as much as the movie’s Saddam Hussein-heavy, Celine Dion-referencing take on the world is very much of its time, the film nevertheless captures the ways in which American culture would continue to take deeply entrenched, complex cultural problems, and hunt for convenient scapegoats and easy answers in the years to come. There is no issue too inflammatory, no societal malady too multifaceted, that it cannot be oversimplified and laid at the feet of a readily-available boogeyman.

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Veep’s Series Finale and the Hollowness of Getting What You Want

Posted on June 1, 2019 by Andrew Bloom


“What did it cost you?” “Everything.”

It’s undoubtedly silly to try to draw too sharp a line between Veep’s series finale and Avengers: Infinity War, But for those of us steeped in both, it’s also awfully hard to disaggregate them. Selina Meyer is not Thanos, despite their parallel, all-consuming quests and shared status as snappy dressers. Selina’s goal is much more one of direct personal ambition, in contrast to Thanos’s faux-altruistic aims (and hers has a much lower body count to boot). And yet the costs, at least in a spiritual sense, are the same.

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Deadwood: The Movie Returns and Finally Forms a Fucking Government

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

It’s 1889, and South Dakota is soon to become the nation’s newest state. With that, the onetime hardscrabble camp of prospectors and cutthroats in Deadwood is being ushered into the future, grumbling but prepared. Picking up ten years after the television series left off, Deadwood: The Movie sees local luminaries like the saloon-owning power broker Al Swearengen and the now-Marshall Seth Bullock having settled into their roles in the town on the cusp of the dreaded-but-long-awaited arrival of law, civilization, and progress.

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