The Great Actors of the Last Decade: Part 3

Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks, Giancarlo Esposito

Take A Bad Role And Made it Better

I may be technically violating my own rules by highlighting three actors who played the same characters in two different series. But one only has to watch them in Better Call Saul to see the textual layers that made up so much of their work in Breaking Bad.

Anyone remotely familiar with the Vince Gilligan knows just how brilliantly these three great actors managed to transform three indelible characters in what can be called the Bad-verse. We should begin by paying tribute to Bob Odenkirk, who’s tweaking of his comic persona was so elegantly done that it inspired Better Call Saul in the first place. But the closer the events in Breaking Bad moved towards their climax, the more you could see that Saul Goodman was actually the voice of reason – and Walter White’s arrogance caused him to ignore it, until his destruction led to Saul having to disappear himself. This makes much of the action in Better Call Saul more tragic as Odenkirk portrays Jimmy McGill, a low-level con artist turned attorney who spends much of the first three seasons trying to embrace his inner goodness – until his own brother tells him otherwise, and he embraces his destiny. When Jimmy officially ‘becomes’ Saul at the end of Season 4, we see the sadness that Bryan Cranston could never quite convince us of.

Banks and Esposito have each done extraordinary work as well, and it’s a measure of Gilligan and his writing staff that watching Gus Fring and Mike Ehrmantraut – who as we all know had two of the greatest death scenes in the history of the medium – can play younger versions of themselves, and makes us realize that there were even more depths to them than was hinted at in Bad. This is particularly true of Mike, where we learned just what brought him to New Mexico in the first place, and see that the steely-eyed enforcer does have a heart, even for the people he has to kill. Esposito is just as good, and that’s an even better trick considering he was basically the Breaking Bad equivalent of Lex Luthor, as well as just how deep his feud with the Salmanaca clan really was, and how far he’s willing to go to get his revenge.

These three performances are so good they do something remarkable – make you forget that they will all, in their own way, be victims of Heisenberg. I’m not sure how much further Gilligan will take his characters – we keep getting hints of Jimmy’s fate every season – but I have trust in him, and in these great performers. Now if only the Emmys would show them some live.

Margo Martindale

The Character Actress’ Character Actress

It’s not that Martindale was unknown even outside television before this decade began – she had a memorable stint as Camilla, Dexter’s only real maternal figure in the early seasons of Showtime’s first blockbuster. But this decade has truly demonstrated just how gifted she is – until she can play herself on BoJack Horseman and be justifiably called ‘Emmy winning character actress Margo Martindale’

Her incredible streak started on the second season of Justified. Her role as Mags Bennett, the matriarch of a Harlan County crime family, who dealt in her apple drink just as well as weed was the greatest single performance on a series that had a lot of them. She – well, there’s no other way to put it – justifiably took a Supporting Actress Emmy.

Two years later, she created another matriarchal figure as Claudia, the Jennings’ handler on The Americans. A maternal figure who exuded love and brutality in the same sentence, she seemed perfectly equipped to handle Philip and Elizabeth – and in the final season, Paige. The longer the series went on, and the closer the Soviet Union came to ruin, you wondered how she kept going. But in her last memorable scene – when Elizabeth betrayed her – her simple final remarks made you see that this was a woman who could easily whisper into Putin’s ear. She deservedly won two Emmys for her work, tying her for the most one by any actress during the decade.

Throw in a memorable stint as a sitcom mom on The Millers and a DNC powerbroker in The Good Wife and The Good Fight, and you have one of the most versatile actresses in a field that’s full of them. She’s already had two roles of a lifetime, but I don’t think for a second the career of ‘Emmy-winning character actress Margo Martindale’ is anywhere near over.

Walon Goggins

No One Does Drama Better… Or Comedy

Goggins could easily have rested on his laurels for his work as Shane, the most tragic villain at the center of The Shield, a groundbreaking series that more than any other series than The Sopranos , was critical to the revolution. But Goggins hasn’t even come close to slowing down, and has managed to make that performance just seem like a warmup for his work in the 2010s.

His most memorable stint came as the central villain on Justified. Boyd Crowder was originally just supposed to be there for one season, but clearly the writers saw the electricity between him and Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan, and said: “We need to keep this guy around for awhile.” The epic battle to bring him down lasted the length of the series, and through the entire match up, Goggins kept surprising you. I was sure the only right fate for him was landing in a body bag. Boy, was I wrong. And it was so great to watch Goggins hasn’t ruled out doing one more season even though the series is over.

Of course, that would require he slow down, and he gives no indication of doing that. While still appearing on Justified, he did a memorable stint as  Venus Von Dam on Sons of Anarchy. Since then, he seems to have decided to deal with lighter work, and has developed a flair for comedy by working with David Gordon Green and Danny McBride, first as Lee Miller, the metrosexual on Vice Principals and Rip Freemann on The Righteous Gemstones. In between he played a Navy Seal on Six and a shadowy figure on Deep State. And yet for all his brilliant character work, it still took television nearly two decades to let him play the lead on a series – a widowed dad on The Unicorn. Even if it isn’t a success, I seriously doubt it will slow Goggins down for a second.

What World Are We Counting Down To? Watchmen on HBO

Watchmen may be the greatest graphic novel in history, and it’s not just the usual people who think so. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ masterwork about superheroes was listed on Entertainment Weekly’s 100 Greatest Novels of the 20^th Century and Time magazines 1000 Greatest Literary Works… Ever. The Cold War era set fiction, with layers that would impress Hemingway and Dickens; for much of the time after its publication, it was considered unfilmable. Some people still considered that after the 2009 Zack Snyder film, which many thought was a masterpiece, and just as many thought was blasphemy. Those same people are no doubt up in arms about HBO’s new TV series, even though creator Damon Lindelof has made it perfectly clear that this series takes place in the world of Watchmen and is not a direct to screen adaptation. Things like this remind me just how much I have come to loathe people who make snap judgments without even bothering to look at the work.

Its Tulsa in 2019. Robert Redford is serving his sixth term as President. There is no Internet and no cell phones. Policeman are forced to wear masks and capes and hide their identities, and aren’t even allowed used their weapons without authorization. A group known as the 7^th Kavalry, who wear the same kind of masks that Rorschach did, and represent the white supremacy of this world have returned to action after a decade of radio silence. Angela Abar (Regina King) already has a dual identity as a cop who wears a mask. She has a family, and there is a possibility she was in a polyamorous relationship with the Chief of Police Judd Crawford (Don Johnson, doing some of the best work he’s ever done). At the climax of the series premiere, Crawford is found in a classic lynching scenario, with a man in his nineties named Will (Lou Gossett, Jr.) claiming that he hung the man, and that he has great powers and ‘friends in high places’ – something that seems to be literally true, when she tries to take him home – and her car is lifted up by a helicopter. Will says the man ‘had skeletons in his closet’. The fact that this is literally true is probably just the beginning.

And that is quite enough of the plot. Because even without knowing a single detail more I am stunned by the work that Lindelof has managed to put into this new world. It may not be Watchmen, but it sure as hell plays like it. Dr Manhattan lives on Mars. Vietnam is now a state. The world still has to deal with a rain of squids every now and then. TV series called American Hero Story are playing everywhere. And the only real holdover from the original series, Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons) seems to have gone even more mad with creativity and power than he did when he played his practical joke. He seems to have developed a whole new capability for cloning, but his only actions seem to be to have them serve as his servants, and he literally treats them as if they were actors in his own drama.  There are flashbacks to the world that existed in this America, and if anything, they’re even more frightening than the world we live in today.

As is the case with every Alan Moore production that has been adapted, Moore insisted that his name be taken off the credits. One wonders why as this series has in spirit the exact nature of what was running under Watchmen. At its core, Moore and Gibbons wanted to create a world that had problems not even superheroes could solve. In the novel, it was nuclear war. In the series, it’s racism. And just as the comic book was central to the time it came out, this Watchmen is just as vital to the era we live in.

Of course, if you want to ignore that, you can just spend your time looking for the glorious Easter eggs that are in plain sight through out the series. (Jean Smart is schedule to play an Agent Blake in coming episodes. Does that mean she’s the Comedian’s daughter?) And if you don’t care about comic books at all, you can still enjoy all of the visual, the sly humor, the dark pathos, and the brilliant performances. King has always been one of our greatest actresses, but the whole cast is good, particularly considering how many of them have to emote while wearing masks. Tim Blake Nelson is particularly good at this as Looking Glass. Looking at the body of his Chief, he seems hard and cold until he tells Angela’s he’s crying under his mask.

Lindelof continues to prove that he is just as well served adapting complex literature for television as original series. My major complaint so far about Watchmen? Lindelof has indicated that the series may end up standing on its own. I really hope that the ratings persuade him to do otherwise. No matter how this story ends, this is a world I want to spent more time in.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Some Of This Decade's Greatest Performers Part 2

Elisabeth Moss

The Madwoman of Gilead

I am in the distinct minority that most of what made Mad Men one of the best series on television took place in its initial three seasons. There were a lot of great moments for AMC’s initial premiere classic in the past decade, but I still feel that it peaked around Season 5. But the one thing that did was the work of the extraordinary women in the cast. And no one will argue that Elisabeth Moss’ performance as Peggy was by far the series greatest accomplishment, watching her go from timid secretary to the most professionally and sexually liberated member of the entire cast.  All of the actors on Mad Men were shorted by the Emmys, but Moss by far was the most victimized. She didn’t let that bother her though – it took her less than two years to be at the fulcrum of another game changing series. While I question the unrelenting darkness behind The Handmaid’s Tale, I don’t argue for a single moment with Moss’ remarkable performance as Offred/June, the woman who stands at the heart of rebellion in Gilead. As if that were not enough of an accomplishment, in her spare time she plays a hypersexual, hard-partying New Zealand detective at the center of some perverse mysteries at the center of Jane Campion’s series Top of The Lake – which got her the first Golden Globe she’d ever win. There have been a lot of great female driven performances at the center of this decade. Few have been as memorable as the ones Moss has breathed life into.

Michael Sheen

The Epitome of Restraint

Of all the series at the center of the 2010s, I feel that Showtime’s Masters of Sex, the drama centered around the lives of groundbreaking sexual studies Masters and Johnson was by far the most underrated. Superbly written, directed and above all acted, it is among the contenders of greatest period piece ever. And one of the reason that I loved it so much was the work of Michael Sheen as Dr. William Masters.

Prior to this series, Sheen was known for being one of the most undervalued actors in the history of movies, known for his portrayals of such British icons as Tony Blair and David Frost. The role of William Masters fit him like a glove as he a man who wanted to break the boundaries of how we looked at sex, but couldn’t acknowledge – especially to himself – that he couldn’t control every element of the world around him, from his professional life to his troubled marriage to his relation with Virginia Johnson. It was a textbook performance in how underplaying a role deserves to measure, which is probably why he never received a single Emmy nomination for his work. Ever since Masters was prematurely canceled, Sheen has kept himself very busy – in 2019 alone, he played Azriphale, a restrained angel who misplaces the Antichrist in Good Omens, a showboat, boundary pushing attorney on Season 3 of The Good Fight, and a serial killer father on the new breakout hit Prodigal Son. I think the odds of his remaining underrecognized have dropped precipitously in the past few months, and I couldn’t be happier.

Olivia Colman

Long Live the Queen

It has now been considered a virtual given that Olivia Colman is going to get at least one Emmy for taking over the role of Queen Elizabeth II on Netflix’s incredible series The Crown, even though it doesn’t debut until November. This, however, will only serve as a overcorrection for a British actress who was definitely a regal presence – yes, even before she deservedly won an Oscar for playing Queen Anne in The Favorite.

She launched herself to stardom in the incredible British mystery series Broadchurch as Detective Miller, a woman who found herself out of her depth when a friend of her son was murdered in the first season, and would eventually learned that it was not the only connection. Over three seasons, her work was among the great performances I’ve ever seen, winning her a BAFTA prize for television. In 2016, she launched herself to American audiences in the incredible AMC adaptation of John Le Carre’s The Night Manager, playing a spy master so brilliant at her job, I was actually astonished when I learned that the writers had flipped her character gender for the part: she was so perfect in the role. And she has capped it off with two incredible seasons in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s work Fleabag, playing Godmother, the woman who was the bane of the title character’s existence, and was so nice to everyone you couldn’t help but hate her. I’d say she was robbed of an Emmy, but there were a lot of good competitors in that race. She’s clearly one of the most gifted British actresses of our time – I feel absolutely no doubt about her ability to step into the shoes and handbag that Claire Foy handled so well for two seasons.

Looking Back at Some Of TV's Greatest Performance of The Past Decade

The world of television has changed immensely in the past decade. But as much as the ways we watch TV have changed, we still recognize greatness when we see in, no matter how or where we watch it.

Over the weeks to come, I will be doing a general assessment of the series that made up the greatest TV of the past decade. But I feel I would be remiss in recognizing these series if I also didn’t pay tribute to those great actors and actresses who have, on multiple series, have portrayed some of the most memorable characters in the history of the medium. Some of them were former film stars who found new life in television. Others were actors who started out in this medium, but blossomed in a way that no film would’ve let them. And there are some who are only beginning their careers, but have already done astonishing work in multiple outlets. All of them have redefined what TV is capable of.

In most cases, I will be dwelling on actors who played different roles on different series. There will be some exceptions which will become clearer as I continue writing. Television has become the greatest form of art these days. And these actors are responsible for making this art even greater.

Damian Lewis:

Showtime’s Greatest Lead

In all of the praise that was (deservedly) heaped on Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin for their extraordinary work on Homeland, not enough attention was paid to Lewis’ exceptional performance in the first two seasons as POW/sleeper agent Nicholas Brody.  In the first season, where it was unclear whether or not he really had been turned by Al-Qaida, his work was one of the more deeply layered performance of ambiguity. He was measured that we genuinely considered that Carrie was off her meds. And watching him deal with the conflicts between him – his loyalty to his country and Abu Nazir – was work that was definitely worthy of the two Emmy nods and Emmy he eventually got. The decision to kill Brody off at the end of Season 3 was the best decision the series could’ve made – not only was it free to go in other directions, but it freed Lewis to take up the role of another great antihero, Bobby ‘Axe’ Axelrod, the self-made head of Axe Capital in Showtime’s criminally underrated Billions. Even four seasons in, its still very difficult to see whether Bobby is the antagonist or the hero of the series, and part of that is due to Lewis’ unflinching charisma that we see as he walks through the halls of his kingdom in jeans and a sweatshirt. Lewis was no stranger to TV before this decade, but no one who saw his work in this series can doubt he’s one of television greatest discoveries.

Rachel Brosnahan

She Was Great Before She Was Marvelous

Just for her work as Midge Maisel, the title character in the extraordinary Amazon Comedy series, Brosnahan was deservedly recognized as one of the greatest comic actresses we have yet to discover. What many people may not realize is that she was capable of going to even deeper depth than the Palladinos will let her go (not that Midge doesn’t have layers) When House of Cards was at its peak, she had a memorable role as Rachel,  a call girl who had the misfortune to get caught up in the machinations of the Underwoods, and an obsession with chief lieutenant Doug Stamper – a battle for control that nearly ended up killing them both. After that, Brosnahan had a memorable stint in Manhattan, a criminally underwatched and underrated WGN drama about the Manhattan Project, as she played a wife to a physicist, trapped between the secrets her husbands had to keep and her own sexual instincts, one that were considered diseased in the 1940s. Brosnahan was a sparkling talent who the Palladinos released into the world. I can’t wait to see what she’ll be up to in the decade to come.

Mahersala Ali

We Knew How To Spell His Name Before The Oscars

For all of those who spent much of the Oscars over the last three years trying to pronounce, much less spell, the eventual winner of two Best Supporting Actor trophies, those of us who spent their lives studying TV – and Netflix in particular – had been struggling with his name years earlier. Another House of Cards veteran, he play Remy Danton, the lobbyist/White House Chief of Staff/ political enemy whose career and life kept getting entangled with the Underwoods and his lover Jackie Sharp. After he left the show, he was by far the best thing about one of Netflix’s Marvel centered series – the villainous gangster Cotton Mouth in Luke Cage. It’s telling that when his character was gone, so was most of the energy of the show, which was canceled one season later. Not content to rest on his laurels when he became one of the movies greatest actors, this past year he added another feather in his cap in his brilliant portrayal of Wayne ‘Purple’ Hays,  a detective trying to solve a twisted murdered and kidnapping in the third season of True Detective. As great as his performance was, just as it was with another great actor who won an Oscar the same year of his memorable stint in True Detective, the Emmys chose not to honor him for it. Then again, Cohle was mentioned in passing in Season 3. Maybe whenever Season 4 happens, we can have McConaughey and Ali leading the investigation. I know I’d tune in.

9-1-1: The Rare Procedural I Respond Too

The police and medical procedurals have rarely much creative or imaginative life to them in the past twenty years. Law & Order and ER may have been among the biggest hits in television history, but the constant changeover in cast was so repetitive, one got feeling that the actual characters never mattered that much to either Dick Wolf or John Wells. Certainly the Chicago franchises on NBC have doubled down on that idea.

Which is why it’s such a pleasant surprise to find that one of the biggest hits currently on network TV is 911, Fox’s series devoted to LA first responders – police, firefighters, and the people who take the calls. What makes it even more astonishing is that the head writer is Ryan Murphy, an exceptionally gifted writer who nevertheless seems to do his work when he focuses on camp – witness Glee or American Horror Story his two biggest hits. I kept watching all of Season 2, waiting for him to explode into excess with everything that was going on in these characters lives and all of their calls. But it hasn’t happened yet. There’ve been some pretty unusual emergencies – an earthquake was at the center of the opening of Season 2, and a tidal wave was at the start of Season 3. But none of that would’ve been out of place on ER.  It’s a little like hearing Tony Bennett singing Lady Gaga standards, which he does very well.

It helps immensely that Murphy has hired a cast that is known for underplaying everything. Peter Krause plays Bobby Nash, a fire chief who, while he has had his struggles with the bottle and personal trauma, remains the man you’d absolutely want beside you in an emergency. Angela Bassett, a Murphy regular in so many seasons of AHS, is a beacon of sensibility as Sgt. Athena Massey, tapping into the respect and authority she has done in so many great films. Jennifer Love Hewitt took a bit longer to find a groove as Maddie, a nurse turned 911 operator, but given a storyline that dealt with being a victim of abuse has given her something solid to sink her teeth in. During the second season, she was kidnapped by her abusive ex-husband, and though she has seemed to recover, there are signs that the trauma has never quite gone away.

Indeed, all of the actors in this cast do solid work that leaves lots of room for character growth. Oliver Stark has done solid work as Michael, a divorcee with a son suffering from cerebral palsy, who lost the mother of his child in the second season finale. Aisha Hinds has done good work as a lesbian firefighter trying to have children with her new wife.  And the series seems to be doing revolutionary work in having most of the men and woman in the cast in solid, committed relationships, not only with their spouses, but with their exes. Athena was apparently married to Greg, a man who came out of the closet after they had two children together, and they don’t seem to have any real problems. Hell, her ex even had an enlightening conversation with her current husband a couple of times in the last episode.

In an even greater rarity for a Murphy program – at least the ones he does for network TV – not only are all of the characters three-dimensional, but when the series grapples with real-life, it doesn’t pretend there are easy answers, or even if there are answers at all. Last night, Greg and his children were pulled over in a traffic stop, which could’ve gone south very quickly had Greg not mentioned his wife was LAPRD. Greg and Bobby had a very serious conversation, where Greg admitted that he wasn’t ready to have the conversation about being black and dealing with the police with his eight-year old son. Athena went out of her way to try and press for action, but she knew very well that nothing was going to happen. No cops were brought down, and it doesn’t look like anything will change. That’s something Dick Wolf would never have allowed to happen on one of his series.

9-1-1 isn’t a great series, though I can’t help but think that in an earlier era Krause and Bassett would be at least considered for Emmy nominations. But it really goes out of its way to do what so many other medical and police dramas even try to do: show that there is genuinely life in a standard without trying to lead it down the conventional roads of what the networks consider procedurals. It’s not high art, but it sure as hell reveals just how empty NBC’s Wednesday Chicago lineup real is.

My score: 4 stars.

Deadwood Episode Guide: Tell Him Something Pretty

Written by Ted Mann

Directed by Mark Tinker

Let’s be completely forthright here: even if Tell Him Something Pretty had been only the final episode of Season 3, I imagine there would still have been a significant amount of disappointment among the loyalist fans of Deadwood. Those who complained about all of the flaws that made up most of Season 3 would still complain here – after the season long struggle against Hearst, which all signs had been leading up to an epic final battle, the series ends with only blood we see being shed on the floor of the Gem. The fact that this would’ve been disloyal to the history of Deadwood as a whole would not have deterred those in the slightest.

Indeed, to do so would be going against the action of Season 3 as a whole – the inability of the camp to stand against the force of capitalism, manifested by Hearst. Against her desire to give the bastard what he wants, Alma agrees to sell her claim to Hearst, so that she and Sofia can remain in the camp safely. Even the final transaction between the two, with Sol and Bullock standing as seconds, two of Hearst’s men on his side is filled with all of the tension of the season, reflecting when Bullock demands to oversee the final payment:

HEARST: May I hope, Madam, you do not subscribe to this insulting and juvenile protection?

ALMA: I do not find the protection juvenile, so many have been murdered with whom you’ve had dealings in this camp.

HEARST: At least you acknowledge the insult

ALMA: I acknowledge the pretense of civility in a man so brutally vicious as vapid and grotesque. (Hearst takes this in, Alma rises, and Hearst does the same.)

HEARST: See the gold taken to her bank, Newman. Have its purity assayed. Let her or her seconds choose the man. When that tedium is completed have the documents witnessed as if we were all Jews and bring the business back to me. Excuse my absence, Mr. Star, as I hope you forgive my thoughtless aspersion upon your race. You stand for local office, but certain contests being county-wide, I await wires from the other camps. (Then as Alma leaves) You’ve changed your scent.

BULLOCK: Can’t shut up. Every bully I ever met can’t shut their fucking mouth. Except when he’s afraid.

HEARST: You mistake for fear, Mister Bullock, what is in fact preoccupation. I’m having a conversation you cannot hear.

Now that all of this chaos is unfolding, Hearst doesn’t even seem to care that he’s realized his objectives. It has been made inevitably clear that Hearst only cares about the earth, as it made so abundant in his final conversation with Langrishe. Its unlikely Hearst’s nickname was ever made known to anyone in the camp, so when Langrishe discusses “a vestige of childhood take in which not only humans spoke but other creatures too. Mountains and streams.” When Hearst tells him, “I imagine she speaks to me still,” Langrishe tells him that such a conversation can be isolating. And the way Hearst considers it an insult means that he doesn’t care to talk to anything else.

The major business of the episode seems to be in preparation for war, and what Al fears will eventually lead to the final conflict comes down to the failed assassination attempt on him. Hearst has realized that it is a whore who shot at him, perhaps figuring that Al arranged for it to take place. He then demands from Al the life of the woman who shot him.  As is his nature, Swearengen gambles on one final deception: assuming Hearst paid more attention to her body than her face, he plans to substitute the body of Jen rather than Trixie. If Hearst falls for it, he will stay his hand.

Of all the whores, next to Dolly, we’ve glimpsed Jen the most over the season, and it is evident from the moment he makes his intentions known that it becomes clear that Johnny has fallen in love with her. Sean Bridgers has spent much of the series as comic relief, playing the idiot foil to Dan and Al, but in this episode, he gives a truly moving performance. He makes the offer to Al to do it himself, tears in his eyes. He then has Jen go into a separate room, and tells her to look at a blank wall, as he tries to muster up the balls to do it:

JOHNNY: In that wall… are ants. The soldier ants and the workers ants and the whore ants to fuck the soldier and the workers… baby ants… everyone’s got a task to hew to Jen.”

This is the poorest model of society, no doubt ones that Yankton and Hearst and the America they are preparing to join believe. It has neither the morality nor love that stills Johnny’s hand on the knife. He even makes a valiant, muted stand against the man he believes in. Al reluctantly tells Dan to knock Johnny out, and send Jen in. In his final monologue with the Chief, he admits that this will lead to the ruination of his operation, but nevertheless he can’t do the easy thing and kill Trixie, because:

SWEARENGEN: I ain’t killing her that sat nights with me sick and took smacks to her mug that were some less than fucking fair. And the hour’s passed for a try with a knife at him. I should’ve fucking learned to use a gun, but I’m so fucking entrenched in my ways. You ain’t exactly the one to be leveling criticisms on the score of being slow to adapt. You fucking people are the original slow fucking learners.

We don’t actually see Al kill Jen, in a rare act of modesty for this show, which has seen so many bloody murders. We are far more concerned with the aftermath, as is the entire camp which gathers in the Gem before the final viewing of the body. Al knows that all of this depends on Hearst’s inability to tell one human being from another. Prior he makes one final instruction:

SWEARENGEN: We show united in the prelude when he’s making his entrance and the fucking like. Comes to the viewing the body, I stand for virtue alone. The deception failing, I’ll make a pass at him with my blade, in the aftermath, play the lie as mine, knowing I speak of you in heaven. Others owe thought to the future – their thinking straightforward don’t come that naturally to.

Al is willing to sacrifice his life for the camp. Hearst is satisfied, and makes to leave wiping his bloody boots on the floorboard.

But even in departure, Hearst can’t resist talking like a bully. He taunts Bullock about having lost the election for sheriff, all the way to Al’s door. When Merrick tries to talk to him about not mentioning his shooting in his paper, Hearst casually says: “I’ve given up reading your paper, Mr. Merrick. I’ll have my people start another one, to lie the other way.” (He has literally begun his publishing empire out of pure spite.) And he takes a final look at the town, not knowing he courts one last bullet, before casually riding off.

He has also committed one last action that none of the group knows about – he has ‘rewarded’ Tolliver to be in charge of the camp. Throughout the series, Tolliver has become more and more isolated. It is telling that everyone converges on the Gem in penultimate episode, while in the last one, the Bella Union, save for Tolliver’s workers, is empty. When Joanie comes in to see Tolliver, as if to express some thanks for saving her from death all he offers are insults: “Do you have to drive cattle to eat your pussy?” and “Help me understand cunt, Lord.” His last actions are to stab Leon in the leg for no apparent reason, and then pull his gun to try and shoot Hearst, knowing full well it will lead to his death afterward. And when he loses his nerves, he points the gun at Janine, the last employee he hired, who exposes herself to him, before he storms off. He has completed the action he did since arriving: he has destroyed his family.

Yet again, the camp is in peril. Neither Tolliver nor Hearst is capable of the leadership qualities that even Al is capable of providing. And it is hard to imagine any man – this is Deadwood, after all – being able to stand against the world at large. One is reminded very vividly of the final image of the episode – Al on his knees, scrubbing out the blood he’s spill. Johnny’s asks him if Jen suffered. Al says: “It was as gentle as I could make it, and that’s all I’ll fucking say of it.” When Johnny leaves, Al has the last words: “Wants me to tell him something pretty.”

But for all of the bleakness in the episode, there are bits of hope. Jane comes as close as she can to find home in the camp, when Joanie brings her a gift from Charlie – the coat of Wild Bill. Sol and Trixie are seen running together through the thorough, Trixie still feeling the shame for Jen’s death (one of her last scenes was dressing Jen in her clothes to complete the deception). But the fact that Sol cares for her, and was willing to consider raising Sofia with her, offers a sign of renewal.

And then, there are the elections themselves. One could make the argument that they are an irrelevant backdrop – Hearst has bought them out, even though the end result did lead to Sol becoming Mayor. And yet, I couldn’t help but remember one of Aaron Sorkin’s characters in The West Wing saying in a similar context: “The process matters more than the result.” At one point, we see one of Hearst pistoleros making threatening gestures towards ‘General’ Fields’. Rutherford, the resident of Number 10, and town shit-stirrer points out: “that the right to vote shall not be abridged or denied… 15^th Amendment to the Constitution.” When they threaten Fields with a lynching, Charlie, who is a poll watcher, warns him that: “If he don’t make it, you’ll be eating your spuds running til I hunt you down.  And we see Richardson, dressed up neatly and for once without his antlers, proudly dropping his ballot in the box. There are no guarantees, but to quote Charlie one last time: “You do fucking good…in aid of the larger purpose.

Nancy Drew Is Everything That The CW is doing wrong

I remember at the beginning of this decade I was impressed with the direction the CW was taking with so many of his new kinds of series, giving new twists to franchises that were decades old and making them topical and entertaining, even with a twist of darkness. But at the end of the 2010s, I’m really beginning to wish that they could just ease up on the darkness a little.

Nancy Drew has been entertaining and inspiring young readers for nearly a century, creating a franchise for young readers before the term ‘franchise’ really existed. And you’d think that the CW, a network that going back to its roots had such brilliant shows with young adult female leads like Veronica Mars (and if we extend it to the WB, the sacred Buffy and Gilmore Girls) would be the perfect place to come up with an adaptation where so many other TV channels have failed to get off the ground. Well, the CW version of Nancy Drew may inspire fans, but I seriously doubt it will be the same group of people who grew up reading those books.

I expected that there would be, certainly by necessity, some updates to the plucky and wholesome heroine that has been solving mysteries for ninety years. I didn’t expect the series introduction to Nancy to begin with her screwing Ned just before heading off to her job at the Claw. Yes, this Nancy has delayed going to college because her mom has passed from cancer, and while she used to solve mysteries as a pre-teen, she has given that up. She doesn’t seem to even be talking with her former bestie George (whose gender flip is frankly the least of my problems with this series), and Bess happens to a former rich girl who has a leaning towards kleptomania. All of this before the opening credits on the first episode have rolled in which by the way, there’s a murder.

Naturally, the chief of police hates Nancy, but this time its because he considers her, and everybody who was working in the restaurant as suspects in the murder, who happens to be the society wife of one of the most powerful men in town. Nancy finds herself beginning to investigate the murder to clear her name. So naturally, it turns out that Ned is a suspect because he was a juvenile delinquent, who the woman testified against.

Not satisfied with dealing with all of these clichés (which let’s face it, make up a lot of YA novels these days) it now appears that her father, an attorney (Scott Wolf, how did you get corralled into this?) may have a history with the town’s most notorious disappearance. And as if this series wasn’t stealing from Twin Peaks enough, it now seems that Nancy keeps having visions of that woman’s ghost.

I’ll be honest. I’ve never read a Nancy Drew in my life. But even this series were to try and stand on its own merits, I still wouldn’t like it much. It’s overly dark, it seems to be determined to put way too many bizarre twists in every episode, and it doesn’t have a sense of humor to save its life. It’s frankly the last thing to come from the mind of Josh Schwartz, who clearly demonstrated his knowledge of teenagers in Gossip Girl and The O.C., but demonstrated that he had the light touch in the wonderful Chuck. Here, anytime there’s even a hint of lightness or humor, the writers stomp it dead. They also seem to be willing to flip genders and races for some characters, which I normally approve of, but they seem to have done so without any effort to make them human beings.

When did the CW lose its sense of humor? It clearly demonstrated it had one in the astonishing Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and could make even the darker subjects seem entertaining (iZombie). Now, the lesson they seem to have taken from Peak TV is that you have to make everything dark, dark, dark and God forbid that anybody involved (cast, writers and audience) have a good time. They clearly seem to have an idea of what they’re doing when they ignore franchises entirely (All-American and In The Dark) but these series are the exception rather than the rule.

After Gilmore Girls was cancelled, I gave up watching the CW for more than six years. When I started watching again, it clearly seemed like they were really going to find a genuine niche in the world of shrinking broadcast TV/ But if series like Nancy Drew are going to be the new normal, I may go into hibernation from them again. Mister, we could use a teen like Willow Rosenberg again.

My score: 1.75 stars.

Goodbye Friend: Mr. Robot Prepares to Log Out

Last year, in a review of the final season of The Americans, it was referred as to one of the greatest series still on the air (true). Game of Thrones was mentioned (respectfully disagree) as was Better Call Saul (enthusiastically agree). But somehow, Mr. Robot wasn’t mentioned in the discussion at all, nor has it been in any reviews I’ve seen so far. And that strikes me as rather odd, because it is clearly one of the most astonishingly perfect series I’ve ever seen, basic cable or pay, broadcast or streaming. It is one of the most visually striking series in the history of television, certainly among one of the best directed. It features sterling performances from it’s entire cast and guest cast, launching lead Rami Malek to superstardom. It is willing to make twists so bold that it would make the writers of Lost stare in awe, and have teaser so astonishing, Vince Gilligan would take off his cap. And that’s without counting all the experimental episodes that is has done over its run - eps3.4_runtime-error.r00 is a stunning when it comes its visual work alone, as well as being a vital story link..

But now, creator Sam Esmail has decided it is time to bring this dark series to its end, and the fourth and final season begins, Elliot Alderson (Malek) is so buried in his desire to destroy the Dark Army and White Rose (B.D. Wong)  that he can no longer connect with the slightest bit of emotion. The burden of narration has now fallen on his alter ego, Mr. Robot (Christian Slater, daring us not to give him a nomination), who spending three seasons spitting vitriol, is now shocked at how Eliot is dealing with things. But Elliot has every reason to be concerned. In the opening moments of the Season 4, Angela (Portia Doubleday) was murdered by the Dark Army, while her father, revealed in the final moments of Season 3 to be Philip Price, the CEO of ECorp, watched helplessly. White Rose has made it abundantly clear that as soon as the final actions of Elliot take place, he will be disposed of.

 Everyone is a mood of despair. Darlene (Carly Chaikin) can’t accept that Angela was murdered, and can’t deal with her mother’s death. Agent Dom DiPerro (Grace Gummer), the one person in the Bureau who seemed to know what the Dark Army was doing, is now under their thumb.  Even Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallstrom) who finally seems to have achieved his dream of running ECorp, can’t seem to raise enough spirit to go through the motions. At this point, everything seems to hinge on a desperate attempt to steal the Dark Army’s money – a heist that it now seems like Price is willing to help with, even though everybody seems to know it is a suicide mission. All of this is complicated enough without the fact that old enemies of Elliot’s are appearing – and he seems to have developed yet another alternate personality.

Mr. Robot is one of the most incredible shows, partially because it is one of the most original dystopian series. It proves you don’t need to have an alien invasion or a zombie apocalypse or even take place in the future – it makes the argument that dystopia is going on here and now.  During the course of the series, it is involved a hack that has led to financial ruin for the country, blackout throughout the nation, and a terrorist attack over the course of a single year. It argues that we are the architects of our own destruction in a far more realistic and subtle way than we’ve ever seen on TV before,  and that trying to save the world can only make things world. And it argues that even the people who completely control the world – the White Rose and Philip Price – can’t ever be satisfied. Some might argue that this series is pro-Bernie or even pro-Trump, both of whom appear in frequent clips. It has no political affiliation. It’s pro-anarchy. It says not only that Big Brother is watching, but we volunteered to let it watch. That’s more quietly frightening than a nuclear war.

Will Mr. Robot cement its place as one of the greatest shows of the decade? It really will depend on how well it wraps up. A lot of it is going to depend on when we finally learn White Rose’s endgame, which the series keeps referring to as some shipment in The Congo. But even if Elliot somehow manages to stop their plans – as they reversed the 5/9 hack at the end of last season – you don’t have to be a genius to know it won’t have a happy ending. However it ends, though, Sam Esmail has cemented himself as one of the great geniuses in a medium that has produced more than its share. The bottom line, this is one hell of a thriller, and I’m sad to see it go. Especially since considering no matter how ugly its version of 2016 is, it can’t be any crazier than our present.

My score: 5 stars.

This Place Is As Good As It Gets: The Good Place Final Season Review

The Good Place is one of the most brilliant shows ever created. I realize using hyperbole like this is something all of its residents would have problems with, but I don’t know how else to describe.  This series deserves a prize just for making deep philosophical issues accessible to a mainstream audience – and entertaining as well. It has some astonishing performers doing incredible comedy, both in front of the camera and behind it. Every season, it does at least one episode that is truly revolutionary (‘Janets’ , anyone?), and every year, it ends with a twist that I think even the founders of Lost would be impressed by.

But all Good things must come to an end, and considering that the ratings have always been meek even by the standards of Peak TV, the creators have decided to end the series on their own terms. Which doesn’t make any less hysterical or poignant. When the third season came to an end, the Judge had ruled that to determine the fate of humanity, the experiment would be recreated. Michael (Ted Danson, give him another Emmy please) had a panic attack, and Eleanor (Kirsten Bell) took up the position of the Architect. However, the Bad Place schemed by bringing up the worst possible people… for the foursome we’ve come to know. This including the most heartbreaking twist to end Season 3: Simone, the neuroscientist who was so helpful in the experiment last year, was brought to the experiment. (We still don’t know how, and it’s going to be gutting.) Chidi, who was in love with her until his memory was restored, realized just how dangerous he was, and did one of the most selfless things in TV history: he agreed to have his memory wiped also, so the experiment could succeed, even if it meant not remembering his love for Eleanor.

Now, as Season 4 progresses, everybody is doing their best to keep the experiment working, even if it galls them. Eleanor, on top of everything else, is dealing with John Wheaton, a man who checks every box for white privilege and doesn’t seem to accept that he’s done anything wrong. Tahani is dealing with a blogger from her world, who spent his life destroying the lives of celebrities and the powerful… something Tahani has spent her life dealing with. Simone doesn’t seem willing to accept that any of this is real. And Chidi, after a dirty trick by the Bad Place, is now part of the experiment. Only now that his memory’s wiped, he’s enjoying himself. (Just one more shout out for William Jackson Harper)

Everybody knows how high the stakes are, but none of this has stopped the series from being hysterically funny and making emotional connections. When Eleanor couldn’t take the pressure, Michael came to her, and told her no uncertain terms that he thought he could beat them, and “you beat me three hundred times”. The realization that the  best person to save humanity is someone as deeply flawed as Eleanor is one of the mot optimistic things I’ve seen on any TV series, particularly in the darkness of the Peak TV era. Bell seems to be daring the Emmy judges not to nominate her this year. (Considering that Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Phoebe Waller-Bridge won’t be eligible, the Emmys would have to be working on a point system that this series mythology would appreciate not to.) Indeed, everything about this series dares even the remarkable flexibility of TV these days. Trying to determine whether true love is more important than the fate of mankind is a question you wouldn’t see even the most daring series try, much less a network comedy. And the way the series is willing to mock every cultural staple imaginable (the Judge is apparent a big binge-watcher; Tahani was mentioned to me the inspiration for eight characters on Game of Thrones) makes you want to watch every episode twice just for the jokes.

Will The Good Place cement its position as one of the greatest series of all time? Unlike most comedies, it probably will depend upon how it ends. But I am certain enough of its quality to be more than willing to include among the greatest series of the decade – yes along with Breaking Bad and The Americans and Jane the Virgin. I know that the fate of the universe depends on how it ends, but I care more to see whether Chidi and Eleanor end up together, or how the complicated triangle of Janet, Jason and Tahani finally ends. The universe may be a better place when its over, but the TV world will be a little darker when its gone.

My score: 5 stars.

One Little thing to Thank Shonda For: A Million Little Thing Season 2 review

I really hate to give her any credit for anything, but I owe Shonda Rhimes a favor. Last year, I thought A Million Little Things was one of those gems of a series that never get a chance to live. But like so many good series on broadcast television, it’s ratings were weak, it wasn’t a police procedural, and it was in a time slot – Wednesdays at 10pm that was a dead zone. And then, in 2019, for reason which boggle the mind, ABC moved into Thursday night at 9, right between Grey’s Anatomy and How to Get Away With Murder, even though it bore absolutely no resemblance to any Shondaland series. It worked, though – the series ratings doubled overnight, and it was renewed for a second season. Furthermore, ABC now has enough confidence (and is running out of Shondaland series) to keep it there in the new fall season.

Things have gotten more complicated for the group even though they learned at least part of the mysteries behind John’s death, which made up so much of Season 1’s backstory. Now, most of them are dealing with life after John, which is not much easier. Eddie (David Glutnick) spent much of season 1, trying to repair his marriage with Katherine (Grace Park, doing some of her best work period for the medium). They just about seemed to have healed – then in the Season 2 premiere, Eddie revealed that he was the father of Delilah’s child. Katherine has spent the last couple of episodes trying desperately to recover.

Rome (Romany Malco) seems to be on the other side of the suicidal tendencies he was battling for awhile, and is trying to take steps forward, volunteering at a suicide hotline, and finally making steps towards realizing his dream as a filmmaker. His wife, Regina, is still moving forward with her restaurant, clashing with her boss Andrew, and trying to figure out her relationship with her husband’s desire for a child himself.

The only couple that seems to be in a uniformly good place are Greg (James Roday) and Maggie (Alison Miller). Maggie finally went into remission, and is now willing to move in with Greg. Miller and Roday are by far the strongest performers in this cast, and both of them lead to truly humorous sections, and some of the best moments. When Maggie attacked the lactation specialist who spent the season premier bullying Delilah for wanted to use a bottle, it was one of those painful, joyous moments that are just there.  Watching Miller trying to deal with the world – and in the last episode, her mother who moved to Boston for reasons still unclear – is incredible TV.

A Million Little Things was one of the bigger and more impressive surprises of the 2018-2019 broadcast season. It still draws a lot of comparisons to This is Us, which is both logical and unfair. There is a certain mythology to the show, surrounding the back stories. At the end of last season, we learned that John had an illegitimate child named P.J., who until the season finale, didn’t know that the man who said he was his father had been lying to him his whole life. P.J. has spent the last couple of episodes stalking the gang, trying to get answers. This is frankly the one part of the series I’m not entirely comfortable with – we dealt with John’s backstory last year, and the lack of resolution to his suicide, was actually one of the better things about it. The fact that despite everything, we might never really know our friends is a bold, dark statement. To try and follow it up seems to border on turning us into so much of a soap opera – which makes me wonder if the writers are under pressure to make the story fit into TGIT, a night that grows weaker by the year.

But for all that, this is still one of the most endearing shows I’ve seen in awhile. The performances are genuinely arresting, and the characters are fully dimensional – something that many Shondaland shows were never able to pull off even after years on the air. I hope A Million Little Things becomes the bedrock for a totally different TGIT. This is a superb series, the kind they literally almost don’t make anymore.

My score: 4.5 stars.

This is Us Season 4 Review

At this point, it doesn’t seem possible that This Is Us, one of the few broadcast series in recent years to be both a critical and popular success, could do anything more to surprise the viewer. We watched Randall and Beth go through one of the most gutting emotional arcs last season, saw Kate and Toby have to deal with the premature birth of their son, and in the final moments of Season 3, watch a flash-forward that showed the final stages of matriarch Rebecca’s life – and it made everything else seem like child’s play.

But anyone who was expecting more of the same as Season 4 began clearly doesn’t know the show’s writers. The season premiere ‘Strangers’ harkened back to the Pilot, where apart from more on the early courtship of Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and Jack, seemed to focus on three people who seemed to have nothing to do with the series – a soldier who went to Afghanistan (Jennifer Morrison) who saw a village bombed, went back to her family and began to suffer PTSD, a teenager trying to go to high school while raising his a baby son, and a young blind singer who was trying to court a waitress. There seemed to be no connection to anything else we’d seen – until the last two minutes, when we saw a series of events that connected them all to the Pearson clan in ways not even the viewer used to the twists and turns of the show would’ve seen coming.

The episodes that have happened so far are back to business as usual, which doesn’t make them any less moving or amusing. Kate (Chrissy Metz) has been trying to adjust to her son, who we finally learned in the season premiere is going to be legally blind. (That won’t stop from having a great future… but I’ve said too much). Toby has been reacting to this by going to the gym, and getting ripped, mainly out of fear for his son’s life, something that seems to be causing Kate stress. Randall and Beth (the incredible Sterling Brown and Susan Kelechi Watson) have relocated to Philadelphia to handle Randall’s position as City Councilman, and Beth’s desire to run a dance studio. They are more worried about the children, and they no doubt will be worried about foster child Deja’s new love interest. As for Kevin (Justin Hartley) once again, he’s six months sober, but is still going through the biggest struggles of them all, which are not made easier by his uncle Nicky (Griffin Dunne) seemingly inevitable determination to destroy his life, no matter how much help people will give him. If you’ve seen the season premiere, you know exactly how the first two characters from the season premiere are involved, and its interesting watching them slowly weave them in.

Paradoxically, the flashbacks involving Jack and Rebecca are gradually becoming less interesting. However, as the Big Three begin junior high we’re beginning to get a clearer picture of the bonds that they would form growing up, and how it relates to their children going forward. Now that we know most of Jack and Rebecca’s mythology, I’d actually like to focus more on them going forward.

This is Us is that rare bird for television these days – a TV show about human beings that don’t have superpowers or a police procedural, where the mythology is based on a family story rather than some obscure serialized drama. The Emmys still feel love for it three seasons in (they finally got around to recognizing Mandy Moore last year), and NBC has confidence in it – it was renewed for three seasons last year. Yes, this show does have a tendency to play way too hard on the emotional strings, but how many broadcast series – hell, how many TV series period – even acknowledge that it’s viewers are human themselves? This is Us is a true jewel among television, and every time I watch it, I count myself bless for being a critic.

My score: 4.75 stars.

Better Late Than Never: Jack Ryan Season 1

Tom Clancy was unquestionably one of the great American writers of action and espionage, and certainly one of the most commercially successful. For all that, I think most of the attempts to adapt his Jack Ryan novels into films were artistically flawed. Considering that Ryan basically starts out his career as an analyst, and only very gradually it becomes clear how qualified an agent he is, I think most of the actors who have played him have been significantly miscast. Harrison Ford and Chris Pine are superb movie stars, but they have too much charisma to make you believe that could ever fade into the background. And Ben Affleck, by the time he was cast in Sum of All Fears, was definitely the wrong choice.

In that sense, when Amazon chose to adapt Jack Ryan into a series, they may the exact right choice when they cast John Krasinski in the title role. Krasinski has spent his entire career playing variations on the everyman, from The Office to his superstar making work in A Quiet Place. And he has the perfect mixture of lack of ego and buried charisma to play Ryan at this stage in his career. At this point, Ryan is still just an analyst trying to follow money trails. But he’s been in combat in Afghanistan, and still needs medical attention for his back, and is trying to measure his double life at the CIA. He’s trying to date a doctor named Cathy Muller and playing that he’s a normal guy,  which blows up in his face when a helicopter picks him up for a mission in the Middle East. He’s early enough in his career that when he tries to convince his superiors that a man named Suleiman is a terrorist on the level of Bin Laden, no one believes him – except a former Section Chief whose career is currently in the crapper named James Greer (Wendell Pierce, doing his best work in quite some time) And though he can clearly handle a gun and has seen combat, he’s still suffering from enough trauma that when given a chance to take down a terrorist from that cell in France, he freezes – and the cost is considerable.

Carlton Cuse, one of the showrunners is no stranger to telling long narratives. But he seems to have a better handle on telling stories when there’s an established universe. Much of the action in Season 1 is focused not just around Suleiman, but around his wife Hanin (Dina Shihabi, in a role that quite understandably was mentioned in Emmy talk last year.) Hanin loves her husband, but she is terrified of what he is doing, and she’s determined to get her family away from him, no matter how great the danger. And we can tell early on just how dangerous he is. At the same time, the series is also very good when it comes to making the extending Clancy-like departures that seemed to lead nowhere, but eventually paid off. In the episode ‘Black 22’, we followed the actions of a drone commander, and watched him get paid a dollar for each kill. We then saw him go to a casino with those same dollar, and then play roulette, and look with disappointment each time he won. He then invited a couple back to his home, knowing they were dangerous, but by the time sequence ended, you could see just how much he wanted to get the blood money off his hands. The storyline eventually interlocked with one involving Hanin that paid off beautifully.

I’ve seen a lot of stories that I have tried to reboot an established franchise on both film and TV, and I can say Jack Ryan is one of the better ones I’ve seen, as well as one with the most potential. They have one of the biggest mythologies to play with (anyone who knows Clancy knows who Greer is, and its rather remarkable to see how they’re willing to play with his background). It’s not one of the best series even on Amazon – not yet – but the service has more confidence in it that it has room for a lot of development. (They gave it a two season order to begin with, and renewed for a third season well before the Season 2 premier in November.) It’s perfect for those who loved the Clancy novels, and it’s ideal for those who haven’t read a word of his. You can’t ask for a better recommendation for a series than that one.

My score: 4.25 stars.

Deadwood Episode Guide: The Catbird Seat

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Its Evil How Good This Show Is: Evil

Robert and Michelle King are among the greatest writers to work for television this decade. Rather than work in the confines of cable or streaming, they seem most comfortable in the broadcast venue, pushing the limits of the network, satirizing the more critically acclaimed series that constantly get nominated over them at Emmy season, always trying to see what they can get away with. Those who recognize them solely for their extraordinary drama The Good Wife (and its equally powerful spinoff The Good Fight) probably would have pegged them to go into supernatural territory with their next work, Evil. But they’ve always had a taste for the bizarre: in 2016, almost as if in preparation for the insanity that was to come, they created Braindead, a stunning satire which put the blame on partisan gridlock on parasitic aliens burrowed into our lawmakers brains. It couldn’t gain traction on the Tiffany network, and was canceled after one season.

If anything, they seem willing to delve deeper into in Evil. Katja Herbers plays Kristen Bouchard, a clinical psychologist who works for the district attorney, testing the sanity of serial killers. She gets called in by David Acosta (Mike Colter, Lamont Bishop in The Good-verse) a priest-in-training for archdiocese on a case where it seems that one of her killers might be possessed. Things spiral, and she gets fired, and in order to pay the bills (she has four daughter, and her husband is out of the country mountain climbing, she starts to work with Acosta, and his tech expert  Ben (Aasif Mandvi, tweaking his comic persona just enough) to try and prove that there are possessions or miracles out there.

If you’ve been watching TV for any amount of time, you’re no doubt thinking ‘X-Files ripoff.’ But there are very distinct differences. First of all, all the people involved, even David, are inclined to be skeptical. For another, the series is far more ambiguous about the paranormal than the X-Files ever was. In that series, the biggest obstacle was why Scully wouldn’t believe what she was seeing; in this one, everything that has happened so far, can be explained by science and social media.

Most importantly, there is the religious aspect. Any long time viewer of The X-Files knows that any time the series even mentioned ‘God’, it was a grind to get through. In Evil, much of the best part comes from the back and forth between David and Kristen. Kristen has a daughter who has a heart defect, who might die before she’s twenty, and she tells David, if she thought prayer worked, she’d be doing it all day long. But when she asks him why good things happen to bad people, David doesn’t even pretend to have all the answers. He offers to pray, but its clear he has his own doubts.

Now, lest you think Evil is somber going, let me assure you this series is really funny. Kristen is being visited by a demon named George who seems determined to torture her, partly with violence, and partly with psychological back and forth. (The series also plays this with ambiguity; it could be a demon visit, or it could just be a recurring nightmare.) Mandvi is also very good as a tech expert, who is clearly working for the church just to pay the bills. But if there’s someone whose presence alone makes this series worth watching, it’s Michael Emerson. Ever since we first became aware of him playing a serial killer on The Practice, almost all of his character he’s played on TV are either outright villains or characters with darkness in the souls. Here, playing Leland, Emerson may literally be the devil, someone who even if he isn’t demonic is clearly a sociopath. Emerson’s characters have all had restraints before; Leland has none, and whenever he’s on the screen, no scenery is safe. I know it’s early, but I think there’s a good chance he’ll be on the shortlist for Supporting Actor this year.

Evil is by far one of the most engaging broadcast series I’ve seen in a very long time. It looks at theological questions in a way that most cable and streaming still won’t touch, and it plays on the madness in the world in a way that will frighten some and strengthen others.  Will it last on CBS, a network that prefers the safe procedural to the groundbreaking series? I don’t know. But then again, this is a show where miracles may happen.

My score: 4.5 stars.