In an attempt to fill some cinematic blindspots, I’ve found myself watching a lot of Vietnam War movies this year. And if you watch enough of those films in a row, the storytelling clichés start to become more apparent: the soldier who’s gravely injured just before he’s about to be sent home, the…
As a human being, I have innate emotional reactions to the media I watch, and as a critic, it’s my job to analyze and explain why the media made me feel that way. But that’s sometimes easier said than done. I spent most of the second half of “Katie Girls” feeling really choked up and I’m not…
The third season premiere of This Is Us felt a little undercooked, and this week’s episode has the opposite problem of feeling way overstuffed. Ostensibly, “A Philadelphia Story” is a Randall-centric episode that examines his life-long identity crisis. As he explains to Beth at Kevin’s movie premiere, he’s always felt…
Between last year’s second season premiere and tonight’s third season one, This Is Us has established a template for its season starters: Deliver a low-key episode that reminds the audience how incredibly endearing the show’s actors are; offer a general sense of where the major storylines are going; then end the…
NBC’s weepy mega-hit This Is Us really likes making people cry, killing its dad, and when possible, doing both at once. Luckily, it also likes great actors, which is no small part of why it’s so good, despite the whole dad-killing obsession.. Theirs is a crowded field—Mandy Moore was so good last season, Susan Kelechi…
Welcome to Development Hell, the fiery pit into which we fling recent developments in casting, distribution, and everything else that’s new and mildly interesting in the Boschian phantasmagoria of the entertainment industry.
Last night the 29th annual GLAAD Media Awards were held in Los Angeles, and along with fulfilling the salutary purpose of presumably irritating the shit out of Mike Huckabee (frankly, it’s odd he didn’t try out one of his signature painful-joke tweets—“I’ll be GLAAD when this show is over,” or some such—during the…
“The Wedding” spends its runtime trying to convince us that something bad is going to happen. Will Kate freak out and run away from her wedding? Will Toby get cold feet and call it off? Will Kate and Rebecca get into a big blowout fight? Will Deja act out and ruin the wedding, potentially by murdering Randall and…
There aren’t many actors on a bigger roll at the moment than Sterling K. Brown. A pivotal role in the worldwide smash Black Panther, his first Saturday Night Live hosting gig this weekend, and an award-winning triple play (Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG award) for his role as Randall in everyone’s destination ugly-cry…
Even among those who like it, This Is Us often gets discussed as if it’s a conventional, old-fashioned family drama. The show’s tearjerker status and Jack’s death-by-Crock-Pot have been the source of far more conversation than the fact that its structure is unlike anything else on TV. It’s not just that This Is Us …
After three episodes focused on the devastating death of Jack Pearson, tonight marks the start of a new era for This Is Us. The show no longer has a big storytelling secret at its core and it’s free to explore the part of its timeline we still know very little about (the years immediately following Jack’s death). For…
Dads get a bad rap in entertainment. More often than not, prestige film and television is driven by characters with absent dads, neglectful dads, abusive dads, or, in the case of The Shining, axe-wielding dads. Or, as so happens in high-water marks like Mad Men, Shameless, and Breaking Bad, we’re led to cozy up and…
Taken together, the past three episodes of This Is Us have served as a mini-series about Jack Pearson’s death. “That’ll Be The Day” celebrated Jack’s final day on Earth, “Super Bowl Sunday” depicted his tragic death, and “The Car” is about laying him to rest, both literally and figuratively. Since it’s designed to…
“I just need two minutes, okay? I’m going to step aside for two minutes.”
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Sunday, February 4. All times are Eastern.
Last week’s This Is Us ended on a big cliffhanger, as the show almost certainly revealed that the culprit behind the long-foreshadowed death of Pearson family patriarch Jack was a malfunctioning “slow cooker” (or Crock-Pot, as those of us who aren’t afraid of getting sued for associating fiery death with a beloved…
Ninety percent of the time, This Is Us is a sentimental, beautifully acted show about family and the way our childhoods shape us into the people we become as adults. And then every once in a while it becomes something more akin to The Walking Dead or Game Of Thrones in its obsession over the impending death of family…
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Tuesday, January 30. All times are Eastern.
Given the dramatic way it was advertised and the fact that the lyric referenced in its title—“That’ll Be The Day”—ends with the line “that I die,” I was fairly certain tonight’s This Is Us would finally reveal how Jack Pearson died. So I watched the episode through that lens, counting down the minutes to what I…
Last year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards felt sort of like a turning point in our modern age of celebrities publicly speaking out on political topics, coming right on the heels of President Shithole’s first attempt at a travel ban. This year, with the Time’s Up campaign in full swing and the Women’s March events…
