From the category archives:

TV

“A New Day”: Nurse Jackie, Season 4

April 8, 2012
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I have been a fan of Showtime’s brilliant and acerbic Nurse Jackie since the first season and have been enthralled by each season since then, but I’m also aware that many people grew frustrated with the show as the second and third years progressed, because it often seemed to them that not enough change was occurring [...]

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Being Human 4.01: “Eve of the War”

February 6, 2012
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Being Human. This is a very hard review for me to write, because I am of two minds about Being Human‘s fourth series premiere. As a piece of supernatural drama tinged with black comedy, it is expertly and quite beautifully written, directed, and acted. If [...]

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Spartacus: Vengeance #2: “A Place in This World”

February 5, 2012
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus. The second episode of Spartacus: Vengeance plays to one of the show’s greatest strengths. Besides fascinating character drama, sex, violence, manipulation, and political maneuvers (which this episode also has in spades), the show is also often at its best when it is subverting [...]

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Spartacus: Vengeance #1: “Fugitivus”

February 3, 2012
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Spartacus. The scene: A Roman brothel. The camera pans from a female prostitute taking a man from behind with a large dildo to a male whore going down on a male client to four men violently fucking a female whore. The overweight male head [...]

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Chuck 5.13: “Chuck vs. the Goodbye”

January 28, 2012
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Chuck. Given the number of times that Chuck could have been canceled prematurely in today’s harsh, extremely-unwelcoming-to-low-rated-shows TV landscape (it was certainly touch and go there a number of times), the fact that this wonderfully geeky Hero’s Journey, this joyously romantic love story, this [...]

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Not Just Another Apocalypse: The Fades

January 9, 2012
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Last week, in practically one sitting, I watched the entire first series of the recent British horror drama, The Fades, one of the most bracing, devastating, and truly intelligent examples of its genre I’ve witnessed in a long time. Created and penned by Jack Thorne, probably best known for his work on the original Skins, [...]

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Over the Edge: Shameless and House of Lies

January 6, 2012
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I have been a fan of Showtime’s original series for years. I continue to maintain that the early seasons of Weeds, Dexter, Nurse Jackie, the entire run of United States of Tara, and portions of Queer as Folk are among the finest series to ever make their way to the small screen, mixing equal parts edge, [...]

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Sherlock 2.01: “A Scandal in Belgravia”

January 4, 2012
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In anticipation of watching the series 2 premiere of Sherlock, I rewatched the three episodes of Series 1 last week and was struck all over again by how overwhelmingly delightful the series is, which is a word I otherwise might not have expected to use in order to describe a crime drama that can be quite [...]

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Doctor Who: “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”

December 26, 2011
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Doctor Who, including the most recent, “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe.” At the conclusion of David Tennant’s final Doctor Who Christmas special, “The Next Doctor,” Jackson Lake (played by David Morrissey) steps inside the TARDIS and, awestruck with delight, pronounces it “Complete and [...]

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Doctor Who 6.13: “The Wedding of River Song”

December 24, 2011
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Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Doctor Who. The highest compliment I can pay Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who is that it rarely fails to dazzle me, particularly in those episodes where it counts, and what’s more, each time I think it has dazzled me beyond it or any series’ ability to dazzle me [...]

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