BuzzFeed: "The Good Wife Is The Best Show On Television Right Now"

The CBS legal drama, now in its sixth season, continually shakes up its narrative foundations and proves itself fearless in the process. Spoilers ahead, if you’re not up to date on the show.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The Good Wife Is The Best Show On Television Right Now," in which I praise CBS' The Good Wife and, well, hail it as the best show currently on television. (Yes, you read that right.)

There is no need to be delicate here: If you’re not watching The Good Wife, you are missing out on the best show on television. I won’t qualify that statement in the least — I’m not talking about the best show currently airing on broadcast television or outside of cable or on premium or however you want to sandbox this remarkable show. No, the legal drama is the best thing currently airing on any channel on television.
That The Good Wife is this perfect in its sixth season is reason to truly celebrate. Few shows embrace complexity and risk-taking in the way that this show has done and, even after last year’s stellar season — which saw Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) and Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry) leave their mentors and start their own law firm and which shocked us with the death of Will Gardner (Josh Charles) — the show has pushed itself into even more challenging territory more than 100 episodes into its run.

Created by husband-and-wife team Robert and Michelle King, The Good Wife has always looked to test the plasticity of its concept. Initially a legal procedural with serialized elements, the show balanced a case-of-the-week format for Alicia with ongoing domestic issues. The first season followed Alicia as she struggled with the decision to stand by her husband, incarcerated Illinois State’s Attorney Peter Florrick (Chris Noth), even after he admitted to sleeping with prostitutes. How would she care for their two teenage children, Zach (Graham Phillips) and Grace (Makenzie Vega), while juggling a demanding career and competing with associates 20 years younger than her? And what of her unresolved feelings for her employer, Will?

But these basic queries soon became further tempered by the deep themes that the show has enjoyed exploring over the years, issues of morality, marriage, technology, and legality. The Good Wife incisively probes our collective cultural institutions to find spots of vulnerability and exposes these potential weaknesses, prodding them with a well-sharpened blade. If the show has been about, as the Kings have suggested in interviews numerous times, the “education of Alicia Florrick,” viewers have been able to see how Margulies’ Alicia has had to compromise her ethical integrity in pursuit of other goals, some lofty and idealistic and others personal and perhaps selfish. Alicia has had to exist in the harsh glare of the public spotlight and make choices that others, living lives of quiet privacy, have not. Every one of her actions has been under scrutiny, both that of the public within the show’s narrative and that of the viewer.

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BuzzFeed: "The Affair Advances Hollywood’s Heated War-Between-The-Sexes Conversation"

The new Showtime drama joins movies Gone Girl and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby in its exploration of gender wars, a topic that’s currently heating up the pop culture landscape. Warning: Minor spoilers for both films and the series ahead.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The Affair Advances Hollywood’s Heated War-Between-The-Sexes Conversation," in which I review Showtime's The Affair and examine it in the context of the similarly themed battle-of-the-sexes dramas Gone Girl and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.

While we can attempt to empathize, it’s impossible to truly ever know every crevice of someone’s psyche, whether it’s the stranger you pass in the street or your own spouse. Other people are innately unknowable.

Gone Girl, whose gender politics have been hotly debated, takes this notion to an operatic and hyper-intense place as the audience is forced to contend with the unreliability of two narrators — Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), the seemingly perfect husband with a quick and easy smile, and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), a Cool Girl with her sharp nails very much intact. The plot of Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl and the subsequent film adaptation, also written by Flynn and directed by David Fincher, toys with the preconceptions of the viewer, jumping back and forth between male and female perspective, between past and present, between fact and fiction, in a tantalizing and telling way, though it never attempts to capture the realities of everyday marriage. The more realistic film The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them presents the complete breakdown of the marriage between Eleanor Rigby (Jessica Chastain) and Connor Ludlow (James McAvoy), flitting between his and her viewpoints as they attempt to regain their equilibrium in the face of searing loss. It’s the grounded and ultimately gut-wrenching counterpoint to Gone Girl, depicting both sides of their struggle with poignancy and grit. If Gone Girl is the cinematic equivalent of a head-on collision, Eleanor Rigby is more like a glancing blow that nonetheless ends up destroying you.

In their own ways, neither film is easy to watch as they portray the vast chasm of perception between the male and female characters — and each is structured in a way that borrows from the mystery format: Did Nick kill Amy? Just what are Eleanor and Connor running from? They achieve their ends in very different ways, however: Gone Girl builds to a Grand Guignol crescendo of horror, while Eleanor Rigby ultimately parcels out the central issue between the estranged couple, posing the question of whether two people, having fallen apart, can ever grow back together. Eleanor Rigby, as a result, becomes a film of two halves — his and hers — as it shifts between the female and male views of the couple. The couple here is far more reliable than Amy and Nick, and Eleanor Rigby director Ned Benson goes to lengths so that neither appears wholly responsible for the breakdown in their marriage — they’re both relatable and relatably flawed. The director actually created three films out of the material that he shot on the project: Them and Him and Her, which are being released in select theaters this weekend, showing the extremes of perspective that unfold over the course of their plots.


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BuzzFeed: "Twin Peaks Co-Creator Mark Frost On The Series’ Return To Television"

Damn fine news: After 25 years, Twin Peaks is headed to Showtime with a nine-episode limited series. BuzzFeed News spoke to Frost about the revival and what fans can expect.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Twin Peaks Co-Creator Mark Frost On The Series’ Return To Television," in which I talk to Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost about the series' resurrection as a limited series on Showtime in 2016.

Earlier this summer, deleted and extended scenes from the Twin Peaks follow-up film Fire Walk With Me were unearthed for the series’ complete Blu-ray release. But that was nothing compared to what happened on Oct. 6, as the impossible suddenly became a reality: Co-creators David Lynch and Mark Frost announced that Twin Peaks would be returning to television 25 years after it went off the air, its resolution as hazy and unclear as a fever dream.

Nine episodes of a Twin Peaks revival series will air on Showtime in 2016 as a limited series, one that promises a resolution of sorts for FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and one that signals a reunion of Lynch and Frost, who will write every episode, with Lynch set to direct as well. For Frost, it’s a unique position to be in, one that has been three years in the making.

“It’s a very rich feeling, to finally be able to tell the world about it, because we’ve been living with it for three years,” Frost told BuzzFeed News shortly after the limited series announcement was made. “People’s reactions are so fantastic. The thought that something like this could make so many people excited and hopefully happy fills you with the kind of joy you don’t get most days. So it’s a wonderful opportunity to close the circle.”

Frost also talked about Showtime’s announcement, why there are exactly nine episodes planned for the resurrected Twin Peaks, whether composer Angelo Badalamenti will return with another iconic score, and what fans can expect from this most unlikely news. In the words of the Little Man From Another Place, let’s rock.

Very few artists ever get the opportunity to return to a work 25 years later, particularly those working in television. What does it feel like to have the chance to make this journey and specifically with David?

Well, you know, the heart of this whole experience, from the beginning, has been this friendship that we share. Everything that we’ve done has started and flowed from that. In a way, it’s a wonderful way to continue the friendship, and deepen the experience for both of us, as friends, as collaborators, and as people, working to tell a story together. Neither of us has ever collaborated with anybody else in this way, and it’s a very special relationship. I guess you can say it’s like the U.S. and Great Britain, in diplomatic terms. It’s the special relationship in my life, creatively, and I think in his in the same way. First and foremost, it’s a wonderful chance to work together with a very good, dear friend.

Given that this is the only collaboration that both of you have done, what is the process for co-writing these episodes, and how has your relationship with David changed in the more than two decades since you last worked together?

I think that the main thing is — you’re different people 20 years later. You’re older and hopefully wiser, and you’ve had a lot more life experience. You’re bringing all that to the table. That’s certainly been our experience; that’s what it feels like to me. We’re not just trying to bring back the show because we can bring back the show; we’re doing it because we feel there’s something more to say with it, and it’s the perfect vehicle for expressing those thoughts and feelings.

Why specifically is the revival nine episodes?

Well, if you think back about the first season, if you put the pilot together with the seven that we did, you get nine hours. It just felt like the right number. I’ve always felt the story should take as long as the story takes to tell. That’s what felt right to us.
There are still a lot of details that are coming together. In terms of the general thrust of this, is this being envisioned as a strict continuation of those plots that were left dangling when the show was canceled, or is it something altogether different?
It’s kind of all of those things. It’s different and yet the same. It’s reassuring, and yet, I hope, equally startling and unsettling. And, more than anything it does, Twin Peaks is kind of a way to look at the world. And this is a chance to refine that vision, so many years later. As you say, it’s a very unique opportunity.

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BuzzFeed: "How To Get Away With Murder Doesn’t Quite Get Away With Its Framing Device"

The Shonda Rhimes-executive produced legal thriller might be pushing some boundaries, but its over-reliance on a wonky narrative device is leaving something to be desired. Warning: Contains spoilers if you are not up to date on the show.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "How To Get Away With Murder Doesn’t Quite Get Away With Its Framing Device," in which I examine the Shonda Rhimes-executive produced thriller and look at the way in which the show constructs its framing device... and falls short as a result.

There are many things for which How to Get Away With Murder — from creator Peter Nowalk and executive producer Shonda Rhimes — ought to be celebrated. ABC’s new legal thriller, which has aired two episodes to date, follows the Rhimes-ian ideals of its forebears, resulting in a show that is thoroughly modern and diverse, brimming with complicated characters who are inherently flawed and yet innately watchable.

Likewise, the show has already challenged several conventions of television, potentially depicting the first broadcast use of analingus (surely, this hasn’t happened on network television before) and positioning a middle-aged black woman front and center while reveling in its depictions of her sexuality. In the pilot episode, Viola Davis’ Annalise Keating is shown receiving oral sex from a man who is most definitely not her husband. It’s a brave and bold start, intended to shock, and it announces that Annalise is not going to be powerful but desexualized, nor is she going to be the one merely doling out pleasure to someone else. The show’s second episode followed up by having Annalise beg her cop boyfriend for help only to go home and engage in sex with her husband — whom she now suspects of murdering one of his students — only to roll over, a single tear falling from her left eye.

It’s a telling moment about Annalise’s complexity and further jumpstarts the sexual politics on display within the show, and it’s a milestone in terms of representation that it’s Davis who is so far engaged in these bedroom gymnastics; it’s rare to find a dark-skinned black woman on television who is presented as a sexual being in a positive or even neutral way.

But despite the impressive themes at work within How to Get Away With Murder, there are two narratives within the show that continue to jostle, rather unsuccessfully, against once another, even this early on in the series’ run. There’s the overarching narrative, one in which Annalise has put together a team of young law students — including Alfred Enoch’s naïve Wes, Aja Naomi King’s ambitious Michaela, Matt McGorry’s slimy Asher, Karla Souza’s timid Laurel, and Jack Falahee’s sly Connor — and has them assist her with a case of the week, Good Wife-style. In the second episode, they were tasked with undermining the prosecution’s case against Annalise’s client, an eccentric Colin Sweeney-esque millionaire (Steven Weber) who may have murdered his wife. The students flounder, they figure things out, they learn, and they end up helping Annalise. It’s a pretty precise formula, one that has worked for The Good Wife and countless other legal procedural dramas.

Then there’s the other narrative at play here, one that is set several months in the future and which finds the aforementioned law students attempting to — you guessed it! — get away with murder, in this case the murder of Annalise’s possibly-no-good husband Sam (Tom Verica), revealed to be the body at the end of the pilot. The students conspire, using information gleaned from Annalise’s law class — whose nickname is the title of the show — in order to seemingly cover up a killing committed by… Well, it’s not entirely clear just yet whodunnit or why. Or even if Sam is an innocent victim or something more.

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BuzzFeed: "Lost Changed My Life In More Ways Than I Can Count"

“Guys, where are we?”

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Lost Changed My Life In More Ways Than I Can Count," in which I revisit the 10th anniversary of Lost's premiere and look at how my life has changed in the time since the show first began.

I saw the pilot episode of Lost a few months before it premiered on ABC exactly 10 years ago today — on Sept. 22, 2004.

I was working in television development at the time, and a box of pilots — they may have even been on VHS tapes — had just arrived from a talent agency. My co-workers and I gathered in a tiny, cramped office to sort through the 30–40 screeners, most with titles and premises now forgotten, to find our copy of Lost. Damon Lindelof was an unknown name to us then, but we were addicted to Alias, the trippy espionage drama from Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams, who had also won our hearts with the wistful Felicity.

Twitter and social media as we now know them did not yet exist and, while we had followed the development of the super-expensive pilot in the Hollywood trades (when people still read printed trade publications), we knew nothing of the plot beyond the seemingly simple strangers-survive-a-plane-crash premise. We had no idea just what was in store for us as we dimmed the lights and hit “play.”

The 90-minute pilot was full of scares, surprises, and even a few laughs (that wonky polar bear!), and, most importantly, it introduced mysteries that had us immediately talking and questioning. And it’s the latter that became a trademark effect of the show, one that would be closely associated with Lost until its finale in 2010 and well beyond, and one that was instrumental in helping to cement the show’s massive success. (Almost 20 million people tuned in to the pilot when it aired.) What was this island? What was a crazed polar bear doing in the jungle? What was going to happen to these survivors and, to borrow the words of rocker Charlie (Dominic Monaghan), “Where are we?”

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BuzzFeed: "Downton Abbey Season 5 Begins With A Jolt"

Julian Fellowes’ costume drama begins its fifth year with a slew of domestic intrigues in place, as well as some new tensions. WARNING: Minor spoilers ahead!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Downton Abbey Season 5 Begins With A Jolt," in which I review the fifth season premiere of Downton Abbey, which launches on ITV in the U.K. (Sorry, U.S. readers!)

Period drama Downton Abbey had begun to show signs of wear and tear, particularly in its fourth season, where the creakiness of the subplots began to match that of the house’s ancient stairs.

It was, simply put, not the best year for the drama, which had come off the narrative highs of its third season, including the highly emotional deaths of two linchpin characters, Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) and Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay). But, in its fourth, Downton sagged into overt melodrama with storylines involving murder, blackmail, and the shocking and highly controversial rape of Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt). For a series that once had such great promise and potential, it felt like the life had been sucked out of the show somewhat as it was forced to restructure in light of those two high-profile departures.

Resurrecting my crackpot theory that odd-numbered seasons of Downton Abbey are far superior to their even-numbered counterparts (I’m looking at you, Season 2!), the fifth season opener of Julian Fellowes’ period drama — which airs Sept. 21 on ITV in the U.K. and Jan. 4, 2015, on PBS’s Masterpiece in the U.S. — offers a reinvigorated Downton, one full of downstairs intrigues and domestic drama. The first episode back is a bit of a whirling dervish: There are so many subplots that it’s almost impossible to account for all of them.

But rather than feel overwhelming, there’s a particularly pleasing rhythm to all of this narrative dance work, with scenes that are short on time but long on significance. Long-simmering plots come to the boil. The ongoing love triangle between Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), Lord Gillingham (Tom Cullen), and Charles Blake (Julian Ovenden) twists in a most unexpected direction, at least by the standards of the time. (It’s 1924, after all.) The relationship between James (Ed Speleers) and Lady Anstruther (a particularly aptly cast Anna Chancellor) is explored with clarity, humor, and a potential resolution. Isobel (Penelope Wilton) and Violet (Maggie Smith) are once again at odds — their temporary cease-fire marred by a new twist in their rivalry, this time over Isobel’s romantic prospects.

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BuzzFeed: "18 Gasp-Worthy Secrets About Downton Abbey Season 5 From The Cast"

Michelle Dockery, Allen Leech, Laura Carmichael, and Joanne Froggatt share details about the new season with BuzzFeed. Warning: SPOILERS ahead if you haven’t finished Season 4.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "18 Gasp-Worthy Secrets About Downton Abbey Season 5 From The Cast," in which I interview the cast of Downton Abbey about what's coming up on the fifth season of the British costume drama.

1. Reinvention is very big this season.

Judging from how often word “reinvention” itself came up among the cast members.
“There’s big social change in this season,” Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary, told BuzzFeed. “You can tell by the clothes, it’s very, very modern. And Mary really embraces those changes. Reinvention is a good word.”

That spirit of renewal is perhaps nowhere more apparent than within the character of Lady Mary herself. “It’s the new Mary,” she said. “Because she’s through the grief now and she’s moving on with her life and embracing a social life again, and exploring things romantically and also taking on more responsibility with the estate. She’s really kind of growing up and growing into a different person this time.”

2. But that doesn’t mean Lady Mary will be choosing a new husband any time soon.

Yes, that means that the love triangle is still in full force and both Charles Blake (Julian Ovenden) and Anthony Gillingham (Tom Cullen) are back in Season 5. “They are on the scene,” Dockery said. “Mary doesn’t settle with anyone any time soon; she was never going to. That’s important, not just for the story, but for the audience, because Matthew [Dan Stevens] was such a well-loved character, and Dan, of course, so you can’t really have Mary marry someone immediately. She’s just feeling her way through things, really. She’s still being very impulsive. I love that about her, that she doesn’t always think things through. She’ll make a decision and she goes with it, and then often, she’ll regret it afterwards or think, in hindsight, she could have dealt with it better. I love that about her. It’s a very human quality.”


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BuzzFeed: "Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces Makes You See Fire Walk With Me In A Different Way"

David Lynch unveiled nearly 90 minutes of deleted and extended scenes to his 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at a Los Angeles theater last night. It was intense and weird.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces Makes You See Fire Walk With Me In A Different Way," in which I look at the so-called Missing Pieces from Twin Peaks — the deleted scenes from David Lynch's Fire Walk with Me — unveiled by Lynch last night at the world premiere in Los Angeles.

WARNING: The following contains information about the identity of Laura Palmer’s killer. If, by some chance, you are reading this and haven’t finished the more than two decades-old series, stop reading before you are spoiled.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, David Lynch’s follow-up prequel to cult classic television series Twin Peaks, has always been an odd beast. It recounts the final seven days of the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), whose inexplicable and brutal murder is the impetus for the short-lived drama that riveted viewers when it aired between 1990 and 1991. It is also about the similarly brutal murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley), a woman killed a year before Laura in a similarly ritualistic manner whose death puts FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) on alert, following the disappearance of one of his colleagues investigating her murder.

One would expect that the film is a strict prequel, but it is not: Fire Walk With Me plays with time in a unique and nonlinear fashion, making it both prequel and sequel in an odd, contradictory sense. Like Twin Peaks, it is both dreamy and nightmarish, making the conflation of time make sense slightly more. There are visions and sigils, haunted rings and groves of trees, whirring ceiling fans and rustling curtains. The film itself is cryptic and strange, embracing a full-tilt Lynchian mode that the director successfully curtailed in the ethereal Mulholland Drive. Fire Walk With Me is about dreams, desire, and death. It is about answers and more questions. And it is also an unflinching look at the horrors of incest.

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BuzzFeed: "The Whole Of Orange Is the New Black Season 2 Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts"

After a sterling first season, expectations were high for the sophomore season of Jenji Kohan’s female prison drama. Fortunately, Season 2 proved to be just as juicy, sweet, and tart as you’d want it to be. (MAJOR SPOILERS ahead.)

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The Whole Of Orange Is the New Black Season 2 Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts," in which I review the entirety of the incredible second season of Netflix's Orange Is the New Black.

Orange Is the New Black’s stunning second season manages to be ambitiously large and somehow intimate. It’s the equivalent of a pointillist painting: from up close each dash and dot has its own individual identity and meaning, but when viewed at a distance, they coalesce into something altogether different and dependent on its parts.

In its deeply complex and magnificent sophomore year, Jenji Kohan’s Orange Is the New Black offers a scathing indictment of a broken system, using Litchfield Penitentiary as a stand-in for the failings of society as a whole. As the season progresses and conditions at Litchfield become worse and worse — because of venal officials, embezzlement schemes, force majeure, and general lack of empathy or interest — it becomes clear that these inmates have permanently slipped through the cracks as the most basic requirements of the prison system (keeping these women “safe and clean”) are not even being met. (The bubbling up of sewage from the toilets becomes an emblem of the corruption and rot at work here.)

The freedom of choice within the non-Litchfield lives of the corrections officers — even Fig (Alysia Reiner), the mercenary assistant warden, gets some deeper shading this season as her life implodes —appears to be wholly at odds with that of the women they’re sworn to protect. Healey (Michael J. Harney), who’s in a miserable marriage to a Russian mail-order bride, enters therapy to deal with his anger issues and creates a “Safe Place” for the inmates to open up as a way of compensating, perhaps, for his ineffectualness. Joe Caputo (Nick Sandow), the masturbatory administrator, becomes a hero of sorts over the course of the season until he too is seduced by power, opting not to do the right thing or even listen to it, such as when Matt McGorry’s Bennett confesses that he got inmate Daya (Dascha Polanco) pregnant. The truth becomes an inconvenience, something to be shrugged off and compartmentalized. It’s far easier, then, just to put a Band-Aid on matters, to drag out a nun (Beth Fowler’s Sister Jane Ingalls) to make a pre-scripted statement. Caputo sees himself as a savior of these women, but he chooses ultimately to perpetuate the broken system that surrounds them. The prison officials are, in actuality, also just as trapped — by red tape, by bureaucracy, by personal desire, by anger issues — as the inmates.

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BuzzFeed: "Orange Is the New Black Continues The Dickensian Tradition Of The Wire"

The second season of the Netflix prison drama is a gripping, beautiful, majestic thing. Warning: Spoilers for Season 2 ahead!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Orange Is the New Black Continues The Dickensian Tradition Of The Wire," in which I review Season 2 of Netflix's Orange Is the New Black, which returns June 6 on the streaming platform.

There are the television shows that you love to watch but that drift from powerful and provocative to comforting background noise, and then there are those that arrive with the momentous force of a revolution, issuing a clarion cry that is impossible to resist.

Women’s prison drama Orange Is the New Black, which returns for its second season on June 6, is most definitely the latter, a groundbreaking and deeply layered series that explores crime and punishment, poor circumstance, and bad luck. (At its heart, it is about both the choices we make and those that are made for us.) It constructs a gripping narrative that owes a great deal to the work of Charles Dickens, a social-minded and sprawling story that captures essential truths about those at both ends of the economic continuum. Just as in the Victorian era, within the world of Litchfield Penitentiary, everything is in its place and in its place is everything: Each of the characters is a cog in a larger machine.

The literary tradition of Dickens — so notably captured in HBO’s 2002–2008 crime drama The Wire — is keenly felt within Orange, as the action shifts between disparate characters in each episode, exploring their inner lives and hidden pasts. There is a strong sense of righteous indignation in the face of a broken and corrupt system, the failures of Litchfield a microcosm for the breakdown within the larger society. In the sixth episode of Season 2, Officer Susan Fischer (Lauren Lapkus) — perhaps one of the more genuinely sympathetic of the corrections officers — goes so far as to make the comparison, as she eavesdrops on the inmates’ telephone conversation recordings. “It’s so interesting, all these lives,” she says, her eyes gleaming with unrestrained excitement. “It’s like Dickens.”

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BuzzFeed: "Halt and Catch Fire: AMC Has Found A New Don Draper And He’s Ginsberg’s Worst Nightmare"

The Lee Pace–led Halt and Catch Fire, set in 1983 Dallas, offers up a pitch-perfect pilot about ambition, greed, and visionary dreamers at the heart of the tech revolution.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "AMC Has Found A New Don Draper And He’s Ginsberg’s Worst Nightmare," in which I review the pilot episode of AMC's new period drama Halt and Catch Fire, which begins Sunday at 10 p.m.

Mad Men has made the world safe for period dramas: Nearly every cable network seems to be launching a time capsule program (and quite a few broadcasters have tried and failed) designed to penetrate our cynicism and trap a bygone era in amber. As Mad Men, the blue chip iteration of the period drama, wraps up its seven-season run, Showtime’s Masters of Sex and even Penny Dreadful, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, and AMC’s Turn have sprung up in its shadow.

Which brings us to AMC’s latest deep dive back in time, the ’80s–set computer drama Halt and Catch Fire (which begins June 1 in Mad Men’s 10 p.m. Sunday time slot). The title is a reference to a line of code about self-destruction and that impulse carries over into the insidious behavior patterns of the show’s lead character, mysterious ex-IBM salesman Joe McMillan.

Played with precise intensity by Lee Pace, Joe looks like a Patrick Nagel illustration come to life, all hard angles, jutting shoulders, and slick eyebrows, who turns up in Texas and launches a complex game against his former employers by cloning an IBM computer. He is a riddle in more ways than one: a charming confident man who conceals some dark secrets that are only touched upon in the pilot episode.

Though his mysterious past remains as such throughout the episode, we know that Joe is a dark and potentially malevolent figure. For one, there are the scars on his chest, which point toward… well, I’m not sure what yet. And then there’s the fact that he wrecks his brand-new apartment early on, picking up a baseball bat that holds a telling inscription from his father (daddy issues!) and connecting it with a ball thrown in the air. Smash. Boom. Crash. As the ball careens around the glass-enclosed apartment, we see the damage Joe is doing, not just to his surroundings, but to the people he’s encountering on his curious mission. It’s no coincidence that Joe is introduced to the audience as he runs over an armadillo, trailing destruction in his wake, wherever he goes, not unlike Mad Men’s Don Draper before him.

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BuzzFeed: "The Midseason Finale Of Mad Men Is One Giant Leap Forward"

Don’t be fooled: Matthew Weiner’s period drama has always been about the future. Warning: contains spoilers for “Waterloo.”

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The Midseason Finale Of Mad Men Is One Giant Leap Forward," in which I review the midseason finale of AMC's Mad Men ("Waterloo"), which represents a giant leap forward for the characters and for the show itself.

For a show about the past, Mad Men has always been about the desperate pressing of the future against the figurative glass. In looking back to the 1960s, the show has held up a tarnished mirror to our own society, our own failings, our own future. A moon landing is full of promise; an old man lives just long enough to see the impossible made possible. Old ways — and the literal old guard — slip away. Companies perish and new ones are formed. Alliances, once fractured, are renewed.

This dance is eternal, the combustive pressure between the past and the future, between cynicism and hope. That embrace that occurs towards the end of the episode, between Don (Jon Hamm) and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), is more than just a hug: it’s a willing and proud acceptance of a new order.

The midseason finale of Mad Men (“Waterloo”), written by Carly Wray and Matthew Weiner and directed by Weiner, potentially revealed the series’ endgame as the countdown to the show’s finale began. (Unfortunately for us, Mad Men’s seven final episodes won’t air until sometime in 2015.) It is a superlative piece of television that captures the hope and beauty (and awe) of the 1969 moon landing and juxtaposes against the potential collapse of Sterling Cooper and Partners, as the struggle between disintegration and cohesion takes place behind the scenes.
Much discussion is made of how people react to the future, whether it’s with cynicism (Sally, initially) or fear (Ginsberg, alarmed to the point of insanity by the IMB 360 computer), resignation (Kevin Rahm’s Ted Chaough) or acceptance. Influenced by a cute boy, Sally (Kiernan Shipka) initially recoils against the possibilities that the future offers, seeing only a cynical view of the cost of the moon landing, rather than what it means for mankind, sitting on the shoulders of giants. The cost of all things weighs heavily on the show; the characters after all are always selling something: a product, the false lure of a happy life, the emblems of happy hearths and childhoods. (Christina Hendricks’ Joan even sold herself at one point.) And the moon landing was an expensive, if seismic, moment in the history of humankind: As we’re reminded, it cost $25 billion, though that seems a small amount for such a monumental leap forward.

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BuzzFeed: "16 New And Returning TV Shows Worth Watching This Summer"

Lee Pace in an ’80s computer-programming drama, a Victorian horror mash-up, sex researchers, Jack Bauer, Louie, and female prisoners? Check, check, check, check, check, and check.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "16 New And Returning TV Shows Worth Watching This Summer," in which I round up 16 new and returning shows that are worth watching (or at least checking out) this summer, including Penny Dreadful, Halt and Catch Fire, 24: Live Another Day, Rectify, Last Tango in Halifax, and more.

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BuzzFeed: "Mad Men Returns With An Intoxicating Beginning Of The End"

Creator Matthew Weiner prepares for the end game with the first of 14 episodes that start to tie up the AMC period drama. Warning: Minor spoilers ahead!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Mad Men Returns With An Intoxicating Beginning Of The End," in which I review the seventh season premiere of AMC's Mad Men, which I loved.

The first episode of Mad Men’s final season is an outstanding installment, offering up new beginnings for several of Sterling Cooper & Partners’ employees while pushing the series inexorably towards its ultimate end. And given the list of potential plot points that critics were forbidden to share with readers about the first episode of the final season of Mad Men, it even feels like a bit of a spoiler to say that much about the Season 7 premiere, which airs on April 13 on AMC.

Much discussion has already been made about creator Matthew Weiner’s stern warnings about disclosing information about the plot, characters, setting, and even year in which the new season is set. It’s challenging, therefore, to discuss the actual content of the show itself, but not impossible: There are simply more fiery hoops for critics to squeeze through ahead of broadcast.

It is, of course, Weiner’s prerogative as a show creator, to set these guidelines and boundaries. As the visionary behind Mad Men, he is looking to create an atmosphere in which the viewer comes to each episode without preconceptions formed on dreaded spoilers. Each episode — and season — is therefore a blank slate; episode previews are long on atmosphere and decidedly short on hooks. A phone rings, someone downs a drink, a glance is delivered across a smoke-filled room.

In the age of Spoiler Culture, it’s refreshing for the viewer experience, allowing for the audience to be unencumbered by information that could either derail one’s enjoyment or curtail the pleasure of the unknown. In a more philosophical sense, pre-knowledge of something forces you into a set of circumstance in which your opinion is altered by dint of expectations. And without those, anything and everything is possible: A plot twist can surprise or shock, elicit glee or panic. The universe of the show is closed off and therefore unknowable.

For a show — and a showrunner — that is determined to capture the ebb and flow of life itself, that’s something to be cherished and, well, treasured. And Mad Men prides itself both on the details and on the bigger, sweeping themes of its narrative, serving up a world of flawed individuals from whom it’s impossible to turn away. They make mistakes, fall, and get up again. They’re trapped in amber, existing in a different time period that feels in ways eons from the present day, but Mad Men captures what it means to be alive and how that feels. And it does so with a slick style and pulsing sensitivity that sets the show apart from the slew of copycats that followed in its wake. Weiner has created a modern bildungsroman in the narrative art style of the today; it’s tethered both to the past and the present and to the future. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, it whispers. (Thank you, George Santayana.)

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BuzzFeed: "Twin Peaks Is 24 Years Old And It Still Haunts Your Dreams"

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s grand opus celebrates nearly a quarter century of influencing television. Damn fine show.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Twin Peaks Is 24 Years Old And It Still Haunts Your Dreams," in which I (very briefly) explore just why Twin Peaks continues to hold a special allure nearly a quarter century after it first premiered.

Nearly 25 years after it first premiered on ABC, Twin Peaks — the brainchild of David Lynch and Mark Frost — continues to exert an inescapable gravitational pull on the imaginations of viewers and on the television landscape as a whole. Yes, there is still the totemic power of such influential series such as The Wire, or Six Feet Under, or The Sopranos, but Twin Peaks remains a powerful shorthand for ethereal, riveting mystery, and for good reason.

Nominally about the investigation into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), the serialized drama was responsible for creating the nightmares of many as it delved into both the seedy underbelly of a seemingly idyllic town in the Pacific Northwest and into a haunting dream world where giants and dwarves roamed the halls of the Great Northern Hotel, perfect cherry pie could be had at the local greasy spoon, and murder most foul could rip a town in two. The show itself embraced the somnambulist visuals of its co-creator, infusing the whodunnit with a lyrical, somber, and, at times, terrifying feel. (You all know which moments I mean: A tableau of lovelorn teenagers singing a song segues into a nightmarish encounter. A skipping record signals doom. Red curtains part to reveal horrors.)

For those of us who experienced the show as it aired, tuning in each week to gather more clues about Laura’s killer and marvel at the deductive reasoning skills of the show’s resident Sherlock, FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), it’s almost impossible to describe the strange appeal that Twin Peaks had and the hunger to solve the murder in the days before Twitter, Television Without Pity message boards, or social media at all. It was a true watercooler show in the days when such things as watercooler conversation still existed. It caused many a sleepless night as you pondered just what the dwarf meant, or whether Laura’s lookalike cousin Maddy Ferguson (also played by Lee) was connected somehow to the specifics of her death.

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BuzzFeed: "53 Possible Ways Season 3 Of Scandal Could End"

Shonda Rhimes’ political thriller always leaves you guessing, but entertainment editorial director Jace Lacob and staff writer Emily Orley take a stab as to what might happen by the end of the third season. Let the wild speculation begin!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "53 Possible Ways Season 3 Of Scandal Could End," in which Emily Orley and I come up with, yes, 53 ways that this season of Scandal could end, from the possible to the highly absurd.

1. Maya’s bomb explodes on the campaign trail, leaving the fates of several characters — including Fitz — unclear as the show goes on its summer hiatus. CLIFF-HANGER!

2. Fitz is killed when the bomb goes off, widowing Mellie in the process. Olivia is understandably distraught, as her actions lead to Maya being able to plant the bomb.

3. Fitz is killed when the bomb goes off and Cyrus runs in his spot on the Republican ticket. He becomes the first openly gay man to win the presidency.

4. Adnan turns on Maya and traps her in a room with the bomb. Adnan becomes a member of Olivia Pope & Associates and Harrison’s girlfriend.

5. Andrew nobly saves Fitz from death, but is himself killed in the process. This gives Mellie even more reason to hate her husband and to feel like he has “taken everything” from her.

6. Fitz is killed when the bomb goes off. Because Sally is the sitting vice president, she ascends to the Oval Office as Fitz’s successor. Olivia is distraught and vows to get Sally kicked out of office.

7. Realizing that she failed to stop Maya when she had the chance, Quinn sacrifices herself to stop Maya’s plot and is killed in the process. Charlie kills Maya in an act of vengeance and ends up joining Olivia Pope & Associates.

8. Maya plants a bomb in the White House. Fitz, Andrew, and Mellie are taken to the secret bunker in the basement, but since Olivia already used her clearance to get down there once, she is left upstairs and thrown against the wall in the bomb blast. Everything goes black.

9. Charlie dies saving Quinn from the blast. Quinn rejoins OPA, though her passion for Olivia’s mission has been tempered from her time with B613 and with Charlie. She wants nothing to do with Huck.

10. Quinn attempts to sacrifice herself in order to stop Maya’s plot, but Huck saves her at the last moment.

11. Feeling betrayed, Charlie attempts to kill Quinn when he realizes that she has been plotting against him and B613. She is saved by Huck.

12. Charlie attempts to kill Huck, believing him responsible for Quinn’s loyalty issues. Quinn kills Charlie in order to save Huck.

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BuzzFeed: "7 Reasons Call The Midwife Is One Of The Best Shows On Television"

Besides the number of times this period drama makes you sob like a baby.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "7 Reasons Call The Midwife Is One Of The Best Shows On Television," in which I extol the virtues of Call the Midwife, which returns for its third season on Sunday, March 30.

The third season of BBC’s Call the Midwife — which wrapped up last month in the U.K. and begins on March 30 on PBS in the States — attracted an audience of more than 10 million viewers when it aired across the Atlantic, a figure that puts it on nearly equal footing with Downton Abbey. But that series gets far more attention than this subtle and superb period drama.

Set in 1950s East End London and based on Jennifer Worth’s memoirs, Call the Midwife tracks the lives of a group of young midwives and the sisterhood of nuns with whom they work at Nonnatus House. Babies are born, labors — both real and figurative — undertaken, and love blossoms and fades. It is an extraordinary show about birth and death and what comes in between. As written by Heidi Thomas and her talented staff, Call the Midwife manages to be both warm and profound in equal measure, opening a window to a time long gone yet offering a glimpse into the eternal and the transitory. It’s tea cozy television with a very deep soul.

But if you haven’t yet watched Call the Midwife (or have already fallen in love with its easy charms), here are seven reasons why it is worth watching. (Warning: Minor spoilers ahead.)

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BuzzFeed: "Was That Good Wife Twist Cheap Or Profound?"

No one saw that coming, not even BuzzFeed Entertainment Editorial Director Jace Lacob and Senior Editor Louis Peitzman, who discuss the shocking reveal on the legal drama. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD, if you haven’t watched.

Over at BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Was That Good Wife Twist Cheap Or Profound?" in which Louis Peitzman and I debate whether the twist in this week's episode of The Good Wife was warranted or manipulative.

The March 23 episode of The Good Wife (“Dramatics, Your Honor”) pushed the critically acclaimed legal drama into new directions, courtesy of an unexpected plot twist that somehow stayed under wraps until it unfolded on-air.

(If you haven’t yet seen Sunday’s episode, stop reading right now. I mean it. STOP. Just stop. There are MAJOR SPOILERS ahead and if you’ve somehow managed to avoid finding out what happened, this is your last chance to do so.)

On this week’s episode, Will Gardner (Josh Charles) was shot and killed by his client — college student Jeffrey Grant (Hunter Parrish), who had been accused of murdering a woman he claimed was a stranger — during an eruption of gunfire in the courtroom after Jeffrey was seized with panic for his life and reached for a deputy’s gun. What followed was traumatic to watch: Will bleeding out on the floor of the courtroom, and then his body being discovered by Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) and Diane (Christine Baranski) on a gurney in the hospital.

For some, it was the perfect way for Josh Charles’ Will to leave the show, one that closed the door on any reconciliation between him and Julianna Margulies’ Alicia. For others, it felt like a cheap twist. We debate just how well the show handled Will’s death and what it means for The Good Wife.

Jace: I was genuinely shocked by the twist. Jaw-on-the-floor, didn’t-see-that-coming shocked. And for a split-second, I didn’t believe that Robert and Michelle King would actually kill off Will, who is nominally the male lead. But what The Good Wife has proven itself willing to do is to shake the foundations of its narrative in unexpected ways. And that’s what Will’s death has done. And in the Age of Spoilers, that they managed to keep it a secret is another miraculous feat. While I’ll miss Will, I love that the show was able to surprise its viewers in such a kick-to-the-gut sort of way.

Louis: I was surprised, too, though perhaps not as surprised as you were, thanks in part to the fact that CBS was heralding this as, “the episode of The Good Wife that you can’t miss.” I hate that. If you warn me that a big twist is coming, I will spend the entire episode waiting for a major character to die, and that ruins a lot of the suspense. But I digress. I will say that, yes, The Good Wife is willing and able to pull the rug out from under its viewers — and I think that’s why I was a little let down by Will’s abrupt death. It felt cheap, the kind of twist another lesser show would use. The Good Wife doesn’t need a random shootout to shock us.

Jace: Wait a minute: It needs to be said that Josh Charles had decided to leave the show a la Dan Stevens and Downton Abbey and was meant to leave at the end of Season 4 and came back under a short-term deal for the fifth season. To me, there’s no way to write Will out of the show that wouldn’t feel cheap except for him dying, likely in some chance way. To me, the fact that it happened under such unexpected and illogical circumstances compounded the tragedy. This wasn’t a protracted cancer storyline where Will learns he’s dying and has to say goodbye to Alicia. There is no goodbye, no closure, no catharsis about the time they lost fighting. His life ended, sadly and without reason.

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BuzzFeed: "A Lover And A Hater Debate The Veronica Mars Movie"

BuzzFeed’s Entertainment Editorial Director Jace Lacob (that's me!) and Chief Los Angeles Correspondent Kate Aurthur sat down to discuss the sequel film. They agreed on one thing. Maybe two.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "A Lover And A Hater Debate The Veronica Mars Movie," in which I sit down with Kate Aurthur to debate the merits of the new Veronica Mars movie, which opens on March 14.

Jace: Ah, Veronica Mars. A long time ago, we used to be friends… And I’m honestly happy that the former teenage sleuth is back in the Veronica Mars feature film, which I quite enjoyed. Yes, I’m one of those people who has watched all three season of the UPN-CW drama several times over, and that may have played a role in my feelings about the film. But I feel like, while you loved the show, you didn’t feel the same way about the film?

Kate: Yes, I loved the show — or at least the first season, which I thought was close to perfect. After that, I found it sporadically great, with Kristen Bell being wonderful throughout, but the plots and her supporting cast hit-or-miss. (Season 3 was almost all miss, sadly.) As for the movie, I wanted to love it! And there were a few moments when I was transported and delighted, mostly, of course, because of Bell, who has worked steadily but hasn’t yet equalled her Veronica Mars heights. I just thought it all felt so… small. I had other problems with it, but let’s leave it at that for now. What did you like about it?

Jace: Well, I’ll be honest and say that the third season of Veronica Mars was… not very good. But those first two seasons — which had really taut, byzantine mysteries — felt closer in spirit to the film, which offers some genuinely surprising twists and callbacks. But the false note that the show ended on doesn’t diminish the pleasure that comes from catching up with Bell’s Veronica and the rest of the characters in the film, such as Tina Majorino’s Mac, Ryan Hansen’s Dick, and Krysten Ritter’s Gia. Yes, the movie is a bit of fan service (given that it was, well, entirely funded by the fans) and it certainly plays that way, even with the recap at the beginning designed to catch non-viewers up. (Are non-viewers going to see this movie? I doubt it.) And the film does offer a really fascinating look at how these characters have grown and changed in the time since the show concluded… though Neptune seems just as trapped in its noir-tinged class warfare as before.

Kate: Before I criticize it, I want to say a few things I really liked about the movie. Have I mentioned Bell? Bell. Bell’s a ringing, Bell on wheels, Bell and whistles, etc. Her delivery is sharp, and she punctuates everything she says with wit (but not wink), intelligence, and when the scene calls for it, a deep sadness. If only Rob Thomas — who created Veronica Mars and is responsible for its excellence, but has never directed a film before — didn’t squash so many of her jokes with his clunky directing. But back to the praise! Bell and her co-star Jason Dohring, as Logan, still have chemistry, both romantically and by being able to throw ping-pong-fast dialogue at each other. Gaby Hoffmann and James Franco (playing himself) both have inventive little arcs. I also liked the continued menace in Neptune; and I liked the sense that the characters, whom we haven’t seen for years, really have progressed in their lives — they’re all kind of different now, imperceptibly but actually. But, Jace, didn’t seeing the gang back together make you a little sad about the gang? The ensemble was fine for TV, but in a movie, I just got kind of depressed watching the Piz and Wallace of it all.

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