This subplot doesn’t really mesh tonally with everything else, but it’s not bad, and it ends with a nice father-daughter conversation in which Bruce assures Alison they’re in this together, that he would never blow her cover to Lyla. “A Gorilla Head Will Not Do” may end on an exciting cliffhanger, but the episode preceding it is riddled with cringe trying-too-hard teen dialogue, frustrating information gaps that muddle the narrative instead of streamlining it, and weird subplots. Live the rest of my life as my sister and use a condom.” It reminds me of the great line from the movie when Ben tells Julie, “Kids like you should be out having fun. The glimpses we’ve seen of Lennon have already painted her as unstable and cruel, especially with the reveal of this sex tape, so the prospect of her as a villain is immediately more interesting than most of the other options. Alison insists that it can’t be Alison (meaning, privately, that it can’t be Lennon), that Dale must be the stalker. I mean it.” But then she ruins it: “I will have a literal Trisha Paytas breakdown if you do.”

• Okay, I don’t like Doug much yet, but it’s pretty funny that the taxidermist responded to his search for Johnny’s head with, “What kind of human head?” Again, it’s a good joke that would feel a bit more natural in a show that took itself less seriously. The final scene provides the biggest evidence yet for Lennon being our killer: a text to Alison with photos of the cuts she made on her thigh and a video of her and Dylan having sex at the party last summer. Madison Iseman’s performance has been the highlight of the series so far, so it’d be fun to see her in more scenes with herself. We already know he’s guilty about sleeping with Lennon, which informs his guilt about “Alison” dying. All we learn here is that he and Riley almost hooked up in the bouncy house and that when Dylan stopped, Riley told him Alison was never going to fuck him. And they waited till Johnny turned 18.” Again … why? Some Other Stuff They Did Last Summer

• Yet another instance of Margot calling something “ugly of you.” This time she’s referring to Riley talking about Johnny’s head being chopped off. Let’s talk about the Alison stuff first, because as it is becoming a pattern, it’s the most interesting. Oh, also, during all this, she accidentally finds a sex tape her dad and Lyla made and has to grapple with her dad dating someone. We just see Alison throw something at him; then it jumps to her at the cave.) There, Dylan reveals Riley’s secret that she thought she saw Alison take a breath before they left her last summer. But none of it adds much insight about him at all because they’re mostly just repeating what we’ve already seen from slightly different camera angles. VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! But Alison knows that none of their rationales for Alison being the killer make sense because she’s Alison, and the one who they hit last summer was Lennon. And despite the shaky foundation of the Alison-Lennon conflict we’ve seen, there’s an inherent hook to a girl being haunted by the twin sister she killed and impersonated. Drinking, partying, running people over, getting away with murder … things like that.”

• There’s something actually kind of fitting and poignant about the exasperated way Margot tells Alison, “Do not die. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. And so the main suspect, once again, becomes Lennon (or, to everyone else, Alison). Tags: We do see Dale eventually, a plastic tube of Blue Crush slushy shoved down his throat. Eventually, Alison tracks the likely killer to the Snak ‘N Stuff, where she finds Dale. She manages to escape before he can hurt her and meets everyone at the cave. Of course, before long, Dale is dead, and so we’re denied any further explanation of the obsession he apparently had with Lennon. • There’s a weird background line while Alison is at the restaurant when some guy says, “He and Johnny were so sweet together. With the video of Johnny’s decapitation being sent from Alison’s phone, everyone assumes she survived and has been stalking them. We’re also introduced to a couple of new characters, including Coach Craft’s ex-wife Kelly and Doug, a cop Lyla works with who seems intended as a dopey comic relief character. Email

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Terms of Service apply. It feels more like a collection of scenes than a coherent episode of television, particularly because the development of the side characters is still so weak. I do kind of hope the show actually goes there, though, even if it’s predictable. • Easily the most intentionally funny line of the episode is when Alison greets her dad with, “Don’t worry, I know the rules. So she sets out to finally identify the person who’s been texting her and following her in their black pickup truck. I Know What You Did Last Summer
A Gorilla Head Will Not Do

Season 1

Episode 3

Editor’s Rating

2 stars

**

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Photo: Amazon Prime Video

The first two episodes of I Know What You Did Last Summer, for all their flaws, had a fairly strong central focus to them. But back to the stalker stuff. For example, we get to see Dylan’s perspective from that fateful party on graduation night last year. The scenes of Lyla actually doing police work and investigating Kelly are mostly boring so far, though, because we didn’t know her before this episode, and we never got to know her husband, either. We’re also denied the actual scene of the murder, and the episode even skips past the gang finding his dead body, instead just showing them running back into the parking lot and commenting on it. But “A Gorilla Head Will Not Do” strikes me as the first episode of the show that feels especially messy and unstable; a few hours after my first watch, I couldn’t remember what exactly happened before the last ten minutes. It’s a fun moment, but I’m not so sure these clues are pointing to a reveal as simple as Lennon still being alive; it just feels like such a potential red herring. Like a number of scenes this episode, the banter here shoots for dark comedy, but most of it feels a bit forced, never truly campy and fun the way it should be. Like a lot of “A Gorilla Head Will Not Do,” it feels like a distraction. (The episode weirdly denies us any fight with Dale, probably because listening to him would help clarify what’s happening here. Hopefully, future installments will return to the focus of the flawed but decent first two episodes.

If the film is a Jordan Peele horror movie about racism, then let’s see Kenan and Rami read for it. Also, bringing back your surprise celebrity guest to straight man a sketch is an awkward fit. However, Oscar winners like Malek typically bring a new dimension to SNL and surprise audiences with their range, often leading to very fun sketches. Keeping Score

Bowen is my MVP for this episode. Chris wonders who drives blimps. Boys. Mikey Day is Linus Minus with Kenan as his volunteer Roy. Post-show Notes

Mattress Store: Aidy and Rami trying out mattresses by playing out dramatic arguments is a strong premise, but they give Bowen so little to do as the straight man that the sketch never surprises us. Reacting to an unusual thing isn’t something anybody can do, and SNL would have been better off assigning that role to somebody like Kyle. Saturday Night Live
Rami Malek

Season 47

Episode 3

Editor’s Rating

3 stars

***

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Photo: Will Heath/NBC

Rami Malek makes his hosting debut after starring in No Time to Die, the latest James Bond movie. Chris Redd coming on as Colin Kaepernick is a really fun moment. Firstly, it takes forever to introduce everyone. Tags: Che brings out Chris Redd to talk about current events. They’d be better served by introducing the characters when they’re asked a question. He’s just not fun as a straight man and keeps overplaying his lines. First thing’s first, Rami playing Pete and Pete playing Rami is hysterical. Boys. As funny as they are, we don’t want to keep seeing the same thing throughout the sketch. So we get laughs watching Kenan’s reaction even when Bowen is just simply walking back to his spot. Asking two students to improvise a scene feels like, “ok let’s see something funny,” which puts way too much pressure on your fun character. Encouraging kids to dream.”). I like that SNL is having more fun with Che and Colin’s personas. After a few bit parts, Aristotle gets to display his full comedic chops. Pete and Rami have terrific chemistry, and a movie starring these two would probably print money. There’s a risk of naturally funny performers floating through sketches, but we always know how Bowen feels, and he hits all his beats hard. NFL Press Conference Cold Open
Rami Malek Monologue
Bug Assembly
Squid Game
Prince Auditions
Celeb School Game Show
Young Thug: “Tick Tock”
Weekend Update (A Proud Gay Oompa Loompa on Timothée Chalamet/Chris Redd on What’s Really Important/Hypnotist Linus Minus on Hypnosis)
Mattress Store
Young Thug: “More Than Anything”
Angelo

NFL Press Conference Cold Open

The episode’s cold open is the NFL making a public comment about its recent scandal involving the emails of now-former Raiders head coach Jon Gruden. Prince Auditions

Chris, Ego, and Punkie are casting for the lead of the Prince movie, which is down to Rami Malek and Kenan Thompson as themselves. This week Colin pulls up an email from Che where he gets called a “honky.” It’s a fun choice, and they both display good humor about it. By finding new reasons for Kenan to get upset, the sketch stays sharp. He wasn’t activated the first two weeks, but they leaned on him and played to his strengths here. Young Thug: “Tick Tock” and “More Than Anything”

Young Thug sings “Tick Tock.” My girlfriend says that’s Blink-182’s Travis Barker is on the drums and that she loves how nicely the band is featured around Young Thug. Young Thug sings “More Than Anything.” Great job, no notes. They can serve many roles, from moving the plot along to providing context to just wrangling the unusual character. Even though Kenan is presenting on a podium, he’s positioned right next to Bowen. Email

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Terms of Service apply. Rami soon joins as a dancer, and now we’re rolling. We also need something a little more from the game show itself. SNL thrives off of these types of hosts. Sketches about sports also have a higher degree of difficulty since not everyone is up-to-date on the latest sports scandal. Rami showed strong commitment, and his acting really shined. Bug Assembly

Kenan and Heidi are hosting a school assembly with students presenting facts about bugs, though Daddy Long Legs, played by Bowen, quickly takes it over. Che says he hopes Kyrie Irving does the right thing and buys a fake vaccination card. Angelo: My biggest issue with this sketch is Daniel Craig. Mattress Store

Rami and Aidy are shopping for a mattress and are approached by salesman Bowen. “What does Daddy Long Legs eat? Mikey is a lot of fun as Linus Minus is struggling with Kenan. Overall, this was a solid episode. Under hypnosis, Keenan immediately pisses himself. Boys.” My director’s eye can’t help but love how they staged this sketch. I give them a lot of credit for that. “Kenan, you’re in costume, but you look nothing like Prince.”

Celeb School Game Show

Kenan is the host of a game show called Celeb School. VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! It’s another strong cold open. This is a character Aristotle did at New Faces, and it’s a riot. I sense the writers are still feeling their way around, and they have the extra burden of rotating the mammoth cast to fit everybody in. Hired as a writer in season 44, Bowen immediately moved up to featured player in season 45 and now repertory player in season 47. The look on Rami’s face as he tries to convert Korean won is gold. Aidy and Rami have excellent dramatic moments, but the sketch could have used another dimension to push it over the top. Daniel Craig’s entrance is a nice surprise, but it doesn’t hit. More on this later. My initial reaction is that this is less screen time for the largest cast in SNL history, but they’re pulling it off. Angelo

Cecily and Daniel Craig are excited to see a singer named Angelo, played by Aristotle, at a restaurant. Also, no sketch ever suffers from good acting, and likely we’ll see Malek commit really hard without playing for laughs. We later learn more about what the Prince movie is about, but we needed more of that earlier. Recounting Squid Game in a country song fits perfectly. No, because that is a missile.” We get a really fun moment when Che plays a clip of Chris saying “Black people can’t catch coronavirus” back in February 2020. While I think they built off their first two episodes, I’m still waiting for the moment where they uncork a couple of breakout live sketches. Just asking celebrities questions is too simple of a show idea for the characters to play, so it ends up being just about impressions. It reminds me of how funny Christopher Walken was every time he was on. We keep making discoveries, as Kenan reveals he’s in love with Zendaya but thinks Linus killed her. These two must know each other because their dueling impressions are tremendous. It’s a shame it took until the end of the night to see the Iranian Aristotle and Egyptian Rami paired together, but it was a lovely ribbon on a solid night for Rami. All the ingredients are here, with Kenan looking hilarious dressed as Prince. At this rate, he’ll be president of NBC by season 50. Squid Game

SNL’s digital sketch is an absolutely inspired send-up of Squid Game. We need to see the sketch evolve so they stay ahead of the audience. Celebrity School Game Show: I again find the impressions strong, but the sketch itself is lacking. “You ever see a fast blimp? SNL solves this by moving from character to character quickly while feeding information as quickly as possible, always finding something fun. Prince Auditions: We never really land on a strong premise. While Josh and Laura are also an unusual couple, they gave Ben a fun character, and he moves the sketch along by showing off different parts of the car. Rami sets up his episode nicely, focusing on how he’s typically a dramatic actor and that he even sympathizes with villains (“Freddie Krueger? Bowen is hilarious here. “That was a soft-top; this one is a little more firm.” Now we can see how a firmer mattress influences Aidy and Ramy’s arguments. Compare this to the “Car Shoppers” sketch with Ben Affleck. In “Mattress Store,” instead of Rami and Aidy just moving to the second mattress themselves, it’d be ideal if Bowen tells them to try the second mattress and explains why it’s different. Rami Malek Monologue

Similar to the first two weeks, Malek concentrates on letting off a short, solid monologue with no cast interruption. I anticipate SNL playing with Rami’s weirdness (they played with his piercing stare in the teaser). My favorite thing about watching Bowen perform is he consistently makes choices. But I think once they settle, we’ll see SNL take risks necessary to produce a classic episode. Josh and Laura derail it every time by devolving into dirty sex talk. Bug Assembly: The only issue is in a sketch like this; you really want to heighten the presentations by having the students take out props or display a diorama, only to be thrown off the rails by Daddy Long Legs. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. “Weekend Update”

“Weekend Update” kicks off with Colin saying he won’t let bad climate news ruin a beautiful 80 degree October day. A straight man in a sketch isn’t just there to find things weird. While I felt they danced around the Facebook scandal last week, here they really dig into the NFL (“He got on his knees and begged, and you know how much I hate seeing someone kneel”).

And you’re planking.” Incredible. Yeah, it’s this teen who never goes to class but whatever!) I wonder if Love is planning an exit separate from Joe where she frames him for everything? The fact that Joe thinks he still has a leg to stand on when he can think things like “I have some absolute fucking weirdos in my basement” is WILD. She tells him all about Matthew’s hacking of the security cameras and how she blogged about it as Sherry before posting that Sherry and Cary fled to an undisclosed location amid this awful violation of their safety and privacy. Perfect. As they embrace, Love spots the gun in Joe’s waistband. Theo swears he has footage from the day of Natalie’s disappearance that proves Joe killed her and that Love doesn’t have to keep protecting her terrible husband. Their relationship is easy to mock, but they do seem to be strong in all the ways the Quinn-Goldbergs are weak: They communicate, trust each other, support each other’s separate interests, have (probably) never committed any felonies. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. We get it, sad childhood, new demons, same as the old demons, blah blah whatever. Theo suggests Love use the security footage to threaten Joe even though it’s not admissible in court (FINALLY, someone knows how the justice system works! The thing is, Sherry is right: Joe is leaving Love alone to deal with this problem while he is stalking Ryan in his stalker-killer uniform. It makes it seem like the show is cosigning Joe’s actions, rather than just agnostically documenting them or positioning itself against them. Sherry shouts the truth through the cage door to a stunned Theo, and I write in my notes: OH MY GOD THEO YOU CHILD CALL 911 GOOD LORD. In her sloppy effort to get him down the stairs, she loses control of his body, and it tumbles so hard that it smacks against the cement wall. Of course, that is how Joe feels. Marienne immediately absolves him for this childhood indiscretion. I like that you can tell Love is seriously considering this option, like maybe it is the best way out of her current predicament. Meanwhile, Theo goes through the footage that Matthew was obsessing over, and he catches something his stepdad somehow missed: a shot of Joe, out of disguise, getting into the driver’s seat of Natalie’s car. Love reports that Sherry will be posting to her blog that she’s “going to be off the grid learning how to make placenta teas.” So Sherry goes full ego manipulation, leveraging her closeness to Love and their alliance as women in a cruel world. He’s going to leave town, and — cue Carly Rae Jepsen — he wants her to run away with him. But Theo is a dumb dumb. I wish this show had been this bonkers all season!! With Love, Sherry continues trying to turn everyone against Joe. Joe takes this opportunity to confess that he killed someone — the abusive boyfriend who hurt his mom. Email

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Terms of Service apply. Maybe! The fall doesn’t kill him, so Joe’s gotta get down there and stab him with an X-Acto knife FOUR TIMES. Joe abandons the much more pressing task of cleaning the crime scene and goes to Marienne, the woman who has told him many times to stay out of her life. Cary has anxiety shits in a bucket (to Sherry, “I don’t know how you’re so regular without any soluble fiber”). I’m so proud of Sherry, you guys. But on this show, I say never say die until you’ve got the body in the ground, and sometimes not even then. Or telling anyone! Tensions are escalating as they argue about which parent would be better for their kids, survival-wise. Joe knows that Marienne would NEVER do anything like his terrible, horrible, slut of a mom. Cary then decides he can try to open the door by shooting it, even though DUH, the bullet ricochets and ends up getting Sherry’s EAR. Blood pools all around his body. In my notes I write: Marienne, I’ll deal with you later, but Joe, you canNOT be doing this in the middle of the attempted double-homicide cleanup day!!! VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! Every time Joe thinks he’s falling in love, he becomes the most annoying person in the world. When Marienne wakes up, she says she’s moving to New Jersey to be close to Juliet, which crushes Joe’s spirit even though technically he wanted her to be a Perfect Mom Who Would Do Anything For Her Kid. It probably is! Matthew’s lawyer asks him to walk her through what exactly is haunting him. While cleaning, Joe finds a gun in Cary’s luggage. “I love you,” he tells her, and says, “Look me in the eye and tell me that your husband is not a violent man.” Which Love, of course, can’t do. Joe and Love are dividing and conquering their latest hostage situation: Joe will clean the house, and Love will handle the Conrads. Matthew explains that something seems off about the footage where Natalie (who we know is Joe in Natalie’s coat and hat) is driving away from the bakery. As Sherry hoped she would, Love cracks. We get more dull and pointless flashbacks to the Queen’s Gambit Tranquilizer Den For Separating the Weak from the Merely Abandoned — nurse Fiona’s wrist is in a splint, Joe wants to rescue her, but he fails yet again — which are extra unnecessary now that we’re in the final stretch of the season. This is the other thing about the Joe/Marienne plot that is so infuriating to me: Marienne sets boundaries, Joe crosses them, and rather than this violation being a turnoff, she is ultimately happy that he did what she told him not to do. Love promises to let the Conrads out “the second you leave,” a blatant lie. He swipes Ryan’s wallet (I assume to make it look like a violent mugging) and skedaddles. I thought he would call Matthew with this information, but he calls Love as fate would have it. Back to our captives: Love’s attitude toward them is extremely funny to me, as is Sherry’s management of it. That sounds like a great deal to me! Keep us where the action is! She sees Theo has the key, and he tells her that he knows what the Conrads said is not true. Surely Joe is planning the same, and now it’s a race to the finish. Joe, ever the empath, can tell that Marianne is embarrassed. Insane. Sherry’s whole strategy here is, I think, pretty brilliant, and her ability to stay cool in this bananas crisis is earning her a lot of points in my book. As soon as Theo’s back is turned, she knocks him out with a fire extinguisher. Love is too calm now, which does not bode well for Theo. The whole town is in an uproar and — finally! But the sound of the gunshot did one good thing: It got Theo’s attention. But instead, he tries to find a key all by himself, which takes just a little too long because Love comes back. “New rules: One of you takes this and shoots the other, and I let whoever lives out.” YES. Love tells Theo to leave Madre Linda, never come back, and never see her again. (Victoria Pedretti’s delivery of “What’s up with him?” as she eyes Cary is just perfect, as is her accusation that Cary is “acting fucking weird.”) Sherry, who is a genius, wriggles into a soft place in Love’s vulnerable heart by asking her if she’s holding up okay and if she’s written that letter to the Ashman school counselor yet. Marienne, as expected, got bad news at the custody hearing and is sitting on the curb of a liquor store, considering breaking her sobriety. — a phalanx of lawyers are scrambling to cover up Matthew’s illegal dealings. The way Shalita Grant says, “Well, I’m in a cage. Marienne reports that Ryan and Juliet are moving to New Jersey because Ryan got promoted. Tags: So Matthew erases all the data and smashes the monitors for good measure. She drags him for cheating on Love and for “letting you fix a marriage that never worked in the first place.” But this allegation hits Love in the wrong spot, and she spins around to leave a GUN in the little goodie box. Over at Matthew’s, Theo downloads all the security videos onto a USB. RIP Theo? You
Red Flag

Season 3

Episode 9

Editor’s Rating

5 stars

*****

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Photo: Netflix

I’m very into Sherry and Cary as foils for Joe and Love. Joe decides there is only one solution to this conundrum: “Ryan has to die.”

When Joe gets home, he finds that Love has ripped out their Nest doorbell. Her response is, “these people are so much more fucked up than I thought,” and then she VERY quickly goes to, “We can make it look like a murder-suicide; it worked before.” Wow, okay, do not pass go, do not collect $200. If Marienne puts this together and STILL decides she likes Joe, I will riot. Love also shares that Matthew has been stealing surveillance footage from all over town to find out who killed Natalie, and Sherry offers up the brilliant idea of outing Matthew on her blog, pinning the whole thing on the men so the women can go free. Theo meets Love at the bakery (regular floor, not prison level) to tell her all about the security footage and how his dad kicked him out. His every transgression brings them closer together, totally validating Joe’s worldview, which is that women mean “yes” when they say “no” because they deny their true feelings, or they don’t know what they need as much as HE knows what they need. “Theo Engler tried to convince me to run away with him today,” Love says, and Sherry is like, “Is it super-gross that I think that’s kind of hot?” Perfection. Without calling a cop! He takes a brief break from watching Marienne sleep to see the ten thousand missed calls and texts from Love on his phone. She tries to level with him: Natalie was a flawed person with secrets. Joe doesn’t feel bad about his murder because Ryan was “real evil,” and Love is “crazy and impulsive,” whereas Joe is just a good soldier ridding the world of people he dislikes or finds inconvenient. Sherry advises Cary to use everything at their disposal, by which she means their relationships. THEO, DROP A PIN! But in the ensuing struggle, Joe manages to shove Ryan over the ledge of a parking garage. No shit, Joe. I like that Joe isn’t as smart as he thinks he is and Ryan catches him. They start talking like they’re sharing goss over wine. And now she’s dead — time to let it go. But for the show to make Marienne behave as she does — she isn’t mad that he followed her here or entered her in the illustration contest — provides no audience surrogate, no pushback to Joe’s way of seeing things. Cary is doing loud chanting and holding planks because he is “seeking a state of readiness,” lol. Time to have sex at Marienne’s house. Then Love returns to use Sherry’s face to unlock her phone. And then he goes to the bakery.

I appreciate that Sherry asks multiple times if something is wrong — for someone who started the season seeming totally self-absorbed and mean, she is at least being empathetic and paying attention here — and Joe says he’s just not used to having an audience. Also yes. In the end, Joe bashes Cary’s head until he is unconscious, and Love strangles Sherry until she passes out. For instance: She seems genuinely more excited about the whole thing, but is that just an act for her own nefarious reasons (her attraction to Theo, her strategic intimacy with Sherry) or is it real? Still, in situations like this, it is just deeply annoying to listen to him talk about how Love used to be a “free spirit,” and now his life SUCKS. The bad news is, it’s not clear how they will get out of there alive. Love has apparently forgotten all about how Joe was thinking of someone else during sex, also with someone else. I mean … I feel like we’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be, Joe! The men go off to one room where Cary shows off his caboodle of meds, offering Joe a pill that “boosts testosterone like a mofo.” Then Cary strips completely and jerks off into a mirror: “If you don’t want to fuck yourself, how is anybody gonna want to fuck you?” Joe is saved from this encounter by a phone call from Marienne, who says that Ryan sent an anonymous email out to all her contacts with those explicit photos of her, an EXTREMELY fucked up thing to do that Joe is rightly outraged by. Joe is like, oh shit, that reminds me I have to go to a custody hearing, lol. It’s definitely because SHE is the problem, not because Joe is fully demented and insatiable. Is it an orgy with four people? Love grabs a knife while Cary sprints downstairs. And what’s more important, you know? Grow UP. Love decides that swinging “isn’t me,” and Joe amends that to “it isn’t us” because he has already forgotten the lessons of therapy and how “we” is individuality erasure. Joe is scrubbing blood out of the car at five in the morning when a drunk Matthew moseys by. Sherry and Cary have all these rituals to get in the zone, including full-body shimmies for “total liberation.” Their safe word is “hakuna matata.” Joe watches Love and Sherry dance and is suddenly reminded that he loves his wife. Joe and Love put the Conrads in the human aquarium and then have the best sex of their lives. (Will they find one of the hide-a-keys?) On the bright side, Love has never been more in love. They return upstairs with a meat hammer hidden behind Joe’s back. Are you KIDDING me? The whole sequence is INSANE and precisely the kind of thing You should be doing all the time! And: Extra points for the way Cary says, “a bisexual man is a truly optimized man.”

There’s a whole thing with Marienne’s custody hearing and Joe being a character witness that I’m going to mostly ignore because (1) it’s boring, and (2) you know the drill, she is going to get her hopes up and then the judge will rule against her so that Joe is “forced” (chooses of his own free will) to do “something” (murder) to Ryan to “save” (ruin) Marienne and Juliet’s lives. I absolutely love how prepared they are for this whole arrangement, complete with an NDA (even though, as I understand it, NDAs are v difficult to enforce). Joe’s lack of self-awareness is sometimes what makes this show so funny. Joe denies it, but things escalate until Love shrieks: “I KILLED NATALIE FOR YOU!” A beat and they wait, in horror: Did the Conrads hear them? Oooooh boy. Sherry has a tell of touching her elbow when she’s lying. The couples reunite, and Love is so much more into this than Joe, but everybody is just powering through. Of course, Joe — whose brain is warped from spending all its formative years having zero healthy social interactions and learning everything he’d ever know about relationships from books published before women had rights — cannot even get to the place of like, “Hey, that’s not for me, but I totally get how it could be great for someone else” with the not-exactly-revelatory notion of consensual non-monogamy. (Well, Joe did take that testosterone.) Joe is horrified to make the extremely no-duh discovery that their love language is violence. Theo realizes that Joe is watching them, and he leaves, and I write in my notes: THEO SAVE YOURSELF FROM THESE PSYCHOS, PLEASE. So Sherry tells him: Look at your partner. I thought Joe planned to open up the marriage just to have sex with Marienne with Love’s blessing, but apparently, what he wants to do is open up his marriage so it falls to pieces so that it is easy for Love to break up with him. Joe! Cary takes Joe’s phone to put it in a vault downstairs. Though I initially thought he was horrified by his dad spying on the whole town, it appears he is MORE horrified by the video capturing Joe punching the wall very close to Love’s face. And Joe’s mind wanders to a deeply boring fantasy where Marienne is literally wearing a white dress under the library’s construction paper butterfly tree. Let’s get into this whole open-marriage thing. Love decides this one orgasm means she and Joe are on solid ground; let’s text the sitter and do this thing! Time to feel them out. She is too busy thinking about how she put her best friend in a cage and doesn’t know what she’d ever do without Joe, the only person who can help her commit this seemingly endless string of assaults and homicides. Joe’s response to this, internally, is, uh, oh yeah, you definitely killed this guy. They talk about their fantasies and decide to talk to Sherry and Cary. Love, of course, can tell that Joe is thinking about someone else. I am both stunned and not at all surprised that Joe, who hilariously refers to himself as a “serial monogamist” (he’s a serial killer), thinks that opening up a marriage is what you do to save a dying relationship. He returns to the bakery, and they check the baby monitor, where we see Cary and Sherry pacing around, banging on the glass. Or just a foursome? This is a red flag, Marienne!! Yes. Joe stabs him with some broken glass pieces. It would be at the Conrads, but they’re redecorating. Theo figures out a way into his dad’s office and sees the full surveillance setup. Joe says it was just “harmless shenanigans,” but I think Matthew is ONTO him. Sherry and Conrad pretend they’re ready to get right back in it, but Sherry hugs her elbow, and BOOM, we are in a real-life Hunger Games! Love waffles on the marriage-opening thing and goes back to Joe to say that she wants to be FUN and WILD and let’s be real, don’t Cary and Sherry seem so much more interesting now that we know they swing? Marienne could use a friend right now, but alas, Joe is in the middle of an orgy. I hate when things like this happen on shows, and the person who had her boundary totally violated just decides not to be mad about it. Joe carefully brings up James, Love’s ex, now that he has it on good authority that Love killed him. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Matthew tells Theot that he is looking into Love because she’s connected to Natalie “and to you.” Theo cannot stand for this slander and screams that NONE of this will bring Natalie back. Is anyone surprised to know that Joe entered Marienne into the illustration contest behind her back? (That said, California has decent nonconsensual pornography/cyber exploitation laws, so maybe Marienne would have a case?) Marienne tells Joe: “The thing about being married is they know you so well they can use it for the rest of your life.” Joe should say that shit in a MIRROR. Email

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Terms of Service apply. But do I love how speedily they abort this whole mission when they can sense that Love and Joe aren’t in a solid enough place to swing? You
Swing and a Miss

Season 3

Episode 8

Editor’s Rating

5 stars

*****

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Photo: Netflix

As you all know, I believe You can only achieve its full potential when it stops hedging and just goes FULL BATSHIT. I am very curious to know if any or all of this was caught on by a surveillance camera playing on a live feed in Matthew’s office. Am I very grossed out by the way Sherry and Cary feed each other baked goods? Love’s happiness melts off her face, and she shouts HAKUNA MATATA and bolts. All Love reveals is that James got cold feet about having a baby, that he “used his sickness as a shield” so she could never really express anger toward him. Matthew responds by telling Theo to pack his shit and go back to his mom’s. Joe’s absolute horror at seeing a smattering of vibrators and dildos is so funny to me. VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! Back to the fun stuff: Love and Joe trying to spice up their “dull” (FULL of homicides) relationship. It’s date night at the Quinn-Goldberg residence! Love tries a little role-playing scenario in the yard that becomes real when Theo, wearing a Jason-Sudeikis-at-the-Emmys-style tie-dye hoodie, throws a football right by her, thinking her come-hither was for him. He wants Joe to know, he thought he heard someone scream. (“Elon’s decorator is brilliant, but he’s so slow.”) The Conrads have many suitcases that we will soon learn are full of a bunch of interesting pharmaceuticals and sex toys. They both pick up those arrows from the hunting trip. I wish we could spend more time with Love’s voiceover in episodes like this one because everything Joe wants to say and do is so obvious, and her deal is much more intriguing to me. Joe, who tells us he feels nothing watching this, pretends to be jealous so Love will be turned on and they can be WILD. Well, it took eight episodes into a ten-episode season, but it is finally happening! Tags: This is very much someone whose entire concept of sex is like, reading Jane Austen novels where having your fingers brush against a lady’s gloveless hand is basically third base.

They shared she will still rock her signature red hair and wear a traditional cowl instead of a mask. Batgirl will be one of the first DC films to premiere exclusively on HBO Max and has not been given a release date. Photo: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

At Saturday’s DC FanDome virtual event, directors Adil El Arbi and Bill Fallah (Bad Boys for Life), screenwriter Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey), and Batgirl herself, Leslie Grace, shared some insight into the upcoming film in the DC Universe. The concept art shared during the online panel can be seen below. #DCFanDome pic.twitter.com/BMxDEBWKOq— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) October 16, 2021

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Tags: First look at concept art for the live-action ‘BATGIRL’ movie. While the movie has yet to begin production, the team gave a small glimpse of what’s to come for Batgirl. Grace is known for her breakout role as Nina Rosario in the film adaption of Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights.

Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Related

The 15 Most Emo Moments in The Batman Trailer

Tags: It’s enough to make a grown man brood. — as Alfred. The Batsuit is bulletproof and this trailer won’t let you forget it, although the biggest problem facing Gotham isn’t gun violence but a couple of slippery mega-villains. “When that light hits the sky, it’s not just a call. He sports a combover, calls Batman “sweetheart,” and giggles to himself when he thinks he’s got him beat. He leaves messages that say things like “THE SINS OF MY FATHER?” and “RENEWAL IS A LIE.” A news report also teases the Riddler pulling off some “serial killer livestreams,” which is all very 2022 (the film is out next year on March 4). Batman will have to balance being perpetually pissed off by the Riddler and annoyed by the Penguin with a burgeoning flirtation with Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman and whole surrogate dad with Andy Serkis — mo-cap free! There’s Paul Dano’s Riddler, apprehended and jailed at the outset of this trailer, who teases Brucie with clues and teases us by never showing his face. A dusty grate is illuminated from the back and it takes a half-second to connect the dots before you see it for what it is: the Bat-Signal. It’s a warning.” Cut to Batman showing us exactly what he means by making a gang of cake-faced Nux-bros cower in fear as he takes them all down in an alley. Then there’s an unrecognizable Colin Farrell as the skeezebag known as the Penguin, clearly having the time of his freaking life under all that silicone. Pictures/ ™ & © DC Comics

“Fear is a tool,” says Robert Pattinson’s Batman in voiceover in the trailer for Matt Reeves’s The Batman.

• I did not enjoy Alison’s line to Johnny, “He’s literally been inside of you. A year later, Bruce has become comfortable with the story. Margot had a nervous breakdown and started binge-eating on her mukbang channel, which the show treats like the biggest sign of mental illness there could possibly be. It’s mostly the same stuff we learned about the last episode, stemming from Alison’s frustration with Lennon and Bruce’s habit of ignoring their own pain after her mom’s suicide. • Bruce is having rough casual sex with the chief of police, Lyla, but clearly has deeper feelings for her. Everywhere she goes, Alison has to actively focus on how Lennon would respond to people. • Alison really needs to watch the road when she’s driving, or she’s going to hit and kill someone else, and we’re going to get a season two called “I Know What You Did the Following Summer.”

• Johnny’s death is heavily foreshadowed, of course, by Margot referring to him and Coach as “star-crossed lovers” and Johnny replies, “You know star-crossed lovers end up dead, right?”

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Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! It’s admittedly a small part of the episode, but that’s part of the problem. I don’t really care about this relationship so far, but I can see its utility for bringing a cop into the narrative. But having your one main queer character get engaged to his high school gym teacher at 19 in the second episode, only to immediately kill both of them off and linger on their brutalized faces? Much of the episode is spent with the characters scrambling to figure out who the sender could be, checking in with each of them to see how they’ve coped in the past year. Johnny got engaged to their old closeted gym teacher, Coach Craft (more on that in a second). This also means it’s the episode that gives us our first real look at Bruce Grant, Alison and Lennon’s CW-looking hot dad. I hesitate to comment too much on the optics of killing off two gay men when I’m expecting plenty more murders to come. Email

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Terms of Service apply. The episode ends on the repeated sickening squelch of Johnny’s shovel decapitation, recorded and sent to everyone from Alison’s number. Tags: The reveal of his relationship with Coach Craft feels like something from a bad Ryan Murphy show, and I’m not one to moralize about unconventional relationships on TV. I’m choosing to wait and see when it comes to her, but we see her entering the cave with the goat head — and the rest of its body on the street for Alison, along with Johnny’s head. • I get Riley’s joke about how Dale is illiterate and “that message has way too many words in it,” but how is she using that as an actual reason he can’t be the stalker? “It’s Not Just for Dog Shit” is at its best when it stays away from the flat side characters and explores Alison’s struggle to inhabit the role of Lennon. Craft’s love seriously, with no intention of unpacking the weirdness of the dynamic (especially considering they became involved while Johnny was still in high school). Riley doesn’t realize how right she is when she tells her, “You really gotta get back on your cool-girl vibe, or people are gonna start to wonder what’s up.”

Much of the episode is downbeat, even a bit slow. It’s just confusing and not a great win for representation. But it also wants us to take Johnny and Mr. It’s nice to see some graphic kills, which re-energize the show after a slightly sleepy hour. Meanwhile, Alison has her first big reunion with her old friends (Lennon’s friends, more accurately) and tells them about the note. It even seems like he might believe it himself, at first: even in the privacy of their own home, he refers to smoking as Alison’s “sister’s thing,” as if Lennon really is the one he’s speaking to. It’s just a strange choice — the show seems to want to both laugh at Johnny’s relationship and fetishize it. We learn that last summer, Alison immediately came clean about what happened, and it was her dad who convinced her to maintain her lie. “You need to be careful around people,” he says, recognizing the way her smoking could lead people to connect the dots. He even dictates the fake running-away note they’ll leave for the cover story, speaking aloud all of Alison’s insecurities and resentments that could’ve led to her plausibly running away from home. Some Other Stuff They Did Last Summer

• Okay, we also get some more glimpses of Clara, who Alison sees near Dylan’s house. But in one of the episode’s final scenes, he finally refers to what happened last summer, if indirectly. But it all ends in the nastiest bit we’ve seen yet, a scene that moves I Know What You Did Last Summer closer to the slasher mold of the movie. Away at Michigan, it was easy to make a new life for herself; back around her old friends who knew the real Lennon, it’s much more challenging. It still skips between two timelines, but in both, we’re seeing aftermaths: the aftermath of Alison killing her sister and hiding her body, and the aftermath of Alison finding the freaky note in her closet a year later. Then Johnny himself gets killed. It kind of fit with Margot’s Cheryl Blossom-esque style of speaking in the first episode, but it’s weird to hear Alison say it here. But Johnny’s storyline in this episode is otherwise kind of inexplicable. Unless wait, are you not a bottom, Johnny?” But I guess it works if you think of it as Alison doing a w

• Bruce and Alison’s choice to bury Alison’s old stuff instead of burning it will definitely come back to bite them in the ass. Visiting his fiancé at the school, Johnny finds him trapped under a barbell; when he tries to save him, it only sends a hidden dumbbell careening into his face. • Why does everyone in this show describe each other’s actions as “ugly of you”? I Know What You Did Last Summer
It’s Not Just for Dog Shit

Season 1

Episode 2

Editor’s Rating

3 stars

***

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Photo: Amazon Prime Video

“It’s Not Just For Dog Shit” is a necessary transitional episode: coming off the pilot, it adds context to the way Alison has been living her life as Lennon for the past year. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Dylan cut everyone off, including his best friend Riley, and installed salt licks to attract goats.

Sure! “That AA stuff is for show. Here’s how Glamma tells it: When James got sick, he and Love were already on the rocks. I feel like he’s losing sight of the part where he and Love could ruin each other’s lives the minute they don’t have spousal immunity. Before Love can respond to this, she gets a message from the babysitter: Glamma came and picked up Henry. I guess he plans to murder the murderer? YES! But also, he is very distracted by how much he wants her. Glamma rolls up to watch Henry VERY late, super disheveled and drunk. Sherry is, naturally, the queen. Sherry basks in her successful gala before getting to the point with Love; the point Love missed because she didn’t read the rest of the article Sherry sent her: “Hot wife is a term for women in open marriages.” Sherry! While Joe, uh, runs errands, Sherry sees Love, telling her that she is “so HOT” and sending her a blog post to help her “tap into Joe’s fantasies.” But Love has other fantasies in mind: Theo. Cut to Glamma, wasted, with Henry on her lap in her car, picking up some food in a drive-thru from someone who should probably call child services but instead is going to take a cool $300 to give a lighter to this shitfaced woman who assures her, “He’s not a baby, he’s the reincarnation of my son, Forty!” Glamma took Henry, gasoline, and the lighter to the vineyard and TORCHED IT. But there’s no way that will last. And he is onto Joe. Glamma calls about coming over to babysit Henry during the gala, but Love tells her not to bother; she already got a sitter. Glamma leaves Joe with a warning: Love knows no loyalty. I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS!! We get it, Joe loves saving people and flirting with adults by cooing over children reading hardcover classics. Her now ex-husband got her “second act” vineyard out of SPITE. Joe and Marienne are colleagues at the library where he, Ryan, dropped the kid off, but okay! “I did everything I was supposed to do,” she tells Love. She is as basic as Beck and not half as interesting as Love. At the gala, Love is dressed like Alice in Wonderland, but Marienne is ORIGINAL who loves WHIMSY so she goes as the red rose itself. I am shocked that Joe doesn’t play scandalized and say, like, I’m married I would NEVER betray my wife! Back at the library, Marienne is having a meltdown because Juliet told Ryan that she and Joe spent the day together — wow, okay, her kid’s a snitch, not cool — and Ryan threatens to use it in the case. There’s drugs in his smoothies.” (To this, I wonder: Wouldn’t the court mandate regular drug testing in a custody case that hinged on the sobriety of both formerly-addicted parents?) Alas, Ryan is un-dosable! As I’ve mentioned before, I do not believe You is the kind of show where Henry would actually be killed, so there isn’t so much suspense here, though I wondered if Glamma would make it out alive. Which was definitely not supposed to happen. Then Ryan rolls in. The best part of this entire sequence is Cary’s kid dealer, who donates all his proceeds to a mental health organization — “Oh, and I only take Bitcoin.” Joe proceeds to spike all of Ryan’s protein powder with Adderall for the morning and Oxy for bedtime, plus he swaps out his alarm clock batteries with near-dead sets from Henry’s toys. So he and Marienne and Henry and Juliet can all be a family? I feel so vindicated!! He’s decided that he is in love with Marienne and, therefore, will be unbothered by Love’s technically-sanctioned flirtation with Theo. Theo bops over to say he’s super sorry, but he couldn’t find out what his dad has on her. Just a recapper’s intuition, baby! Glamma gets into the car with Joe, probably viciously hungover. I am delighted to learn that the library is having a swanky gala as a fundraiser, thrown by Sherry and conveniently catered by Love in a last-minute rescue situation, one that will require all our characters to get dolled up and collide. I wonder if she will tell Joe that Love is having sex with Theo, but she does me one better: “How much do you know about Love’s first husband, James?” YES, HELL YES! But he just stands there. I’ve lost sight of his endgame here — extricate himself from his marriage with Love in such a way that nobody gets hurt, emotionally or blunt-force traumatically? She screams that her daughter is a LITTLE BITCH and sets her own plan in motion. Over in Joeland, we are treated to a very boring day where Marienne has Juliet and Juliet’s glasses break, so they play family and get the glasses repaired together. She and Henry return home unscathed. He assures her that they can do ANYTHING together; they will figure it out as a team! But then Joe can’t stop himself from doing some light snooping, finding naked photos of Marianne in one of Ryan’s dopey books, and then jerking off to said photos in Ryan’s house. Joe is all I cannot believe this loophole is falling into my lap. Over at Matthew’s place, Elise, a young coder with facial recognition software in her back pocket, is convinced to assist Matthew in his efforts to track down Natalie’s killer. He has no proof of an affair. Marienne tells Joe that lying is bad for her recovery and she can only be in an honest relationship. The vision: Mess with Ryan’s routine and trigger a relapse. It’s just that her parents are divorcing and her family is in the public eye, and “That is a major trigger for me,” she says, attempting to reach this teen by speaking like a parody of a Zoomer. “This is what happens when you marry the wrong man.” She and Love argue, so Glamma leaves. She starts to cry, and naturally, Theo comes around to helping her out even though he clearly finds the whole thing a little sketchy. Terms & Privacy Notice
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Terms of Service apply. You all know how I feel about the way this show is dealing with domestic abuse and the handling thereof, so I won’t dwell on it here; I will simply re-up the general feeling, which is: ugh. “Just a mother’s intuition.” I KNEW IT, I FUCKIN’ KNEW IT!!! I fully said “barf” aloud when Marienne said that her take on fairy tales is “screw princesses.” Like, wow, so original!!! You
We’re All Mad Here

Season 3

Episode 7

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

****

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Photo: Netflix

Greta Gerwig’s Amy March famously told Laurie that she believes we have some control over who we love — “It isn’t just something that happens to a person.” Laurie and the poets and I (for what is a recap if not poetry??) disagree, but Joe is such an Amy. Joe stakes out Ryan at an Addicts Anonymous meeting and sizes up his whole day: Leaving Juliet with his mom so he can work out (I mean, yeah, people are allowed to have childcare to tend to their health!) and generally sticking to a rigid routine, which Joe decides means Ryan’s sobriety is hanging by a THREAD. Unsurprisingly, Cary has a hookup for Adderall and other such substances. He already has access to all the security camera footage in Madre Linda. Love gets all sniffly again, sobs a little about how she used to have her shit together, and then, of course, she and Theo are having sex in her kitchen. Does the show take advantage of this setup to do the most interesting, thrilling stuff? Sherry and Cary are polyamorous, and they “would love to take our relationship to a new level.” See, I KNEW Cary wanted to make out with Joe during their little CPR session in the woods! After he went into remission, he asked for a divorce, “And the next thing you know, he was dead.” Glamma doesn’t have any proof of this, mind you. Joe then heads to the bakery, where Love shows him the blog post and tells him about Sherry and Cary’s invitation. Which is a little odd to me. Joe thinks he is “watching his own execution,” but Love and Marienne get along just fine. (I love that his reaction to her come-on is to wonder, “Did she kill someone else? Love tells her that she can sleep there tonight and that Joe will drive her to rehab in the morning, but she can never see Love or Henry again. What a sizzling take from a modern woman. Glamma wails that Love will lose EVERYTHING one day too, and see how she likes it!! Joe decides to ignore Marienne’s explicit request to stay out of her complicated entanglement with her ex. Meanwhile, Sherry sends Love that “Hack Your Sex Life” post, which Love partially reads — she gets far enough into it to decide to dress up in a short little black number and play sexy housewife, which isn’t really Joe’s fantasy so much as his nightmare. Joe thinks his plot to send Ryan off on a no good, very bad day is working — Ryan tells his BFF that he’s “calling in sick so we can get blessed” — and, high on this perceived success, goes home to lavish his wife with gifts and apologies. I wish Joe would take the L, but we know that’s not his style. They leave the bakery arm-in-arm, right under the path of the security camera, whose feed is playing on Matthew’s computer screen. Eh, not really — the gala ends up being the decoy thing while the real explosions, literally, happen elsewhere. Tags: But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Everyone needs to spend less time heavily breathing outside their marriage and a lot more time talking to a lawyer. She lures him into the bakery basement and then asks him to find out what his dad has on her and Joe. Glamma is drunk, hurt, and furious. She tells Joe that Ryan will be at the gala because Channel 3 made a “sizable donation.” This is his way of showing her he can hurt her even at work. Joe is shocked, but Dante reports that Ryan has — twist! And is she trying to distract me?”) Because Joe is all spent from his session with Marienne’s photo earlier, he can’t get hard for his wife, who is mortified and now, according to Joe, another problem for him to fix. The next day, Love is freaking out over burnt almonds — or maybe something else is bothering her??!? Joe is going to focus on Love so that he can be with Marienne. — never actually been sober. Love confesses that she thought Joe wasn’t attracted to her anymore. Elise finds the whole thing very yikes and I wonder what Matthew would do with this information if he found it since none of this footage would be admissible in court. VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! Joe realizes the obvious: He’s been so worried about Love hurting Marienne he forgot that Love could just up and murder him.

Johnson reveals that they have just started the post-production process on the upcoming feature. He teased the sneak preview by saying this clip will show why the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is about to change. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson opened Saturday’s DC Fandome event, a virtual convention that’s all things DC Universe, by sharing a trailer for the long-awaited Black Adam, archnemesis of Shazam! Ladies & gents…Enjoy your WORLD EXCLUSIVE first look⚡️He is ruthless.He is unstoppable.He is the reason the hierarchy of power in the DC UNIVERSE is about to change.He is #BLACKADAMThe Man in Black has come around…#DCFanDome@SevenBucksProd@flynnpictureco pic.twitter.com/nv4oRmaLlq— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) October 16, 2021

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Tags: In the teaser, Johnson talks about how “this character, this film, and this universe has been a gigantic passion project of [his] for a very long time.” And by a long time, The Rock means he’s been signed on to play the role since 2014. Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/FilmMagic,

He is ruthless. He’s probably going to be shirtless. However, despite the eight-year wait, Johnson has kept busy with numerous projects like the Fast and Furious movies and even a “historic rap debut.” The DC feature Black Adam will open on July 29, 2022, with Jaume Collet-Serra directing, who also directed Johnson’s Jungle Cruise. He is unstoppable.

Caine spoke to the BBC Radio One Program “Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review” about his long career in Hollywood and his most recent role in Best Sellers. Photo: Anthony Harvey/Getty Images

Michael Caine is laying any retirement rumors to rest. Reps for The Dark Knight actor told Variety that Caine is not retiring. I haven’t retired and not a lot of people know that— Michael Caine (@themichaelcaine) October 16, 2021

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This One Line from Tenet Plays on a Loop in My Head

Tags: There haven’t been any offers, obviously, for two years. Michael Caine has had an incredible and diverse career in entertainment, starring in films like The Italian Job, The Dark Knight trilogy, and The Muppet Christmas Carol. Because nobody’s been making any movies I’d want to do. There’s not exactly scripts pouring out where the leading man is 88.” However, sources close to the actor told Variety that he is currently reviewing scripts for upcoming projects despite his doubts about his age. But also, I’m 88. Caine also confirms his non-retirement in a tweet below. When asked if his Best Sellers role would be his last, Caine said, “I think it would be, yeah.

Theo demands to know if Love thinks of him when she has sex with Joe, “because yours is the only face I see.” Joe and Love then have sex while thinking about their separate obsessions, and again I wonder why they don’t just have an open marriage? This 75% crazy is just icky. But Matthew is a man obsessed, and, in his defense, he is correct. (Same sartorial strategy for the “wellkend” last season, remember?) Glamma is wearing a velvet mustard-colored blazer that I love. The only good part about it is when Theo says he thought this was something she’d like because of the “rom-coms of her generation,” and Love is like, I am NOT that old, lmao. Back at home, Love ignores Theo’s texts and is gazing at that classic plot device: A pregnancy test. What do you all think? Joe swears to himself that he will find a way to have Marienne and prevent Love from ever hurting her. (Though first, she sees Sherry, who tells her that soulmates are “bullshit” and that loving someone long-term is about choosing them over and over. Joe believes this no-duh revelation has FREED him. Honestly, this whole thing where Joe is just now putting together his mommy issue patterns … I mean, really? The gentle nurse Fiona gazes upon him and shares her sad little sandwich. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. It’s all a dream until Joe realizes with horror: “Oh shit, Love is going to kill you.”

Love has a vicious hangover and a surprise visitor in the morning: Theo, who she drunk-texted last night. Hallucination Forty tells Love that Theo “kind of reminds me of me” and that Joe cannot be her soulmate because he, Forty, is her real soulmate. You
W.O.M.B. Most of the women who try to save — Candace, Delilah, Peach — get killed before they can. He hides under the bed when she gets home and watches her get undressed (“Okay, now you’re just playing with me,” he narrates to a woman who doesn’t know he’s there) and receives a text from Love. Her nook is a haven at the Queen’s Gambit Tranquilizer Den For Separating the Weak from the Merely Abandoned, but alas, she cannot save herself, for young Joe sees that her wrists bear the wounds of some gross MAN who hurts her. Have we not known that this whole time? She sees right through Love’s “I’m doing a mini-detox” and goes right to “is it Joe’s or that neighbor kid’s baby in there???”

The WOMB summit is about what you’d expect. It is a massive PR problem already, and he will only make it worse. Love has to go to Glamma Dottie’s vineyard for its big opening weekend, a goddess-y girlboss-y summit. She has his phone in her nightstand. Joe decides that he can’t have anything to do with “your planet of red flags” and assures himself he’s over Marienne. Joe, given this very brief update on Marienne’s complex history, understands completely. Joe has decided that Marienne, who “likes flaws and whimsy,” is “deep.” Good lord. Apparently, on You, virtually any substance or illness will make you hallucinate because Love gets so drunk she imagines her dead brother sitting opposite her in a bubble bath. I say: Theo, see a therapist! He breaks into her house to sniff her pillows but, more importantly, to find out WHY he feels the need to break into her house and sniff her pillows. I, for one, would not put such damning information in a text message with such a stalker-y husband. For now, let’s retreat to a safe space: The library. I mean, there’s no way she’s pregnant because the show isn’t going to give her character two babies; they’re too annoying to deal with when the story needs to move forward, and television is generally too conservative to let a Sacred Pregnant Woman get her hands as dirty as Love does. VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! This has gross echoes with season one’s Claudia, mother of the stairwell urchin, whose abusive boyfriend gets murdered by (who else?) Joe. Love flips out, and Glamma holds her ground: Love’s marriage is full of problems; Love herself is an “ungrateful little bitch.” I am very intrigued by how Glamma hints at some nefarious dealings in her own past (“You have no IDEA what I had to do to give you the world”). Is she playing a part to make him fall for her so SHE can kill HIM? While Love is away, Joe digs through Marienne’s office and finds a lawsuit accusing her of child endangerment. In this episode, we learn that Marienne’s ex-husband (played by Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s A+ Scott Michael Foster) abused her and manipulated the system in his favor to keep her from getting full custody of their daughter. Including the Quinn-Goldbergs. And: The show intends to deconstruct these tropes about men saving women and reveal them for the twisted truths they are, right? Joe demands someone stop Ryan from manipulating the justice system, and HE is that someone! Reunited at home, Love tells Joe about Matthew’s PI and offers this convenient idea: Taking advantage of Theo’s crush on her. Marienne is seeing a lawyer instead, thank God. The sprinklers go off again, and they make out in the fake rain like two teens in a Taylor Swift song. Email

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Terms of Service apply. (Plus, let’s not forget that before Natalie got the axe, she was essentially being surveilled 24/7 by her husband, which is not not abusive behavior, and she was on the verge of using Joe as an escape from that situation.)

It’s just a lot of women experiencing abuse for a show that wants to be soapy, wild, and ridiculous in a dark-but-still-fun way. But Joe is too blinded by his own self-interest to see through Love’s whole deal, so he eagerly agrees. Well, time for some wine! Ryan — the channel three news guy we saw earlier this season — is the ex, yelling that Marienne doesn’t HAVE any rights because she’s a “fucking junky.” Now that Marienne is a damsel again, Joe loves her once more. By the harsh light of day, Joe tries to resign from the library. They swear they would never do anything to hurt each other’s kids. But Marienne won’t let him. But probably not. Love arrives at Casa Gaia Vineyard with Henry in tow. Instead of by, I don’t know … other women in their lives! It’s so on the nose that I write in my notes: Is Marienne maybe out-Joe-ing Joe? Love deals with her confusion by texting Forty. Theo says Love is the only person he can talk to. Season 3

Episode 6

Editor’s Rating

3 stars

***

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Photo: Netflix

Flashback Joe is reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower because of course he is. These blast-from-the-past scenes are even worse than Don Draper’s Little Whorehouse on the Prairie memories, which is really saying something. Actually, great advice; thank you, Sherry!) Theo is here with some news: his dad is investigating everyone in the neighborhood. How is this landing with you? If they can negotiate corpse disposal and homicide coverups, I’m pretty sure they could navigate polyamory! She is in full Moira Rose mode talking about her wines and the “Women Optimizing Motherhood and Business summit,” a.k.a. By the end of the episode we will see Joe, a child, tell this adult woman that he and only he really sees what’s happening to her and that she shouldn’t take back her shitty, undeserving boyfriend. Meanwhile, Matthew has hired an investigator to look into his wife’s murder. WHY does this show keep walking right up to the idea that Love and Forty were Flowers in the Attic style gothic horror incest siblings without following through?! But JOE and JOE ALONE will fight for her. I feel like TV shows need to hire adult siblings as writers — especially adult siblings of the opposite sex because if I were in a bubble bath and I opened my eyes to find my brother sitting across from me, I would NOT respond by flinging my naked body across the tub to embrace him. This determination lasts all of 20 minutes because while he’s downstairs shelving books, he hears shouting from above. “WOMB.” I’ll give this to Glamma: She knows what she’s doing. “I could pretend like he had a chance,” she says in the most unconvincing manner. Also consider the litany of abusive and gross men in season one: the gropey book agent, the pervy professor who tries to screw Beck, the abusive uncle Beck tells us about. The attorney from his company — FINALLY, someone is talking to counsel — advises against this. But then that night, there is a library crisis: the sprinkler system malfunctions, water water everywhere, and while attempting to salvage books from the wreckage, Joe and Marianne confide in one another that they were both foster kids who were never hugged but instead tenderly caressed every book they ever read. And Love immediately gets her period afterward. Love, to whom Joe must prove he is a devoted husband, for reasons. Anyway, Marienne and Ryan were both using when their baby, Juliet, was born; Ryan got clean first and got full custody. Meanwhile, You has most of its women “saved,” however problematically (primarily by homicide) by Joe. I love that she wears breezy white tops and bright colors at home, but she shows up in all black whenever she is forced to do something with her parents. Before Love leaves, she hears Lorde’s “Supercut” blasting from outside, and I write in my notes: I swear to god if this fucking teen is holding a beats pill over his head outside her window, I will kill him myself and then, yup, that’s exactly what he’s doing. NO ONE DOES THIS. Namely, that so many women in the show are in abusive relationships, and that they either fail to escape these relationships OR their way out of them is always … Joe, who is ALSO abusive!! I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have some issues with how this series handles partner violence. Tags: I mean, yes, but also: easier said, buddy! Love decides to call bullshit in the middle of a reading on The Secret of Joy, puncturing all these empty aphorisms with smug confidence until the speaker turns it around on her and asks if maybe Love likes to “sabotage [her] own happiness.” Love storms out and is, hilariously, swiftly accepted back into the fold by Glamma and Sherry, both of whom want Love to participate in a little IGTV interview where Glamma just outs Love’s pregnancy on live internet. This show is at its best when it goes FULL crazy. What a team these two make. Or season two’s Hendy plotline, which, again, was “resolved” not by Delilah’s reporting but by Joe killing Hendy. And we can’t leave out the ur-text here: Joe’s mom, “saved” by Joe, who shot and killed his abusive dad, or just one of her many boyfriends, I actually can’t remember. But before the inevitable fakeout, we are treated to an entire episode of Love wondering who the father is! Not to MENTION her next-door neighbor who made his fortune in tech surveillance and whose wife you literally murdered.

Not the same.”

You can find Yamini on Twitter at @showmetheyamz and on Instagram at @yaminidoescomedy. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Vulture (@vulture)

Thanks to the coronavirus, comedians are now trapped at home like the rest of us, so we decided that while we’re all self-isolating, we’d do something a little different from our usual “Follow Friday” column. So welcome to our new version of the column, now titled “Follow (From a Safe Distance) Friday.”

This week, I donned my lucky hat for a virtual chitchat with Yamini Nambimadom (Pillow Fight, Second City, noted Zillennial) about how she’s doing post-vaxx but still pre-end-of-the-pandemic. She also gave an incredibly sound and logical answer to my favorite Fuck/Marry/Kill prompt (bed, shower, fridge): “I would marry my bed. I could use another person’s fridge, another person’s shower, and I wouldn’t feel off-put. Instead of interviewing up-and-coming comedians we love on Twitter, we’re going live on Instagram every week to check in with some of our favorite people in comedy to get a firsthand look at how they’re handling the pandemic. More From This Series

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Tags: She made me blush right off the bat with her fandom of my Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman days, explained why Twitter is one of the best places to get your news, and shared some excellent advice to white women on taking advantage of their prime season, Christian Girl Fall. I think that it’s been there for me through all kinds of things, you know? But sleeping in someone else’s bed?

We’re also getting nine fence options, new lighting and ceiling décor, permanent ladder placement, an increase on the bridge and incline cap, more storage, and new furniture items (yes, including the beloved Froggy Chair). Related

The Best Video Games of 2021 (So Far)

Relishing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, an Anti-Anxiety Oasis

I Am Obsessed With a Tragic Hidden Backstory in Animal Crossing

Tags: Nintendo has revealed a whole host of features is coming to its quarantine hit Animal Crossing: New Horizons on November 5. Meanwhile, Happy Home Paradise, the game’s paid DLC, will allow players to design dream homes for NPC customers you can select via Amiibo. Photo: Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Can we time-skip to next month? A 23-minute video streamed on October 15 unpacks all the new content that will be available through the game’s last major free update, as well as its first paid DLC expansion. The expansion naturally comes with a ton of interior-design capabilities, and is available as a standalone purchase for $24.99. If you’ve played the Animal Crossing spinoff Happy Home Designer, the concept should feel very familiar. Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack memberships will also include access to the DLC. The premium subscriptions, which launch on October 25, offer annual plans that cost $49.99 for an individual and $79.99 for a family. In Version 2.0, Brewster will run his Roost café, Kapp’n will give tours, Katrina will tell fortunes, and Harriet will teach us some of the 11 new hairstyles available. For example, we’ll now be able to grow crops that can be used in cooking recipes, lead group stretches, hang out with popular NPCs at Harv’s Plaza, collect and plant Gyroids, and take selfies with villagers (who will finally be able to invite us to their homes). Players will have a range of new activities to enjoy.

Quick shots introduce an inquisitive Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones) in his new recurring role as Vinder, along with several guest stars. The Doctor, Yaz (Mandip Gill), and new companion Dan (John Bishop) are seen sprinting away from one of several explosions in the trailer. Flux is set to air on BBC One, BBC America, and BBC iPlayer on October 31. Doctor Who: Flux is serving up a buffet of its best-known baddies to Jodie Whittaker before she regenerates out of her role as the Thirteenth Doctor next year (and takes showrunner Chris Chibnall with her). Let’s take a trip down monster memory lane, shall we? We already know that the Flux, the mysterious titular threat of the 13th series, will be responsible for enemies arriving from across the universe. But there’s also a preview of new faces, including some bedazzled beings and a furry, doglike creature who reportedly will be called Karvanista. Related

Jodie Whittaker Regenerates Away From Doctor Who

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Tags: In the new trailer, iconic villains such as the Ood, Sontarans, Weeping Angels, and Cybermen all make menacing appearances. With scenes of two forces clashing on a battlefield and a disfigured character gravely telling the Doctor that “our final fight has begun,” the six episodes promise to be action-packed.

The singer said that after 13 years, she got the keys to her car four months ago. “Lord have mercy on my family’s souls if I ever do an interview,” she added, concluding that she is staying away from show business — all she’s ever known — for now. Read her full caption below:

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Related

Britney Spears’s Father Jamie Suspended From Conservatorship After 13 Years

The Internet Erupts in #FreeBritney Celebration

Tags: Photo: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

Britney Spears, whose father was suspended from her conservatorship last month after a lengthy legal battle, announced on Instagram that she won’t be posting as much anymore. “I’ve waited so long to be free from the situation I’m in … and now that it’s here I’m scared to do anything because I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake,” she wrote in a lengthy caption. According to Spears, the paparazzi have been running onto the road while she drives home, and they seem to want to scare her into doing “something crazy.” She expressed her frustration with the way she’s been treated and noted that she is “disgusted with the system.” The message was shared alongside a photo of a Christmas tree; Spears explained that she’s celebrating the holiday early because she believes in finding more joy in life.

Meanwhile, Gia can strut, but beyond that, her choices are bizarre. They’re photographed by extra special guest judge Caitlin Cronenberg, who, yes, is the daughter of David Cronenberg. She gives you things that you couldn’t even i-magine with that tiny little imagination of yours.” We worship. The Pink Pantheress (not that Pink Pantheress) exercises her language law rights with two entrance catchphrases: “Hello, uglies!” in French, and then in English, “Oh, the ocean is rising, and she’s so salty.” (We bet when Greta Thunberg walks into a room, she says the exact same two things.) There is nothing not to love about Océane Aqua-Black. Pythia is one of those mythology gays radicalized as a child by D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. Bowyer-Chapman made the correct decision to join the Disney+ Doogie Howser reboot (film in Hawaii + Disney $$$) instead of returning for another season of production bullshit. No one else is doing it like her. RuPaul makes her once-an-episode pre-recorded video appearance before meeting the three new judges (because we’re counting Brooke Lynn Hytes’ additional filler as the third new judge). Beth hits us with a new urbanist meme for transit-oriented teens, asking, “Is the SkyTrain still runnin’?” She’s from Vancouver, and is giving Rick Moranis in those confessionals. Get Canadian legend Nia Vardalos on the line. She is inno-vative. Which makes Kimora Amour the solar eclipse. Tags: Email

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Terms of Service apply. She claims to bring the best looks, but, based on her entrance, we have doubts. The Scarborough queen brings delivery in a black-feathered bodysuit that is very Crows Have Eyes upon first glance, but it works in the context of her “Carnival drag queen” persona. • “I’m Synthia Kiss, I’m 29 years old, and I’m so excited for jury duty. The dolls gasp. And it’s not just the queens who are new to Wërkroom Nōrth; Neither of Brooke Lynn Hytes’s original co-hosts returned for this season for, frankly, depressing reasons. She says she doesn’t have a signature style,” but between her extremely plaid entrance, boy, and (spoiler alert) runway looks, we’d disagree and say the brand is indeed strong. VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! The whole thing is kind of giving Carrot Top at a Chili Peppers show. It’s a more interesting look than, say, Beth’s, but it called to mind a vision of Gigi Goode without her perfectionist’s eye. On the runway, the queens model their premiere looks with varying degrees of success. Also, Kimora looked like a pinata. We’ll see if “winner” can be added to Eve’s list. This week’s lip-sync is set to Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater,” but not before Eve 6000 has a commercial break-length crying fit after being declared “safe.” This lip-sync is a weird one. She says the name Pythia comes from the “oracle of Apollo” and shouts out her Greek roots. It’s our civic right!” We love a civic-minded hottie. Meanwhile, Océane’s knee remains busted, and she admits that she’s “blind” when she does her makeup because she doesn’t wear contacts (The reads write themselves, folks). Her skin is delicately plastered in gold leaf like she’s an overpriced burger and her headpiece is the sort of thing you want to hang a crown on. The highlight is Eve getting stuck in the foam and fished out like a dead possum in the pool, and the lowlight is when Océane fucks up her knee during the stunt. As for the entrance look, it’s the open-coat-over-body-suit thing that William/Carrie Bradshaw invented, only in Ilona Verley colors and festooned with “Beth Beth Beth Beth Beth Beth.”

Apparently, drag queens still call themselves variations on “ISIS,” including Icesis Couture from Ottawa. There’s former Fashion Police panelist Brad Goreski, whose appearance to Brooke’s left has child-actor-gets-recast-in-’90s-sitcom feels (That is not the Becky I remember). Has there been a Drag Race queen whose “thing” is being Greek before? The first maxi challenge of the season is a design challenge that has the girls raiding a coat check closet to make “haute check couture that screams premiere party eleganza.” Props for a concept that feels uniquely Canadian (coats, ergo coat checks, are needed 13 months of the year), but what makes this challenge a little muddled is that while coat checks are full of, well, clothes, the contestants can’t just throw an outfit together, they have to remix it with the other creative materials like ticket stubs, feathers, and a bowl of lemons. The judges are gagging over this look, but it mostly looks like a jacket she grabbed off the coat check rack, especially considering Stephanie’s clever construction and Suki’s glamour. Adriana toodles out in a little mermaid waist and says “Columbian body and pride” in Spanish and then says “I am fire to your veins” in voiceover, and we appreciate everything about it. Most queens don’t pull off something like this until the grand finale, but this Montreal queen doesn’t want to waste a second of our time. • “Sksksksksksk” — Stephanie Prince when the judges praised her look. the other-other white meat of Drag Races, is back-back-back-bacon again for the sequel. Stand-oots

• “Bitch, you better bring it to the floor, because I will always give you what? You'll never be able to unhear this.— Black Lives Still Matter (@thatonequeen) July 19, 2020

And as for the new judges? First is Vancouver’s Gia Metric, because in this house we use centimetres and kilograms, sweetie. The mini-challenge is a throwback photoshoot situation where the gals jump into a pit of foam blocks and look like they’re snatching a crown to be filled in later in post. But at least it had energy and confidence, so Beth is the season’s first sashay. This charming, beautiful Filipinx queen opens with “I’m Stephanie Prince, I’m 24 years old, and I love cilantro,” and now I want her to ghostwrite my Hinge profile because that’s just perfect. In perhaps a first for any iteration of Drag Race, season one’s producers gave the villain edit to a host — Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman — after giving him the problematic direction to be the “sassy one” of the judges and allegedly feeding him “pre-written negative critiques to read.” This sparked vile, racist bullying online. Rolaskatox dynamic. The final girls through the door (best friend Vancouverites), are the impeccably named Kendall Gender, dressed in all-brown Skims-chic and braids, and Synthia Kiss, dressed in a Katya wig and an unfortunately ugly as hell dress. Kimora Amour.” We are officially eating out of the palm of Kimora’s hand. The tops include Suki Doll, who makes her beautiful dusky jewel-tone drapery dance in an impeccably constructed tripping hazard; Stephanie Price, who sold a constructed comic book heroine masterpiece entirely out of posters with impossibly fun stage presence; and Icesis Couture, who wins the challenge with a smart jacket set with layered tickets running down the side. She wiggles her arms around like Norma Desmond dancing Salome, then strips off her shirt to boy chest and pump her fist in the air. Eve casts herself as 6000 things: the shady queen, the curvy queen, allegedly a fashion queen. Both Synthia and Eve 6000 really went for the purple-green-black Spirit Halloween colorways. Océane Aqua-Black is the most aggressively Quebecois queen since Rita Baga, and we are obsédés. We’ll get to them in une minute, because we’ve got 12 new queens to introduce. To Brooke’s other left is actress Amanda Brugel, who I learn plays Rita on The Handmaid’s Tale (shame All-Stars 3 got to the handmaid motif first). Brooke announces the prize: 100 thou and a sickening supply of beauty products from Shoppers Drug Mart, which is Canada’s answer to CVS, minus the carpeting. You know a queen’s got the goods when you can picture Matt Rogers’ future impression of them. Suki Doll wins the challenge, mostly by showing up in a fit that matches the backdrop. Suki Doll’s red entrance look is giving major frontrunner vibes. The judges are unanimous in their picks, making me miss having Michelle around to disagree with everybody. She walks into the werkroom dressed like a Trojan logo in Breast Cancer Awareness pink. She’s going for the Vivienne Westwood thing in a bumblebee tartan sculptural lampshade look. Production better get some more accommodating chairs for the larger queens. Eve 6000 from Toronto enters with a flat Earth joke (but is kidding). Of the safe gals, we’ll give props to Pythia’s “Y2Gay” lime green and Rock Lobster bouffant combo and Synthia Kiss for wearing her gold lamé jumpsuit so well. Between her name (which sounds like a spicier Icelandic Ultra Blue), smile, laugh, entrance look (a big pink shabby-chic coat over a pink athletic bodysuit), and, most of all, her boy look, which is Guy Fieri swapping sunglasses for sensible readers. As the queens hug and introduce themselves, we learn that this season’s clique has already arrived pre-formed: Gia Metric, Kendall Gender, and Synthia Kiss are known as the Brat Pack in Vancity. It’s not a Drag Race premiere without an injury. That’s one Vancouverite down, one Brat Pack remaining. Stephanie Prince from Calgary is dressed as a sexy Jollibee mascot, so she already has our hearts. I knew the judges would say it wasn’t serving premiere, and sure enough, that’s what they went for. That ain’t right. Beth is aware of them but not included in the trio, setting up a possible Jinkx vs. This week’s topic at the makeup mirror talking club is Kimora Amour’s teenage son, of whom he is very proud. Thankfully, Océane is safe after playing up her knee injury by staggering along in one of those morning-after-office-slag-limping-home-with-her-heels-off-and-makeup-running “comedic” looks. The balance has also totally shifted this season from Toronto to Québec and Vancouver queens, so expect a lot more circus and athleisure influence in this year’s drag, respectively. Beth is nervous and out of it the whole time, doing the saddest-ever version of that Megan Thee Stallion move where she lies butt-up on the floor and rhythmically pounds her first like she’s having a sexy tantrum. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Beth is a young queen who’s clearly clever, but she is obviously a little green for this. Canada’s Drag Race, a.k.a. Also, it looks like Océane is sitting on the floor to do her makeup. And does she ever give narration: “Suki Doll is different. Canada’s Drag Race
Lost and Fierce

Season 2

Episode 1

Editor’s Rating

3 stars

***

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Photo: WOW

Hey, what’s up, bonjour, and what a bonjour it is indeed! I scream. Co-host Stacey McKenzie also didn’t return; the show’s Twitter account broke the news by citing “COVID-related challenges.” We will miss her presence but shall always remember Bob the Drag Queen’s piece of awful advice:

When Stacey McKenzie talks, close your eyes and its James Charles. The bottoms include Beth with a black spiky bodice top and limp sad bottom and limp sad stage presence; Eve 6000, who serves camp narrative from the neck up but barely elevates the rest of her look out of bodysuit territory; and Gia Metric in pastel yeast infection diaper-cut half-jeggings that broke my brain. Gia is dripping in Creamsicle orange and says she’s “all the stars in the universe, baby,” if you want to get a sense of both how hot and how gassed up she is. She’s the first of two Quebec City queens really putting the ho in bonhomme.

Base model’s $50. It even comes with its own voice remote. • “Hey, Roku, Paul Walter Hauser.” First film on search page: Cruella. Its AAA batteries feel a bit outdated given that Apple, Amazon, and Google all have rechargeable remotes now (except for the base Chromecast model, which ships with no remote). • “Hey, Roku, Hitchcock movie from 1960.” Answer: “No results found.”

• “Hey, Roku, Alfred Hitchcock movie from 1960.” Opens search page. The company released new devices this month — the Streaming Stick 4K ($50) and Streaming Stick 4K+ ($70) — and Vulture got its hands on both for a week of testing our intimacy and our eyeballs with what they can offer. Of course, there are still plenty of questions when it comes to these new gadgets. How big’s the remote? Is there anything else I should know? If you don’t know what they are, they probably won’t affect you all that much. The Stick’s as long as a credit card and just a little wider and thicker than the HDMI port it’ll plug into — it’s not a streaming box so much as a dongle. Third: 1917, directed by Sam Mendes. The new Roku models are identical apart from their remotes. • “Hey, Roku, the Gargoyles episode ‘Awakening.’” Answer: “No results found.”

• “Hey, Roku, 1950s Westerns.” Films on search page: Man of the West, Sitting Bull, Man in the Saddle, High Noon — all available for free. You can also download a Roku app that will connect over Bluetooth so you can type on a real phone keyboard instead of clicking arrows on a screen. It’s slower and leaner, but it also streams in 4K, even if it doesn’t support some of the same tech standards out there. My gaming consoles take up lots of space on the shelf right now. The 2021 model of the Roku Express 4K+ goes for $30 right now and has the same apps and almost all of the same functionality. First film: Psycho. It’s bigger than the Apple TV remotes and Amazon Fire Stick remotes, which can be useful if you’re prone to misplacing yours. Streamliner

At your service. Why? Well, it’s like a second remote, and the company updated it so it can take your voice commands too and save stuff to lists to play later. Huh. Counts for something. Photo: Eric Vilas-Boas

If I buy one for Mom and Dad, will I need to set it up for them, or can they handle it? Roku may have its own streaming options, like the free Roku Channel, but it’s got literally thousands of apps — including biggies with their own hardware, like Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+, or niche anime stuff like HiDive — because it doesn’t play favorites. This all sounds good-not-great. (“Better” is subjective here; HDR does very little for me personally.)

One thing most folks might care more about is Wi-Fi 6 — a new, faster standard for Internet speed. The 4K+ ships with a Voice Remote Pro with a headphone jack for private listening that’s charged by USB. And $70 is definitely too high just to get a Voice Remote Pro. Want a Roku Streaming Stick? • “Hey, Roku, eat my shorts.” Opens Roku page for 1976 Ron Howard film Eat My Dust!, available for free on Tubi and the Roku Channel. Hmmm. Empathy is not its strong suit, but it is attentive. • “Hey, Roku, Disney Channel Original starring Kyla Pratt.” First result: The Proud Family. It’s about five feet long, so you’ll want to think about where you want the cord to go. Can I watch my obscure ’80s anime on it? The remotes are different? The 4K remote’s a clicker, plain and simple. On certain films and movies, the format will shoot information through your device to help display things differently. Here’s what we asked and how it answered:

• “Hey, Roku, turn on.” TV and Roku both powered on. That thing’s $70. • “Hey, Roku, Gargoyles.” First result: Gargoyles. “Hey Roku, eat my shorts.”
Photo: Eric Vilas-Boas

If you’ve dreamed of whispering sweet nothings to your Roku remote and hearing it ping back at you, now’s your shot. Yep. Is this one a good listener? The one thing you’ll want to note is the USB power cord, which is also the Wi-Fi antenna (tricky to replace, so don’t break it). The Voice Remote Pro also does this thing where, if you lose track of it, you can ask where it is and it’ll sound a little alarm. And doesn’t Roku itself have more affordable alternatives — confusingly also called 4K+ models? But it won’t beep when you call it, no matter how much you love it. We tested it on both a 4K screen and a years-old 1080p screen and both looked crisp and streamed in perfectly. My parents would love that. One of them has a +? Indeed, it did. Yes, but it’s nicer on the playground and knows movies. Roku’s interface and setup instructions are super-easy. Give ’em some credit. The big positive: Roku is still good at iterating on its clean, user-friendly interface and app software. This calls for an investigation. It should work on the vast majority of screens big enough to support 4K and below. That said, while $50 bucks isn’t a lot, it feels like too much for incremental updates. We have attempted to answer the most pressing questions below. Wait, what tech standards? Roku promised faster speeds for the Streaming Stick, and it seems to have delivered; we had no connection or lag trouble in Vulture’s test. Then just sign into Netflix and fire up Longmire for Wyoming prairies and crotchety cowboys. • “Hey, Roku, can you change the language to Mandarin?” Answer: “You can ask for closed captions on, off, and during replay.”

• “Hey, Roku: handsome man.” First two results: Handsome Devil, streaming on Netflix. Didn’t Roku just release a lite-beer version of this thing? They can probably handle it. Commanding your remote to do things is fun and may notch you a speedier, more merciful death when Skynet comes to roost. It’s a nice way of washing its hands clean of any drama between, say, Netflix or HBO Max should it ever come up. Roku has been called “platform agnostic” before. Tags: What about this phone app? What else can it do? If you subscribe to a service through our links, Vulture may earn an affiliate commission. The drawback: The hardware we played with felt like enough to convince a streaming newbie to jump onboard but not quite enough to justify an upgrade or a change from an already-working setup. One of them beeps at you? It’s also better about pairing up with Bluetooth headphones now, cutting down on the lag and matching sounds to mouths. Is it dumber than my Alexa? Fifteen minutes after opening the boxes, we were good to go. What do you think I should do? Roku’s got the best interface and layout mix in the game, for my money. Will this work on my HD set, or do I need to get one of those new 8K TVs? I lost all their remotes growing up. Space behind most TVs won’t be a problem. But the simplest explanation is that Roku added the picture formats HDR10+ and Dolby Vision to its devices this year. (We have seen one review that reported Wi-Fi hiccups, but we never had a single one in a week spent with both the 4K and 4K+.) For your 8K TV, you may want to wait until 8K streaming actually becomes a thing. What are you not telling me!? Will the couch eat it? Buy the 4K+

Buy the 4K

Does it have all the apps? Nope. I’d wait for a discount, or — if I really needed a hookup after my smart TV or my PS4 Pro failed — I’d get that $30 Roku Express 4K+. But if you already own a streaming setup of some kind and you’re not noticing problems, I wouldn’t worry too much about this one, either. Know what you mean. Is it bulky? Photo: Eric Vilas-Boas

So I don’t actually need the remote to talk to my Roku? I love talking to my remote. The trickiest bit is setting up a (free) Roku account to link to the device.

Nominations for the Golden Globes will be announced on December 13 (Taylor Swift’s birthday for those who observe), and the ceremony will follow on January 9, 2022. Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

The HFPA is gonna go its own way for the 79th annual Golden Globes next year. The deadline for motion-picture and television submissions is November 15. The group has announced its plans for the nominations and the awards ceremony, all without longtime broadcaster NBC. No further details regarding the awards presentation have been announced. The HFPA has addressed the ethical issues by banning members from receiving incentives from studios and by appointing three external members to its board of directors. Guess that hand? In May, NBC decided it was not going to air the 2022 ceremony after the Los Angeles Times reported there were zero Black members in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The new members will be eligible to vote for this year’s awards. Last March, the group promised to have a 13 percent Black membership before the 2022 ceremony; however, when 21 new members were added earlier this month, only six were Black, leaving the group short of its quota. Surely, that will be a drama-free series of events that results in everyone being happy. Related

How the Golden Globes Canceled Themselves

Tags: The HFPA has been preoccupied with a series of reports about the organization’s lack of diversity and its questionable ethical practices that caused publicists to boycott the awards. But in true belligerent Globes spirit, fuck it, they’re doing it anyway. As is tradition, the Globes will precede the guild awards and the Independent Spirit Awards next year, leading up to the Oscars on March 27.

“Why am I all alone with your glass of wine?” she sang over swelling violins and trumpets. Camila Cabello had already enlisted a big band for her NPR Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, reimagining her hits with horns, an expanded percussion section, and two backup singers alongside the usual guitars and keys. Related

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Tags: The band accompanied her on the first public performance of “La Buena Vida,” a song off her upcoming third album Familia. But then, for her final song, she went even bigger, bringing out the ten-piece Mariachi Garibaldi de Jaime Cuéllar. And they more than impressed, heightening Cabello’s kiss-off. Call that a Cinderella story. “Oh no, oh no, this is not the life!” Cabello also performed groovy new renditions of her songs “Havana,” “Real Friends,” and “Señorita” along with Familia lead single “Don’t Go Yet” between waxing about her love for other Tiny Desk performances — so big that she overcame a “tiny sinus infection” to perform hers.

Theo teases Joe’s lawn with a “Richard Yates level of attention to detail,” which is a great burn. I think Dottie is bad, generally speaking, but her advice here isn’t terrible: Love likes a project to fix, which is why she was so obsessed with her brother and initially drawn to Joe. Also, MEN can PUNCH EACH OTHER IN THE FACE, but then, ALSO, they can COLLAPSE INTO EACH OTHER’S ARMS and SOB LIKE WOUNDED ANIMALS. I love that Joe keeps asking himself, with no irony, “Maybe I am the problem?” Like yeah, Joe, of course you are the problem, you’re a fuckin’ psycho! When Love gets home, Glamma reports that she saw Theo get out of Love’s car and that she missed the FaceTime call Dottie made while Henry took his first steps. “Bored housewife yearns for torrid affair with hot teen next door” is the free space on the Suburban TV Tropes bingo board, so, glad to see everyone leaning into their clichés here. They wipe out (duh), and through tears, Theo says he is actually taking a leave of absence because he can’t stop thinking about Love. Left to her own devices, Love finds herself alone with Theo yet again. You
Into the Woods

Season 3

Episode 5

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

****

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Photo: Netflix

It’s a tale as old as time: Boy meets girl. Sure, nobody around them is dying. I can’t say I care whether Marienne enters the illustration contest, but I guess this is an improvement from Guinevere “I want to be a writer, but all I do is theatrically flop on my bed, look at my laptop for two seconds, sigh dramatically, and then close my laptop” Beck. In this very special episode, Joe could have pushed a bully down the stairs, but he didn’t, and his dream girlfriend, the nurse, wants him to know that he’s a Good Person™, but also, he would STILL have been a Good Person™ if he had shoved that bully down the staircase because the bully had it coming. Love and Joe report to their therapist that they are “just a normal, boring suburban family” now. Honestly, the way Cary describes it, I thought and sort of hoped they were all going to hook up in the woods, but nope. UNLEASH THE IMPULSES. But are boy and girl really living??? Parenting is about sacrifice! Meanwhile, Sherry’s hot gossip is that Theo showed up for a midterm drunk and took leave from school. But Theo heard Joe’s shouting last night and is worried about Love because he does not yet know that Love recently assaulted a man with a rolling pin in the very spot Theo is standing. You can tell that somebody in the writer’s room had a lot of fun coming up with all the batshit mantras Cary says. Good People™ are empowered with this gift of unilaterally deciding who deserves to get the shit kicked out of them. That boy will distract you from your son.” Then she suggests fine wine as an alternative to a teen boy, as far as addictions go. Good to see a woman with some follow-through. The only rule is that you can ONLY EAT what you KILL FOR YOURSELF. Even though I, like Joe, am underwhelmed by the social offerings of Madre Linda, I do like that this therapist tells him he needs to have friends outside of his marriage, which is a wise counsel I wish more couples took seriously. He’s going to be super-duper-extra-careful, and no one will find out or get hurt. He approvingly calls Joe “one fine specimen of a man.” It is INSANE that none of these dudes even kiss on this trip. Also, Love’s makeup looks fantastic. It looks phenomenal all episode, as do her outfits, which I know is supposed to be a bad sign because it means she’s fully assimilated, but who cares? It turns out they were email pen pals for a while until Love drew a hard line there that Theo respectfully did not cross. “So let me be blunt: Grow up. “I’m impossible to kill,” he announces and then shoves his arm back into place with a very upsetting crunch sound. Theo pops over to see Love, and Joe realizes as he walks in on their conversation that he has walked in on something. Love fesses up to the Ubers, and Joe goes full Marriage Story and shouts while punching a wall. Email

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Terms of Service apply. For some reason, Love thinks the solution to this problem is for Joe to go on the weekend trip with the boys. The way all the men on this trip talk about Cary and his rituals that saved their marriages and releasing their inner beasts is very weird, like they’re some sort of cult. Love sends Theo a text that says, “Never again, find someone your own age,” and for someone who knows her husband’s predilection for stalking, going through her shit, etc., that seems like a dicey move. Joe has become obsessed with tending to the lawn (I laughed out loud at his line reading of “The lawn is the foyer of the home”). But maybe Love’s skin is aglow because she is keeping a secret: She’s stayed in touch with Theo, “helping him” from afar by ordering him Ubers when he’s too drunk to drive and by thinking about their one passionate kiss. Please be careful on your scooters, people!). Love tells the therapist that Joe has had a harder time making friends than she has — his only friends are at work, and by “friends,” he means Marienne, the latest doomed object of his desire. Joe had the alarm at the bakery go off just for an excuse to leave the house so he can watch Marienne. Because Love has befriended Sherry, Joe is trapped in a broship with Cary, who likes to talk about the key to “truly orgasmic barbeque,” which is to kill your own meat. Cary falls back over a ledge, and Joe thinks he killed him, and there is a whole thing of CPR, but then Cary pops up, good as new. I write in my notes: “Why don’t Love and Joe just … open their marriage?” But alas, they are committed to making it work the old-fashioned way: Men are men who hunt their meat, women are women who throw baby birthday parties, husbands and wives only kiss each other, and no one commits any felonies. Now that Joe is an animal, they can have great sex again; congratulations, you two. He knows she isn’t happy. He tells Love that she doesn’t need to tell him everything because “I trust you,” which is definitely a five-alarm fire, but Love just takes what she thinks is a win. I personally would be worried about ticks, but I guess MEN cannot get LYME DISEASE. VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! During a nighttime sprint through the woods with Cary, Joe is taunted into punching his leader in the face. Six months have passed since Love killed Natalie. Also, when I found out that they were angling to get Henry into the Ashman School — after ALL this hype about moving to Madre Linda for the excellent public schools — I lost my mind. Joe keeps telling himself he can live a life so dull and empty he doesn’t even bother jerking off in the shower anymore; he has also been struggling to stay hard for sex with Love, who no longer excites him because she is not committing and/or covering up a homicide. I write in my notes: “Okay, are these guys gonna fuck or … ?” But no, it’s just more like shirtless hunting. Later, Theo calls Love because he got picked up for a DUI for drunkenly riding an electric scooter (Don’t do that!! Whatever, anything to make Henry happy! Joe returns home a changed man. Naturally, when Joe goes to the library, where the lighting is soft and warm and he is safe in the embrace of hardcover books and the people who adore them, Marienne drags his hair for being “very Patrick Bateman meets Venetian gondola.” For totally normal reasons, Marienne needs Joe to pose for her and answer flirtatious questions about his favorite childhood literature so she can … draw a picture of something that isn’t Joe. Probably. She grabs him and kisses him, and then they have sex in the dirt. Joe’s douchey shellacked look for the family photo is also perfect styling-as-character work. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Again, I will say I am fascinated by how gender-normie the vibe is in this supposedly progressive place. But this is how Joe plans to “feed his inner beast.” Ew. Boy and girl have a romantic courtship and thrilling sexual escapades and commit a smattering of manslaughters. Tags: Just in case you aren’t connecting the dots here, we are treated to even more flashbacks to The Queen’s Gambit Tranquilizer Den for Separating the Weak From the Merely Abandoned. I think deep in her lizard brain, Love knows she needs to get rid of Joe to have sex with Theo. He has decided no keepsakes, no social media, only “watching.” Which is the worst of all three stalking options, no? A+ to the hair and makeup department this episode. But alas, the spark goes out of their relationship. Joe believes these men have “accepted his darkness” when, in fact, they did no such thing. So Joe gets roped into going on this all-male hunting trip, which is the only way for Joe to become a MAN again. She teaches him a lesson by … riding on the scooter with him because she’s never tried it before. Boy and girl have a baby, settle down, buy a house in the suburbs, kill ONE more person on purpose, and also one more person, but by accident, but still, and then they pinky swear: NO MORE MURDERING. That is an ILLNESS for GIRLS and BABIES who haven’t EMBRACED THEIR INNER BEASTS. It feels a bit retro for the setting, no?

With its tripartite structure — the picture is split into three sections, each showing the same series of events from a different perspective — and grim subject matter — it’s about the last sanctioned duel in France, a 1386 standoff between two men over a grisly accusation of rape — one may expect the film to be something distant, grave, challenging, complicated. It may at first seem like a Rashomon-style exercise in exploring the slippery nature of truth, but in fact it’s quite the opposite: Each of the three chapters begins with the words The truth according to … but they all basically tell the same story. To her, he’s a crude storm she must do everything to weather. Each has delivered his share of masterpieces, duds, and problematic cult favorites: Visionary Ridley gave us Blade Runner but also 1492: Conquest of Paradise and The Counselor, while Populist Ridley gave us Gladiator and Thelma & Louise but also G.I. The film first charts the dissolution of Jean and Jacques’s relationship over matters of money, rank, and jealousy. When he appoints Jacques to a high position, he playfully waves his hands in a mocking, abracadabra motion, right before the film cuts to a group of soldiers enacting an elaborate ritual for Jacques’s ascension. Jane and White Squall. The script was written by Affleck, Damon, and Nicole Holofcener, with the men handling the sections from the male point of view and Holofcener handling the female variation. This tension has run throughout the course of Scott’s career, and it’s one reason that approaching any new film from him is a wonderfully suspenseful ordeal. All this could easily have resulted in a slog. Thanks to Jacques’s devotion to Pierre, he gets the captainship Jean once felt was his birthright as well as the land promised to Jean in Marguerite’s dowry. The duel of the title is less a duel and more a vicious, metal-as-fuck trial by combat between Jean and Jacques — a spittle-flecked, grotesque orgy of hacking, slicing, and stabbing that’s alternately lumbering and frenetic. Which brings us to Scott’s latest effort, the medieval drama The Last Duel. We’re the ones watching, after all.) Marguerite, who briefly bonds at one point with Jacques over their shared love of medieval romance literature, doesn’t exactly feel as if she belongs in the 14th century. It’s not so much a history lesson as it is a savage, beautiful catharsis — a bonfire of the bros. Matt Damon in The Last Duel. This performance is not a joke: Affleck’s dismissiveness underlines the empty, corrupt gestures that lie at the heart of the rules, rituals, and traditions to which Damon’s and Driver’s characters — and societies in general — have wedded themselves. But somehow it turns out to be Scott’s most entertaining movie in decades. And then there’s Affleck’s wonderfully skeezy Pierre, a marvelously out-there creation who shouldn’t work at all and yet becomes an engine of uneasy delights. “He’s no fucking fun,” Pierre declares of Jean, a line that should be a throwaway bit of levity but that Affleck delivers with such debauched, motormouth aplomb that as soon as he says it, we understand Damon’s Jean de Carrouges is never, ever, ever going to get what he wants from this entitled mollusk of a man. Meanwhile, the seesawing friendship between Jean and Jacques feels not like the tangled, alien relationship of two men who lived and fought 600+ years ago but like something closer to the emo fallout of a modern-day bromance undone by unspeakable breh-trayal. An irate Jean takes the complaint all the way to King Charles (Alex Lawther). Movies that repeat multiple scenes from different perspectives can become tedious really quickly. And in truth, Scott hasn’t always been the most confident of storytellers. More Movie Reviews

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Tags: Jean’s rage at the rape accusation, viewed by him as a matter of principle, is revealed in Marguerite’s eyes to be fueled as much by fury at her for putting him in this situation. Affleck isn’t just showing off here. A brave, impulsive charge into a group of murderous soldiers in Jean’s telling is revealed in Jacques’s to be a dumb stumble into an enemy trap. You never know if you’ll leave the theater enthralled, excited, bored, or utterly perplexed. His imperious performance is a sly messenger for the film’s moral vision, both hilarious and choke-on-your-laughs tragic. There’s Ridley the Visionary and then there’s Ridley the Populist. (And why the hell shouldn’t it? Alien is the work of both an art student with big ideas and a first-rate entertainer; Black Hawk Down is a rousing, Cubist war movie; and though Kingdom of Heaven’s theatrical cut is a pandering mess, its director’s cut is, amazingly, a sublime, thoughtful masterpiece. Even as it pretends to add complexity and context, it simplifies and focuses. Comer lends her an inner conflict that feels thoroughly relatable: She doesn’t want to rock the boat, but she has reached her limits. The Last Duel is full of incident and historical detail, and its universe is a complicated one — but it seems the script, by its very nature, has ingeniously done all the necessary underlining for us. Relatively little is known about the real-life events depicted here, which frees the film to animate this long-ago world with the sensibilities of our own. Tonal emphasis becomes everything as we go from one point of view to another, but the truth itself is rarely in doubt. The two do sometimes meet. It also reveals how the casual words and actions of the powerful lead to life-destroying consequences for those beneath them. He’s a master of mood and composition, but he tends to be at his best when working with narratives that have been stripped to their essentials. Is that even allowed when the subject matter is so disturbing? We see the labyrinthine series of incidents leading up to the duel from Jean’s perspective, then Jacques’s, then Marguerite’s. Pierre is so disdainful of everything (my favorite bit: Affleck pronounces the locality of Bellême as blahm) we can practically smell the contempt. The three characters at the heart of The Last Duel are Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), a French nobleman known for his loyalty, bravery, and ferocity; his wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer), the beautiful daughter of a disgraced nobleman, whom Jean marries partly in an effort to alleviate his crippling financial burdens; and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), Jean’s comrade in arms, a squire who rises precipitously in the ranks at Jean’s expense when he becomes a confidant and enforcer of their lord, Count Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck), a hedonistic, shallow dandy. Photo: 20th Century Fox

There are two Ridley Scotts. Damon brings to Jean the dim, burly solidity he has mastered in his middle-age: From one angle, he’s a steadfast, reliable soldier; from another, he’s so dull and hard that he’s thoroughly unaware of the world or others in it. To him, she’s not so much a wife as a piece of property that dares, inconveniently, to have a mind and a soul. An outraged Jean repeatedly raises a stink to their lord about the fact that his former friend is getting all the things that were once rightfully his, which of course puts him in further disfavor with the sniveling Pierre. Everything comes to a head, however, when Marguerite accuses Jacques of raping her while Jean was away hunting down his payment for battle. What does shift is the emotional valence of the scenes. In Jacques’s version of the events, we see him trying to defend the broke, not-very-bright Jean to his callow lord, Pierre, but what Jacques thinks are scraps that Jean should be happy with are seen by Jean as insults to his unquestioning loyalty. What we’re watching isn’t a deconstruction. It’s a denunciation, a damnation, and just about all the men are going down.

In a statement to Vulture, a Netflix representative confirmed that the employee, who apparently revealed the cost of the special and Chappelle’s salary to Bloomberg, was let go due to “sharing confidential, commercially sensitive information” outside of the company. “Some people find the art of stand-up to be mean-spirited but our members enjoy it, and it’s an important part of our content offering.” Sarandos proceeded to double down on his stance in an October 13 corporate memo, adding that “as a leadership team, we do not believe that The Closer is intended to incite hatred or violence against anyone.” Chappelle has yet to comment on anything. This criticism has also boiled over to internal unrest within Netflix, with co-CEO Ted Sarandos being forced to defend The Closer in two memos to staffers after trans employees threatened to stage a walkout. (Netflix reportedly paid $24.1 million for The Closer, compared to, say, the $3.9 million spent on Bo Burnham’s Inside.) “We understand this employee may have been motivated by disappointment and hurt with Netflix,” the statement read, “but maintaining a culture of trust and transparency is core to our company.”

However, in a separate interview given to The Verge, the former employee — who remained anonymous due to fear of online harassment, but was identified by the outlet as Black, pregnant, and a leader of Netflix’s trans employee resource group — disputed the merits of the dismissal. “All these white people are going around talking to the press and speaking publicly on Twitter and the only person who gets fired is the Black person who was quiet the entire time,” the employee said. “That’s absurd, and just further shows that Black trans people are the ones being targeted in this conversation.”

Since The Closer’s premiere on October 5, Chappelle has received widespread criticism — often from his fans — for the transphobic comments he makes in the special. “I recognize, however, that distinguishing between commentary and harm is hard, especially with stand-up comedy which exists to push boundaries,” he wrote on October 11. Photo: Shareif Ziyadat/WireImage

Amid the ongoing controversies surrounding Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix comedy special The Closer, the streaming giant announced today that it has fired an employee for allegedly leaking metrics information to the press. Related

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Her soldier would explore deserted maps, arming bombs and rescuing hostages with no threat of a firefight on the horizon. Today, he has at his fingertips free engines like Unreal, Unity, and Godot, which completely lap what used to be on the market. Scroll through Itch.io’s “horror” tag and you’ll find hundreds of fuzzy nightmares begging for your attention. But as the age bracket has shifted, the N64 inherited that prime, wistful terrain. In the mid-aughts, small studios cranked out countless side-scrolling 2-D platformers like Super Meat Boy and Braid, which fit perfectly within the Super Nintendo canon those designers grew up on. Related

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Tags: “Developers are no longer limited to the confines of a console; these programs live inside your computer now,” he adds. As you venture through its queasy, minimalist, polygonal universe — rooms composed of pixelated jpeg-y viscera or blurry Funko Pop dolls — there is never a moment when the graphical fidelity convinces you you’re doing anything other than clicking things on a screen. I would proudly wander into media that aimed to scare me; I had battled countless zombies, ghouls, and vampires in games like Castlevania and Doom throughout my youth. The title screen is bordered by gnarled pink flesh while the camera pans around a bland, untextured stretch of asphalt. Anyone who has wandered through the abandoned capital cities of World of Warcraft or EverQuest knows what it’s like to witness the gradual decay of a place where thousands of players used to congregate, now forsaken on unmanned servers and whirring away in perpetuity like a numbers station. “It makes the whole thing feel more unpredictable in a way that a $100 million, focus-tested product can never be.”

Kallio isn’t the only designer who has gotten that memo. “It might be hard to master, but it’s a pretty accessible style for game devs to get into. Photo: Clockwise from top left: Steam, Puppet Combo, Haunted PS1, Steam

The Nintendo 64 had a weird quirk with its game cartridges. A body sits in the driver’s seat with half its head missing as the name “Cruelty Squad,” filtered through sickly Microsoft WordArt, floats in a starless sky. “It’s stuck with me ever since.”

Clearly, Hughes had a Pokémon Snap moment just like me, when the trip wire is snapped and we briefly sense an overwhelming menace emanating from the unknowable guts of the machine in front of us. Take Paratopic, a horrible Lynchian nightmare that unfurls a gothic American expanse through the blurry, static prism of Windows 98. But I didn’t know about any of those inefficiencies when I was 8 years old in 1999, deep into a summerlong love affair with Pokémon Snap. A car — equally low res — looks as though it was brutally sculpted out of gummy brown 3-D-modeling presets. Or Power Drill Massacre, a pure slasher pastiche that somehow manages to squeeze out the most intense jump scares on the market with about four different texture sets. But the idea of an unseen vindictive force preying on me at my most vulnerable — as I took pictures of Pokémon in a peaceful breeze — shook me to my core. If you inserted one at the wrong angle — leaving it slightly tilted as it jutted out of the console — the software would boot up into a buggy, uncanny version of itself. Developers have spent the past few decades moving as far from those limitations as possible (just look at the work that went into The Last of Us, Part II’s Rat King), and yet the 64-bit void has grown ethereal and enchanted in our memories. Looking back, it’s clear what went wrong. A spartan haunted mansion — small enough to fit on a 64-megabyte cartridge — is much easier to create than, say, a battle-royal map. “Mushy and weird graphics leave more blank space for the player to project their own ideas and fears on,” Kallio says in an interview with Vulture. Cushing notes that 3-D game-making software has been democratized over the past decade. That makes sense when you consider the ebbs and flows of the indie-gaming contingent as a whole. As the name implies, Demo Disc is metatextual in its approach: We’re sitting in front of a TV, controller in hand, and something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. The other reason for the boom is more practical. That’s where lead designer Ville Kallio thrives. On one of those nights, I slapped the cartridge into the N64 and flipped on the power switch. We’re currently living through a golden age of indie-horror games that evoke the turgid late 1990s — the ugliest era in interactive media — when limited processing power squelched environmental scopes down to blocky primary colors, fingerless fists, and cityscapes drowned in fog to cut down the draw distance. You know for a fact that this game may be watching you, may be finding out things about you that you may not even be aware of,” says Aidan Cushing, a game designer and the communication director for the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc collective. Thematically, that narrative ties in with some of her own encounters with digital unease. The models don’t need to be rendered with that many polygons, so you don’t have to have that high a skill level in 3-D modeling, especially when making environments,” says Salem Hughes, one of the designers featured on the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc compilation. “More people are learning how to make games and flocking to this particular aesthetic because the bar for entry is so low. “I remember when the peak of hobbyist tech was something like GameMaker Studio, which only supported 2-D games at the time,” he says. The derangement never happened again (as far as I know, Pokémon Snap doesn’t contain any buried terrors), but I spent the rest of the year traumatized, bracing for impact every time I returned to the N64. Or he could take us back to the deliriousness of early 3-D when, with just a nudge of the cartridge, a console could turn evil. I think part of what is so exciting about this scene is that we are getting so many newcomers.”

Hughes’s game is called Agony of a Dying MMO. We fear it, we run from it, yet we can’t help but return to touch it over and over again. Sound cues would go awry, characters would fold into abominable polygonal masses, and colors would bleed into one another, rendering the content totally unplayable. My childhood is rendered in bad 3-D — and there was never a time in my life when video games were more capable of scaring me. Released this year by Finnish studio Consumer Softproducts, the first-person shooter has an aesthetic that is almost impossible to describe. “The vagueness of anticipating that anything could happen, in combination with the player’s inability to interpret what anything is supposed to be with 100 percent certainty, opens the mind to some deeply unsettling experiences.”

Cushing believes the low-res horror scene has thrived thanks to an ascendent generation of 20-somethings who possess a proud fondness for those grotesque, proto-3-D environments. The credits flickered onscreen, and suddenly a deep, demonic voice echoed from the forbidden pits of the sound card: “Pikachu.” I ran out of the room, terrified of whatever hell I’d just unleashed. Sure, he could render out a precise speckle of blood and guts, spending years polishing pockmarks on rotten flesh. Once again, the horror is self-contained within the context of a vengeful video game. We’re not facing off against an evil genius; we’re at the mercy of a feral video game. Horror games typically aim to transport the player from their computer; Amnesia and Resident Evil succeed when you’re white-knuckling it right alongside the protagonist. But Cruelty Squad takes a different tack entirely. This is perfect for amateurs who want to make low-res horror because, well, it’s low res. “The idea of a game being, well, haunted will change your perspective on anything created afterward. “There was something about the combination of primitive 3-D and not experiencing that space with another person and being completely alone that felt very wrong,” she says. I simply didn’t attach the game to the console correctly, which corrupted the code and briefly gave the amiable Pikachu the voice of an eldritch divinity. When Hughes was 10 years old, she used to join empty Counter-Strike matches from the family computer. I had forgotten all about that formative chill until I started playing Cruelty Squad. This was one of the primary reasons Nintendo lost ground to Sony’s PlayStation; CD-roms were more flexible and could store more data than those fabled gray tapes. But the best entry point into the niche is probably the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc project, which released a new edition this year and collects 25 different projects from designers eager to explore the eerie edges of the low-res frontier. Cushing has never needed to write a single line of code in Unreal, he says: The tools are just that streamlined. Hughes took that feeling — an uncanny dread known only to a select group of gamers — and forged a short myth. It was as if a ghost had possessed the console, removing the guardrails that had until then pacified the AI. The fear is hard to describe.

TMZ reports that during a rehearsal for his act on America’s Got Talent: Extreme, escape-artist stunt performer Jonathan Goodwin was sandwiched between two swinging cars that exploded upon impact, causing Goodwin to be airlifted into surgery at a trauma hospital. Photo: Trae Patton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via

Production has paused on a spinoff series of America’s Got Talent after a stuntman contestant was hospitalized due to an on-set accident. The series centered on daredevil stunts is slated to premiere midseason on NBC and is hosted by Terry Crews with judges Nikki Bella, Travis Pastrana, and Simon Cowell. Two cars were suspended on either side of him … swinging back-and-forth.” The stunt required Goodwin to free himself and safely land on an air mattress before the cars hit him, but the vehicles made impact and exploded, sending Goodwin falling to the ground, according to production sources. A man escapes from a flaming car in a 2015 audition for an early iteration of America’s Got Talent: Extreme. Goodwin had previously performed an elaborate escape stunt on America’s Got Talent in 2020, in which he had to escape from a contraption before being engulfed in flames. Related

Simon Cowell Breaks His Back From Electric Bike Crash

Tags: Our thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family as we await further updates on his condition,” an America’s Got Talent spokesperson told Deadline. According to sources on set of the production, “Goodwin was suspended 70 feet in the air in a straitjacket hanging by his feet from a wire. “He was responsive and was immediately taken to the hospital, where he is continuing to receive medical care.

The Lennon from last summer is all mischievous grins and lascivious dancing with none of the apparent world-weariness of the Lennon we have seen so far. I suppose the most obvious conclusion is that Lennon herself is still alive somehow and she’s the one sending the ominous messages. Allison, meanwhile, is the fuck-up because she isn’t going to college in the fall. She seems to think she’s hot shit, especially compared with her identical twin sister, Allison, who’s conspicuously absent from the present-day timeline besides some family photos. Lennon became their father’s favorite in Allison’s eyes, and in a deeply misguided effort to help her move on, Lennon tells Allison that their mom didn’t love her, that moping around is a waste of time. It makes for a solid beginning if, occasionally, a tonally confusing one. Iseman makes it easy to tell the twins apart even when they’re dressed and styled exactly the same. It all starts at a graduation-night rager hosted by Lennon’s rich, social-media-obsessed friend Margot. But the series doesn’t treat death with the perverse glee of a cheesy ’90s hit — at least not yet. And she’s particularly impressive in the second half of the episode: You can see it in Allison’s eyes and body language when she totally shuts down, unable to process what she just did. Madison Iseman’s performance as the sisters is the most crucial element in all of this, the element that makes this show pretty watchable out of the gate. It was particularly tasteless to Duncan, whose own teenage daughter was killed in 1989. While the episode moves at a pretty good pace — fast but patient enough to introduce some character dynamics before rushing to the mayhem — it sometimes skips some steps in a rush to establish the underlying conflicts. You’re the worst fucking person I’ve ever met.”

And that’s before Lennon decides to play directly into her sister’s perception of her and fuck Allison’s crush herself, right when Allison was planning to make a move. • The other most promising lead: A mysterious woman watches them from afar at the cave. There’s a lot of inelegant exposition and lots of buzzword dropping and exaggerated slang. She seems to delete it with no problem, but could it come back to bite her? But most of “It’s Thursday” is devoted, wisely, to depicting the events of last summer. I’m less familiar with the book, but I’m reading it now so it’ll be interesting to see if the show takes any cues. There’s something disturbingly real about the panicked flurry of conversation and strategizing between the friends while Allison just sits quietly on the side of the road. But the aftermath of Lennon’s death has some pathos because of Iseman and because the show conveys the full gravity of just how traumatic this situation would be. Some Other Stuff They Did Last Summer

• Okay, so in retrospect, the opening shot seems to be from the point of view of Lennon’s body in the water of the cave (or somebody’s body). The relationship between Allison and Lennon may not be as nuanced or even as coherent as it should be at this point — hopefully, some flashbacks will show us the bond they used to have, or at least show where the cracks started to form. • When it comes to little human interactions, my favorite so far is Dylan assuring Allison, “I’m gonna pay attention this time,” on his second attempt to pour a shot. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. That leads to the second argument, which we see parceled out through the rest of the episode. She barely has any time to spend with her dad before she finds the titular note scrawled in blood on her closet door. • The “fuck, marry, kill” conversation is an awkward attempt at writing banter, especially because I’ve never seen the game played that way. VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! We’re slowly introduced to the other characters in Lennon’s friend group: Johnny, Margot’s chill and supportive GBF who actually pays attention to Allison; Dylan, the classic neurotic introvert and Allison’s crush; and Riley, Dylan’s friend who deals drugs. There’s a lot of muffled screaming and gasping. It’s Allison who goes off to Michigan for college and Allison who comes back a year later to the site of the most traumatizing event of her life. What do we think this means? But Iseman doesn’t resort to endless blank-eyed coldness and monotone; she lets us see the gears turn as Allison pushes slowly through her daze, trying to force herself to understand her circumstances. The last words Allison says to her twin sister are “Fuck you.”

This leads to our biggest twist: It’s Allison, not Lennon, who drives off with Dylan, Riley, Johnny, and Margot. I Know What You Did Last Summer
It’s Thursday

Season 1

Episode 1

Editor’s Rating

3 stars

***

Photo: Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video

When Lois Duncan watched the 1997 film adaptation of her 1973 novel I Know What You Did Last Summer, she hated it. Email

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Terms of Service apply. Tags: Here’s where we get our first real taste of the show’s teen dialogue, and the results are … mixed. • A jock named Dale sees the group stopped on the road the night of the accident. And so the title and the message “I know what you did last summer” gain a fascinating new angle: The you is plural, referring to the teens who covered up the manslaughter, but it’s also singular, referring to Allison, who not only hit and killed her sister but stole her identity. What started as a teen melodrama and thriller had become a violent slasher flick reveling in the gruesome murders of teens by a fisherman with a hook. This episode begins by establishing our updated setting: present-day Wai Huna, Hawaii, where Lennon Grant has returned home for the first time after her freshman year at the University of Michigan (Go Blue!). You guessed it, folks: Someone knows what Lennon did last summer. • An interesting wrinkle: Margot was posting an Instagram Story when they crashed. Then later, Riley thinks she hears breathing in the cave. We learn that after their mother’s suicide ten years prior, Lennon barreled ahead with her life, while Allison couldn’t ignore the past. As far as I’m concerned, the stretch when the thing happens is the best part of “It’s Thursday.” The initial moment itself is effectively shocking, and long periods of stunned silence convey the sheer horror of what’s happening, the retreat into denial. The first of two explosive arguments between Lennon and Allison, for example, begins with Lennon advising her sister on how to seduce Dylan, then escalates wildly and unbelievably, ending with Allison saying, “Fuck you. Duncan would probably disapprove of the new TV version of I Know What You Did Last Summer, which seems to promise more teen murdering. He serves the role Max did in the movie, which means I’d be surprised if he didn’t die in these first four episodes. I’m coming to this as someone who’s familiar with the movie (and generally enjoys it for what it is). • Intertextual Teen-Show Alert: Margot calls Dylan cute “in a Dan Humphrey kind of way.”

• Welcome! We’ll return to this scene at the end of the episode and get a nice glimpse of the horrifying goat head that accompanies the note. Are these some of the voices of the cult members who committed suicide there? Margot, though captured energetically by Brianne Tju, particularly resembles a Gen-Z stereotype so far, speaking like a cross between Cheryl Blossom from Riverdale and Julien Calloway from neo–Gossip Girl. You’re nothing. “As the mother of a murdered child, I don’t find violent death something to squeal and giggle about,” she said. Between the two, even though Lennon has a mental illness and a drug problem she’s ignoring, she’s perceived as the sunny golden child. It’s Allison, not Lennon, who accidentally hits and kills her twin sister (Lennon, not Allison). It’s a wicked twist on the premise of the original book and movie and one that seems promising if the show can figure out how to keep its tone consistent. I’m not sure how supernatural we’re getting with it. Showrunner Sara Goodman seems to split the difference between spooky, violent Halloween fun and serious psychological drama.

In other burgeoning-relationship news, Marienne caught Joe stealing a $2,500 book, and for some reason she has concluded that he must have grown up in a mansion where he used rare books as coasters. Her idea: Frame Gil for Natalie’s murder by making it seem like they had an affair, Gil killed Natalie, and then committed suicide at home because he couldn’t take the guilt (and explain it all in a comically overwritten suicide note typed up by Joe). Glamma gives Love the number for their family PI, whom Love will deploy to look into Gil, much to Joe’s frustration. She smacks his hand away and tells him not to do that. (Also, it’s weird that the police haven’t gotten a search warrant for the bakery, right?) Later, Love tells Joe she is scared he’ll hate her forever “if we don’t deal with it [the man we are holding hostage] the right way [without murdering him],” and I’m like, Well, yeah, if you keep committing homicides probably that will affect how your husband sees you!! The detectives put together all the pieces Joe and Love left for them. Sorry, but that’s boring. I mean, what are the odds that the Quinn-Goldbergs just got to town and all of a sudden Natalie is dead and the bakery is the last place she was seen alive? It’s a perfect closed loop. Then she has a PLAN, which Joe executes while she and Theo traipse through the woods, and she sneakily plants the murder weapon — which now has Gil’s fingerprints on it — in the dirt. — which means all the neighbors will be prowling through the woods where Natalie was buried and exhumed. Of course, there is no way Gil will make it out of this situation alive because once you’ve entered the plexiglass prison, there’s only one exit (death). (Also, I know the original Will Bettelheim lived to keep his mouth shut, but he was already basically living on the lam and had no legitimacy with which to report to the police that Joe was dangerous.)

But Joe and Love twist themselves into knots about the right thing to do, now that they’ve already done about 10 million wrong things. Progress, baby! Personally, it would make sense if Gil figured out that Joe and Love must have killed Natalie. It wouldn’t matter, except a show like You needs stuff like this to make sense so it can get away with all the delicious, bonkers, off-the-rails plot twists. Two bodies, one story. I wonder if the long game is for Ellie to come back and kill Joe? Theo kisses Love. It would be way more interesting if they found credible dirt on Gil and released him, only to have to constantly worry if not-so-saintly Gil could turn on them at any moment. The one “bad” thing he has done (more on that in a minute) is something he didn’t even do and wasn’t aware of until Love and Joe revealed it to him. The season is still so young. But at least for as long as this episode lasts, it gets the job done. Unfortunately for Joe and Love, Gil is a saint. Her husband, who, as she has complained, barely even looks at her since their son was born? Love announces that her mom is taking Henry tomorrow, and I write in my notes, “Did she not JUST scream at her mom to get the hell out of her life forever??” But I guess we’re just letting that go! And was she always this crazy, or did Joe bring out the crazy in her? Just briefly setting aside the part in which Joe has also done his share of homicides. Boring! It dawns on Gil that he is dealing with real-deal sociopaths, but even then, he cannot offer up anything to save himself. (He declines a croissant because he can’t exercise it off?? Is Love even more batshit than Joe? It seems like they wouldn’t linger on it so much if it weren’t going to pay off later. Love assures Joe, “Hey, this is not our fault. Ground their dislike in something real! Tags: Theo packs his car up to head back to school. GIL.) There is also a lot of Gil saying that all you can do as a parent is keep your kids healthy and safe, and I write in all caps in my notes, “GIL, YOU DID NOT VACCINATE YOUR FUCKING KIDS.” 

Love tells Joe that, well, they gave it a LOT of thought (24 hours) and have no choice but to do a homicide: “We didn’t want to do this. It’s a real pots-and-kettles situation over there, where all the pots are corpses. More fuckable to WHOM? VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! And we all know how good Joe is at stopping himself from thinking about a woman. TOO perfect, you might say. Plus Gil experiences their violence and human aquarium firsthand?! We did this to protect our family.” Ooookay, buddy. Email

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Terms of Service apply. Joe knows he canNOT let himself think about how she is flirting with him. So this enemies-to-lovers thing isn’t working for me. So we know he’s going to do that again. If these fundamental interactions make someone really paying attention go, Wait … what?, then none of the crazier parts of the show will fly. Terms & Privacy Notice
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Concerned citizen Sherry is hosting a community search for Natalie — the Search Party alum is throwing a search party! Joe takes over Gil’s reading spot at the library. Love overhears Theo shouting at his stepdad that he doesn’t want to go because everything and everyone is FAKE, and Sherry thinks Matthew is the killer anyway. HE did this.” Oh, man. I mean, there’s plenty not to like about the guy. She briefly loses Theo’s friendship but, of course, wins it back because she is the only person in this godforsaken town who gets him. What’s weird is that Theo asks if “terrible family tragedy makes people more fuckable,” and Love says, “In my experience, yes.” But she was already with Joe and pregnant when Forty was killed — and Forty’s death is the “terrible family tragedy” she has been through that Theo knows about. Please share your takes in the comments; I am v curious to hear your thoughts.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. But Love convinces Theo that the optics-wise thing to do is go and promises to go with him. I wonder when! Before Joe and Love can tell Gil to leave town, they return to the box to find Gil hanged himself. Anyway, Joe has to return the books, so Ellie will rely on her own resources this month. Love taunts Gil with the intel from the PI, which is sort of an Operation Varsity Blues thing that also involves Gil’s son assaulting multiple women. At the search party, Theo explodes on Sherry after he overhears her describing Matthew as “an unfeeling robot.” Love intervenes to stay on Sherry’s good side, pretending to make sure she’s okay. They kill people, but they don’t want to be “the kind of people who kill people.”

Joe attempts to negotiate with Gil — Hey, let’s keep this assault-and-kidnapping situation between us friends, you know? Gil has failed to grasp the danger he is in. (It’s all very You to have sexual violence against women we never meet be used as a plot device for male characters we spend a lot of time with … not a fan!) Gil doesn’t even know the extent of the scamming and cover-up, and this revelation about his son devastates him. You
Hands Across Madre Linda

Season 3

Episode 4

Editor’s Rating

3 stars

***

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Photo: Netflix

Joe is so proud of his wife for managing to hear upsetting information from a near stranger and respond with blunt-force trauma that only renders this man temporarily unconscious and not 100 percent dead. Gil responds by launching into his anti-vaxxer rant and how Henry’s immunity is really “beneficial,” so didn’t he do the kid a favor? So how would she know that she was “more fuckable”? Marienne toys with her necklace while she talks to Joe and recommends the extremely on the nose David Copperfield as his next read. Joe can tell Gil won’t let bygones be bygones, so he and Love must go out into the world and find some damning secret they can hold against fair Gil to keep him quiet. Do you think that little hole in the fence is going to be a problem for Joe and Love moving forward? The question is, How will this Padre Linda meet his maker? Again, WE know Joe is a scumbag, but Marienne has no reason to believe Joe grew up wealthy or any better off than she did; she knows nothing about him except that he has a baby and likes books! And upon that realization, Joe and Love decide they have no recourse but to off this guy. Instead, we get some convoluted non-plot laced with red herrings as Gil fails to understand the severity of his situation. This would naturally present the “she has become the thing she hated” problem, but her life is already pretty fucked. Oh, Joe. (At least that’s this recapper’s opinion! I do find it hilarious how quickly Love “I’m NOT impulsive?!” Quinn fast-tracks to, “Welp, guess we better murder this schmuck.” Joe snarls at Love that she will NOT make him kill ANYONE. Love realizes she needs to go to the search party while Joe takes care of Gil.