is a show that gives viewers lots to consider and contemplate, and at the center of all of it is Rhea Seehorn's deft portrayal of Carol. Celebrated for her role as Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul, Seehorn is an actress with astounding range and emotional depth - even a minute widening of her eyes or a twitch of her lip can convey volumes - and it's easy to see why Pluribus creator Vince Gilligan wrote this role specifically for her.
But "Bahdl Harmon Birthplace (Disputed)" is the strongest episode yet - arguably the first to truly prioritize the central character study of Ron Trosper - and backstory is a big part of that. Credit the script by former SNL co-head writer and The Other Two co-creator Sarah Schneider, who deploys flashbacks to perfect use and delivers an absolute wallop of an ending.
In " Down Cemetery Road," Ruth Wilson looks like a frog. It's just in the first shot, when Wilson's character, Sarah Tucker, examines a priceless piece of art, as art conservationists tend to do. But director Natalie Bailey introduces her co-lead head-on: The extended magnifying glasses hang a few inches in front of her face, and the audience peers back at her baby-blue eyes as they bulge disproportionately from her studious visage.
Saying yes to Witch (see Linda Ferguson's ArtsWatch review here) meant committing to a production calendar that would spirit cast and crew from first table read to opening night in less than a month, a process that Modica-Soloway calls "a beautiful, hard, lovely, gratitude-filled lift." With it came the opportunity for her to slip into the skin of the gruff, acerbic Elizabeth, whom she describes as "a Character, capital C."
But Jeffrey Manchester, the robber known as "Roofman," made headlines for being unusually polite when he executed his misdeeds. After he surprised McDonald's employees by dropping in through the roof-hence his nickname-and holding them at gunpoint, he gently reminded one of them to breathe while they collected cash. Before he locked them in the walk-in refrigerator, he made sure that they had coats to wear so they'd be comfortable in the cold.
I think of Tim Robinson's characters as existing on a spectrum. Yes, they're all prone to loud, sudden explosions of cartoonish rage or pain, and they're almost all anxious, insecure weirdos obsessed with proving they're in on the joke. But there's a big difference between the affable "chaotic good" Tim Cramblin from Detroiters and the procession of freaks Robinson plays on his sketch show, I Think You Should Leave.
James Mooney (Josh O'Connor) is a man without a plan. With his dim-witted accomplices, he stages a heist at a Massachusetts art gallery but is soon forced on the run when the law comes to call, followed by members of a local crime cartel. Kelly Reichardt's film is a whipsmart and subversive take on the all-American crime caper, with shades of Sidney Lumet in the funny and nail-bitingly tense first half especially.
On The Lowdown, the action picks up where it left off last week, and characters drift in and out of Lee's story, freed from the burden of an arc. The looseness (so far) works for me, because Lee Raybon's fast days don't end. His misadventures crash into one another. His problems accumulate. His arc is crescendoing chaos. The looseness also mirrors something rare and powerful about Lee himself: how he authors his own fate, sets his own hectic pace, never checks a calendar.
He sniffs around Tulsa, Oklahoma, digs through people's trash, repeatedly makes a mess of things and mostly gets hostile responses from the people who have the misfortune of crossing paths with him (pretty much the world a raccoon lives in). But, every so often, someone will find Lee adorable or sympathetic enough that they just might lend him a helping hand, or even take him to bed with them.
In Mare of Easttown, the previous Delaware County-set series that Brad Ingelsby made for HBO, solving crimes was women's work: Kate Winslet's blowsy, grimacing turn as a detective in a Philly exurb was thrilling to watch not just for her flattened vowels and bone-deep sighs but for her character's authority. Looking more exhausted than any TV character in recent memory, Mare investigated murders, raised her grandson, and presided over her community with questionable ethics but unfailing care.
It wasn't yet another national media story telling Portland about itself, but rather a book review-of a novel, no less. Portlander Willy Vlautin's The Night Always Comes rendered the city's cost-of-living crisis through one woman's torment. Somehow, the book knit a lifelike portrait of systemic injustice into a quick, violent crime drama that careens through a single, momentous night-escorts, guns, cocaine, and a stolen Mercedes-without selling out its characters or its city.
