Yet Jeb Stuart’s “Vikings” spin-off series still tortures actual timelines like a zealous Christian convert would an obstinate pagan. The “Die Hard” writer’s team slams together famous, 11th Century personages who may have met in melodramatic ways that they certainly did not. The show piles up coincidences, hair’s breadth escapes and heroic showdowns so Hollywood phony, it makes you long for the relative realism of a White Walker attack.

Overall though, “Valhalla’s” imaginative interpretation of ultra-interesting history is clever and reliably rousing. Each episode should motivate the curious to learn the truth about the events and people depicted here. The non-do-your-own-research crowd will be more than satisfied by all the political intrigues, family resentments, pageantry and bloodlust on display, even if the bigger battles are marred by jittery step-printing. With at least four, far-flung plotlines going at any given hour, the narrative never drags, nor hangs around anyplace long enough to get too stupid.

Set seven years after the events of Season 2, this eight-episode run opens up a new theater of operations in the Mediterranean, and does so with a bang. Now the respected leader of the Byzantine Empire’s formidable Varangian Guards, Norwegian Prince Harald Sigurdsson (Leo Suter) strategizes the best way to take Syracuse and kick the Saracens out of Sicily. He’s immensely aided by his best bud and traveling companion Leif Eriksson (Sam Corlett), who’s become the ultimate medieval autodidact while still rocking that Hot Jesus look.

We’re expected to believe that Leif invents the infamous incendiary weapon called Greek fire, a move he guiltily regrets when jealousy-fired Greek General Maniakes (Florian Munteanu) applies the compound to helpless civilians. After their triumphant return to Constantinople, Harald and the hissable Maniakes chart a sneaky, gory collision course, while the troubled Leif decides to sail west — way west, ultimately, with a dream of setting foot on the American landmass the Greenlander once glimpsed as a child.

But first, Leif wants to know what’s happened to his sister. A lot, as it turns out. Fightin’ shield maiden Freydís Eiríksdóttir (Frida Gustavsson) is now high priestess and leader of Jomsborg, the last unchristianized European Viking colony. She’s also the fiercely protective mother of a son Harald doesn’t know he shares with her, is always getting captured and escaping, and wants to lead her people to that genuinely green land her brother told her about when they were kids. Their dad, Erik the Red (Goran Višnjić), is not crazy about that idea.

Meanwhile, in Rome, Canute the Great (Bradley Freegard), ruler of the Denmark/England/Norway North Sea Empire and none too thrilled about renouncing his Asgard-worshipping ways for political purposes, is conducting amusing, decidedly not pious negotiations with a corrupt Vatican. His second wife, England’s Norman Queen Emma (Laura Berlin), and her Machiavellian Saxon advisor Earl Godwin (David Oakes) — both multi-dimensional in their quietly calculating ways — lend their unparalleled skills to the papal intrigues. Visits to Normandy, Denmark and London follow, where assorted nasty youths destined to claim English and Norse crowns are introduced. By season’s climax most of the surviving players end up in Kattegat, the series’ fictional Norwegian capital.

These include younger versions of Harald Hardrada, Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror (a toddler Harold Godwinson can be spotted too). They’ll all become key figures in 1066, the year both the Viking Age and Anglo-Saxon rule in England end and everyone’s French cousins take over. But that’s decades away — not sure how long exactly, considering those mutilated timelines — from where this run of “Valhalla” ends. This is the series’ final season, which is more disappointing than for most shows Netflix pulls the plug on too soon. Perhaps a third series could show us the history-altering battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings — but Leif and Freydis still need to find Newfoundland, goddammit!

Forgive the profanity, but “Valhalla’s” increasingly sophisticated examination of religion this season is its smartest thematic element, and dare I say inspirational in the way it distinguishes this show from the plague of Middle Ages sword-swingers out there. While earlier seasons emphasized fanatic, cross-wearing barbarians, this round digs into how the power of the Church was wielded as an instrument of control and consolidation. For all the radiant charisma and strength of character Gustavsson brings to Freydis, we know the monotheists’ might will overcome her Odin’s in the end (canonizing St. Olaf, whom Freydis slew last season, requires a pleasing bit of savage ingenuity). And while it can’t be said that Corlett totally sells Leif’s dual nature as man of science and unstoppable swashbuckler, he does convey the Catholic-curious hero’s nagging moral quandaries.

Since Munteanu plays Maniakes as pure evil in every conceivable way, it’s no surprise that the character is also the series’ number one Islamophobe. This is not a big part of the season, but it’s a noteworthy acknowledgement that some things have not changed to this day — and a reminder that, before the 11th Century’s end, the Crusades will be in full, ghastly swing.

So yeah, lots here for history buffs to drink in, despite the hangovers it may give sticklers. Language snobs may rightfully wince at clumsily written lines such as “Vikings are NEVER lost” and “Take these to the kitchen, there is much cooking to be done!” Yet “Valhalla’s” faults fade as one binges on through its eventful plot, impressive-enough locations (Ireland for the Northern climes, Croatia for the Mediterranean parts), and longboat-sinking, battleaxe bludgeoning action. I still don’t buy that drunk crows can set an imperial city on fire, but aside from things like that, I believe in “Valhalla” like Norse warriors had faith in their afterlife reward.

“Vikings: Valhalla” Season 3 premieres Thursday, July 11, on Netflix.

The post ‘Vikings: Valhalla’ Season 3 Review: Netflix Historical Drama Ends With Plenty of Unexplored Potential appeared first on TheWrap.

Jones tested herself a bit more as a leading lady in the Sofia Coppola movie “On the Rocks,” but her lower-key take on gilded-cage ennui wound up a comfortable fit for what was itself a lower-key Coppola picture of more modest moods and less spiritual distress. In the new Apple TV+ series “Sunny,” however, Jones must access a greater range of emotions — even when they’re supposed to be partially concealed. As Suzie, a woman living in near-future Japan whose husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and young son are presumed dead after a horrific plane crash, she needs to convey grief over that potential loss, anger at its unfairness, exasperation (bordering on disgust) at being stuck with her judgmental mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg), and a nagging suspicion that information is being kept from her, among other complexities.

It’s not necessarily that Jones lets “Sunny” down with her acting. All of those requisite emotions do come across — at times, almost too clearly. In a multifaceted show with a tricky tone, her directness should be a guiding light for the audience, but Jones seems to have trouble squaring those complicated, conflicting feelings with Suzie’s self-presentation, as well as making those inner conflicts surprising or counterintuitive. So instead she sticks to the surface: Scowling, swearing and occasionally sobbing. She’s not exactly overacting; it’s more like emotional exposition.

Some of this, of course, is really a problem in the writing of “Sunny.” It’s based on the novel “The Dark Manual” by Colin O’Sullivan, and some details (whether in the book or invented for the show) have been brought to life with great skill by series creator Katie Robbins and her staff. On paper, it seems like one of its most challenging elements would be Sunny (Joanna Sotomura), the advanced domestic robot that Masa leaves to Suzie. This wish confounds Suzy, given that she has always expressed revulsion at the concept, and throws her further as she realizes what a complex not-quite-person Sunny appears to be.

Roughly the height of a tween but with bulkier proportions, Sunny’s version of a robotic demeanor (at least as we initially see it) is less ultra-efficient automaton than slightly frantic people-pleaser with big cartoony eyes — which only makes her more unnerving (and funnier; it’s the rare original re-interpretation of the servile-robot dynamic). Both the visual effects and the personality are surprisingly believable as Sunny wears down Suzie’s resistance and becomes her sidekick of sorts — though she has to compete with bartender Mixxy (the singer-songwriter known as annie the clumsy), a new human friend Suzie meets (and maybe flirts with?) in the aftermath of her family’s disappearance.

The trio gets deeper into an investigation that involves hacked robots, secrets Masa kept from his wife, and possible business involving the Yakuza. Along the way, some of the quirkier details feel like the show is using its futuristic surface to get away with a bunch of tired isn’t-Japan-weird material. That might just come down to “Sunny” missing the mark when it’s aiming for dark comedy. For every intriguing plot turn or bit of clever irony, there’s a scene that really clangs, like a midseries police interview that’s played as comic absurdity but is actually just a bunch of unbelievable behavior. Suzie describes a missing robot without mentioning that she’s talking about a robot, then issues sarcastic quips that depend entirely on the police detective supplying information to fuel them.

“Sunny” often looks great, perpetuating Apple’s rep as a go-to streamer for well-appointed sci-fi. Its sense of design isn’t ostentatious; though some character dynamics recall Spielberg’s “A.I.,” it’s scaled closer to the smaller, more retro-futuristic style of Spike Jonze’s “Her.” But for much of its ten episodes, the show, like Suzie, is doing a lot — prickly, uneasy buddy comedy; big sci-fi ideas about artificial intelligence; messy grief drama; crime intrigue; amateur private-detective work – and not doing any of it especially well. It’s the kind of show that insists on having its lead character’s flaws conspicuously called out around the three-quarters mark, lest the audience misunderstand whether Suzie is meant to be a good person, and winds up coming across more like a lampshading of the show’s more unconvincing human elements.

A late-season backstory episode about the art of robotics programming is a welcome change of pace, yet has to carry so much weight in 37 minutes that it throws the material around it out of whack. The season as a whole is at once drawn-out and overstuffed. Like Jones, “Sunny” has admirable ambition – and doesn’t seem entirely prepared to follow it through.

“Sunny” premieres Wednesday, July 10, on Apple TV+.

The post ‘Sunny’ Review: Rashida Jones Stumbles Through Apple’s Overstuffed Sci-fi Dramedy appeared first on TheWrap.

It’s evident in the first few minutes of “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken” that this isn’t a typical concert documentary. A two-part docuseries that concentrates its energy on the pitfalls of drug addiction and the failed penal system revolving around rehabilitation, Etheridge speaks directly to the camera as she prepares for a monumental show at the aforementioned correctional facility. Beginning nine months before the concert, the “Come to My Window” legend explains her reasons for performing for prisoners, mainly due to her upbringing in Leavenworth, Kansas, a town famous for its own prison.

The only other landmark in Leavenworth? A guitar-shaped sign that greets visitors entering the town that reads, “The Hometown of Melissa Etheridge.”

But the underlying thread that connects Etheridge to the women housed in the Topeka Correctional Facility is the fact that she lost her son to a fentanyl overdose in 2020. Still dealing with the trauma of losing a child, the singer is determined to help those still struggling with addiction in any way she can. Collaborating with prison workers and five specific prisoners, Etheridge wants to give the incarcerated population the concert of a lifetime while vocalizing her support for changes to the system.

The courage and resilience of these women, who are striving to overcome their past and build a better future, is inspiration personified.

Interviews with prisoners about their experiences with drug addiction, and how they ended up in prison, highlight the earnest reasoning behind Melissa Etheridge’s intentions. Tugging at the heartstrings of an emotional journey that inspires Etheridge to draft a new song dedicated to the prisoners, the docuseries explores the fractured relationship between addiction and imprisonment. Discussions are presented of these women’s hopes and fears leading up to the debut of Etheridge’s new song, aptly referred to as “I’m Not Broken,” for most of the series.

The directing duo behind “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken,” Brian Morrow and Amy Scott, are keen to keep viewers guessing as to how Etheridge’s new song will sound. The docuseries is interspersed with scenes directly from the concert while taking viewers back to when the songwriter developed the song in her Los Angeles home. She interviews five incarcerated women who ultimately inspired her to write a melody filled to the brim with transcendence and healing, for a population of prisoners who haven’t connected with a performer in quite some time.

For many of these women, Melissa Etheridge is their first concert experience. That becomes apparent as we learn their fears for the future and the hope a singer like Etheridge brings to their confined existence. The docuseries brings to light many of the challenges they face while giving Etheridge a platform to stun an eager congregation with her sultry sound.

It’s a powerful reminder of the transformative power of music, offering hope and solace in even the most challenging circumstances.

Boy, does she ever! There aren’t a lot of performers quite like Melissa Etheridge in this day and age, especially considering the hurdles she’s had to overcome to get to this moment in her 63 years. Much of that isn’t explored via this series. Rather, the focus is squarely placed on Etheridge’s guilt and revelations of her son’s death during the opioid crisis, and how it relates to the difficulties these incarcerated women go through within their own drug addictions.

“Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken” lifts up a population of women forgotten by society and strives to tell an inspiring story filled with overcoming loss and human connection through music with others experiencing trauma and grief. The series shines a light on what many consider a failed penal system, using Etheridge as the seductive voice of reason. Though many aspects of that system aren’t necessarily repaired through her desire to affect change, the documentary does a fantastic job of traversing prisoners’ experiences using empathy and understanding set to the tune of Etheridge’s vocal genius.

Before the credits start rolling, viewers and the in-person audience are rewarded with Etheridge’s newest song, dedicated and inspired by her conversations with the five incarcerated women. The emotional impact of Etheridge’s new song, inspired by the stories of these women, is truly moving and underscores the power of music to connect and heal. If you weren’t familiar with Melissa Etheridge’s work and political activism before, this series will make a fan out of you.

“Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken” premieres Tuesday, July 9, on Paramount+.

The post ‘Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken’ Review: Rock Music and Drug Addiction Intersect in Moving Prison Docuseries appeared first on TheWrap.

Over three 40-ish minute episodes, “Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer” does nothing but tell, tell, tell. A necessary evil of the true crime docuseries form, so often marked by talking heads and case files and the like? To an extent, but superior versions of this type of series use a keener sense of “telling” to reveal and deepen. “Mastermind” feels content with superficial, Wikipedia-level summary told at an aggressively rushed, and therefore unmoving, pace.

Don’t get it twisted: none of this is an indictment of the docuseries’ subject, Dr. Ann Burgess. If you enjoyed Netflix’s fictional crime series “Mindhunter,” you will likely find an interest in Dr. Burgess, as Anna Torv’s character is based on her. Dr. Burgess, a psychiatric nurse and professor, was one of the, well, masterminds behind the psychological profiling of serial killers and rapists, helping federal agents capture and understand the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. She is obviously an important, underappreciated figure in the world of criminal justice, and it’s a noble goal of showrunner Dani Sloane (“The Truth About Jim”) and superstar executive producers Dakota and Elle Fanning to produce a shining, borderline hagiographic examination of her life, attempting to springboard it into a broadly persevering form of state-sanctioned feminism.

“Attempt” is, unfortunately, the key word, as most techniques and sections of the series leave viewers confused or even annoyed. Director Abby Fuller, who worked with Sloane on the influential docuseries “Chef’s Table,” transplants some of that series’ immaculate aestheticization into her visual language, changing aspect ratios, framing her talking heads in unorthodox compositions, and rendering reenactments with a sort of fetishization of “grimy crime stuff” that recalls the trailer for horror-thriller “Longlegs” more than a respectful engagement with real acts of violence.

But these oft-tasteless predilections do nothing to offset the constructive sloppiness present throughout the work; soundbites are clearly Frankensteined together, visual edits are noticeably jagged, B-roll is misleadingly disseminated to force inaccurate conclusions, and one particular piece of taped audio from an interview with a killer is used so many times that it becomes unintentionally, perversely comical.

These taped interviews with the most notorious of killers (think Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper) should be bone-chilling, stopping viewers in their tracks until Dr. Burgess and her filmmakers reveal the game-changing psychological expertise that led to such ripples within law enforcement. These revelations never come. Instead, we receive a stimulus — a section of a taped interview or talking head summarizing a criminal — followed immediately by a conclusion; Dr. Burgess saying she figured it out, or another talking head telling us she figured it out. What we’re missing are some crucial journalistic questions: what did she figure out, and how? By eliminating the operating sign from the math equations, the documentarians present some raw numbers and variables and tell us what it equals. It’s sloppy storytelling math, proof without proof.

At times, “Mastermind” doesn’t even deign itself to go through these lowest common denominator moves. Many times, it will compress numerous people or events into a fast-forwarded montage, audio and video colliding over each other into incomprehensible cacophony (except for that one friggin’ repeated serial killer soundbite). By increasing the tempo, “Mastermind” thinks it can get away with a lack of concrete detail by sheer force of momentum. It does not.

When the show slows down, in some second and third-episode passages, it can occasionally find insight and nuance. In particular, the use of archival television footage helps paint a picture of society’s ever-regressive patriarchal attitudes. Men, both on the street and hosting professional television news programs, categorize rape as something women eventually want. Men take public credit for the techniques cultivated by Dr. Burgess, rippling through the culture in such a way that even Dr. Burgess’ “Mindhunter” analogue is third-billed behind two men. And men lambast Dr. Burgess testifying that the infamous Menendez brothers were sexually abused, callously conflating “explanation” with “endorsement” — with even John Malkovich catching a stray for an icky piece of “Saturday Night Live” hosting!

These passages, if unhelpful in explaining how to think like Dr. Burgess, help explain why we need people like her — and that helps take some steps toward earning the series’ rah-rah ending moments. But they’re too few and far between. The primary mode of “Mastermind” is “Person With Passing Interest In Criminal Justice Hastily Explaining Something They Heard About At A Cocktail Party.” Dr. Burgess’ mind deserves more.

“Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer” premieres Thursday, July 11, on Hulu.

The post ‘Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer’ Review: Hulu Docuseries Flounders With Surface-Level Look Inside the Minds of Murderers appeared first on TheWrap.

Fast forward to the release of “That ‘90s Show” Part 2 on Thursday, June 27, and the series has finally found its groove. After Donna (Laura Preppon) drops Leia (Callie Haverda) off at her grandparents’ house for the summer, the original gang stays away. That means no awkward Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher cameos, or Wilmer Valderrama returning to remind us what a problematic character Fez was from the start. Instead, the show remains focused on the new crew and their problems.

It’s the typical teen fare you’d expect, with episodes ranging from breakups and makeups to pregnancy scares and shoplifting. The season picks up on the cliffhanger ending from Part 1, in which Leia and Nate (Maxwell Acee Donovan) almost kissed. From there, much of the new part revolves around Leia and Jay (Mace Coronel) and Nikki (Sam Morelos) and Nate trying to navigate their respective relationships.

There are teachable moments along the way and lessons to be learned from the kids’ growing pains, but most storylines scratch the surface in that “special episode” way that comedies of the ‘90s tended to do. The show never goes super deep, even when tackling issues like racism, relying instead on quick resolutions to keep the story moving.

Where Part 2 lingers is in the nostalgia, leaning into the feelings of the era and embracing the pop culture moments that defined the generation. There are field parties, recognizable stores at the mall and commercial parodies that instantly transport you back to the 1990s if you were around to experience it the first time around. These references will probably be lost on younger viewers, of course.

The best moments of nostalgia in “That ‘90s Show” Part 2 come via the dreamlike sequences that bring character fantasies to life, such as Lisa Loeb recreating her famous “Stay” video or Carmen Electra dancing around the Formans’ kitchen. Elsewhere, “Jay and Silent Bob” duo Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith stop by in a non-dreamlike sequence that’s worth a smile. It’s these moments of core memory unlocking that will keep those of a certain age tuned in, despite the weak acting and often weaker writing.

Like eating Fun Dip and Jolly Ranchers, the early Part 2 episodes often feel like empty-calorie viewing. You’re not moved or left fulfilled for having consumed them, but you’re pleasantly entertained and uplifted. An underlying layer of positivity keeps the show moving forward, anchored by Haverda and her sunny disposition. Red (Kurtwood Smith) and Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp) also help the pace as seasoned pros of this format, and their deliveries in the scenes with the kids help uplift the performances.

Toward the end of the episodes, the comedic timing improves and you can see the cast growing more comfortable with one another. Reyn Doi delivers several sarcastic zingers as Ozzie, while the brotherhood between Jay and Nate transitions into a loveable oaf status. That relationship is another ‘90s trope that’s layered into the season, and it works with this group of kids.

The girls get their chance to shine, too. Morelos has a big storyline as Nikki in Episode 7 that she manages to bring home, but it’s her musical, Jewel-inspired performance in Episode 8 that stands out. Elsewhere, Ashley Aufderheide’s Gwen gets a romance this season and a somewhat meaty race storyline. Unfortunately, the more poignant moments of that particular episode are lost in the scenes between Gwen and her mom, Sherri, played by an over-the-top, heavily accented Andrea Anders.

With so much time and development dedicated toward the new class, the returning characters that do appear this time around make sense and service the fulltime characters and their storylines.

Seth Green reprises the role of Donna-obsessed Mitch in a fun way, while Don Stark returns as Leia’s other grandfather, Bob. Seeing the Bob and Red characters interact again makes for some of the season’s better moments, and it’s fun to see these opposites forced into family situations — like when they team up to teach Leia to drive.

Of course, Tommy Chong also returns as Leo because what would “That ‘70s Show” or “That ‘90s Show” be without at least one appearance by Chong? But even his participation is minimal, and leads to the “big thing” the characters need to deal with in the Part 2 finale.

“That ‘90s Show” isn’t award-winning TV, but it’s never claimed to be. There’s a place for fun and easy comedies in this TV landscape too, especially when you want to unwind and be transported back to a simpler time.

“That ‘90s Show” premieres Thursday, June 27, on Netflix.

The post ‘That ‘90s Show’ Part 2 Review: Netflix Comedy Gets Better as It Embraces the Magic of Its Own Era appeared first on TheWrap.

Let’s get right to the point, chefs, since every second counts: “The Bear” Season 3 is just as well-performed and emotionally resonant as the first two. The show continues to excel in depicting the multi-faceted and anxiety-provoking experience of working in hospitality, with its charming ragtag cast of characters.

That said, this ten-episode season is slower in narrative pace than viewers might be used to, taking stock of its characters’ pasts and focusing on trauma reconciliation while setting up an uncertain future for the Michelin-aspiring restaurant — and an electric Season 4.

Episode 1 picks up shortly after the end of the second season: in the aftermath of Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) meltdown in the newly-launched restaurant’s walk-in freezer. The unconventional premiere skews toward the experimental side with a montage of flashbacks that trace Carmy’s bumpy road from high-end chef to taking over The Beef.

With very little dialogue, the Season 3 premiere serves as an appetizer of sorts, preparing us for the major threads to come: Specifically, Carmy processing the bullying he experienced by a chef in his training (played by Joel McHale). His trauma, apparent since Season 1, continues to impact his relationships, both romantic with Claire (Molly Gordon) and his business partnership with Syd (Ayo Edebiri). Though he gets a chance to confront his trauma head-on by season’s end, the damage may already be done.

The opening episode sets the tone for a season that is no longer running on the same adrenaline. With a reported two-season order filmed back-to-back, “The Bear” embraces a creative spaciousness that didn’t seem possible in previous seasons. There is still room for blood-pumping anxiety, most notably in a fantastic third episode that chronicles the growing pains of the restaurant’s first month of service. But most episodes feel simpler — to the extent that they could be considered filler (not necessarily pejoratively) if “The Bear” aired weekly.

Meanwhile, Syd begins to doubt the terms of the initially proposed equal partnership and struggles to connect with Carmy as an equal in their new venture (sparks of romance remain non-existent). Richie struggles to find the inspiration he garnered from his experience in “Forks,” as a gap in communication deepens between front and back of house in light of Carmy’s new list of non-negotiables for the restaurant, which include an entirely new menu every day.

As is now traditional for “The Bear,” the season boasts two excellent character-focused episodes. Episode 6 puts the spotlight on Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) during a never-ending job search after being laid off from an administrative position she held for 15 years, ending with her stumbling upon her job at The Beef. Edebiri makes her directorial debut in this moving, intimate character portrait that encapsulates the show’s distinct use of grounded realism.

The second, Episode 8, turns the gaze on Natalie (Abby Elliott) as she reconnects with her mother Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) while enduring the pains of labor. Though both episodes are easily the standouts of the season, they are still heavily focused on the past as Natalie heals from her mother’s estrangement and Tina gets a more defined backstory. Neither installment moves the plot of the restaurant forward — a major focus of the previous seasons.

In fact, most threads introduced to push the plot further are left unresolved by the end of Season 3: an impending restaurant review, Carmy’s potential reconciliation with Claire, Syd mulling over a job offer while not communicating her needs within Carmy’s authoritarian rule, and Uncle Jimmy’s (Oliver Platt) reticence to confront Carmy about the true state of his financial support of the restaurant.

Instead of resolution, the season ends with more flashback montages and a “to be continued” title card for the first time in the series’ run.

Focusing on the past does allow for many of Season 2’s fantastic guest star roster to return in meaningful ways. The way the guest cast is weaved into the narrative challenged initial criticism that casting so many A-listers leaned more gimmicky for a show that started out as a scrappy sleeper hit — a defining sign that “The Bear” had been fully adopted into the zeitgeist. The return of Chef Terry (Olivia Colman) and Chef Luca (Will Poulter) gives “The Bear” a sense of expansiveness while still feeling like an ode to Chicago.

In regards to the plot, perhaps creator Christopher Storer envisions Seasons 3 and 4 as one continuous story. For fans of the show, the slower, emotional pace may be a welcome breather from the expected sweaty kitchen stress-watch. The lighter episodes may even start to justify the show’s Emmy placement as a comedy (but let’s not get too crazy — it still skews drama).

“The Bear” may not have the same sense of intense urgency in Season 3, but it feels no less exciting to return to this textured world of culinary wonder with a cast that’s always worth watching.

“The Bear” Season 3 is now streaming on Hulu.

The post ‘The Bear’ Season 3 Review: A Calmer Appetizer for Chaos to Come appeared first on TheWrap.

But one nagging question hangs over the latest episodes of Amazon’s demented superhero series. Is there enough imagination left — on the planet, let alone in this particular writers room — to keep it up?

It feels like we’ve already seen every conceivable riff on the fascist agenda at the heart of the comic book genre and how it relates to corporate controlled, media addled, early 21st Century America. Homelander (Antony Starr), the chemically mutated Superman/Captain America/Donald Trump figure who heads the evil Vought conglomerate’s top-rated supergroup The Seven, has already ravaged and schemed to such horrific extents, isn’t it time he retired to some sort of Phantom Zone? How many more new members with conflicting loyalties can the title’s anti-Vought vigilantes cycle through before it all gets as repetitive as 1970s “Avengers” comics? Are there any more sexual kinks left for the show’s pervs to explore? Can the current event references keep pace with our mad reality, or on the other hand will they jump the shark?

Indeed, Season 4 can often feel like it’s reaching for more sickening violence, outré deviance and Republican talking points than there are left to grasp. Impressively, however, showrunner Eric Kripke’s creative team gives the expected stuff fresh, urgent spins, even if they can’t prevent some plot beats from seeming familiar. What’s key, though, is how we’re constantly surprised by new, deeper emotional dimensions for many of the main characters. There’s a contemplative quality to the personal dramas and, no, we’re not talking about the drug-laced enema, auto-human-centipede and coming to terms with one’s needy octopus girlfriend scenes.

If the season’s political allegory is broader and more obviously informed by every damn upheaval of the 2020s than before, well, this is the election year when the fate of our democracy will be decided, right? The power struggle metaphors play like something we’ve simultaneously earned, deserve and ought to appreciate in quivering awe.

Matters commence on Election Night, when self-closeting head-popper Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) becomes vice-president-elect. Boys’ battering ram Butcher (Karl Urban) wants to kill her before a supe becomes a heartbeat away from leading the free world, but he’s got bigger problems. The ex-CIA operative’s testing of powers-bestowing Compound V on himself has left Butcher with a deadly brain tumor, other weird things in his body and an angel and devil on either shoulder.

Homelander is all for Neuman ascending to power, even if her ambition can’t quite overcome her wariness of the psycho supe. To further his aims, Homelander adds a terrific new character to The Seven, Sister Sage (“Orange Is the New Black” alum Susan Heyward). “Just Sage,” says the Compound V-created Smartest Woman on Earth. “Smartest Person,” she corrects anyone who calls her the former — primarily Homelander, whose balls she loves busting because they both know he needs her brain to get what he wants. Simmering with Black female rage and exulting in her skill at … let’s call it 20-dimensional chess … Sage is always running her own agenda, could be good or could be evil, and even exploits her greatest (and hilarious) vulnerability for pleasure.

Plus, she’s naturally hostile to the other new Seven recruit, a Christian Nationalist who goes by Firecracker (Valorie Curry). Virtually every awful quality of Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert poured into a tight-fitting, star-spangled suit, Firecracker may not have much in the way of powers, but her gift for conspiracy-spinning makes her a rising star on the Fox-like Vought News Network. She’s also got bottomless hots for the uninterested Homelander and her own hate-boner against Annie January (Erin Moriarty).

For her part the former Starlight, who quit The Seven last season to join The Boys, is now losing her powers as she leads a popular opposition movement against the right wing supes complex. While other troubled Boys members Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) wrestle with their formidable past demons — and Laz Alonso’s Mother’s Milk, who replaces Butcher as the group’s official leader, struggles to assert authority — Annie’s arc this season transcends the others by reflecting Moriarty’s own, demoralizing struggles with reactionary trolls. And that’s just one reason why this may be the actress’ most devastating performance yet.

As for the show’s traumatized audience surrogate, Jack Quaid’s Hughie Campbell, his storyline is one of several steeped in this season’s parenting theme. The Campbells deal with a lot here, as do Neuman and a surprise father figure. But the real custody struggle is between Homelander — suddenly, ridiculously concerned about his legacy as he collects his graying pubic hairs in a jar — and Butcher over the soul of adolescent Ryan, whom both consider their son. Confused, petulant and sometimes wiser than any adult, Cameron Crovetti could not be more poignant as the first natural-born supe, whom Vought wants to exploit and Homelander tries to mold in his sociopathic image, while Butcher strives to preserve his mother’s decency (while also grooming Ryan to be The Boys’ ultimate weapon).

Additionally, just about everyone gets accused of being a pedo. The generational concept is also represented by elements from last year’s teen spin-off “Gen V,” which make their way onto the grownups’ stage in smart and scary ways.
Other running themes this season include the quest for forgiveness and need for love, possible balms in this shrieking, sundering universe that so grotesquely mirrors ours. They generate some lovely moments, but are hardly sustainable in the Vought world. Nice try though, Boys.

Don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to note that Season 4 climaxes on — when else? — January 6. Reversals fly fast and land hard as events spin in and out of control, while Kripke and company set up what looks to be an even stronger, already greenlit Season 5 in masterful fashion.

Let’s just hope that, after this November and maybe beyond, we’ll still be allowed to watch it.

“The Boys” premieres Thursday, June 13 on Prime Video.

The post ‘The Boys’ Season 4 Review: Amazon’s Demented Superhero Series Still Fires on Most Cylinders appeared first on TheWrap.

In the ever-crowded field of 21st-century prestige TV, it’s somewhat surprising that the good old-fashioned courtroom drama hasn’t made a grander comeback. The genre dominated film of the ‘80s and ‘90s thanks to the likes of John Grisham and Scott Turow, the latter of whom dominated the bestseller lists with “Presumed Innocent” in 1987. A movie adaptation starring Harrison Ford soon followed, a glossy sexy drama that felt like the natural stopgap between “The Pelican Brief” and “Basic Instinct.”

Apple’s new adaptation of Turow’s novel comes to us courtesy of David E. Kelley, a showrunner who can make a slick, propulsive courtroom series with his eyes closed (“Ally McBeal,” “Harry’s Law). Certainly, this one feels like classic Kelley, although it doesn’t quite reach the peaks of its genre counterparts.

This “Presumed Innocent” presents the murder as merely the foundation for a sleazier battle. Polhemus’ death, shown starkly in the pilot episode and baring an impossible-to-ignore resemblance to a sex crime, is viewed with surprising coldness by the camera and characters alike. The DA’s office is in the midst of a scathing electoral race between the failing old-school incumbent Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp, ever reliable and profanely appealing) and the scheming social climber Nico Della Guardia (O-T Fagbenle), who proudly uses Caroline’s death as campaign fodder. When Della Guardia’s right-hand man Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard, slimy and with the haircut to match) nitpicks Rusty’s case, it’s clear he’s doing it for his own benefit and not that of Caroline.

Rusty isn’t a knight in shining armor either. He’s as smarmy as his opponents and his own agenda is hardly virtuous. He whines to his therapist about how Caroline ferociously pursued their affair, and has a brief outburst when he admits he can’t stop thinking about her. As he becomes the defendant in the city’s case, any semblance of empathy he may have had quickly dissipates. If “Presumed Innocent” has anything going for it, it’s the willingness to let every single character in its vast ensemble (with almost every role played by a beloved character actor) be shamelessly mean. It does begin to wear thin as the series progresses but the commitment to this often off-putting brutality is something to behold. When the side of law and justice is as transparently nasty as the so-called bad guys, you cannot help but want the entire courtroom to sink into oblivion.

Jake Gyllenhaal is an actor forever torn between his handsome leading man facade and his inner weirdo character actor. While he’s long shown himself capable of traditional starring parts (the kind that the previous Rusty Sabich, Harrison Ford, made his bread and butter for decades), he’s at his most intriguing when he swings for the fences. In “Presumed Innocent”, he’s a simmering pot waiting to boil over; a morally conflicted man whose expensive suits barely hide the tight knots of his tension and paranoia over the case and his ties to Caroline. It gives Gyllenhaal a chance to play around in that space between classic and strange, halfway from Ford and Willem Dafoe. While Rusty is at times sympathetic, even pitiable, Gyllenhaal gets more room to flex when he’s at his most contemptible, whether it’s sparring with his brother-in-law Sarsgaard or avoiding the truth with his wife Barbara (Ruth Negga, thankfully given more to do than be the token disappointed spouse.) The way he talks about Caroline will make you want to scream. It does, however, stretch credulity to have Gyllenhaal as a frustrated middle-aged lawyer when he has a body that will not quit and is on frequent display for our pleasure.

Much of “Presumed Innocent” feels like a throwback, a near-retro revival of those courtroom stories that are more likely to be found on the bookshelves in 2024 than on TV. Certainly, Kelley seems in his element playing around with the tropes that he staked his claim on way back in the days of “L.A. Law.” Even the sexual details seem more familiar to the days of slick erotic thrillers from three decades past than for the Apple TV+ of now. There have been efforts made to modernize this fare. The cast is more diverse, the cinematography is straight out of the prestige TV handbook (meaning it’s more grimy and poorly lit than noir-esque), and everyone swears like a sailor on shore leave. Unlike its genre forebearers, or even the original film, this series is curiously distant. Everything is kept at an arm’s length. Even the steamy affair between Rusty and Caroline is shot with coldness. The real heat is in the courtroom itself, between men who want nothing more than to step on one another to get to the top of the ladder.

But there is a reason this genre endures, and “Presumed Innocent” is never less than enjoyable, even when it falters with maintaining its kinetic pace. There are plenty of twists and turns, and Gyllenhaal is a sturdy anchor holding it all together, aided by one of the more enviable casts on TV right now. Perhaps this is a genre we don’t need to modernize. It all holds up without the need to drag proceedings into the current age of prestige entertainment. Though it could stand to let itself be a tad looser.

“Presumed Innocent” premieres Wednesday, June 12, Apple TV+.

The post ‘Presumed Innocent’ Review: Jake Gyllenhaal’s Apple Adaptation Is a Snarky Take on the Harrison Ford Classic appeared first on TheWrap.

Season 2 picks up in the immediate aftermath of the first season finale, which saw the death of Queen Rhaenyra’s (Emma D’Arcy) son Luke at the hands of Prince Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell), the realm of Westeros is bracing for the impending Targaryen civil war. While the events of the finale painted Aemond’s role in the kinslaying — a cardinal taboo in Westeros — with shades of grey, the rest of the Seven Kingdoms doesn’t see eye-to-eye with his version of events. Thus, there’s a need to choose teams before all hell inevitably breaks loose.

As a quick refresher: There’s Team Black (those who believe Rhaenyra is the rightful heir to the throne), and Team Green (those who back King Aegon II’s claim).

If all of this sounds a little hard to track, well, welcome back to the dense world of George R.R. Martin. That said, the premiere does a good job of refreshing everyone on the stakes and players of this particular era of throne games. It’s a welcome, and perhaps the only, bit of respite in the season, as once a bit of table setting is established, showrunner Ryan Condal and his team send the series into the deep end by kicking off one event after another to stoke the (dragon) fires of war. Across the four episodes provided to critics for review, “House of the Dragon” quickly takes to the sky, and the season becomes a breathlessly exciting and gripping tale. Those who quibbled with the year-spanning gaps between episodes last time around will find none of that epic sprawl, as the events depicted across these episodes unfold over a few short weeks.

While hauntingly well-executed, part of the criticism leveled at the Season 1 finale was the feeling audiences hadn’t spent much time emotionally investing in the youngest generation of Greens and Blacks, making Luke’s death feel a little more inert. In Season 2, “House of the Dragon” does a much better job establishing both Rhaenyra and Alicent’s (Olivia Cooke) children. The immediate beneficiaries of this choice are the Green kids — Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), Aemond and Helaena (Phia Saban), who are much more involved in the early ongoings of the season as Aegon figures out how to rule and Aemond atones for his choices. It takes a bit more time to dive into the characterizations of Rhaenyra’s children, Jace (Harry Collett) and Baela (Bethany Antonia). Still, they take on active roles as the drums of war ring louder, allowing for much-needed development. There’s also a renewed focus on Mysaira (Sonoya Mizuno), who felt cast aside and wasted in the latter portions of the previous season.

Considering the air time needed to balance two generations across two families, “House of the Dragon” could easily fall into a rut of tunnel vision. Instead, there’s a welcome development as the series continually finds moments to orient the larger stakes around the daily lives of the Westeros working class. There are a handful of moments throughout these episodes where Condal and crew — including directors Clare Kilner and Geeta Vasant Patel, who return from Season 1, and “Game of Thrones” stalwart Alan Taylor — take a beat to show off the lives of the “smallfolk.” By going smaller, the world of “House of the Dragon” feels bigger and more live, especially when bolstered by what looks to be a significant upgrade in the show’s overall production budget; Kilner and Patel’s episodes, in particular, feel much more expansive, alive and vibrant, as the series finds new and exciting nooks and crannies around King’s Landing before expanding beyond the reach of the Iron Throne to locations new and old.

The show also manages to service the older cast, finding gripping arcs for all involved. In particular, D’Arcy and Cooke remain electric and magnetic to behold. Fabien Frankel finds new levels of bastardy in Ser Cirston Cole. Matt Smith’s Daemond remains unhinged, twinged with a sense of melancholy over his brother’s death. Rhys Ifans and Matthew Needham scheme and plot as Otto Hightower and Lord Lards, respectively. The one weak point is that of Lord Corlys (Steve Toussaint), whose arc takes a slight backseat in favor of fleshing out the children before heating back up just before the stretch of provided screeners ran out.

With so much history established between the Blacks and the Greens throughout last season, “House of the Dragon” soars even higher this time as it leverages the audience’s past to inform its present. Each little road sign along the metaphorical highway to war is richer, deeper and sadder because of the characters’ relationships with one another. Calling something as tragically rendered as this season of “House of the Dragon” isn’t fun — but it is utterly compelling and expertly crafted television.

“House of the Dragon” Season 2 premieres Sunday, June 16, on HBO.

The post ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Review: War Makes the ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel Even Better appeared first on TheWrap.

The sheer bizarre nature of it all — the unintended comedic timing, the stilted, but oddly composed delivery of such unabashedly salacious information — was perfectly engineered for a burgeoning meme age. FX’s “Clipped” is well-aware of how iconic the clip is (the scene from the show is used in commercials for the show), but it is strangely flat in dramatizing or enhancing that moment in the series itself. Perhaps that’s because it’s a show that is concerned with the more serious ideas hiding beneath the surface — the media and a new era of viral celebrity culture, the dawn of a certain strain of performative politics, the false notion of a post-racial society — and this, after all, was the low-brow snapshot of what was a very messy, TMZ-powered controversy.

But the show’s limp narrative treatment of the silly rabbit moment (the context leading up to it only leaves more questions than answers) is an emblem of a frustratingly uneven, sometimes illuminating, and pretty entertaining series. “Clipped” refuses to indulge in the drama of this wild moment, but elsewhere the series inadvertently embodies, in its often unsubtle writing and direction, the kind of cheaply entertaining nature of its real-life controversy. And yet, it’s a show that, when it does actually work (mostly in the latter half), has something profound to say about what was really just a big meme wrapped in the drag of what would have been naively referred to then as “social justice.”

The central scandal occurred in 2014, when Sterling’s racist comments, during a private conversation with his assistant Stiviano about his aversion to her bringing Black people to Clippers games, caught fire and eventually forced him to sell the team. The series opens by first contextualizing the controversy within the new tenure of Clippers head coach Doc Rivers (Laurence Fishburne). Basketball fans will most likely chafe at the depiction of the actual basketball elements — the portrayal of Doc, star players and their dynamic — but that perhaps is because of a certain recency bias element that the show is up against. The more time removed from a period-specific subject tends to inspire a greater suspension of disbelief, and giving the biopic treatment to tabloid-sports drama that occurred only 10 years ago almost guarantees the depiction reads as false and caricatured.

But as it tracks the scandal’s effect within the team, the series is periodically compelling when it goes into the behind-the-scenes conversations between Doc and his players about whether or not to boycott the league. For most of them, there is no version of action or inaction that feels right; Sterling’s comments didn’t exist in a vacuum and his dismissal doesn’t erase history, or change the fact that they are all still Black players in a league owned by dozens of other white billionaires. All it means is that one of those owners was caught.

“I was just talking about the way the world works,” Sterling (Ed O’Neill in a knockout performance) says later in the show, defending his comments. “Are we to pretend that appearances don’t matter, that there isn’t an ordering that every schmuck on Earth has to observe? An order, by the way, that slammed doors on me when I was [named] ‘Tokowitz.’” The most damning revelation of the series is that buried within Sterling’s vile racism was also a sobering, clear-eyed understanding about the Obama era illusion of a post racial society, one that the hammer brought down on Sterling was touted for purportedly upholding. “They want me dragged through the town square to send a message about something that nobody’s gonna change,” Sterling says. “Don’t let that kid in the White House fool you. Hope? Change? Give me a break. No one can change it. But you’re not supposed to say that.”

From Sterling’s side of things, the series tracks the scandal not so much through Sterling himself, but rather through the two women in his life: Stiviano (played by Cleopatra Coleman), who embodies a murky position as his assistant and sort-of public girlfriend, and Sterling’s wife and business partner, Shelly (Jacki Weaver). The show’s treatment of Stiviano’s side of the story is often where it reads most inelegant. Part of this is because, for much of the show, it can’t quite decide what its position is on her — she’s a cartoonishly gold-digging, wannabe socialite who also wants to adopt two kids and carve out a place for herself in a city built on fame and fortune. At points, her involvement in the leaked clip is framed, flimsily, as righteous payback in a rich man’s world.

That ambivalence becomes translated into a mostly believable complexity by the end — complexity rooted not so much in her, but rather the forces that made her: a new Instagram era of fame in America, the patriarchal hand that exploits her. How the show really feels about her can perhaps best be understood in relation to Shelly, who is seen in a largely sympathetic light across most of the series. Both Stiviano and Shelly, are cast in some ways as two sides to the same coin: victims to the whims of a crass and entitled buffoon. But whereas V is seen mostly as a fame-hungry ditz, Shelly is the overlooked good wife who has stuck beside Sterling. O’Neill and Weaver make a show stopping pair, translating their marriage’s twisted dynamic into something as believable and human as it is ugly.

But the show eventually twists its view of Shelly. “You two were made for each other,” Shelly’s friend says about her and Sterling in the final episode. “You both think you own everybody.” The moment comes at a lunch where Shelly and her girlfriends are celebrating the end of the scandal and the official sale of the team. A shot of them clinking champagne glasses comes after a hard cut from a prior scene, in which Stiviano is assaulted by someone calling her a racial slur in a bar.

Stiviano was the woman who became the meme — the woman in the visor, the silly rabbit — and perhaps welcomed it, desperately courting her 15 minutes of fame. Neither she nor any of the characters in this scandal are to be admired. But, as “Clipped” seems to finally point out, she was also a Black woman who was exploited and thrown aside. Meanwhile, Shelly, the other woman, is left to her own punishment, a far quieter public shame and a payday to the tune of $2 billion.

The post ‘Clipped’ Review: FX Drafts a Messy but Entertaining Drama About the LA Clippers’ Racism Scandal appeared first on TheWrap.