PicoBlog

As promised, here’s a slightly expanded version of the review I started writing for the NYTBR before learning that it had already been covered by someone else. I just want everyone to read this wonderful book. I expected Natalie Zina Walschots’ Hench (William Morrow, hardcover, $27.99) to be a high-concept, light-hearted punch-up, the literary equivalent of leaning back and putting your feet up on the desk of superhero movie franchises. It surprised me completely.

“We’re not here to laugh or be funny, we’re here to win.” I’ve held out on making grand pronouncements about Season 16 all I can, but “The Gang Goes Bowling” shows It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, perhaps for the first time in its illustrious, infamous life, truly showing its age. Mildly amusing, the Gang’s adventures at the local bowling emporium notches itself below last week’s outing at a Chuck E. Cheese-style establishment.

When I first began blogging about theater over 12 years ago, the way to get a good review was to make me feel something. That's why I called myself The Sappy Critic. While my tastes have refined in a dozen years, thankfully and regrettably, I am far more likely to overlook other flaws if a show or a performance can move me. Fortunately, in the case of recently appointed Patricia A.

Back in Loki’s second season premiere, the frazzled God of Mischief arrived back at the TVA with one wish: more time. He needed more time to think about He Who Remains’ offer. More time to talk things through with Sylvie. More time to catch his breath. Tonight’s season (series?) finale finally closes that loop, giving Loki literal centuries of time to figure out the best course of action. And yet I can’t help coming away from it with the same sort of feeling Loki had at the start.

Well, that was an energetic opening night performance! "Once On This Island," a musical by CCM alum Stephen Flaherty and his writing partner, Lynn Ahrens, is based on a novel called "My Love, My Love" by Rosa Guy. It's a tragic folktale with a gorgeous score (aptly musically directed by Casey Reed). There are a million ways to stage a show like this (and not all of them are good.)

I often wonder what it’s like to watch television as a normal person. To clarify, none of you reading this are normal: you’re taking the time to follow up your viewing of this season finale by digging deeper into it with this review. And I’m obviously not normal as the person writing it. For these reasons, anyone who’s been reading along in no way took last week’s “reveal” that Donna had poisoned Ben as the end of this season’s murder case.

When I was writing about CBS’ Elementary for three years, I often wrote about the inherent struggle of stakes in a weekly procedural. Ultimately, a show about Sherlock Holmes could cover a wide range of different types of crimes that his specific skills could assist with, but Elementary focused exclusively on murder, mainly because it was believed that it was necessary in order to efficiently establish stakes that could invest audiences in a case-of-the-week.

“You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them. -Bill Waterson A lot of the best cinema of 2023 was about suffering and humanity's capacity to inflict harm: The creation of atomic warfare, systemic and intimate murder, genocide, grappling with loss in our past, or of loved ones, abusive relationships, the predatory capacity of the media, or the alienation of modern life.

Sooner or later, clones always end up making out with themselves. It’s a concept I can respect but never entirely understand; I know myself, sure, and I know what I like and don’t like, but that’s not enough to make me look into my own reflection and start thinking of pick-up lines. But sci-fi is full of horny clones, and it was probably only a matter of time before the two Beths started getting frisky.