I’ve been praising Shogun from the start for its efforts to decentralize the “white savior narrative” in its storytelling. Maybe I’ve been praising it a little too much; as others have noted, the choice to treat Portuguese like English undermines some of the work (and it says something not entirely flattering about me that I didn’t even notice it). Still, the show is trying to make things more complicated, and more challenging, than it might have, and the writers and directors (and cast, of course) have demonstrated considerable skill in ensuring that the Japanese culture of the time is presented in all its complex beauty.
It occurs to me that I haven’t spent enough time in these reviews praising Anna Sawai’s work as Lady Mariko. Allow me to correct the oversight: she’s fantastic. The character is, in this production at least, the heart of Shogun, the individual who best expresses the story’s main themes even as she struggles to find peace within them. In “Crimson Sky,” the penultimate episode and presumably her last, Mariko takes center stage as the fulcrum of Toranaga’s plans, the key part of his efforts to tear down Ishido’s power and authority.
I'm still not quite sure what to make of Cosmo Jarvis as John Blackthorne. It's a committed performance, to be sure, and there's a rawness to it that I appreciate; again, while I haven't seen the 1980 miniseries (thank you for the correction, commenters; I swear to god I looked up the date before I posted about it, but somehow still managed to get it wrong), I'm willing to bet this a far cry from the kind of work Richard Chamberlain was doing in the same role.
Oh hey, would you look at that—a perfectly cromulent episode of Discovery. “Face the Strange” is the closest thing the season has done so far to a standalone; while the macro plot magical Progenitor tech is still the driving focus, the main story involving Burnham, Rayner, Stamets, and a “time bug” has a beginning, a middle, and an end. These are good things to have, and the discipline forces the writers to pull back on some of their worst impulses.
I remember being very excited about this film when I saw the trailer. It was moody, atmospheric and it felt original.
Now that I’ve seen it, is my opinion still the same?
In a preview I made of this movie I said this might be “pure scary shit” - I think two of those three words are correct. Scary is the odd word out.
It’s not that the movie was bad, well not all of it at least.
In the wake of Carson’s early immunity win that takes arguably the easiest dissolution of the Tika 3 at the final five off the table, Carolyn returns to camp with Heidi and Lauren, and the Survivor editors needs this to be a potential turning point. For weeks, the show has feigned the breakup of the trio, but when the votes were actually cast it was clear that it was all for show—they’ve always felt confident with one another, and what we’ve been sold by the editors has been an extended performance.
I thought it was weird at the end of last week’s episode that the mood was so jubilant after Randen being pulled from the game, but I get it: the vibe at Yanu was bad, and this was the first time they had anything to be happy about. I sort of think we should have ended with a more emotional moment for Randen, but I understand that Bhanu’s miracle is the core story of that episode of television.
[While my reviews of Survivor are normally behind the paywall, this feels like a particularly important episode, so I’m making this free for everyone. Conveniently, comments remain restricted to subscribers, which will hopefully keep the discourse free from the toxicity this is no doubt inspiring online. If you wish to spend $5 to join that conversation and be racist, I will ban you from commenting and donate that $5 to a racial justice charity.
When CBS announced last year that Survivor was expanding to 90-minute episodes (a little over an hour with ads), I felt generally optimistic. Like many fans, I’ve had a lot of issues with the direction Jeff Probst has taken the show in the New Era, from the shortened 26-day game to the proliferation of dumb twists and advantages that obscure the show’s basic “vote out a tribe member every week” premise.