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Close Reads

  1. close reads
    The Last of Us Is Not a Video-Game AdaptationHBO turned the story into unmissable television. So why does it feel like something’s missing?
    By Andrea Long Chu
  2. close reads
    The Winners and Losers of Prince Harry’s SpareWinner: Stewie.
    By Devon Ivie
  3. close reads
    Holy Spider’s Ending Uncovers a Tangled Web of MisogynyHoly Spider is at its most precise and upsetting in the film’s final scene.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  4. year in culture 2022
    This Year’s TV Female Friendships Were KillerIn their final seasons, Dead to Me and Kevin Can F*** Himself made misandry look a lot like love.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  5. close reads
    Carol Is Not the Romance of Your MemesTodd Haynes’s drama gets embraced online in a manner that doesn’t jibe with the nature of its story.
    By Frankie de la Cretaz
  6. close reads
    Misreading Octavia ButlerThe slavery interpretation the author couldn’t escape.
    By Andrea Long Chu
  7. close reads
    Netflix’s Falling for Christmas Is a Dante’s Inferno-esque AllegoryIt’s the only reading of the film and its title that makes any sense.
    By Rachel Handler
  8. close reads
    The Velveteen Rabbit Was Always More Than a Children’s BookWritten for her daughter, Margery Williams Bianco’s hundred-year-old story is a memorial to what we all lose in exchange for adulthood.
    By Andrea Long Chu
  9. close reads
    Baz Luhrmann’s Tortured ArtistsElvis makes a point about exploited artists that Luhrmann first approached in Moulin Rouge!
    By Roxana Hadadi
  10. close reads
    Natalie Portman Put on a Cape for This?Thor: Love and Thunder lets down Jane Foster, who never makes it past a catchphrase in her return to the MCU.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  11. close reads
    The Best Scene in Heat Just Isn’t the Same Without These TwoIf you ever wanted to see what one of the most iconic scenes in film history would look like with, well, two other guys, now’s your chance.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  12. book review
    Ottessa Moshfegh Is Praying for UsThe author has been hailed as a high priestess of filth. Really, she wants to purify her readers.
    By Andrea Long Chu
  13. close reads
    E.T. and Close Encounters Told the Same Sad Story From Different EyesLooked at one way, they’re companion pieces: One tells the story of a father who leaves, and the other stays with the family he left behind.
    By A.A. Dowd
  14. close reads
    Outer Range Goes Off the Rails in the Best WayThe show’s closing stretch leans into its weirdo instincts, illuminating something interesting and true about the American West.
    By Nicholas Quah
  15. all the pieces matter
    We Own This City Asks Us to Look BackwardWhile David Simon and George Pelecanos’s new series has plenty to say on its own, considering it as a sequel to The Wire enriches the experience.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  16. close reads
    Let’s Unpack That Diabolical Incest Scene in The NorthmanA prince creates an unalterable image of his mother and takes it with him into her bedchamber — where she destroys it.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  17. exit review
    Black-ish Was No Televised RevolutionThe show always aimed for the third rail, but it played it safe more often than not.
    By Craig Jenkins
  18. album review
    Syd’s New Love StoryThe singer-producer’s latest album, Broken Hearts Club, sheds the hedonistic visions of her earlier work.
    By Tirhakah Love
  19. close reads
    Bridgerton Needs to Decide Whose World It’s Living InThe Netflix series fashions itself as a Regency theme park, but its historical fantasy is built on shaky ground.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  20. close reads
    An Ode to Drive to Survive’s Saddest ManThe perennial loser of Netflix’s F1 series, Guenther Steiner faces new troubles in the latest season that nod to the sport’s dark underbelly.
    By Nicholas Quah
  21. endings
    Pam & Tommy’s Misplaced ForgivenessIn giving unearned absolution to Rand Gauthier, the miniseries also provides it for itself.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  22. trends
    The Limits of the Women’s Redemption PlotYou know the story: A previously maligned public figure gets an eight-episode empathy tour.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  23. the other ava
    A Plea to Abbott Elementary: Let Ava Stay TerribleJanelle James’s scene-stealing principal gives the breakout comedy a hard edge that doesn’t need to be softened.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  24. parallel story lines
    Attack on Titan Echoes Game of Thrones’ Death RattleThe controversial anime’s final season rings “The Bells.”
    By Eric Vilas-Boas
  25. close reads
    Euphoria Found Its Focus, and It Was GoodIt was also excruciating, but that’s the point.
    By Jen Chaney
  26. close reads
    The Fundamental Flaw in And Just Like That …Sex and the City made life over 30 look fun. And Just Like That … makes life over 50 seem confusing and sad.
    By Jen Chaney
  27. close reads
    Trinity Valley Deserved Better From CheerThe scrappy team with the gigantic chip on their shoulders and a simmering dislike of Navarro should have been season two’s central focus.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  28. endings
    The Yellowjackets Finale Gave Us All It Needed to GiveNot all mystery-box shows are built to sustain the speculation and scrutiny they invite, but this one has laid a strong foundation.
    By Jen Chaney
  29. close reads
    Search Party’s Millennial Horror Was Always Going to End This WayAt its end, a series that’s always been defined by fear turns the subtext into the whole damn text.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  30. close reads
    Eternals Is Just the Plot of Steven Universe But BadLet’s talk about Celestials and gem clusters.
    By Rebecca Alter
  31. reboots
    The Wonder Years Is Exactly What a Good Reboot Should BeThis week’s “Brad Mitzvah” episode is a great example of how a show can honor its predecessor while charting its own course.
    By Jen Chaney
  32. close reads
    Hanya’s BoysThe novelist tends to torture her gay male characters — but only so she can swoop in to save them.
    By Andrea Long Chu
  33. meta analysis
    2021 Was the Year of Too Much MetaverseWhen everything is a part of something else and nothing ever ends, it all feels so much cheaper.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  34. close reads
    Station Eleven Finds the Sublime in the ApocalypseThis pandemic story’s winter 2021 debut seems almost perfectly wrongly timed, but that’s precisely what makes it so perversely satisfying.
    By Hillary Kelly
  35. close reads
    The Elves Just Can’t Catch a BreakFrom The Lord of the Rings through The Witcher, fantasy has long positioned elves as victims of humanity’s selfishness.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  36. close reads
    Succession’s Sincerity ConundrumIn a world where caring for another person might mean harming your own interests, does love between the Roys matter?
    By Roxana Hadadi
  37. it was tom-atha all along
    Tom Wambsgans Finally Becomes a Real Person, InvolvedThe Roy family’s biggest outsider has turned his chief weakness to his advantage.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  38. hello & goodbye
    The Arrivals and Departures of And Just Like That …Farewell to those who were written out of the Sex and the City revival series, and hello to those who have arrived to fill their places.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  39. close reads
    That Succession Moment Is About a Lot More Than Roman’s ‘Item’Once you manage to stop cringing, there’s a lot to unpack here.
    By Jen Chaney
  40. close reads
    What Is the Allure of Kendall Roy?Succession’s would-be No. 1 boy is a deeply broken soul, and the sympathy he inspires is anything but simple.
    By Jack King
  41. the long and winding show
    The Beatles: Get Back Is Too Long, But It Has to BeWhat may at first seem like a major bug in Peter Jackson’s new docuseries is actually its greatest feature — and a gift.
    By Jen Chaney
  42. close reads
    The Unbearable Sadness of Tom WambsgansAs Succession explores increasingly baroque ways to make nothing happen, one character is poised to break the cycle.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  43. finales
    What We Do in the Shadows Accepts Its HumanityA tremendous third season ends with a twist revealing just how much these idiot vampires have grown.
    By Anne Victoria Clark
  44. close reads
    Chucky Turns a Tired Horror Cliché on Its HeadAs the first Child’s Play installment with a gay lead, the new TV series is reclaiming a harmful trope that’s dogged the slasher genre for decades.
    By Louis Peitzman
  45. profile
    Writing Through the MomentThe Kings are known for making TV that captures the Zeitgeist. It’s a high-wire act that’s gotten trickier post-Trump.
    By Angelica Jade Bastién
  46. close reads
    A Game of Marbles Turns Squid Game’s Anti-Capitalist Critique Inside OutThe season’s narrative turning point fully reveals the stacked-deck nature of the game, and how it fundamentally changes its players.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  47. close reads
    Decoding The Many Saints of Newark’s Parallels With The SopranosSeven ways the new Sopranos film echoes the original series and treats its story as mythology that can be retold, reinterpreted, and revised.
    By Matt Zoller Seitz
  48. exit strategy
    The Circle Might Have a Catfish ProblemWhat was initially a perfectly legitimate tactic within the larger game has become one of the latest season’s biggest bummers.
    By Emily Palmer Heller
  49. close reads
    Ted Lasso Reveals Its Long GameWith “Man City,” season two finally addresses the trope in the room, giving the show and its characters alike a much-needed dose of reality.
    By Amma Marfo
  50. performance review
    Erika Jayne and the Runaway NarrativeWhatever sympathy the embattled Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star might have built is buckling under the expectations of being a Housewife.
    By Louis Peitzman
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