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New Escapist Column! On What Makes a Great Series Finale…

We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every Wednesday, and the plan is to use it to look at some film and television that would maybe fall outside the remit of In the Frame, more marginal titles or objects of cult interest. With the recent wrap-up of shows like Barry and Succession, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at what makes a great television finale.

Interestingly, from The Sopranos to The Leftovers, one of the hallmarks of a truly impressive television finale is the way that it leaves room for the audiece. After all, television shows involve considerable investment from viewers, and offer a chance for the audience to really get to know and understand the characters and the themes of this world. The best of these finales are clear endings to the story being told, but which leave room for the viewer to reach their own conclusion about these characters and their journey.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

New Escapist Column! On “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” and Boring Blockbuster Third Acts…

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, it seemed like as good a time as any to reflect on one of the blights on modern big-budget blockbusters: the bland computer-generated third act throwdown in a big empty space with no sense of geography or texture.

In recent years, it has become increasingly common for these sorts of spectacles to climax with a gigantic final battle in a vast computer-generated wasteland, with no defining features or landmarks, but instead just a big empty space with no sense of where objects are in relationship to one another. Rise of the Beasts is perhaps the most egregious example of the trend, but there are plenty of others: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther. It’s a hollow, empty, cardboard world.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

New Podcast! The Recap – “Succession and Barry Are Masterclasses in Series Finales…”

We’re thrilled to be launching a weekly multimedia podcast at The Escapist, called The Recap. I’m hoping to be a regular fixture of it, stremaing live every Tuesday evening. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.

This week, with the ending of Succession, Barry and Ted Lasso, it seemed like a good opportunity to ruminate on what it means to actually end a long-running series. What is is that makes a finale compelling and effective?

New Escapist Column! On The Finale of “The Last of Us”…

I am doing weekly reviews of The Last of Us at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Sunday evening while the show is on, looking at the video game adaptation as the show progresses. This week, the show’s finale.

The Last of Us wraps up a phenomenal season with a decidedly small-scale season finale. Look for the Light is one of the shortest episodes of the season, and is remarkable for its tight focus and narrative efficiency. The series remains tightly focused on Joel and Ellie, building to a climax that is at once tragic and inevitable. The result is a very satisfying wrap-up to a very impressive debut season.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

New Escapist Column! On How “Willow” Was a Perfectly Average Streaming Series…

I am doing weekly reviews of Willow at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Wednesday evening while the show is on, looking at the legacy sequel as it progresses from one episode to the next.

With its season finale, Willow revealed that it was basically the statistical mean of Disney’s streaming shows built around existing intellectual property, even more than their Marvel of Star Wars shows. At various points in the season, Willow felt more like a checklist of familiar narrative beats than it did a cohesive story, and that was particularly true of the season finale, with its non-deaths ands its beams of multi-colour energy.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

New Escapist Column! On “Andor” as the Most Consistent “Star Wars”…

I am doing weekly reviews of Andor at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Wednesday evening while the show is on, looking at the Rogue One prequel as it progresses from one episode to the next.

Rix Road brings the first season of Andor to an end, closing the cricle by bringing the primary cast back to where it all began. It’s a fascinating and compelling way to close out the season, underscoring how much these characters have changed by bringing them back to their starting position. Rix Road is a breathtaking and impressive season finale to what has been the most consistent run of Star Wars ever produced.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

New Escapist Review! “The Book of Boba Fett – In the Name of Honour”

I published a new review at The Escapist today. I’m reviewing new episodes of The Book of Boba Fett weekly, so this week I’m covering the season finale, In the Name of Honour.

In the Name of Honour is big. In the Name of Honour is bombastic. In the Name of Honour looks like people spent a lot of money on it. Unfortunately, In the Name of Honour is curiously hollow. It’s a season finale that bungles most of the season’s strongest thematic and character arcs, often descending into a chaotic mess of “stuff happening.” It’s a finale that has nothing of substance to say about its characters, the larger show or even the world that it depicts. It is spectacle, though.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

 

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 4, Episode 24 (“Gethsemane”)

So The X-Cast has reached the end of its fourth season coverage, and I’m delighted to be joining Tony Black to discuss the fourth season finale Gethsemane.

Gethsemane is an interesting season finale, and a defining episode of The X-Files. It opens with what appears to be the suicide of Fox Mulder, and then builds to that as a season-bridging cliffhanger. Of course, the audience knows from the outset that the cliffhanger will be Mulder’s death, and the audience also understands that Duchovny is going to spend the summer shooting The X-Files: Fight the Future. So there’s an incredible tension there, right at the moment when the series had become one of the most popular television shows of the decade.

More than that, though, there’s something very lyrical and poetic about Gethsemane, which eschews the sort of action and adventure beats that defined a lot of The Erlenmeyer Flask or Anasazi or Talitha Cumi. There is a sense that writer Chris Carter (working without partner Frank Spotnitz) is meditating upon some of the internal contradictions of the show, and trying to work through some of the tensions that simmered through a complicated and scattershot fourth season as a whole.

The truth is in here. You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

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New Podcast! The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch – Episode #102 (Sunshine Days/The Truth)

I’m thrilled to be a part of The X-Cast X-Files Podwatch, a daily snippet podcast rewatching the entirety of The X-Files between now and the launch of the new season. It is something of a spin-off of The X-Cast, a great X-Files podcast run by the charming Tony Black. Tony has assembled a fantastic array of guests and hosts to go through The X-Files episode-by-episodes. With the new season announced to be starting in early January, Tony’s doing two episodes of the podcast per day, so buckle up. And we’re at the end of the final season of the original series.

This is my last appearance on the podwatch, although hopefully I’ll be back before long on another X-Cast activity. It’s a pleasure to be joining Tony to discuss the last two episodes of the final season of the original run, Sunshine Days and The Truth. The X-Cast will be continuing beyond this to look at The X-Files: I Want to Believe and the revival, but this is the end of the line for me, at least for the moment.

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The X-Files – Existence (Review)

This October/November, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the eighth season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of The Lone Gunmen.

This is not the end.

But it really should be. At least for Mulder and Scully.

There was no season nine. What are you talking about?

There was no season nine.
What are you talking about?

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