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Close Reads

  1. close reads
    The Key to Dickinson Season Two Is a Woman Named Lola MontezA legendary and scandalous figure from the 19th century is only a tiny part of the plot, but she plays a major role in the season’s central theme.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  2. close reads
    Cobra Kai Season 3 Sends Mixed Nostalgia MessagesThe series argues that nostalgia is toxic but also can’t stop reminding us that the ’80s rule.
    By Jen Chaney
  3. close reads
    What Happened to Ryan Murphy?With a huge Netflix deal and the power to green-light just about anything, he has become the ultimate insider. And his work is suffering.
    By Jackson McHenry
  4. close reads
    Let’s Talk About Bridgerton’s Finale Reveal of You-Know-WhoLady Whistledown is … not who I thought she would be.
    By Jen Chaney
  5. close reads
    The Villainous White Mother Was All Over the Domestic Novel This YearThese stories came in a year that thrust white liberal parents into a harsh light.
    By Kelly Coyne
  6. close reads
    Has The Mandalorian Succumbed to the Dark Side?The final moments of the season-two finale represent the galaxy-collapsing shortsightedness that has come to define Disney-era Star Wars stories.
    By Matt Zoller Seitz
  7. vulture investigates
    Why Is The Mandalorian So Hot?Much like the Force, true hotness comes from within.
    By Lizzie Logan
  8. space parenting
    The Mandalorian Let Baby Yoda Be a Baby, and It Was GoodGrogu’s appetite for destruction (and frog eggs) was much more than comic relief. It was essential to season two’s emotional payoff.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  9. spoilers
    The Flight Attendant’s Murder-Mystery Reveal Succeeds Where The Undoing’s FailedBoth series center on whodunits that go to the wildest of places, but only one asks us to take what it’s doing seriously.
    By Jen Chaney
  10. close reads
    Please Let Slag Wars Be Queer Reality TV’s FutureSo much more than a porn competition, the series is a genuine celebration of queer bodily pleasure and emotional candor.
    By Tim Forster
  11. close reads
    Zendaya Captures 2020 in Her Extraordinary Euphoria PerformanceThe series’ one-off Christmas special finds Zendaya’s Rue in a different mode that feels distinctly of this moment.
    By Jen Chaney
  12. close reads
    The Crown’s ‘Balmoral Test’ Barbours Are Not Just JacketsMargaret Thatcher’s and Princess Diana’s outerwear choices offer a window into their relationships to power.
    By Derek Guy
  13. adaptations
    The Undoing Took All the Wrong Cues From Big Little LiesTaken together, the two David E. Kelley series demonstrate the limitations — and diminishing returns — of copying one’s own success.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  14. close reads
    What Is Shawn Mendes Like As a Boyfriend? An Investigation Into WonderWell, he sounds like a generous lover.
    By Gabrielle Sanchez
  15. books
    Is It Possible to Enjoy This Winter?In her memoir, Wintering, Katherine May suggests that retreating from the world in the coldest, darkest months has its benefits.
    By Molly Young
  16. close reads
    The Undoing’s Fall From GraceThe whole show was a red herring, and we, like its inscrutable protagonist, got duped.
    By Jen Chaney
  17. close reads
    What the Hell Is Happening With Masks on Network TV?This is what the middle ground of COVID-19 storytelling looks like, and it’s both unsatisfying and distracting.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  18. close reads
    The Queen’s Gambit Is the Forrest Gump of ChessIt knocks you out with its lush costume design and production, while its beautiful white heroine slips unscathed past the roiling traumas of the era.
    By Jane Hu
  19. close reads
    Princess Diana Exposes The Crown’s Great Uncrossable ChasmSeason four brilliantly illuminates, through the arrival of Diana, how impossible it is to connect with the royal family, even for those within it.
    By Jen Chaney
  20. close reads
    Real Housewives Is Pioneering a New, ‘Mormon-ish’ Trail in Salt Lake CityIn a place where the rules for housewives are still at their most traditional, the franchise has found new ways to defy viewer expectations.
    By Glenn Rowley
  21. history on screen
    Valley of Tears Is Historical Fiction for Today’s Grim RealityThe timing of the Israeli drama series, now on HBO Max, feels unsettlingly ironic, for Israeli and American audiences alike.
    By Abraham Riesman
  22. close reads
    The Bachelorette Is Best When It Breaks All the RulesIt should’ve broken a few more.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  23. close reads
    Before NXIVM and The Vow, Mark Vicente Directed a Truly Bizarre Hit DocumentaryA look back at What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?, the 2004 indie phenom that Vicente made back when he was the student of another dubious guru figure.
    By Alison Willmore
  24. qui-bye
    Did 2020 Kill Quibi? Or Did Quibi Kill Quibi?Name aside, the upstart streamer actually had a lot of things going for it — and it failed in spite of all of them.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  25. twist endings
    Let’s Discuss That The Haunting of Bly Manor EndingLots of spoilers, obviously.
    By Jen Chaney
  26. role muddles
    The Boys Is the End of the Superhero As We Know ItThe dark satire’s second season has illuminated the rotten core of superheroism, and cast our collective obsession with it in an unflattering light.
    By Abraham Riesman
  27. reality tv
    The Real Housewives Versus RealityCan a class of reality stars weaned on outrageousness find a way to respond to the current moment — and do we even want them to?
    By Brian Moylan
  28. close reads
    Emily in Paris’s Biggest Faux Pas Is Emily HerselfAmid the show’s many indulgent clichés about French life, its take on the American-in-Paris trope rings even more hollow.
    By Sarah Moroz
  29. close reads
    Actually, the Cultiest Part of The Vow Is the Night VolleyballLong before anyone in NXIVM got to the point of branding, there was volleyball.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  30. emmys 2020
    The Failure of Mrs. America’s Phyllis SchlaflyRevisiting the show, I started to think about Bette Davis’s performance in In This Our Life and what it takes to create a white female villain.
    By Angelica Jade Bastién
  31. close reads
    P-Valley Reclaimed TV Strip-Club Drama for the DancersThe pole-dancing workplace drama is a rebuttal to the Bada Bings of the TV world, but it’s also so much more than that.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  32. close reads
    The Mod Squad, Kojak, Real-Life Cops, and MeWhat I relearned (about well-meaning liberalism, race, my late father, and my young gay self) rewatching the TV cop shows of my 1970s youth.
    By Mark Harris
  33. connective tissue
    I May Destroy You, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, and the Therapeutic Power of StoryThough markedly different, the two series are complementary voices in the ongoing conversation about sexual assault and its aftermath.
    By Jen Chaney
  34. close reads
    Let’s Talk About That I May Destroy You EndingIf trauma is a closed loop, then fantasy — which Michaela Coel makes nimble use of in “Ego Death” — is a field of endless potential.
    By Angelica Jade Bastién
  35. close reads
    At the DNC, Nostalgia Went Backward and ForwardThe four-night virtual political event sought to take us, in the words of Don Draper, “back home again to a place where we know we are loved.”
    By Jen Chaney
  36. close reads
    Yellowstone Is the Most (Anxious, White, Male) American Show on TVIt’s no coincidence that a story about outside threats to an insular way of life is one of cable’s biggest dramas.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  37. korrasami forever
    Legend of Korra Walked So Queer Characters on Kids’ TV Could KissBy 2020 standards, the series’s final beat looks like a small step for LGBTQ+ representation, but it helped embolden other series to make big strides.
    By Zosha Millman
  38. close reads
    The All-Virtual DNC Is Good, ActuallyFor the first time, the national convention was designed primarily as a screen experience rather than retrofitted for TV.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  39. close reads
    I May Destroy You’s Structural EpiphaniesIn the penultimate episode, Arabella remembers what has been eluding her all season. But it is what comes just before that is the true revelation.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  40. close reads
    About That ‘Controversial’ Black-ish Episode …Watching the newly resurfaced episode “Please, Baby, Please” today, it seems even more ridiculous that ABC wouldn’t air it back in 2018.
    By Jen Chaney
  41. close reads
    P-Valley Shows Stripping For What It Is: LaborAmid the glitz and glamor of The Pynk, we’re reminded again and again that strippers are workers, and they have worker concerns.
    By Cate Young
  42. nasty
    The ‘Clean’ Version of ‘WAP’ Is Actually So Much FilthierIt’s much more detailed in a sensory way.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  43. close reads
    Untangling Taylor Swift’s ‘Teenage Love Triangle’ Trilogy“Cardigan,” “august,” and “betty” tell a story of high-school romantic drama from three different perspectives.
    By Nate Jones
  44. close reads
    The Innate Black Britishness of I May Destroy YouWithin Michaela Coel’s searing drama, Black British culture is everything in that it is treated as nothing. It just is.
    By Bolu Babalola
  45. close reads
    When Black People Appear on SeinfeldThe things you notice when you rewatch, rather than cancel, old sitcoms.
    By Lauren Michele Jackson
  46. black is king
    Black Is King Works Best When Beyoncé Can Be BeyoncéThe Disney+ visual makes it clear that Beyoncé is too big for even the biggest IP.
    By Hunter Harris
  47. master class
    What Beyoncé Tells Us Without Saying a WordA close read of nine formative images tell a complicated story about the artist’s politics.
    By Angelica Jade Bastién
  48. close reads
    Search Party’s Elliott Is the Limit Case of the ‘Gay BFF’John Early’s “gay, energetic, self-diagnosed narcissist” is a satirical figure as funny as he is terrifying.
    By Manuel Betancourt
  49. close reads
    I’ll Be Gone in the Dark Makes Us Ponder Our Own True-Crime FixationsBy making writer Michelle McNamara its protagonist, the HBO docuseries compels viewers to reexamine their own relationship with true crime.
    By Jen Chaney
  50. close reads
    Indian Matchmaking Is Just Telling It Like It IsWhen the game itself is dirty, why yell at a mirror pointed at it, reflecting the moves for all to see?
    By Mallika Rao
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