House of the Dragon: Faceless Men

“What better way to die than blade in hand?”

While it has its flaws, I’m generally pretty satisfied with this show’s ability to turn the tables on its characters.

House of the Dragon: Unbowed and Unbent

“He burns, but without fire.”

No one’s happy in this house. Everyone’s got big plans, delusions of grandeur, but reality keeps rearing its ugly head.

House of the Dragon: Tumbleton

"Let us become wraiths. With fear as our standard, strike from the quiet and the darkness. Our fight will not be clean, but it will be pure. We'll be man-to-man. And it will be free from dragons."

The war is not won, and things are heating back up.

House of the Dragon: Rhaenyra Triumphant

“I have no small council. Nor a Queensguard to serve me. I am awash in dilemmas and deficiencies. Let me find my footing and I will attend to your requests.”

That about sums up the episode right there. And it can be a useful refrain for those who are also dealing with the pressures of a high-stress job.

House of the Dragon: Queen's Landing

“In this moment, you will become Queen.”

Things are moving fast. I like it.

Invincible: Season 4

"Let the war begin."

This is Invincible’s biggest, most ambitious outing to date. That being said, my feelings about it are a bit mixed.

House of the Dragon: Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood

“Was this not always our purpose?”

We start things off with a bang. Yet, this still feels less like a premiere, less like a “we’re back” and more like a penultimate episode or season finale. Which is apparently what it was supposed to be before last season’s budget ran out. We were left with an ending meant to feel like a cliffhanger, but it mostly felt like a huge tease after a lot of buildup.

Backrooms

“Is someone there?”

A liminal space is roughly defined as uncanny valley imagery representing “in-betweenness” through the use of mundane yet deceptively unsettling transitional locations that are devoid of people: stairwells, roads, corridors, hotels, office buildings. For a modern audience, Backrooms may be the crowning example of this particular branch of understated horror.

Obsession

"WHY DON'T YOU LOVE MEEEEEEEEE?"

It's always nice when you go to a movie you don't know much about and find that you've just walked into a new sleeper hit.

Fallout: The Strip

“You’re still living in a world of fiction. A world that isn’t real.”

Fallout: The Handoff

“Don’t think of them as people. Think of them as Americans.”

It’s the penultimate episode, and New Vegas is at the center of everything.

Invincible: Season 3

“You don’t understand. All this? This is my fault. So the only thing I want to do right now… is hit something as hard as I can.”

Let us escape one overburdened world constantly under threat of impending disaster for another even more overburdened world under constant threat of even scarier impending disasters. Let us remind ourselves that bravery, determination and heroism matter, especially in the hardest of times, when our notions of heroism may no longer be so clear-cut.

Fallout: The Other Player

“I’ve been Wastelandin’ 200 years. Whatever it is I got to do, I do it alone…”

The last episode was very well-done, but didn’t feel like it had a lot of forward momentum. There’s a bit more going on in this one, narratively speaking.

Invincible: Atom Eve Special

“I’m wearing a mask. I’m using a fake name. I’m apparently a government-designed super weapon. I’ll be fine.”

In this special episode, we take a break from Invincible’s epic journey to explore the backstory of Atom Eve. Which I was pleased to see was just as well-done as any episode of the main series.

Fallout: The Wrangler

“Now I’ll admit, I am in an altered mental state, but I think we should just shoot these monsters in the face. And frankly, whatever we do, we need to do it quickly, ‘cause I am very much out of drugs.”

I’m not a big fan of the limited episode format that so many modern prestige TV shows have adopted over the last decade or so. With that in mind, I do appreciate that a show as expansive as this packs as much as it can into those eight episodes.

Invincible: Season 2

“I thought you were stronger...”

In modern pop culture, the superhero sub-genre has generally been torn between two extremes. Between something bright, idealistic, fantastical, and something darker, more cynical, closer to reality. Invincible is a show that dances on the line between those extremes, and looks good doing it.

Fallout: The Demon in the Snow

“Rock to spear, and so on.”

I suppose change, and the chaos that goes with it, was the theme of the episode.

Fallout: The Profligate

“Kinda looks like we got ourselves a civil war.”

A world this bizarre and twisted should not feel so embarrassingly familiar.

Fallout: The Golden Rule

“Civilization. It hasn’t worked out so far. But, if at first you don’t succeed… Try, try again.”

Between the opening nuclear bomb detonation and the closing duel to the death, there was a lot to see in this episode.

Fallout: The Innovator

“The world may end, but progress marches on.”

Right, let’s get back to it. After all, we should be used to seeing America for the tainted, withered, comically grotesque husk that it is by now.