"Bullshoot."

Good morning, delicious friends! My television schedule is in flux and I don’t like it, BUT I have learned something: over on Bluesky, Devin McCullen let me know that the reason Hacks has had an odd release schedule — and also Andor did the three-ep-a-week drop — is because the eligibility period for the Emmys ends on 31 May. So now we know!

The Last of Us, season 2, episode 7

The problem with The Last of Us is that at this point, the culture war about Bella Ramsay is so pervasive that, while I think the season was overall good, part of me worries that I’ve just persuaded myself of that to own the assholes.

However, I found this piece by Kat Tenbarge on the Bella Ramsay hate train very helpful, in particular, this:

I have been thinking of my inability to escape the hate train in terms of faceless algorithms and the fact that social media thrives on making people upset and angry. But it is also an attack against a group of people, and I think it’s reasonable to have a reaction.

“But how did you like the finale, Liz?”

I have mixed feelings, to be honest, but they’re not about Ramsay (who is brilliant) or Ellie, who I think is a well-written and realistic anti-heroine. And overall I enjoyed the episode — although there was a bit of video game logic at play when Ellie decided to steal a boat, in the dark, to get across the bay to Abby’s location.

(“Does she know how to use a boat?” my flatmate wondered.

“You just step in and press the button with a square on it, and then there’s a little cut scene as you cross the water,” I explained.)

I think my issue is that the ending — switching to Abby’s point of view three days earlier — reproduces the video game a little too closely. A game doesn’t easily let you switch perspective like that. (No, I have not yet played Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, check back in 2027.) So the structure of TLoU2, where you begin as Joel, then play as Ellie, and then play as Abby and have to develop empathy for the character you’ve hated for ages, is very effective. I assume.

But television doesn’t need that structure. We could have followed Abby and her friends all along, with the growing tension as they converge — Abby attacking just as Ellie begins to move on from her mission of vengeance. Abby is little more than a cipher at this point, and I think something has been lost in choosing to reproduce the experience of playing the game.

I’m also aware that this will be the last episode of The Last of Us that I watch without having played the game myself. If there was any prospect of getting the next season within a year, I’d hold off, but as it is…

Matlock, season 1, episodes 18 and 19

Hey, guys, I watched the Matlock finale!

And … I liked it! While also thinking that it was a little too dependent on flashbacks. Like, we can see everything coming together, we don’t need to have our hands held while the show stops to explain that everything is coming together.

Or maybe we do? One of my complaints about Current Star Trek — and, indeed, a lot of modern television — is that it’s made for people who are watching with one eye on their phone. And that is absolutely a Matlock problem as well.

But then, it always has been. This newsletter came along a few weeks after I started watching, but at the very first episode, I was like, “This is fun, but the flashbacks aren’t really necessary, fortunately we won’t be seeing more of that.” Oh no. It’s as much a signature of the series as Kathy Bates and Skye P. Marshall’s platonic tension.

It is what it is. Does the case of the week conform in any way with any realistic legal system or timeline? No. Do I care? Also no. I am much more concerned about Olympia’s fragile loyalties, and her realisation that her ex-husband — amiable and sensitive as he is — hid documents from discovery. And she’s in an awful position — he’s the father of her children, and as a new partner, she has a financial stake in the success of their crooked law firm. The law is fake but the feelings are real.

The law is real to Matty, who has admitted — to herself and her husband — that she loves practising law, and would like to un-retire and keep working for real after Jacobson Moore has been taken down. This is extremely Boomer-coded of her, but also completely understandable: she was a good contracts lawyer, but her real passion was for litigation — which she rejected as an option in her first career because it would have brought her into contact with a sexual harasser.

The season ends with an odd cliffhanger: Alfie’s dad turns up out of the blue. Why? How? Did anyone ask for this? Aside from Alfie, of course. I’m kind of annoyed by this narrative choice, but then, I’m mainly here for Olympia and her collection of Telfar bags that match her outifts.

Murderbot, season 1, episode 4

Murderbot leans into its place in the old fashioned adventure serial genre with Murderbot — damaged and sabotaged — hallucinating that it is part of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

First of all, my flatmate’s insistence that Sanctuary Moon is what she sees when she watches Star Trek: Strange New Worlds delights me.

Second, we see that Murderbot has already fallen platonically and unemotionally in love with Mensah and put her on a pedestal. I like that she can be an intrepid galactic explorer even with panic attacks; I worry that introducing her panic attacks now — before she develops the PTSD that will come later — leaves us with nowhere for her to go as a character.

Third, I’m looking at the Sanctuary Moon opening credits and going, “Wow, this show is a real sausage fest.” Three male characters and one woman? Come on, guys.

It’s especially galling because Martha Wells has said that Sanctuary Moon was inspired by How To Get Away With Murder, famously a show with a lot of female characters that was led by Viola Davis. Give me Shondaland in Space, guys. Please.

As long as I’m nitpicking, I felt like the conversation between Ratthi, Pin-Lee and Arada in the hopper was a bit “Look! These characters are so woke they can’t even get out of their own way to effect an efficient rescue!”

Overall I liked this episode, especially the way it advanced the Murderbot-Mensah relationship, but the series has not yet earned my trust.

Hacks, season 4, episode 10

Hacks, for me, is maybe a show that doesn’t respond well to the whole “writing it up for a newsletter” experience. Because I enjoyed this episode, especially every single thing that happened in Singapore, but when I sit down to write about it, I feel like there’s very little to say.

Okay, Singapore: my stepmother is Singaporean, and my dad is a Noted Expert on its politics and history. So any time it turns up, I’m like, “Hey, it’s that city-state I know!”

Please note I have never actually visited Singapore.

Anyway, I thought season 4 of Hacks was about Deborah achieving her dream, and in fact it’s about Deborah achieving her dream, realising it’s not what she wants, and setting out to build a new legacy. So I’ve been interrogating the text from the wrong perspective this whole time. EMBARRASSING.

But the important thing is that season 4 ends with Ava and Deborah on better terms than ever, which means hopefully we won’t waste half of season 5 with the two of them trying to destroy each other. Again. Bring it on, but don’t overthink it!

Poker Face, season 2, episode 6

I wanted to love this episode. You have demon children, which is a trope I adore, and the chaos and weirdness of eight-year-olds. A solid mystery, a compelling setting, thee Margo Martindale and a for-some-reason-uncredited Adrienne C. Moore. An ending which doesn’t really hold up, but okay, that’s not the end of the world.

Unfortunately, amidst all that, you also have a gerbil being beaten to death with a comedically large hammer. And I know this is weird, given how much I love murder mysteries, but I am very, very squeamish about animal cruelty in fiction. The gator episode was just barely okay for me on that front, and now we have poor Joseph Gerbils, who first has to live with a name which is a Nazi joke, and then has to die violently at the unwitting hands of the boy who loved him most.

I really did enjoy this episode! But the inciting incident was simply too … squishy for me, and I think Poker Face needs to get past its animal cruelty era. Just one lady’s hot take!

What am I listening to this week?

First of all, I’ve had Lorde’s new song on repeat since it dropped, and I love it, but I suspect this is going to be an album that works best being listened to as a whole — just like Solar Power, and also Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft. Some would argue that is the whole point of releasing an album, but I’ve always been a singles girlie, followed by a mixtape girlie and a playlist girlie.

Anyway, if you follow popular music, you probably already know what Lorde is up to. BUT MEANWHILE, British punk icons Skunk Anansie have released a new album, and its opening track, “An Artist is an Artist” is Skin’s glorious anthem to being a queer, Black, British, post-menopausal artist.