Point One: Stephen King is often dismissed as a mediocre wordsmithing machine, cranking out modest midlevel fare, a sort of literary Bon Jovi. Sure, some of his stuff isn't great, but when you're that prolific, there will be clunkers. I've never been partial to his horror stuff only because that's not a genre I relish, but some of his more mainstream stuff is really quite splendid. Read his original novellas Apt Pupil, The Body, or Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,

By way of context, it's important to note that I was two when Star Wars was released in 1977. The first movie I really recall seeing at a theater was Empire Strikes Back in 1980 when I was five, and Return of the Jedi was the apotheosis of kid culture when I was eight in 1983. Solo was cool, Vader was scary, Leia was our ideal of womanhood. But the most accessible character for me was probably R2D2. The spunky little droid with his whistles and chirps brought the feisty attit

This is Us is schmaltzy. It's treacly. It's saccharine mixed with honey poured over platitudes. It's a soap opera, an afterschool special in prime time. And yet we keep watching, following the twists and turns of this patchwork American family. The fractured timeline is part of the appeal, jerking us from the present day to the rice paddies of Vietnam to the bad clothing choices of the '80s to the half-glimpsed future. The menagerie of characters is mostly enjoyable too, thou

When the ravages of the Great Depression swept Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the White House in the election of 1932, it was not immediately apparent that he brought with him the vast progressive agenda that would be his legacy. FDR was a pragmatist, not an ideologue, and by no means was he the proto-socialist that many on the right would claim, then or now. He was a patrician, a philanderer, and a fiscal conservative. He would also become one of the three or four greatest p

First things first: Kristen Bell's leading lady on The Good Place is a terrible human being. She's greedy, lazy, selfish, boozy, destructive, vain, argumentative, impatient, mean, untruthful, conniving...heck, you name the character flaw, and Eleanor has it. And yet somehow, despite her laundry list of negatives, we can't help but like her, sort of a Kirsten Gillibrand in reverse. Her awfulness in life is the context for her afterlife experience in this underrated sitcom. The

Top-shelf supervillains like Loki, Thanos, and Magneto are awesome, but a lot of the fun in comics comes from the deep roster of lower-wattage costumed crooks who provide our heroes with their routine job security. Spider-Man in particular enjoys a menagerie of B-list sparring partners who help him keep in shape between title bouts. I've always been fascinated by these dollar-store baddies. Some are sympathetic, with bad luck or bad choices leading them down the path of the d

I've said it before: The Orville is the best Star Trek we've seen since the heyday of The Next Generation. Seth MacFarlane's passion project is clearly steeped in the themes and tropes of the Trek universe, and more than one alum of TNG has been part of the fun both in front of and behind the camera. It shows. The production quality is excellent, and the stories are populated by three-dimensional, interesting people with very human foibles. Sometime in the mid- to late-90s it