What I'm Watching: Trap, The Rings of Power, Only Murders in the Building, and More

Here’s a quick rundown of everything I’ve been watching, reading, and writing about lately:

The shows:

• It’s official: I love the even seasons of Hulu’s mystery-comedy Only Murders in the Building best. I’ve always found that the show balances just on the edge between funny and corny/stupid, with season 3 landing in the wrong direction. But the new season is really enjoyable, thanks in part to a genuinely touching plot that gives Steve Martin more to do than the past two seasons have. It also remembers that it has some of the funniest people on the planet in its cast and acts accordingly – an upcoming episode featuring Martin, Richard Kind, and Eugene Levy is an old guy comedy trifecta I didn’t know I needed. I’ve only screened the first four episodes of the new season, so I can’t say whether or not the central mystery delivers, but it’s definitely compelling and original so far.
• It’s tough to compare the second season of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to the first, since I spent the show’s debut season attempting to educate myself on all things Tolkien in order to cover the show prolifically for work. This time around, I’m mostly watching just for fun, and it’s been an enjoyable experience so far. A couple of the plots feel too much like Middle Earth Game of Thrones, but in general, the show is a visual epic in every sense of those words. The gravity and drama it gives to major moments never feels like overkill, and as the most expensive TV show ever made, every second of it looks drop-dead gorgeous. Drew McWeeny put it best over on Twitter: “unlike a lot of the shows that cost a bajillion dollars, this one actually looks like it does.” All this being said, Sophia Nomvete’s Disa is everything to me and I’ll lose my shit if anything ever happens to her.

The movies:

• I think M. Night Shyamalan’s new thriller Trap is an absolute blast. I went into the movie with lowered expectations after reviews called it a disappointment, but I honestly don’t know what the naysayers are on about. The high-concept movie about a wanted serial killer trapped at a pop star’s concert with his daughter told us it would be ridiculous from the moment the trailer dropped, and it delivered exactly that: expertly executed ridiculousness. Dryly funny, creatively propulsive, and full of the kind of casually bold filmmaking choices only a few directors are even attempting these days, it’s an enjoyable watch from start to finish. Josh Hartnett is a great match for the strange, stylized performances Shyamalan is into, but I think Saleka Shyamalan steals the show.
• Speaking of unique performance styles, I watched Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire for the first time this week. I adore the Tennessee Williams play that inspired it, which I think is a taboo-busting and endlessly complex character study. I wasn’t as high on the 1951 movie, which had some great bits (including the filmmaking style and Marlon Brando looking hotter than any man possibly ever has), but which I think did Blanche’s character dirty compared to the source material. It’s also overlong and grating, but I’m still thinking about how well its three leads embodied three distinctly different types of acting: old Hollywood glamor and theatrics from Vivian Leigh, quasi-modern swagger and intensity from Brando, and surprising naturalism from Kim Hunter.

Odds and ends:

• Few reading experiences I had as a kid were richer than the days I spent getting lost in the Dear America books, a series of fictional (yet historically accurate down to the most minute detail) diaries that imagined plucky young girls writing their own coming-of-age stories – which always happen to take place during some of the most important points in U.S. history. No doubt in part inspired by the legacy of Anne Frank, these books provided incredibly vivid and relatable links to the past for ‘90s kids. It turns out they’re just as great when you’re a grown-up, too: I was reminded of the Dear America books recently and decided to read some I missed as a kid (there are 43 total), and it’s frankly been the most rewarding reading experience I’ve had all year. In the past two weeks I’ve torn through emotional, engrossing, culturally specific books about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (Hear My Sorrow by Deborah Hopkinson), the Valley Forge era of the Revolutionary War (The Winter of Red Snow by Christiana Gregory), school integration in the south (With the Might of Angels by Andrea Davis Pinkney), and the Salem Witch Trials (I Walk in Dread by Lisa Rowe Fraustino). It’s impossible for me to pick a favorite from the bunch – they’re all powerful and indelible. Pinkney’s entry from 2011, a more fictionalized and novel-like installment than the rest, does make me wonder whether some of the bleak hyper-realism that made the originals so great was sanded off for the comeback series. I’ll no doubt report back on that, as by this point I don’t think I could stop reading these highly addictive books even if I tried.
• A few weeks ago I shared a stunning piece from Meg Elison that I came across when doing some research on Stephen King’s Thinner, and at that time I also caught wind of the King-centric podcast Just King Things. I’ve been having a ball lately listening to the show, which is of course one of many great pods to tackle the master of horror’s works. I really dig this one for both its near-academic geekiness – the hosts come from a literature studies background, and it shows – and its absolute disinterest in putting King on a pedestal. The author is an undeniable master of his craft, but he also has massive, damaging blind spots and a not-so-subtly fucked-up sense of the world. I’ve never heard King fans speak so blatantly about all of these things at once, confident in the fact that criticizing King’s faults in no way lessens the impact or entertainment value of his work. It’s the way I’ve always wanted to talk about the author, and its validating to hear others do it so clearly. It’s also a podcast that encourages read-alongs: each episode covers a different King book in publication order.
• Speak of the devil: this week I wrote about my favorite Kingverse show that died too soon, Hulu’s Castle Rock.
• I am wholly unsurprised that my True Detective season ranking made people mad. I said what I said!
• SEO writing – AKA writing up non-breaking news stories to target certain popular search terms – can be a drag, but it can also be an armchair researcher’s dream come true when a topic turns out to be more complicated than its headline (and, crucially, a publication actually gives you the time to dig into it). That’s been happening with me a lot lately, including with this story about why Star Trek: The Original Series isn’t about Captain Pike, and this one, about why Denzel Washington wouldn’t kiss Sandra Bullock in The Pelican Brief. Any day that I get to poke around Google Books for a few hours is a good day.

That’s all for me. If you read the Dear America books (as a kid or otherwise) and have a favorite, you know you’ve gotta share the love in the comments. Otherwise, I’d love to hear about what you’ve been watching, reading, or listening to as we finally make the transition into fall – a season I once hated that’s steadily become my favorite over the past few years. Welcome to September, and thanks, as always, for reading.