4.3 Acres Of Diamonds The Meeting of the Milds between Arnold Rothstein and Valentin Narcisse was a masterclass in understated antipathy. The deal to supply heroin to Harlem has clear season-arc implications not least because of the manipulated involvement of Dunn Pernsley, but for now it was enjoyable simply to see this pair of crocodiles face one another in a spirit of polite aggression. One of the themes of the show, and of the mild psychopath archetype in general, is of the constant hypocrisy or the gap between reality and artifice....

The cast of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow was at WonderCon for a panel last weekend, and we caught up with them for some roundtable interviews. Brandon Routh updated us on the present and future of Ray Palmer. Before the hiatus, we last left Ray, Sarah (Caity Lotz) and Kendra (Ciara Renee) in the ‘50s watching Rip Hunter’s ship leave without them. Looking ahead we’ll see Jewel Staite appear in episode 10 next week as Rachel Hunter....

No, the flashbacks weren’t about Hank’s ex-lover Faith. Those are my dreams. So right away the title brings back awkward memories for an episode that basically promised to give us some glimpse of how Hank and Karen will end up during this final season. With Karen’s car smashed up by a drunk driver in the last episode, this week Hank, Marcy and Charlie gather in the hospital to play the waiting game....

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Episode 18 Clear Card can’t seem to get past its obsession with nostalgia. On some level I get it. This series is pretty much meant for fans of the original series that want to see the further adventures of Sakura and company. It’s fun to occasionally refer back to old events or characters. The return of Meiling was beyond delightful. Even the scene in this very episode where Sakura reexamines just how Kero recruited her into being a Cardcaptor was a great reference to the past without being beholden to it....

A gruesome plan took shape in the season 1 finale of Channel Zero, but with an anthology series like this one, there are no guarantees everyone will survive. However, as we share our final discussion with executive producer Nick Antosca, the story clearly had a significant amount of satisfying closure, providing the perfect ending to a great freshman season for the show. Den of Geek: Gary was able to pull his kids out and just be a dad....

Colony Season 2 Episode 12 Colony continues to do two things while it scurries towards its second season finale: 1.) Evolve into a full-blown genre series where spending intimate moments with central characters takes a backseat to telling an overarching story that has a few too many disparate threads, and 2.) Defy my expectations as it burns through all the fresh plots, characters, and other components that were shiny and new this year....

The other problem with that episode was how lazily sitcommy it felt. There was this terrible sense that the show was getting comfortable with throwing out some kooky premise and stuffing the characters into it, regardless of how it strained the believability of the show’s universe. It was the kind of sloppy, trite plotting that weaker sitcoms—and Community’s fourth season—might fall back on. The vibe at the outset wasn’t that different from last week and I was worried that Community Season 5 was quickly becoming Season 4 – The Second Coming, but the tone quickly evolved to one that made more apparent that this episode knows what it is that Community is actually supposed to do: develop its characters meaningfully....

But the quest for the Book of Leaves have overruled everything else in their life, and as Da Vinci fiddled with the recording device (shaped like a head) containing the voice of his long dead mother, Riario confesses that without the Church, he is nothing, that he will return and hope for the Pope’s mercy. Boy, that’s like hoping not to get a massive coronary after eating McDonalds everyday for a decade....

Dark Matter Season 2, Episode 11 & 12 On the surface, there’s not much that connects “Wish I’d Spaced You When I Had the Chance” with “Sometimes In Life You Don’t Get to Choose,” this week’s pair of Dark Matter episodes that comprise the penultimate lead-in to the finale. However, while there was an air of inevitability around events like Kierkan’s return or Ryo’s coup, intriguing threads of character details were woven throughout the exciting and suspenseful narrative that enriched and deepened the stories being told....

Dark Matter Season 3 Episode 9 Time travel can either be a real crowd pleaser or a confusing dud, but Dark Matter created a wonderful diversion in this week’s episode, “Isn’t That a Paradox?” Seeing our 21st century society through the Raza crew’s eyes was entertaining as well as informative, providing both insightful character moments and humorous ones. As the blink drive continues to add to the drama — first parallel universes, now time travel — the fallout from this episode may be subtle for the time being, but the potential for payoff is huge....

What a joy it was to see Datak attempt to stage the assassination of Mayor Pottinger using a religious fanatic as his patsy. I can’t decide which I liked more: the transparent convenience of Datak’s supposed heroism or the ease with which Pottinger dismisses his underhanded ploy. As much as I dislike the interim mayor, it’s very refreshing to discover that he’s not an idiot. It will take more than a haphazard Castithan scheme to bring him down....

2.4 Beasts Of Burden As per usual, the stars of this show are undoubtedly the Tarrs, and how their changing family dynamic has fallout in numerous directions. What’s great about Datak, Stahma and Alak is that they’re all pretty stubborn and determined to get their way, so there are bound to be substantial sparks. The scene where Datak kills one of his crew in an – ultimately vain – attempt to wrestle control back was pure theatre, if a little borrowed from a long history of gangster movies and TV....

Anyway, now we know who the killer is, it’s all turning into an elaborate game of cat and mouse – with Dexter in the role of mouse, something he’s really not accustomed to. Another odd thing about this episode is that half of it has been shifted out of Miami, about five hours up the motorway – something is about to rock Dexter’s world in a way he never would have expected....

For those entirely devoid of the common sense to watch the latter part of Dexter season 4, it was probably some of the finest TV in the last decade, up there with the best. For me, it was like doing something bad as a child that you can’t hide, and must handle the consequences for doing. And you run it through in your head playing out the worst possible outcome, and each time you do you realise some previously unconsidered fall-out....

6.9 Get Gellar This episode and my review of it reveals the answer to the real nature of Professor Gellar’s existence, and so if you’d rather not know, maybe never know, then don’t read it. But before I get to that, I’d really like to say how much more I enjoyed this story over the previous one, and not just because of the reveal it contained. 
I find it hard to put my finger on why, but the writing in this one was so much tighter, and there were some excellent scenes with characters other than Dexter....

8.5 This Little Piggy The opening scene in which Vogel helped Debra and Dex come to terms with their love/hate relationship was heavy on metaphor. Vogel’s increasingly maternal role in their lives played out like a family spat with her playing arbiter to a sibling rivalry. Last week I proposed the notion that Vogel is Dexter’s mother, garnering much derision. But while that might not be literally true, it’s becoming their relationship, and in this story that concept was further expanded to include Debra....

TV is changing. Hell, all media is changing and it will likely never stop changing. The streaming services have altered our perception of what a “show” or a “series” even is. Entities that we once thought of as movies or TV shows are now converging into one big ball of entertainment and taking on new, unfamiliar forms. Dirty Money, Netflix’s new documentary series produced by popular Going Clear documentarian Alex Gibney, takes about two and a half episodes to “figure out....

Disenchantment Episode 7 Though perhaps going forward the writers should be wary of dipping into the “Elfo loves Bean” plot watering hole too often, this early in Disenchantment’s life it’s a good area to pull stories from, especially for developing Elfo’s character. Elfo is supposed to be naïve and starved of life experience. However, the episodes focused on his Bean crush do a great job of unearthing the selfishness just beneath this façade....

Run, Tom! Go! Get as far away from Parminster and from those two as you can. We’ll help in fact – Doctor Foster’s millions of viewers will form a network of safe harbours. You’ll find bundles of cereal bars, five pound notes and Jason Bourne-style fake IDs stashed behind loose bricks and taped to the underside of toilet cistern lids around the UK. Think of it as an underground railroad for mistreated TV characters....