Last night’s episodes of both dramas showed that their firms can be unfair places to work—and some of the same characters we sympathize with like it that way.
Review
Game of Thrones Watch: That’s What the Money’s For!
It’s not just about swords or dragons. Last night’s Game of Thrones showed that in Westeros as in our world, money has great power—and has its limits.
TV Weekend: Da Vinci’s Demons
This Renaissance drama might have been really good, if only it hadn’t had the freedom and budget of cable.
The Americans Watch: The Commitments
The setup of The Americans has made us invested in Philip and Elizabeth’s marriage. But the dramatic, sad “Only You” questions whether we should be.
Mad Men Watch: The Straight Pathway Is Lost
Mad Men returns for a penultimate season, full of sex, death, and booze.
Game of Thrones Watch: Speak Softly and Carry a Big Crossbow
An episode focusing on the dispossessed and losers of war suggests that in Westeros, war does not take place only on the battlefield.
TV Weekend: Mortality (and Reefer) In the Air for Mad Men’s Return
As season 6 opens Sunday, some characters’ patterns continue, but all around is the sense that, eventually, everything comes to an end.
Justified Watch: We Have Met the A-Hole, and He Is Us
There was no Big Bad in season four, but that freed Justified to explore the bigness of the badness within its regular cast of characters.
Game of Thrones Watch: Freedom’s Just Another Word
The premiere highlighted what I hope will be a big theme of season three: freedom, as an absolute, as a relative term, as an ideal and as a liability. Also, giants!
Phil Spector’s Greatest Hit
Al Pacino plays the notorious record producer in David Mamet’s “fictional” HBO movie that has both sides on the murder trial crying foul
Justified Watch: All Talk, All Action
The beauty of an episode like “Decoy” is the free-wheeling joy that Justified takes in letting its characters spend their words like newly minted lottery winners.
Devil in the Details: The Real Problem With History Channel’s Satan
The Bible never specifies what Satan looks like. Why give him dark skin and a Sith Lord’s hood?
Girls Watch: You Call That a Happy Ending?
Intentionally or not, the season finale pulled off a neat trick, giving us a romantic-comedy finish that had me yelling at Adam to run in the other direction.