The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Poker Face, season 1

TV #24 of 2025:

Poker Face, season 1

I realize I am both late to this show and out-of-step with the critical consensus, but this first year hasn’t really blown me away. Theoretically, it’s a charming little modern Columbo riff — a “howcatchem” as opposed to the more common “whodunnit,” in which the audience generally knows the culprit behind each case from the start and gets to watch the investigating protagonist put together the pieces. Natasha Lyonne is fun as that lead character, the guest cast is stacked with big names who likewise seem to be enjoying themselves, and the cross-country cinematography is rather striking. Regardless, as the credits roll each episode, I find that I’m usually left more frustrated than entertained.

For starters, I hate the gimmick that Charlie is a “human lie detector” who can infallibly detect falsehoods in others. She’s a smart (if pleasantly off-kilter) person who could easily be doing a plain amateur detective shtick instead, and her superhuman talent makes things way too easy for her. It’s also just an element that’s hard to suspend my disbelief over! It reminds me of that woman in showrunner Rian Johnson’s movie Knives Out who vomits every time she even thinks about being untruthful, which was a premise that I loathed as well. Neither ability is a thing that anyone has in real life, which blocks me from investing in what follows as a realistically grounded story.

On top of that, there are plot holes and similar logistical issues that keep popping up and irritating me, although none I can get into without spoilers. But this is the problem with this genre: the prototypical villain is a genius who plans the almost-perfect crime, while their opponent is supposed to be clever enough to spot the one loose thread and rumble them. As a result, the writing needs to be on that same intelligence level to pull off the effect successfully, and too often here, it simply isn’t. Characters make wild logical leaps or forget about key details that should seal their fate, but nobody notices or takes advantage. It’s like watching children play chess.

There are some structural complexities I appreciate, with an episode typically presenting a scenario at length before rewinding to reveal how Charlie figures in (and ignoring how, like Jessica Fletcher on Murder She Wrote, she’s so frequently at the scene of a crime having befriended the victim in advance that she should be a person of interest for the police and probably in therapy for all the trauma). But even that wrinkle is of variable quality, with certain hours unnecessarily replaying entire scenes for us with no significant change. Overall it adds up to an assortment of elements that I like enough to continue watching, but never quite manages to overcome the associated flaws.

[Content warning for child sex abuse, domestic abuse, gun violence, suicide, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Saturday Night Live, season 50

TV #23 of 2025:

Saturday Night Live, season 50

Fifty seasons of a single TV show is rather a lot, and ideally I would have preferred to have the landmark status of that anniversary incorporated into more of the regular sketches and guest stars this year. Instead it seemed like it was generally business as usual at SNL, with the celebrations relegated to a few additional specials for the most part. Granted, there were some alumni like Dana Carvey and Mike Myers who made multiple appearances this season, but not appreciably more than we’ve gotten in the recent past, I would say.

Still, this was a fun run. Maya Rudolph returning as Kamala Harris during the presidential election was an easy layup for the show, and James Austin Johnson’s rambling Trump impression continues to impress. I also like the further twist on his formula seen in a few of the cold opens this year, where the character interrupts an unrelated scene to deliver his latest stand-up soliloquy to the captive audience. And on that same political front, Tim Kaine’s surprise appearance as himself was a great piece of self-aware / self-deprecating humor from the former VP candidate.

Music-wise, SNL delivered some hilarious original bangers too. I’m thinking specifically of “Sushi Glory Hole” and “My Best Friend’s House,” but the season also introduced — and then arguably ran into the ground — the recurring “Domingo” sketch, which I’m told went viral on the TikToks or something. Parental sex was also a surprising but funny theme, with both “Oedipal Arrangements” and “OnlySeniors” bringing the shock comedy to their episodes.

In casting news, it was goodbye to Punkie Johnson, Molly Kearney, and Chloe Troast, none of whom had been a particular favorite of mine, and hello to Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim, and Jane Wickline, who I don’t feel strongly about just yet. So a bit of a wash there, I suppose.

In the final analysis I’m awarding this season a baseline three-star rating, because I don’t think it really stands out as a remarkable outing for the series, especially given the somewhat squandered potential of the anniversary year. But it remains reliably entertaining with occasional breakout moments that take it even further, and that’s ultimately enough for me.

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Babylon 5, season 4

TV #22 of 2025:

Babylon 5, season 4

By far the weakest iteration of this 90s sci-fi series yet, although things turn around enough near the end (starting approximately when Sheridan is captured by his enemies and the standout episode “Intersections in Real Time”) that I’ll still rate it as three-out-of-five stars. Too much of this feels aimless, however. The Shadow War that’s been building practically since the show began is resolved after the first few episodes this year, only to be followed by a sort of epilogue wherein the always-inscrutable Vorlons become the new big bad, as they attempt to eradicate every species that’s ever had any contact with the Shadows. But that arc too wraps up pretty quickly, leaving us with merely the long-simmering political situation back on Earth. At least the mad Centauri emperor Cartagia is a fun diversion, especially in contrast to the interminable caste intrigues happening over on Minbar. It’s just a shame we don’t get to know humanity’s own corrupt ruler to that same degree.

My understanding is that this season was expected to be the last, and so certain storylines were either accelerated, reworked, or flat-out discarded to get to a meaningful conclusion. The eventual reprieve of renewal on a different network didn’t provide enough time for the writers to then overhaul their plans yet again, resulting in this run’s somewhat disjointed nature. It’s possible that some of the elements that don’t work as well here, like Garibaldi’s mysterious brainwashing, could have been handled better in the original five-year vision for the program. On the other hand, I do have to offer my thanks that a particular development that initially feints like it’s going to kill off my favorite character winds up killing my least favorite instead. I’ll take it!

Ahead of the actual final season on TNT, four TV movies were commissioned to get new audiences up to speed. I’ll be watching those in the approximate order in which they canonically take place, which means that up next is In the Beginning before I start season 5.

[Content warning for suicide, gun violence, gaslighting, and torture.]

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: Sinners (2025)

Movie #5 of 2025:

Sinners (2025)

Just a phenomenal historical horror piece, and one that takes its sweet time establishing the setting and the characters before finally unveiling the vampiric threat. In fact, I found that initial stage of the film so engrossing that for the first few scenes with the supernatural villains, I resented their intrusion and wished we could simply continue to follow the human drama instead. That element is very well-observed, situating us in a poor Black community in Jim Crow-era Mississippi where twin brothers (both played by an excellent Michael B. Jordan, director Ryan Coogler’s long-time collaborator) have recently returned home to open a backwoods drinking and music hall. The men are joined by their more innocent younger cousin, who’s a budding bluesman, and all three have romantic interests and other entanglements that the bloodsuckers upend.

Much as I wanted to see where their stories would go without the vampires, that interruption is of course entirely the point. Coogler draws a not-especially-subtle parallel between the demonic foes and the ordinary racists of the movie, who likewise violently derail the intended plans of the sharecroppers and their ilk. It’s no coincidence that the unholy presence descending upon the juke joint is initially / primarily represented by white outsiders, before any of the local people of color are struck down and converted to their cause.

(On a deeper thematic level, the script also seems to be comparing the vamps to Hollywood and the rest of the largely-white entertainment industry, whose representatives chew through Black talent and offer worldly riches at the price of conformist restraints and leeching off the commoditization of their art. Coogler has experienced his share of commercial success lining the pockets of his white studio bosses, and made headlines for his deal governing the production of Sinners, in which all rights will revert solely to him after 25 years. In that context, it’s hard not to see the work as a metaphor for Black ownership and the forces opposing it writ large.)

Even setting all that aside, however, it’s an immersive dive into a specific cultural milieu, populated mainly by Black bodies and Black concerns. I love the scene in which a musical performance pierces the divide across past and future, showing glimpses of African tribal dances and modern entertainers coexisting alongside the 1930s ensemble. And while the genre may appear to lurch suddenly once the bloodshed starts, the plot from there on out remains a thrilling one with plenty of terror and heartache in store.

I could have done without a few early jump scares, and Jordan doesn’t really modulate his acting to differentiate his two roles to the extent I think he probably could, but those are relatively minor complaints. Overall this was a story I felt deeply drawn into and imagine I’ll still be thinking about for quite some time to come.

[Content warning for gun violence, domestic abuse, racism, death of children, and gore.]

★★★★★

Movie Review: Thunderbolts* (2025)

Movie #4 of 2025:

Thunderbolts* (2025)

Very much the Marvel answer to DC’s Suicide Squad, starring a motley crew of operatives from the grayer side of the heroics business. In fact, some of these characters were villains in their original on-screen adventures, albeit roughly sympathetic ones. And as usual for the MCU at this stage, it’s not entirely clear which previous titles the studio expects the audience to have already seen / remembered going into this new release. It’s primarily a sequel to Black Widow (2021), with Florence Pugh’s Yelena rightly given the central focus, but you don’t especially need to be up to speed on her cohorts from the other properties, who are more there for the requisite banter and action sequences than asked to shoulder any significant personal arcs.

Still, it’s a fun shoot-em-up with a couple super soldiers but little else in the way of augmented powers. It’s also the rare superhero feature to openly deal with depression and similar mental health issues, which is a nice change for the genre (though I wish one key person’s shifting motivations were better defined than just general instability). Plotwise the movie does about what it’s expected to: someone foolishly tries to kill off the highly-skilled underlings they think have outlived their usefulness, then said protagonists survive and attempt to take their revenge, only to be sidetracked by a more serious threat that lets them finally be proper good guys. As a story, this interlude doesn’t feel like it will be remotely important for the future of the franchise, but it’s not such a bad time either. I’d give it three-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

[Content warning for gun violence and domestic abuse.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green

Book #81 of 2025:

Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green (Nightside #1)

[Note: this is an updated version of my review from 2017.]

The Nightside series was my introduction to the urban fantasy genre back in high school, and I still have a bit of a soft spot for it. This 2003 title wasn’t even the first one I think I read, but it’s a solid gateway into the setting, the premise, and a few of the key characters. As the protagonist will tell you ad nauseum, the Nightside is the dark underbelly of London, where it’s perpetually 3:00 AM and fantastical beings like gods and monsters rub shoulders under a giant full moon with anyone desperate enough to join them.

That narrating presence is John Taylor, a private eye with a supernatural gift to find anything, including fatal weaknesses or other secrets that have been magically hidden away. He’s a classic hardboiled detective, and author Simon R. Green nails that style of writing while marrying it to the weird and macabre details of this particular world. I used to describe these books to people as Welcome to Night Vale meets Sin City, and I’d say that remains pretty accurate.

Like many debuts or TV pilots, this volume struggles to both establish its regular ongoing elements and provide a compelling story with them in the moment. There’s a lot of telling and not showing, and the plot is largely just a movement from one set piece to the next. Nevertheless, certain recurring figures make an impression already, with the writer skillfully building up their legends as they clash against other equally mythical forces. We’re also introduced to the initial major arc of the saga in a way that doesn’t dominate the immediate proceedings, learning that the hero fled the Nightside once before, has powerful enemies who want him dead, is the child of an inhuman mother and the subject of apocalyptic prophecies, and may someday be responsible for the destruction of all life on Earth. (That last bit comes in one of the novel’s coolest sequences, when the narrator temporarily stumbles into the far future for a spell.)

Overall the work is probably trying to do too many things and cram in way too much exposition, which is why I’m giving it a three-star rating upon this reread. But I’m excited to continue on and discover whether the later releases improve at all, or if I simply happened to catch them at the right time when I was younger.

[Content warning for burrowing insects, underage nudity, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

Book #80 of 2025:

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (We Solve Murders #1)

Mixed feelings on this one. I like the interpersonal dynamics of the private security officer, her father-in-law the retired detective, and their eccentric author friend, and it’s fun to watch them bounce around the globe dodging their enemies while trying to solve a mystery. On the other hand, that puzzle isn’t one I’ve found especially engaging, and I really don’t care for the scenes with the villain under a pseudonym and the corresponding implication that he’s one of the known characters in disguise, which seems very Dan Brown to me. The overall tone is like a Dave Barry or Carl Hiaasen comedy-thriller, but not nearly as funny / zany.

I will say, this 2024 title is the first novel I’ve read that uses ChatGPT as a plot point, as that shadowy figure utilizes it to rewrite all his messages in a particular style to evade detection. I also appreciate his scheme to employ social media influencers as unwitting mules for his money laundering and smuggling operations, by sending them to various locations for bogus brand deals. As a whole, though, the story doesn’t quite manage to escape my mid-range three-star tier. I’d maybe come back for the inevitable sequel(s?), but I haven’t been blown away by the series debut here.

[Content warning for gun violence.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: In the Realms of Gold by Victoria Goddard

Book #79 of 2025:

In the Realms of Gold by Victoria Goddard

Within the context of author Victoria Goddard’s Nine Worlds fantasy saga, Ysthar is another name for Earth, and so these five stories take place in what’s seemingly a version of our own reality — albeit one that the protagonists discover is rather more magical than they had expected. Theoretically, this 2020 collection is intended as a followup prequel to the 2014 novel Till Human Voices Wake Us, as its entries all in some way or another connect to characters from that larger piece. In practice, however, it’s a pretty standalone work, and for newer readers, I’d actually recommend checking out this one first. I personally found the longer title to be somewhat aimless, and I think I might have liked it better had I been more invested in the cast from their early appearances here going into that experience.

On the other hand, returning audiences will be able to spot a unity linking these disparate tales that might elude newcomers, which is the common presence of a certain otherworldly figure throughout. He goes by various names or no name at all within these pages, but he’s recognizably the same hero from the novel, out upon his duties as Lord of Ysthar (a cameo role I prefer to his moping about as the lead). But whether he and the others are known to you already or not, this is an engaging ensemble of spells waiting just around the corner from normal life and an apt addition to the wider series mythos.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, incest, and rape.]

★★★★☆

TV Review: Andor, season 2

TV #21 of 2025:

Andor, season 2

I went into the second and final season of this Star Wars prequel prequel with reservations on two separate fronts. First, the debut run back in 2022 was simply astonishing, representing the franchise at its utter best. Was there any way the followup could possibly match it? It sometimes seemed while watching season one that it had slipped past Disney’s editorial oversight somehow, delivering a thrillingly mature take on how fascist governments operate and can be resisted. Showrunner Tony Gilroy may have managed to get away with that once, but Disney as a company is notoriously risk-averse and ostensibly apolitical, especially in the current climate. Now that they must fully understand what he was up to with this show and how it had been received, would they really let him do it again?

I was also hesitant due to my background knowledge of how the plan for the series had evolved. Andor was initially envisioned as a five-season storyline, with each season taking us another year forward towards the events of the 2016 movie Rogue One (which Gilroy co-wrote and co-directed). Over time, however, that intention was scaled back, until the announcement came that this second season would now be the last. The time jumps remain, however, with these twelve episodes split into four arcs for each year from BBY4 to BBY1, the in-universe designation for years before the Battle of Yavin at the end of A New Hope. Essentially we’d be jumping forward by a year repeatedly throughout this season, which is an approach to television that I’ve never seen attempted before, let alone on the heels of a more straightforward season one. I had my doubts it could be done effectively without losing all audience investment in the characters and their ongoing plots.

Luckily, it turns out my concerns were misplaced. Although I mourn the full five-season Andor we once could have gotten, and I do think there are a few places where this run has to truncate an arc that might have been stronger with more room to develop, it’s overall another remarkable achievement. In the final analysis, I maybe slightly prefer season one, but it’s so close I could easily feel differently tomorrow. I will say that structurally season two sets a much higher bar for itself, and it clears it with aplomb.

Every moment on the timeline is crisply defined, and while the characters have moved on to new circumstances each time we skip forward, the writing confidently clues us in as needed. The span of years also helps us witness larger schemes unfolding, from the steady coalescence of the Rebel Alliance into the organized force it’ll be by Luke Skywalker’s day to the Empire’s subtle plans regarding the planet Ghorman. If you’re enough of a Star Wars buff, you’ll know that that world is the site of an eventual imperial massacre, which is the final impetus for Senator Mon Mothma to speak out against the Emperor and flee her lofty position. (You can even go back as I did to watch the 2017 episode “Secret Cargo” from the Star Wars: Rebels cartoon to see what she does immediately next; that’s how carefully Gilroy and his team have plotted everything around the existing canon.) But even for viewers lacking that context, the mounting tension is clear and straight out of the Nazi playbook in how the Ghor are slowly positioned as troublesome Others in the Empire’s propaganda machine as the heavy-handed occupation intensifies. I love the oh-so-appropriate French Resistance flavor to their local worldbuilding, too.

This remains a Star Wars high point, but it also sits proudly in the company of other prestige TV series as well. The Americans comes to mind for the spycraft arms race, the unraveling cover identities, and the tense sequences of listening devices being planted, detected, and recovered, but I’d actually highlight Better Call Saul as an even closer comparison. Like on that acclaimed franchise vehicle, these writers trust the audience to follow along without spelling everything out for us, especially as they thoughtfully engage with their program’s status as a prequel text. On a big picture level, we know where Andor is headed: to the beginning of Rogue One, when Cassian is a trusted Rebel operative, Mon is a commander over him, and the information about the nearly-completed Death Star is only starting to reach them. But the personal journey to get there is rendered an interesting one, as is the way the scripts play with our understanding of that path. It’s of course a tragedy too, given Cassian’s fated end, as every step we see him take binds him further to his upcoming death on the beach at Scarif. And for the newer characters like Luthen, Dedra, Syril, or Bix, the question naturally becomes as it did for Saul’s Nacho Varga and Kim Wexler: why are they not around later on? The answers involve some heartache and some surprise reprieves, yet everyone’s fate feels justified to a degree of nigh inevitability in hindsight. Now that’s good writing!

It’s a marvel, honestly. In a fictional setting known for its wacky space wizard adventures — and I say that affectionately, having loved for instance the very juvenile Skeleton Crew — there stands this quiet and defiant tribute to the power of ordinary people to jam up the machinery of empire with their lives, and how authoritarian overreach invariably contains the seeds of its own destruction and eventually turns on its most faithful adherents. It’s even a genre series unafraid to call out attempted rape by name, when such threats normally stay festering in the unexamined subtext. (How would this creative team have handled Princess Leia’s sexual exploitation and slavery in Jabba’s palace, I wonder? Probably not by putting the actress in chains and a metal bikini for the male gaze of the audience, I’d wager.)

And all of this comes with nary a Jedi or a Sith in sight — not even the Emperor or Darth Vader, because as scary as the imperial intelligence and security forces here are, they’re operating at a level of bureaucracy still below the grand leaders’ attention — and barely even any mention of the Force. The wider continuity ties are subtler than that, in contrast to how Rogue One controversially used digital recreations of certain original trilogy characters. While that technology has improved by leaps and bounds in the time since, so has Gilroy’s restraint, and he now seems to recognize that it’s enough to merely invoke those individuals by name rather than turn their late performers into virtual puppets for us.

Meanwhile he has fun incorporating additional Rogue One characters like Krennic, Draven, and K-2SO, all so organically that if you watched Andor through without first seeing the film, you wouldn’t necessarily register any of them as an artificial intrusion. And as with Better Call Saul, there’s no effort here to de-age anyone with special effects; we’re simply asked to accept that these folks are younger than they were in Rogue One despite looking almost a decade older. It’s a theatrical approach that I appreciate, and doesn’t break the immersion any more than the unfortunate recasting of Bail Organa due to Jimmy Smits’s outside commitments.

In the end, it all leads fairly seamlessly into its big-screen predecessor, as of course it must. The plot threads that don’t continue on are wrapped up well, while the others reinvigorate and recontextualize our sense of where those protagonists will go from here. Cassian never does reunite with his long-lost sister, but one of the last scenes of the show confirms how her absence still haunts him (and thank goodness there’s no Luke-and-Leia twist with her revealed as Kleya or Dedra or some other female character, as I’d seen some corners of the internet speculating). And when it arrives, the ultimate closing image circles back in a really pleasing fashion to emphasize how no matter the title, both this story and the Rebel movement were always so much larger than Cassian Andor as a person.

I said this after the first season and again up top, but I’ll repeat once more that this is Star Wars at its absolute finest, and a must-watch for any serious fan of the saga. I miss it already, and I fear we may never again see its like.

[Content warning for gun violence, police violence, torture, suicide, genocide, sexual assault, drug abuse, and gore.]

This season: ★★★★★

Overall series: ★★★★★

Seasons ranked: 1 > 2

Book Review: The Expert of Subtle Revisions by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

Book #78 of 2025:

The Expert of Subtle Revisions by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

I’ll fully admit that I picked up this novel on the basis of its clever cover design resembling a Wikipedia article, and that site does in fact wind up impacting the plot, albeit not as much as I would have expected. But overall, I’m a little underwhelmed by the execution here. Although there are pieces that feel like they could have been effective if presented differently, as a whole it’s a blandly uneven affair.

The heroine is overly precious and special, to begin with. Her genius mathematician father has raised her totally off the grid, with no documentation or even knowledge of her full name. Now in her mid-twenties in 2016, she’s neither curious nor resentful of that strange upbringing, accepting at face-value how he lives on a boat, only contacts her at prearranged times, and believes he’s the target of a vast conspiracy persecuting him — which admittedly is strengthened in plausibility when he mysteriously vanishes. Meanwhile, her story is intercut with those of two additional protagonists in 1933 Austria, each of whom is struggling to succeed in academia and resist the anti-intellectual forces that are rising in the era.

Ultimately this is a tale about time travel, though that isn’t revealed until the final quarter of the text (despite being apparent for quite a while beforehand). Once it is established, the shape of the work is further explained with a lot of rote exposition that isn’t very dramatically engaging. In a way, it’s closer to a wiki summary of events than a firsthand view of them, which is a disappointing creative choice in my opinion.

Sometimes, the tangential approach works for me in fiction. I’ve seen other reviews comparing this book to The Starless Sea, which I enjoyed while noting that it “obliquely hints at larger designs instead of ever giving us the full picture… and often feels more like just an overheard conversation.” Here, unfortunately, I’m left more frustrated than impressed by that sort of narrative construction.

★★☆☆☆