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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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, …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 