Michael Haigis
Slant
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Past articles by Michael:
The Kominsky Method: Season One
The Kominsky Method: Season One TV Review by Michael Haigis → Read More
Homecoming: Season One
Homecoming: Season One TV Review by Michael Haigis → Read More
Wanderlust: Season One
Wanderlust: Season One TV Review by Michael Haigis → Read More
Camping: Season One
At first blush, Jennifer Garner’s performance as Kathryn—a high-strung hypochondriac, domineering wife, and helicopter mom—is severe enough to seem out of place in Camping, which is, on its face, a comedy. The HBO series takes place on a camping trip Kathryn organized for her husband, Walt (David Tennant), and their friends for Walt’s birthday. Tensions, of course, run high, and conflict and… → Read More
The Romanoffs TV Review by Michael Haigis
Amazon’s The Romanoffs, an anthology series co-written and directed by Matthew Weiner, is ambitious but disappointingly inconsistent. Its eight nearly feature-length episodes hang together as a loose concept, each one focusing on a character (or characters), often in different parts of the globe, who believe themselves to be descendants of Russia’s Romanov dynasty. While the show’s characters… → Read More
Dead Lucky TV Review by Michael Haigis
Sundance’s Dead Lucky is a tangle of plot threads, almost all of which are either underdeveloped or overly intricate. The four-part miniseries, set in the seedy underbelly of Sydney, Australia, follows Grace Gibbs (Rachel Griffiths), a veteran senior sergeant in the police force, as she hunts a notorious killer, Corby Baxter (Ian Meadows), and, in a possibly unrelated case, attempts to find a… → Read More
The Deuce: Season Two
Set in 1972, the first season of The Deuce mapped the sweeping effects of the commercialization of porn on the previously entrenched, street-level sex economy of New York City. In its second season, HBO’s sprawling, richly detailed series jumps forward to 1978 in order to arrive at another inflection point—one marked by the nascent feminist movement, emerging punk culture, and the complete… → Read More
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Season One
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Season One TV Review by Michael Haigis → Read More
Ozark: Season Two TV Review by Michael Haigis
By the time Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery) carelessly murdered a cartel cell leader at the end of the first season of Ozark, the series had spent nearly 10 episodes methodically building to this explosive show of violence. In season two, the series dramatically quickens its pace, as if it's brought a gun to a chess match. In the immediate aftermath of Darlene's misdeed, Ozark finds financial advisor… → Read More
Lodge 49: Season One
The chilled-out surfer-dude protagonist of AMC's Lodge 49, Sean “Dud” Dudley (Wyatt Russell), fits the archetype of the guileless fairy-tale hero. Except, when he's introduced in the first episode, he's languishing without any sense of direction. Dud lumbers through Long Beach, California, combing the beach for lost metal and hanging around the local donut shop. Then he stumbles upon the town's… → Read More
Castle Rock: Season One
Castle Rock: Season One TV Review by Michael Haigis → Read More
Sharp Objects TV Review by Michael Haigis
Wind Gap, the fictional Midwestern setting of HBO's Sharp Objects, is an eerily secretive backwater, an archetypical vision of a podunk town whose inhabitants almost all have wicked streaks. For newspaper reporter Camille Preaker (Amy Adams), who returns home to Wind Gap to investigate the murder of one teenage girl and the disappearance of another, the town is a reminder of her innermost and… → Read More
Marvel’s Luke Cage: Season Two
Marvel’s Luke Cage: Season Two TV Review by Michael Haigis → Read More
Yellowstone: Season One
Yellowstone: Season One TV Review by Michael Haigis → Read More
Arrested Development: Season Five
Arrested Development: Season Five TV Review by Michael Haigis → Read More
The Handmaid’s Tale: Season Two
The Handmaid’s Tale: Season Two TV Review by Michael Haigis → Read More
Westworld: Season Two
After an inaugural season mostly defined by its puzzling narrative structure, the prospect of true danger imbues Westworld with a newfound sense of urgency. The new season of the HBO series begins where the last one ended, with the newly sentient Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and the other android hosts of Westworld on the move after overthrowing their human tormentors. After spending 30 years… → Read More
Legion: Season Two
“I'm having a really hard time finding the landmarks here,” says an exacerbated David (Dan Stevens) at a turning point early in the second season of Legion. His frustration is understandable. Visually, the show's new season is as opaque and disorienting as its inaugural one, even as its narrative more closely adheres to traditional comic-book conceits. David's quest is now more or less… → Read More
Barry: Season One TV Review by Michael Haigis
Bill Hader and Alec Berg, the creators of HBO's dark comedy Barry, mine a considerable amount of heartfelt insight from their show's farcical premise: Barry (Hader) is a depressed hitman who falls in love with acting after stumbling into an acting class while on a mission in Los Angeles. This fish-out-of-water scenario results in predictable observations about such things as the vapidity of L.A.… → Read More
Trust: Season One TV Review by Michael Haigis
FX's new true-crime series, Trust, focuses on the fall of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty's (Donald Sutherland) dynasty. While its on-the-nose title ascribes the Getty clan's failures to a deficit of trust, the series also emphasizes the complete lack of empathy that contributed to this downfall. Series creator and writer Simon Beaufoy sees the Getty family as an insufferable lot of individuals who… → Read More