Scout Tafoya - page 16

Severance draws its excellent first season to a close this week with an episode that makes excellent use of every second of its pulse-pounding airtime.

The perfectly curated frames give way to woozy chaos as Lumon Industries workers Irving, Mark and Helly experience the outside world for the “first” time.

Revelations await them. And they’re going to have be savvy if they want to get away with this illegal operation to bring down Lumon. Everyone’s in fine form as usual, and the show makes a great case for a second season. (Which Apple just made official, BTW.)

WeCrashed, the Apple TV+ drama about real-life startup WeWork, goes big, goes crazy and gets bitter this week.

As WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann starts trying to expand his co-working company, he decides he’s got to tear down the competition, too. Meanwhile, his wife Rebekah is having her own crisis of confidence — and it may end with her having burned every last bridge she has.

Though cheaply entertaining a few times an episode, this show suffers from an insurmountable problem: It never picked an identity. It has to believe enough in Neumann’s prowess as an entrepreneur to find his tactics interesting, while also tacitly admitting he was wrong and crazy and a huckster.

But you can’t sort of admit your hero is a bad guy, not when you keep charting his rise to success without giving you any kind of window into who he was.

Ptolemy starts tying up loose ends in this week’s episode of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, the Apple TV+ series based on the book of the same name by Walter Mosley.

We see reconciliation and revelations for almost everyone this week, in a finely acted and carefully directed hour of television. Ptolemy’s memories are fading, but before they do, he remembers his days as a boy. And he realizes he wants his nephews to feel protected the way he used to.

Pachinko, the epic, time-hopping Apple TV+ series about a Korean family’s struggles, hits its stride in a truly unbelievable fourth episode.

The show started strong enough, but it reaches pantheon level in this incredible installment, which sees Solomon renouncing his capitalist training, Sunja saying goodbye in the past and hello in the future, and a climactic singalong uniting people, eras and cultures.

This is the kind of thing you’re lucky to get out of serialized TV.

The plan is set on this week’s episode of Apple TV+’s dark comedy thriller Severance. But will our heroes make it out of Lumon Industries? Will anyone believe Mark, Helly and Irving when they wake up from their regular lives and emerge their work selves?

This week’s magnificently tense episode, directed by series executive producer Ben Stiller, is a real nail-biter. It’s wonderfully edited and excellently performed.

Severance has abandoned its early crux — the depressing lives of office drones who literally have no souls because they’ve been surgically stripped of them — for a more fast-paced approach to the show’s thriller aspects.

It’s no longer a show about the drudgery of both lives lived by lost people. It’s about the race to get back some measure of its characters’ personhood.

Slow Horses, based on the first book in the Slough House series by author Mick Herron, is the newest addition to the Apple TV+ roster of thrillers.

In the series, which premieres Friday, Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the leader of a group of misfit spies who work cases in secret while MI5 looks down its nose at the scrubs.

Directed by James Hawes and created by Will Smith (no, not that Will Smith), the first two episodes of this oddball spy show prove reasonably diverting.

Dorothy has one final trick up her sleeve on the season finale of Apple TV+ thriller Servant, M. Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop’s show about a mystic nanny and the troubled family she appears out of nowhere to help.

Just when it seems like things can’t possibly be more warped than they already are, a handful of desperate events throw the Turner household into tragedy and disarray. Is there any coming back from this?

Servant‘s riotous third season comes to a close on a dreadful cliffhanger, promising more chaos and darkness in the currently filming fourth season.

A depressing dance party and a murder round out the crazy goings on in this week’s episode of Severance, the Apple TV+ show about a workplace plagued by secrets and underhanded, science fiction-style practices.

Once Mark (played by Adam Scott) sees the truth of his situation, there’s no turning back. But he can’t fix the problems at Lumon Industries alone. Wouldn’t it be helpful if something traumatic happened to everyone on his team, aligning them against their employer?

This week’s episode of Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson’s trippy workplace thriller brings a cavalcade of violent upsets — and each new incident stings intensely. It’s all a hair convenient, but it’s compelling enough to clear the hurdle anyway.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey takes a tour through the past this week and finds clues to its central mysteries. The Apple TV+ show, based on Walter Mosley’s book of the same name, continues to be one of the best shows on television, with actors Samuel L. Jackson and Dominique Fishback leading it to greatness.

The Last Days might be the best investment in a TV show Apple TV+ has yet made. All the right people will be talking about this series for years to come.

Apple TV+ show WeCrashed tightens up at long last for a reasonably entertaining fourth episode that nevertheless lays bare the essential flaw in its calculus. It’s still asking us to watch and care about the vacuous psychos at the heart of the story of co-working startup WeWork — and it has not made them any more interesting.

Actor Jared Leto’s portrayal of Adam Neumann, the CEO and founder of WeWork, remains unwatchable. And the show keeps hitting Anne Hathaway’s character, Rebekah Neumann, with more and more embarrassment to overcome. But at least there’s the occasional joke.

In epic new Apple TV+ series Pachinko, three generations of a Korean family — caught between Japan, America and their homeland — eke out a living as times change and fortune fails to provide for them.

Series creator Soo Hugh and director Kogonada based the show on the bestselling book by Min Jin Lee of the same name. Frequently gorgeous, this show provides necessary context for modern Korean sociopolitics, while also delivering healthy doses of gripping melodrama.

The series, which debuts Friday on Apple TV+, also boasts what might be the best opening credits sequence of all time.

The plot thickens on this week’s tense and exciting episode of Severance, the show about a creeping conspiracy at a shady organization.

Mark is finally ready to start asking questions about what his employer Lumon Industries is up to, even though he knows the company will do everything in its power to stop him. He’s going to have to watch himself on two fronts because his outside world self is starting to dig into Lumon, too. And if he keeps making a spectacle of himself at work, they’ll be watching him extra-closely outside.

Dorothy is fed up on this week’s Servant, the Apple TV+’s show about a witchy nanny named Leanne who takes over the lives of a rich Philadelphia family.

Dorothy wants Leanne out of the house by any means necessary, heedless of just how crazed her determination makes her look. She’s going to need all the help she can get to best Leanne, who she should know by now is nigh-impossible to outflank.

This week’s typically strong episode comes courtesy of Austrian directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, who take to the world of Servant like fish to water.

The five kidnapping suspects finally meet their tormentor in the gripping season finale of Apple TV+ thriller series Suspicion. All the information will be revealed about these perfect strangers this week. And they can decide for themselves, along with the rest of the world, whether they’ve been doing the right things for the wrong reasons.

This ecoterrorism lark has proven exciting so far. The first season of Suspicion closes on a satisfying note of audacious ambiguity about what happens next and who gets away.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, the Apple TV+ series based on the book of the same name by Walter Mosley, unwinds more of its central mysteries this week.

Ptolemy (played by the excellent Samuel L. Jackson) learns a little more about the deal he’s made with the doctors to get his memory back — and what it will cost him in the long run. However, he’s got too much to do with the extra capacity the operation gave him to stop now. If he can’t solve the many problems and questions swirling around him before he loses his memory, it will be too late. He’ll die not even realizing how close he came to peace.

For some reason, Apple TV+ paid actual money for WeCrashed, the deeply inessential story of WeWork founder Adam Neumann and his wife Rebekah.

The tale’s already been told as a documentary, a podcast and a series of investigative pieces for various publications. But as we all know, the idea isn’t totally wrung dry until a couple of Oscar winners have their say.

So here’s Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway as the Neumanns in a terrible Apple TV+ mini-series directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. Maybe now we can tell another story.

Leanne makes a surprising new friend on this week’s episode of Servant, Apple TV+’s M. Night Shyamalan-shepherded show about a nanny upending the lives of a rich Philadelphia couple.

Dorothy’s rival at the TV station shows up in their lives with a little more force than usual, and it’s up to Leanne to fix things, and keep the Turners from losing what they worked so hard to gain.

The kidnapping suspects under Suspicion land in New York for their next rendezvous this week on Apple TV+’s thriller series.

As the noose tightens around them from the lead-hungry FBI and British police service, the group starts to look at each other askance more frequently than usual. Can they really trust each other? This week, there’s enough breathing room to soak up the tension. And Katherine Newman (played by Uma Thurman) finds herself in an uncomfortable situation.

Severance takes a detour to a birthing cottage as Helly recovers from her suicide attempt and Mark recovers from having misjudged her so wildly. Now that he’s starting to see her side of things, he just has to hope it’s not too late.

Elsewhere in this week’s episode of the Apple TV+ hit about a company with extreme ideas about work/life balance, Irving and Burt circle each other. Mrs. Cobel grows nervous about her grip on the employees. And a psychiatrist comes in to monitor everyone.

Trust is running thin at Lumon Industries, and tensions are running high.

Apple TV+ made an incredibly smart move picking up The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, based on the book of the same name by legendary writer Walter Mosley.

Directed by Ramin Bahrani, adapted by Mosley himself, and starring a searing Samuel L. Jackson, this is one of the best things to air on Apple TV+ so far. This sensitive and painful look at a man losing his memory at the end of a hard life is everything it ought to be.

Apple kicked off Tuesday’s Peek Performance event with a look at the upcoming Apple TV+ slate of movies — and it’s not a very pretty picture.

You can look forward to the kind of forgettable, star-studded stuff that Netflix has become so adept at providing a rapacious public, most of whom seem just as eager to forget these types of movies exist. While promising Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon remains free of both a release date and a trailer, the Apple TV+ sizzle real showcased several upcoming movies that don’t inspire confidence.

Dorothy is getting fed up with Leanne and her followers on this week’s installment of Apple TV+ thriller Servant. The cultish mischief is ramped up as Leanne starts to exercise more overt and dark power over the goings on in the Turner household. And Dorothy realizes she’s no longer the one in control in a chaotic climactic vignette.

The endgame now looks like it’s going to be Dorothy and Leanne fighting for the soul of baby Jericho.

Severance throws a couple of funerals this week, but only one might be final. Apple TV+’s satirical psychological thriller about the hazards of compartmentalizing runs into a grim cul-de-sac in the episode, with some people giving up and others giving in.

The show’s purposefully lifeless world of corporate culture and suburban malaise find darker territory than ever this week as it becomes clear that each character, in their own way, will stop at nothing to do the job they deem most important.

The first season of Apple TV+ “comedy” The Afterparty draws to a merciful close with its final piece of evidence this week. The show, about the half-dozen witness statements relevant to solving the mysterious death of a pop star, has one more story to tell. This time, the last suspect is no suspect at all, but rather a little girl who happened to see the whole thing.

The Afterparty consistently dragged its feet on the way to this magnificently inessential and perfunctory wrap-up of season one. (Yes, shockingly, Apple TV+ recently renewed this “global hit” for a second season.)

The series’ first season never generated any interest or momentum over the course of eight episodes, so why change now? Let’s put this body in the ground.

The suspects are on the move this week on Apple TV+’s terrorism thriller Suspicion. As the five make their moves to leave the United Kingdom, there are loose ends to be tied up and strings they can’t see pulling puppets they can’t identify.

Secret identities and allegiances fall out of the woodwork left and right. And it seems like the next big chase is just around the corner. These people are far from safe.

The show’s thrills are now in the every idle second spent getting the characters from one place to the next, the big picture so fragile that one slip-up could shatter it to pieces.