Scout Tafoya - page 18

Apple TV+’s The Shrink Next Door, starring Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd, mercifully comes to a close this week after eight very long episodes. Marty goes looking for the missing pieces of his life after 30 years under Ike’s care, and finds a lot of dead ends.

Can he repair his life after so long messing everything up? It’s an open question whether he, or anyone around him, will be willing to forgive him. This series finally parts ways with its central pair and lets them both off with a warning, in the grand scheme of things.

Reconciliations abound and new beginnings rear their heads on the penultimate episode of Dickinson, the alt-history Apple TV+ series about the great poet and her family and friends. And the show prepares to say goodbye in fine, fine form.

Dickinson finally answers its loose-end questions about Emily Dickinson’s place in history (and, indeed, the place of art and poetry in a more general sense). The show finally explores what it means to want to create during a destructive time — and it’s a shame the showrunners won’t be able to do more after landing in such a beautiful place. There’s still some sitcom business, but that’s less important.

Just before the end of the year, Apple TV+ has one more prestige item to push. New sci-fi movie Swan Song stars multiple Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali and multiple Academy Award nominee Glenn Close.

Swan Song, which premieres Friday on Apple TV+, is a number of things: an inspirational disease drama, a sleek sci-fi parable, a clone movie, and the feature debut of an Academy Award-winning short film director, Benjamin Cleary.

Arriving so soon after Tom Hanks’ ho-hum Finch, viewers could be forgiven for preparing for the worst. Thankfully, there’s no need.

Team Swagger goes to the nationals this week on the Apple TV+ show about the star players of Baltimore’s youth basketball league. Trust is put to the test. Bodies and minds are injured. And, at the center of it all, Jace flails around when he should be flourishing.

This show heads into its final matches with a strong dramatic game.

Apple TV+’s exciting new South Korean sci-fi series Dr. Brain draws its first season to a thrilling close this week. Sewon has one last brain sync to perform — and it’s the most important operation he’s ever conducted.

He needs to get everything right in order to save his son (and redeem himself in his own heart for the job he’s done as a father and a husband). The race is on to find out if he and his cohorts can stop Myung from stealing his son’s body.

Dickinson, Apple TV+’s soon-to-be-missed show about the great poet, arrives at its moment of truth this week. The episode, titled “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun -,” is the one the entire show has been building toward — and there are still two left to go before this final season concludes.

Will Emily Dickinson become who history understands her to be, or is there some greater truth for this version of the poet? Strong performances and fearless writing guide the show into uncharted territory this week.

Apple TV+’s The Shrink Next Door hits the boiling point in this week’s episode. After suffering three decades of passive aggression, manipulation, bad advice, greed and sabotage, Marty finally has his fill of Ike and decides to take action.

It’s too little too late for Will Ferrell‘s character — and for this increasingly unpleasant show — which is about to wrap up on a distinctly unsatisfying note.

The aliens have been defeated … or have they? And if so, what next? Is this the first wave of a prolonged attack? The start of intergalactic war? This week on Invasion, our heroes wake up in a reality that’s been thoroughly altered for the second time since the series opened.

As the first season of the Apple TV+ alien combat show ends, it plants clues that leave us itching for season 2.

Just in time for Christmas, Apple TV+ cooked up a brand-new holiday special from the Peanuts gang. The charming show, titled Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne, debuts Friday and centers on Lucy’s attempt to pull off a New Year’s Eve party.

It will run alongside several classic Peanuts specials on the streaming service, so we don’t have to judge the new one in a vacuum. Luckily, For Auld Lang Syne pops the cork on some of that old-fashioned holiday magic that makes the Peanuts special so … special.

This week on Invasion, the humans and the aliens seem just moments away from some kind of break in their standoff, but fate is about to throw an 18-car pileup between them.

The Apple TV+ sci-fi series is about to bring back the fireworks in a big way. The Maliks are being shuffled to the Defense Department, Trevante is off to the hospital with Caspar and Jamila, and Mitsuki has to think hard about what’s floating in space.

Last Christmas, Apple TV+ made an important play for the hearts and minds of viewers: It gave Mariah Carey a Christmas special. This year, amidst a host of new original Christmas programs, Apple TV+ brings her back to sprinkle more of her magic on the holiday season.

Mariah’s Christmas: The Magic Continues is a short but definitely stream-worthy follow-up to last year’s charmingly chintzy special. Honestly, can anyone get enough Mariah?

Dr. Brain, Apple TV+’s new series from visionary genre specialist Kim Jee-Woon, drives headlong toward answers, both disappointing and cathartic, in the second-to-last episode of the exciting first season.

Can brain-syncing scientist Sewon stop the far-reaching forces at work to destroy him before they succeed? Can Hong redeem himself after causing so much chaos and hurt? Apple TV+’s first South Korean series is poised for a strong close.

Emily and Lavinia visit the future in this very special episode of Dickinson, Apple TV+s alt-history romp about the great poet. They head to 1955 while Austin gets desperate, Betty gets lonely, Henry gets creative, and Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson get high.

It’s a wild episode this week, rootless and maybe a little too cute, but that’s not unusual for Dickinson.

This week’s Swagger finds Jace, Ike, Jenna and Crystal at crossroads. The Apple TV+ basketball drama is all business this episode, showing us what the raised profile of their activism has done for the kids on Swagger, good and ill.

Jenna feels like coach Ike is letting her son down — and takes some drastic measures to try and take him off the pedestal on which Jace has placed him. But at what cost?

Apple TV+’s true comedy The Shrink Next Door heads into its endgame this week. Manipulative psychiatrist Ike has all but moved into his patient Marty’s house in the Hamptons. And the bad doctor has started professionally throwing parties.

However, the longer the party goes on, the less fun it feels. The same is true of this show, which increasingly feels like it should have been a two-hour movie — if it needed to exist at all.

This week’s Invasion is a series of long exhales as people finally mourn and hope in relative silence for the first time since the aliens arrived. The Apple TV+ sci-fi series prove its worth, even when it’s being as quiet as it is loud and exciting

Apple TV+’s true comedy The Shrink Next Door jumps forward to 1990 this week as Ike and Marty take the next step toward their collective doom: They go in on a housing project together. Ike is ready to become one of the beautiful people, something Marty always shied away from despite his massive inherited wealth, and they’re going to do battle over something Marty loves.

The show, which stars Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell, laid the groundwork for a one-sided battle of wills — and now it pushes everything too far. It will be difficult to get excited for another minute of this show after the episode’s conclusion.

Apple TV+’s exciting new South Korean sci-fi series Dr. Brain dives into the past this week to discover mistakes, regrets and murder.

Brain-syncing scientist Sewon Koh starts to understand that, though he’s at the center of a conspiracy, his own guilt is much more relevant to the crimes in question than he initially considered. It is, after all, not illegal to be a bad husband. But when your negligence leads to kidnapping, murder and fraud, it’s too late to say sorry.

Apple TV+ teen basketball drama Swagger faces its first COVID-19-era game — and its second brush with police brutality — in a tense and shocking episode this week. Crystal finally confesses, while team Swagger faces a couple of real and metaphorical foes.

This week’s episode of the stellar new show, which was created by NBA star Kevin Durant and director Reggie Rock Bythewood, is the crowning achievement of the season. It must be seen.

This week on Dickinson, the girls are off to the lunatic asylum and Henry needs to find his inner housewife to help his recruits pass an inspection.

This week’s episode of the Apple TV+ feminist alt-history fable is one of the strongest yet — and it makes the looming finale all the more bittersweet. Just when the creative team seems to be hitting its stride and enjoying themselves, the end must come.

When Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher was slapped with war crimes charges in 2018, the allegations made a public spectacle of the inexcusable, overzealous violence that had been a staple of U.S. military intervention in Iraq since the first years of the invasion post-9/11.

What followed brought the wrong kind of attention to military operations at a time when the United States needed to sell its continuing involvement in Iraq. In new Apple TV+ series The Line, directors Jeff Zimbalist and Doug Shultz adapt the podcast of the same name as a four-part documentary.

In it, we hear testimony from everyone who felt comfortable stepping forward to talk about really happened in Mosul, where Gallagher led a sniper team and committed acts that shocked his fellow war fighters. And yet the filmmakers ultimately fail to ask the questions that really matter.

COVID-19 makes its debut in this week’s Swagger, the Baltimore-based Apple TV+ basketball drama inspired by the experiences of Kevin Durant in the junior leagues.

In the episode, titled “All on the Line,” Jace and his teammates cover up a crime. Crystal exhales and figures out how she feels. And Jackie and Jenna have it out. Everyone’s at the top of their game in one of the best episodes of the season so far.

We’ve seen our aliens and we’ve got our heroes. Now what dreadful things await for Invasion’s terrified humans?

Apple TV+’s newest sci-fi show is having a pretty terrific season, all things considered. So now, with everyone on the same page, can the series sustain its relentless pace? Can the show’s creators continue this balancing act for the rest of the season?

The first season of Apple TV+’s epic space opera Foundation winds down this week with a drama-packed final episode.

Terminus has a big shiny weapon to use against the Empire, which is renewed in its conviction that all rebellion must be dealt with. Between a rock and a hard place is a human coffin that spouts wisdom like Yoda. Read on to find out what I mean by that.

In this week’s episode of Dr. Brain, neuroscientist Sewon Koh discovers a powerful ally as he chases new leads while searching for his son and his wife’s killer. Reality and the imaginary begin to blend in a way that suggest he soon may not be able to tell them apart.

Oh, and Sewon’s new ally? It’s in his brain! Apple TV+’s trippy new South Korean sci-fi/mystery series just keeps getting wilder.