A24 has had syllabuses in mind for a while, as I’ve argued recently in “A24’s Academic Style; or, Coming of Age in an Era of Student Debt” quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx…

My take on Michael Szalay’s impressive “Second Lives: Black-Market Melodramas and the Reinvention of Television,” is out today in the ALH Review academic.oup.com/alh/article/37…

"'Bonnie and Clyde' is the first film demonstration that the put-on can be used for the purposes of art," said Pauline Kael in her epochal review. "Severance" takes up that New Hollywood style in the most profoundly superficial way.

My alternate title was "The Offness," in homage to Teddy Blanks, who designed the show's typography: “The production design in Severance is highly indebted to that clean, modernist ’60s corporate look, but there’s something ‘off’ about it.... The type needed to be the same way.”

"Analogous to the characters' split selves, the show's attitude toward answering its viewers and itself is internally divided." Jordan Brower considers Apple TV+'s "Severance," 2 seasons in. lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-pu…

Severance earned an industry-leading 27 Emmy nominations. Why has it worked so well? In part because it sustained its put-on from the first episode to “Cold Harbor,” the justly-celebrated Season 2 finale lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-pu…

It’s true, I am Maddie’s friend!