I Wanna Link With Somebody

• Vanity Fair Jamie Lee Curtis answers the Proust questionnaire
• Esquire Candid interview with Josh Charles who talks his HBO show We Own This City as well as delivering Aaron Sorkin's dialogue in the past
• EW Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth Winstead got married over the weekend
• Slate on the sexual landscape of TV at the moment. interesting take

Viola Davis, Singin' in the Rain, The Northman, CinemaCon and more after the jump...

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Review: "Away" on Netflix

by new contributor Christopher James

What role does space play in our current world? Today, getting on a plane during COVID almost feels as risky as embarking on a mission to Mars. 

Netflix’s new bright, shiny and expensive looking drama, Away, tries to contextualize space travel in its pilot episode. At a press conference, a reporter asks the Atlas crew, “Why should we care more about Mars than our own planet.” Hilary Swank’s commanding officer, Emma Green, delivers an impassioned speech on how much the US spends on the military and war. Wouldn’t it be better if we repurpose these tools for “discovery, not destruction.” This sets the stage for an exciting space mission where traveling to Mars could possibly save us from ourselves. Unfortunately, Away dodges this interesting, if thornier, premise as if it were a meteor heading straight for its shift. Rather than take a risk, it heads into safer territory, being a digestible family drama...

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The Team on TV: Masters of Sex S3

Last week we kicked off a new weekly series in which we assemble a few rotating members of Team Experience to discuss various TV shows. Here's Dan, David, Deborah, and Manuel on discuss Masters of Sex - Editor
 

Dan: Hello everybody, welcome to our roundtable discussion on Masters Of Sex. I want to begin with a general topic: How do you all respond to time jumps in TV shows? Masters of Sex does this a lot, with several months often taking place offscreen either in between episodes or even during a single episode (S2's "Asterion" comes to mind). The second season ended in 1961, and this season began in 1966, skipping anything dealing with finding a publisher and marketing the study as a book. Did that throw you? Did you miss anything that would have been covered in the years we didn't get to see?

I was taken aback when it turned out Isabelle Fuhrman was Virginia's daughter Tessa, because last we saw Virginia had given up custody of her kids and Tessa was still a little girl. Now she's all grown and sneaking alcohol and drunkenly attempting to kiss Bill.... what happened to our sweet girl?

Deborah: Hi Dan and all!  I'm a Mad Men fanatic, so I don't mind time jumps in theory. But Masters of Sex has been clunky with it. A big time jump at the halfway point of a season (Asterion) is awkward. At the time, I wrote "Halfway through Season 2, Masters of Sex decides 'to hell with this.'" It was strange. Jumping forward between seasons is a more elegant way and it makes sense. Here's what doesn't make sense: The show clearly wanted to get to the publication of the book, because all the years of research for the book were bound to become repetitive. That being the case, now that they've brought us to the book, why put so much attention on Virginia's kids and Bill's marriage?

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