Andy Andersen

Creative copywriter and media critic, reporting from Long Beach, CA. 

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Vulture •

The Penguin Recap: No One’s Untouchable

Our sophomore episode of The Penguin puts us through the first real phase of Oz Cobb’s plan to take over the Falcone empire. If you’re coming into this thing looking for a quality Sunday-night HBO crime show, the proceedings will prove efficient, if not underbaked. But where “Inside Man” may come off as paying thin gangster-cosplay lip service to its The Sopranos/Boardwalk Empire–baiting HBO time slot, The Penguin continues to make inspired use of the comic-book IP torch it’s been tasked with ca...
Vulture •

The Penguin Series-Premiere Recap: Wrong Guy, Wrong Night

Gotham City is underwater. For those who breathe the rarified air high above her streets — folks like Bruce Wayne and the Falcones — the aftermath is only felt in the power vacuum left behind by a fallen father. For the many who live on Gotham’s street level, chaos reigns. To anyone who’s spent any amount of time in any version of this city, the succession of news voices and flashes of chaotic footage that orient us in the maelstrom of urban decay will be all too familiar.
Vulture •

Sugar Series-Premiere Recap: Find the Missing

The lost finding the lost. What’s a hard-boiled detective story if not that? Every case is the case: one lost soul hired to solve the mystery of another. If you’re a movie buff like me or John Sugar (Colin Farrell), and you’ve spent enough time in Los Angeles, chances are you’ve driven past some Hollywood landmark or another and found yourself caught between the real world and the movie world, if only for the briefest of moments.
Vulture •

Tokyo Vice Finale Recap: A Different Kind of Justice

“I want to report on what really happens. That’s it.” That’s what Jake Adelstein told Samantha Porter in the first episode of Tokyo Vice. They were both cast as vintage Michael Mann protagonists, then — driven outsiders with an insatiable lust for greatness in a subterranean field. Navigating the complex underworld of Tokyo crime, politics, finance, and violence has brought its fair share of consequences to both of them.
evil sexy hamlet •

I Survived the Premature Burial

Nevermore. Nevermore. That inescapable word. Issued from a raven’s beak, spread across the only time and space you or I will ever know. An intimate betrayal you never saw coming. A loved one’s life cut short by disease, insanity, violence, some awful combination of all three. The echo of guilt distorts the survivor’s senses, the Id erupts with all manner of apparitions and cursed emblems. A black cat, a bleeding house, a corpse reanimated, but caught in the shrieking terror of its death throes.
Vulture •

Special Ops: Lioness Recap: Wheels Up

“If we play this right, it’s over before it’s begun.” Our penultimate special op picks up right where we left off, both time- and vibe-wise. Everyone in Langley’s clacking away on laptops and pacing and fast-talking through 15-second phone calls. And Kaitlyn Meade, as always, knows just what to say to sum up the whole damn thing. We always double down. Go big or go home, get rich or die tryin’ — it’s the mission or bust. The emperor wears no clothes, and someone’s liable to catch a glimpse.
Vulture •

Special Ops: Lioness Recap: They Choose It All

Damn, this Lioness program is turning out to be a real drag for our girl Cruz, and we’re just now getting into a real episodey episode of these Special Ops — keeping the action and the plot and all the emotional beats a-movin’. Cruz gets her first real round of spy games in, and some of the boys on the team even get a naughty li’l side quest. Action’s moving, plots developing, and characters are emoting tight little morsels of soap-western wisdom from the TV cowboy poet himself.
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