Megan Garber
The Phantom Reckoning
From Les Moonves to Louis C.K. to so many others implicated in #MeToo, there have been many performances of accountability theater. But those in power have repeatedly proven themselves unwilling to make amends.
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Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Sarah Sanders Broke the News
The press secretary for the Trump White House, who announced her resignation today, used her pulpit to spread the gospel of winning.
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Charlie Gross / HBO What the Beto O’Rourke Documentary Says About Political Charisma
HBO’s Running With Beto is an apt snapshot of the 2018 Senate campaign that went viral, in part, on the promise of streamed intimacy.
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Helen Sloan / HBO Game of Thrones’ Final Rebuke of Anger
Dany. Sansa. Bran. Why did the show that used to be so interested in emotion come, in the end, to mistrust it?
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Paul Morigi / Getty Revisionism Is Winning in American Politics
Joe Biden wants to move on. Mark Halperin wants to come back. Donald Trump is Donald Trump. They’re all missing the point of true reckonings.
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HBO The Only Thing Worse Than a ‘Mad’ Daenerys
The late-breaking plot shift in Game of Thrones’ penultimate episode was sudden and swift and senseless. That is precisely what made it so terrifying.
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Helen Sloan / HBO Game of Thrones Is Considering ‘Electability.’ It Isn’t Going Well.
Sorry, Dany: Jon Snow, it turns out, is just the kind of guy you’d want to have a beer—or at least a glass of Dornish wine—with.
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Corey Nickols / Getty / Arsh Raziuddin / ... ‘The Goddess of Good Sex’
Dr. Ruth, the world’s most famous sex therapist—and at 90, the subject of a new documentary—has long harnessed the power of pop culture to tackle that most intimate of subjects.
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Netflix Knock Down the House and the Quiet Insurgency of Tears
The new Netflix documentary makes a subtly radical argument: that the emotions of women running for office are not liabilities, but sources of power.
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CNN / screenshot CNN Is About to Host a Hunger Games Town Hall
The televised Q&A is a sometimes awkward fusion of politics and entertainment—and it’s becoming a key element of the 2020 hype cycle.
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Mark Wilson / Getty The Perverse Paradox of the Mueller Report
Donald Trump’s outrageous behavior described by the special counsel is, at this point, so deeply familiar that it has lost its power to outrage.
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HBO Game of Thrones: Jon Snow Finally Learns the Truth
And in the process, he—and the show that has shaped him—reckons once again with the totalizing power of lies.
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HBO The Scams Are Winning
American language suggests that grift can be separated from everything else. American life suggests otherwise.
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Andrew Harnik / AP Joe Biden and the Apology That Wasn’t
His video promise to “be much more mindful” of personal space is all too familiar: It is precisely the kind of non-apology he has offered Anita Hill.
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Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Biden’s ‘Affectionate’ Behavior Was an Open Secret
Two women have come forward to accuse the former vice president of inappropriate touching. And some have defended him on all-too-familiar grounds: It’s just flirting.
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Colleen Hayes / HBO Veep’s Dark Take on ‘Thoughts and Prayers’
The premiere episode of the HBO show’s seventh and final season explored the most caustic of satires: an environment in which gun violence is so common as to become unremarkable.
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Will Heath / NBC Saturday Night Live Wades Into the Chaos of the Mueller Report
“Well, this week made me feel insane.”
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Comedy Central / The Atlantic The Small, Radical Choice That Broad City Has Always Made
Its conclusion celebrated what the show has done from the beginning: Insist that friendship can carry the same vitality as romance.
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Colin Anderson / Alex Wong / Getty / ... Americans Can’t Stop Mythologizing Robert Mueller
Batman. Superman. Boyfriend. Savior. While the special counsel has conducted a notably quiet investigation, Americans have filled in the blanks.
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Eric Charbonneau / Invision for Warner Bros. / ... What the Casting Couch Looks Like in the Digital Age
One of Hollywood’s most pernicious tropes hasn’t died. It has merely expanded.
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Shutterstock The College-Admissions Scandal and the Warped Fantasy of the American Scam
Beyond the eye-popping details, the fascination with the alleged actions of wealthy parents reflects how thoroughly the logic of cheating has come to define the present moment.
