The devil, they say, is in the details. But in “Brooklyn,” Manhattan’s penultimate episode of the season, the monster in the minutia. So many secrets are revealed in this (literally) breakneck paced episode that viewers can be forgiven for needing one of the scientist’s blackboards to chart it all out.
After last week’s “33” efficiently set the table for the last few episodes, “Behold the Lord High Executioner” goes back and grabs the loose threads of Jim’s storyline and starts to wrap them around his throat. For most of the episode, it plays as a spy thriller worthy of The Americans.
Manhattan is a profoundly adult and complex show, but it isn’t afraid of occasionally including a little old-fashioned belief in the human spirit, which is welcome in a TV landscape that so often wallows in nihilism.
The legacy that is left in the wake of Emily Owens, MD’s demise could be found in Jennie Snyder Urman’s follow up television series Jane the Virgin. Urman wanted to fit her sensibility into a medical drama template but was limiting her creativity by playing too closely to the format. Her vision of an Ally McBeal-esque tone did not come through in Emily Owens, MD as one could imagine she had intended, as Jane the Virgin is much clearly Urman embracing her unique writing style without restraint. This show is still a very good effort by Urman as it is skillfully written and presented, yet the flaws exist mostly for being too generic to be noticed, which is mistake that Urman has certainly not repeated.
Jonathan Demme must enjoy weddings. His last theatrical endeavor, Rachel Getting Married, focused on the chaos one family is thrown into after a daughter returns home for rehab for her sister’s wedding. Ricki and the Flash takes the same fractured family dynamic, but the wrecking ball this time is mom. Ricki Rendazzo (Meryl Streep), left her husband and three kids behind when she decided to chase her dreams to be a musician years ago. Flash forward a couple of decades and Ricki’s life hasn’t matched up with her dreams.