There’s ample salt, acid, and heat—but little fat—to be found in The Bear’s frenetic seventh episode, directed by creator Christopher Storer. Executive producer Joanna Calo describes it as a “resting place” for the season’s character arcs, including Sydney and Richie’s fractious dynamic and Carmy’s increasingly “rageful, deep, dark feelings hidden inside,” all exacerbated by a rave review that brings a flood of customers their kitchen can’t handle. But in writing the script, Calo says, it became “this place where everyone exploded.” The propulsive, almost 20-minute one-take result created “this massive feeling of anxiety, which sort of encapsulates the energy that all people working in restaurants feel.”
The Bear: Courtesy of FX.
SUCCESSION
Episode 3, “Connor’s Wedding” HBO
Best not to get married on HBO. In “Connor’s Wedding,” the third episode of Succession’s final season, the eldest Roy’s nuptials on a boat quickly get overshadowed by an event of truly epic proportion: Logan Roy’s unexpected, ultimately unceremonious death. Rather than capture the fall of the king, director Mark Mylod focuses what he called his “sadistically voyeuristic” camera on the Roy siblings as they find themselves literally and emotionally at sea in a world without their father. “It had to stay really close without taking its eye off of them,” he said. “Because every time we cut away from the siblings, it seemed to let them off the hook.” With “Connor’s Wedding,” Succession simultaneously upended every expectation for the series while fulfilling its titular premise. What a way for L to the OG to go.
RESERVATION DOGS
Episode 8, “This Is Where the Plot Thickens” FX
Director Blackhorse Lowe took inspiration from 1970s cinema for this surprisingly poignant episode, which swerves away from its central characters to follow tribal cop Big (Zahn McClarnon) after he mistakenly chugs a bottle of soda laced with psychedelic drugs. Walking through the pulsating, spinning forest, Big winds up on an introspective journey to the past, confronting his feelings of guilt over the death of his friend Cookie. “In this seemingly fun, trippy episode, we actually really get deep into character,” says series cocreator Sterlin Harjo. “There’s a pain that drives Big.” There’s also a heavy dose of Native humor, like when Big stumbles upon a mysterious group of Secret Society members in the woods chanting things like “The earth is a whore, and it is our will to take her!” The punch line? The cult ends up not being a hallucination at all.
Reservation Dogs: Courtesy of FX.
FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE
Episode 7, “Me-Time” FX
Jesse Eisenberg’s Toby and his woes dominate much of the first six episodes, but by the penultimate “Me-Time,” it becomes clear he is not the Fleishman in real trouble. His missing ex-wife, Rachel (Claire Danes), reappears in this episode, which serves as both an explanation of where she’s been and a showcase of what Danes does best—raw, messy emotion. “Before the pandemic, I’d written my book out of a sort of primal scream,” says Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who adapted her book for the series, and a primal scream defines this episode too. Growing apart from her married boyfriend, Rachel lets loose in a therapy session so loud it shakes the trees outside. It’s a taut, cathartic reflection on what happens when your heart feels overstuffed and empty all at once.
ANDOR
Episode 12, “Rix Road” Disney+
It all builds to a brick. The first season’s extraordinary climax takes place at the funeral march for Maarva (Fiona Shaw), the adoptive mother of Diego Luna’s title rebel leader, whose remains have been forged into a hexagonal funerary stone. When Maarva delivers her own fiery eulogy by way of prerecorded hologram, a riot breaks out—and Maarva’s brick becomes a weapon used to clobber Imperial soldiers. “That is when the moviemaking takes off past the script,” says series creator Tony Gilroy. “I remember being really surprised when I saw it and going, ‘Holy…look what they did!’ ”
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Savannah Walsh, Chris Murphy, Christian Allaire, Kase Wickman, Anthony Breznican, Rebecca Ford, David Canfield, Hillary Busis
When Daphne (Meghann Fahy) whisks Harper (Aubrey Plaza) off on an unexpected overnight stay in a villa in Noto, the pair hit the shops wearing showstopping looks that costume designer Alex Bovaird describes as fittingly romantic and sexy. “It is Daphne’s little fantasy and she’s always playful,” says Bovaird of the blue-and-white striped Prada two-piece Daphne wears once they arrive. The constant tension between them also plays out in what they wear. “Daphne dresses a lot more what somebody with money should wear,” says Bovaird, adding that Harper, in her tastes, is “much cooler than Daphne. And she’s a little bit uptight.” Her vintage Moschino dress, then, is “a perfect little summer holiday retro look, but it’s also very stiff.” Both women wear designer clothes and accessories, like an Hermès bag, Cartier watch, and the Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses lately favored by the ultra-rich. “They’re both thinking about what they’re wearing from head to toe,” Bovaird says. “In real life, people who’ve had money for a long time maybe don’t wear flashy things—but in the movie world they do.”
Courtesy of HBO
SUCCESSION (HBO)
When Shiv, Roman, and Kendall Roy travel to a California estate and attempt to lock in a deal with the Pierce family in the first episode of the season, they wear outfits that say “we come in peace,” says costume designer Michelle Matland. “They were all in their least business attire, knowing that Nan was only going to welcome them if they didn’t come as a team of troopers.” Matland adds that the moment also allowed viewers to see “a little bit about who they are when they’re not with Logan.” Each of the Roy offspring has transformed their looks over the seasons, with Kendall (Jeremy Strong) going from “corporate to hipster to trying to fit into his father’s world and then throwing his hands up, I think, and deciding to find himself again after a lot of difficulties,” says Matland. Of course, Kendall still uses his clothes to communicate how he wants to be seen. “Not necessarily who he is, but who he would like to say to the world he is: ‘I’m strong, I’m hip, I’m cool, I’m wealthy,’ ” says Matland. In contrast, Pierce family matriarch Nan (Cherry Jones) carries her generations of riches in a much different way. “We see Nan come out in what she could have been gardening in. She has a much longer history of wealth,” says Matland. But even Nan only wears the best designers, which speaks more to her limited view of the world rather than her specific desire to display her wealth. “Her clothes are super high-end and they’re all labels, but not because she’s pretentious, because that’s all she knows,” says Matland. “They’re limited to their understanding of the world, and her understanding of the world is fairly simple. This is old American money.”
Courtesy of HBO
BEEF (Netflix)
All of the characters in Beef use their clothing to communicate how they want to be seen, whether that’s to gain power, hide secrets, or manipulate others. There’s a range of wealth on the show, and so costume designer Helen Huang turned to Instagram, studying Asian influencers to perfect the way Ashley Park’s Naomi would dress. “Even though she is wealthy, we did it where she was very conscious of her body and she liked sort of pared-back looks, but then she has a logo bag or something—she’s that type of wealth,” she says of Naomi’s Alexander Wang shirt and Helmut Lang pants. “When you have wealth, the silhouette is changed.” Maria Bello’s billionaire investor Jordan uses her high-end looks to exhibit her proclivity for collecting— both objects and people. “Her wealth is not in the fact that she has a specifically labeled purse, but more so she’s very proud of the textiles she collected in Africa,” says Huang, who accessorized a black Donna Karan dress with a shawl from Bello’s own travels. Most of her sleek looks are accompanied by a pop of pattern, like a black top that Huang paired with a vintage textile that she found at a costume shop. “When you travel a lot, depending on your racial identity, there is an element of racial appropriation to it,” says Huang. “She might not be aware, but it is very apparent in the story with a mostly Asian cast.”
Dunne’s family declined to comment for this story, preferring not to relive the tragedy. Packer did not respond to requests for an interview. As the deplorable Daniel, the actor, who went on to appear in movies such as RoboCop and Strange Days, along with a long list of TV appearances, remains one of the most chilling aspects of the miniseries.
A 22-year-old actor named Blair Tefkin entered a production in mourning. She had just made her screen debut with a small role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and was asked to fill the part left vacant by Dunne’s death. “Someone had to do it. But definitely, it was hard,” Tefkin says. “Normally, you’d be really excited and happy you got a part, but it was a different kind of experience.”
An extra week of filming was added to the production to re-create work that Dunne had already completed. “We had the physical problem of having to go back and reshoot scenes with a brand-new actress, who had to step into the role that a beloved person had been playing,” Johnson says. Tefkin sums up those reshoots with two words. “Awkward,” she says. “Sad.”
Ironically, her Robin is one of the bright spots of V, an effervescent kid who just yearns for things to return to normal when her life is upended. She was the innocent caught up in the crisis. “I didn’t really think about what she symbolized,” Tefkin says. “I was thinking more about it from the vantage point of sort of a self-involved teenager. Her life and the world is crumbling. She’s interested in boys and her crushes and is pretty tunnel-visioned.”
After shooting was finished, the V cast and crew gathered one more time for a wrap party to screen the miniseries. The mood was celebratory until the end, when the credits concluded with: “In loving memory of Dominique Dunne—Her friends miss her.”
“That’s when everybody in the room really started crying,” Johnson says. “That moment.”
V’s debut was a smash with audiences and critics, but V’s victory turned out to be a pyrrhic one for Johnson. NBC wanted more but Warner Bros. was reluctant to make it. The initial $8 million budget had ballooned to $13 million, and the financials seemed risky. “I think it was unclear to them just how valuable this was,” says Sagansky, the former NBC exec. Johnson blames V’s budget problems on the overtime incurred in the race to finish by May sweeps. The sci-fi element also came with sticker shock. “The use of special effects was really unique in television at that time, and because they were so new, it was unclear how much they cost,” Sagansky says. Blame fell on Johnson himself, although Sagansky feels that was misguided: “I never thought that Kenny got all his due for what he accomplished.”
NBC finally offered terms that convinced Warner Bros. to greenlight a second miniseries. The sequel would be called V: The Final Battle. Just before production was set to begin, Johnson says he got a call from a Warner Bros. TV executive, who said: “‘Kenny, we don’t want you to direct any of the sequel.’ Honest to God, this is a quote. ‘We are afraid you won’t direct the sequel as quick and cheap and dirty as we want it done.’”
Johnson was forced out for trying too hard.
His pleas to NBC for intervention went nowhere. “I called Brandon, of course, and he said, ‘I want to, but the network won’t let me meddle with Warner’s internal affairs,’” Johnson says.
The actors say they were unhappy to lose him but contractually obligated to continue. “I think it fundamentally changed the nature of the show,” Singer says. “The overarching politics were underemphasized in comparison to the more adventurous and action elements of the story. We felt that immediately.”
V: The Final Battle was still a hit when it aired during the May sweeps of 1984. It included Juliet leading an attack on the Visitors during a live television ceremony, during which she held their supreme commander before the cameras, tore at his face, and exposed the reptilian predator beneath. Packer’s Daniel met an appropriately karmic end, consumed (literally) by the alien regime he so dutifully served. Tefkin’s Robin gave birth to her Visitor-fathered twins—one a human baby with a thin snakelike tongue, the other a scaly green abomination. “I never saw any of this,” Johnson says. “All of my friends who worked on it said, ‘Kenny, you don’t want to see what they did to your original series. You just don’t.’”
The Final Battle used parts of his scripts, but Johnson changed his story credit to Lillian Weezer, a combination of the name and nickname of his golden retriever. NBC ordered a weekly series, but Johnson was completely locked out. The result? “Ugh,” says Sagansky, “the worst.”
V, the series, devolved into campy schlock. Badler noted the changing influences for her militaristic Diana. “Stalin and these sorts of very powerful, corrupt leaders were more where I was thinking when I did the role,” she says. “‘Joan Collins’ came in later with the series, when it became a little bit ridiculous and started to become a soap opera in outer space.”
Most actors would do anything to secure a lead role on a national network drama, but Grant was desperate to quit: “In fact, since I wanted out of it so badly, they kept throwing more and more money at me.” She kept proposing ways for Juliet to sacrifice herself for the cause. “I mean, I had literally 50 ways to kill me off, and they weren’t having it,” Grant says. “And the direction that the series took, I mean…they tried to write a mud fight between Diana and Juliet, and I wouldn’t have it.”
The audience didn’t care for it either. The V series was canceled after only a partial season.
Johnson also wasn’t involved in the 2009 ABC reboot of V, which had a slightly longer run than its ’80s predecessor, with 22 episodes over two seasons. Badler and Singer returned playing different characters, but they were the only connection to the original. The effects were better, for sure, but the impact wasn’t nearly the same.
Humanoid troops stand guard after imposing martial law on Earth in the original 1983 miniseries.Everette Collection
Johnson went on to develop the Alien Nation TV series in the late ’80s and remained active as a producer and director for decades. Today, he is working to revive his own version of V. He’s published novels revealing how he actually wanted the story to play out, and his original deal with Warner Bros. stipulated that he controls the movie rights. Although he has no say over V on television, he still hopes to mount a big-screen revival. He’s now looking for investors willing to buy in.
The fandom, he believes, is still out there. He keeps a drawer-size binder full of letters and emails, many of them penned by people who were just kids when they watched the original miniseries. Many thanked him not just for the scares and thrills, but for teaching a valuable moral. “If I printed all of them, I mean, it would be a stack that would go to the ceiling,” he says. “Honest to God, it’s crazy. But bless their hearts. I love those fans, and the fact that so many of them get it.”
In the eyes of the state, at least publicly, neither community’s approach was necessarily more correct than the other, and for the first few years not a single official raised a red flag or published any complaints. Just 466 applications were logged in 2015, the first year of the program. By 2020, though, that number hit 34,876. The Sephardim had been the world’s first truly global Jewish community, ending up everywhere, from Libya to London, Hamburg to Mexico City. Folders filled with multilingual marriage certificates and photo albums flooded in from all corners.
By far the largest surviving number of Sephardim can be found in Israel. A bustling avenue to Portuguese citizenship rapidly developed there, with several corporations springing up to service the interest. “It was like a factory: 100 clerks, telephones,” recalls Leon Amiras, the vice president of the Israeli Bar Association, who was initially skeptical about having non-lawyers involved. He had personally helped a couple hundred Sephardim apply, following word-of-mouth referrals, from his office opposite the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem. But the more he saw of the larger operators, the more he grew to admire their seriousness and professionalism. They were, he says, “‘tak, tak, tak,’ first stage, second stage.…” He trails off to pull out his phone and show me several slick commercials produced by one such firm, called Portugalis.
Like Litvak, Amiras was born in Argentina. His grandparents had fled Turkey during an early 20th-century conflict with Greece, and he successfully gained Spanish and Portuguese citizenship thanks to Sephardic ancestors in both his parents’ families. But he told me his Portuguese certification from the community in Porto required far less documentation than the endless back-and-forth with the designated Jewish community in Spain. “The difference between the Portuguese procedure and the Spanish procedure is like when you have two girlfriends,” he explained with a hint of mischief. “One says ‘I really love, love you, want to be with you.’ The other says, ‘I’m not sure if I want you, if you want to be with me, I want flowers, I want a Rolex, I want this, I want this, I want this.’”
The subsequent deluge of citizenship and passport requests—the latter as proof of the former—began to outpace Portugal’s poorly staffed civil service, and delays mounted. By June 2020, foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva appeared before Parliament to ask for change. “There are an increasing number of people who come to that consulate,” he said, quoting a telegram from Portugal’s ambassador to Israel, “both to prepare applications and to collect their citizen cards or passports, who manifest complete ignorance about Portugal, its culture and history, even declaring they have no intention of visiting our country.” Israeli firms, he told lawmakers, had been advertising Portuguese citizenship applications during Black Friday sales. Such “prostitution,” he called it, of the country’s nationality “damaged Portugal’s international reputation.” Another lawmaker proposed adding a two-year residency requirement. Various Jewish communities began to worry that the right of return wouldn’t last much longer.
On July 16, 2020, an applicant with the Hebrew name of “Nachman ben Aharon” emailed the Porto community. “Dear Community,” he wrote in English. “I am a Sephardic Jew member of Sephardic community. Rabbi Boroda interviewed me and attested my Sephardic origin. Thank you, Roman.” Attachments included a birth certificate, a PDF file entitled “Letter from the Rabbi,” copies of Russian and Israeli passports, and a Microsoft Word document entitled “Roman Abaramovich [sic] Family tree.” It included two parents, Irina and Arkadiy, born in the USSR, and four grandparents, born in the “Russian Impire [sic].” One hour and 53 minutes later someone responded, “Shalom. Approved” and requested some information be sent in a different format.
Four days later, a SWIFT payment receipt shows Abramovich instructed his bankers at UBS in Switzerland to pay a “charitable contribution” of 250 euros to the Jewish Community of Porto’s account at the local subsidiary of Spanish banking giant Santander. It was the standard processing fee, which, multiplied across tens of thousands of applicants over several years, has helped Porto’s Jewish community accomplish a great deal, including feature films about Judaic history in Portugal, a moving Holocaust museum, and tours for schoolchildren. A few weeks later, Abramovich supplied the reformatted information and proof of payment. He also wrote, “I plan to donate you [sic] on the permanent basis for the long term.” His application was immediately passed to the Porto community’s back office. Gabriel Senderowicz, the community’s current president—using the pseudonym Berel Rosenstein, as he commonly did to avoid hassle from pushier applicants, he explained to me—alerted other members of the “support committee.” He suggested the group send an email of thanks, which was duly written and dispatched. (“Those who doubt Abramovich’s Sephardic origins do not know the law, do not know the case, or do not know both,” Senderowicz told VF.)
King João I established the city’s Jewish quarter in 14th-century Porto. His successors’ enforcement of the Inquisition led to the murder or expulsion of many Jewish citizens. iStock/Getty Images.
When I asked how he’d shoot it, he clarified, “If there wasn’t a murder, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
Entin waved for me to follow him over to it. He anchored the pretend live shot with serious enthusiasm: “The trash is so high—let me stand next to the trash. Let me show you.”
He positioned his body next to the dumpster for scale. “If I stand here, it’s literally above my head. I’m five feet eight, and the trash is above my head.”
Dramatically, he concluded, “And if it wasn’t this cold, imagine what this would smell like.”
Even when the news is garbage, Entin is a star.
On December 29, a source alerted Entin that the Moscow PD would be holding an important press conference the next day. Entin felt like something big was about to “erupt.” The next morning, at 8:02 a.m., he received a Twitter DM from someone in Pennsylvania law enforcement, saying that a “Bryan Kohberger” was in custody in connection with the case. After some back and forth, Entin was able to confirm it.
At 8:26 a.m., Entin tweeted: “An arrest has been made in the Moscow, Idaho quadruple homicide I have learned.” Sixteen minutes later: “Arrest happened early this morning in Pennsylvania.” At 9:06 a.m.: “Arrest paperwork filed in Monroe County, Pennsylvania shows 28 year old Bryan Christopher Kohberger is being held for extradition in a homicide investigation in Moscow, Idaho. On my way to Pennsylvania now.” At 9:09 a.m., he tweeted Kohberger’s mug shot. By 11 a.m. he was on a plane. When Entin landed, the tip had made national news.
Later, stationed outside the Kohbergers’ gated community, Entin received another Twitter message from a woman claiming to be one of their neighbors. She offered to drive him through the gates. They met at a gas station, where Entin tucked aside his fear of being kidnapped, because she seemed like a “nice lady.” Entin got in the car. She dropped him outside the Kohberger house, which had been raided less than 24 hours before. Entin went live on Twitter. He knocked on the door, its pane busted out by police in the raid. Behind it came a muffled voice, demanding to know who Entin was. Entin introduced himself as a journalist. The voice told him to go away. He did.
Over the next few days, Entin barely slept, fueled by an adrenaline rush as he chased down rumors and reported on the ones that were true. Later he received a text message from Kaylee Goncalves’s family, thanking him for his news coverage. Maybe it was exhaustion, but the text brought tears to Entin’s eyes.
“It just feels so good to know they think I’ve done a good job and been respectful. It’s truly so fucking incredible and has me feeling really raw.”
Since Kohberger’s arrest, so-called “suspects,” like Jack Showalter, Jack DuCoeur (Goncalves’s ex-boyfriend), and Chapin’s fraternity brothers, have been exonerated by reality—though who knows what kind of psychological or professional toll this kind of experience exacts. One of the surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen, however, continues to withstand a huge amount of abuse. Mortensen and the other surviving roommate, Bethany Funke—both named as victims in prosecutorial filings—were pilloried on social media, a friend of theirs told me, alleging that one self-appointed “detective” posted pictures of Mortensen and Funke every day, analyzing their “evil” expressions and accusing them of the crime.
Neuroscientists have found that when we interact with social media, it’s the anticipation of answers, not their existence, that stirs in us a need to keep clicking, scrolling, and posting—perhaps that’s why Kohberger’s arrest brings less closure to sleuths than one might anticipate.
In our internet-addicted brains, it seems productive to skip past endings and repost whatever fresh allegations we’ve just read, misguided by the myth that social media is a tool for social justice. In reality, studies show that screens lower our empathy, increasing the tendency toward cruelty, which can camouflage online as heroism.
In Justice on Demand: True Crime in the Digital Streaming Era,Dr. Tanya Horeck writes, “The notion that audiences can participate in true crime has, of course, always been a feature of the genre” because it offers a metaphorical seat in the jury box. What is different about today’s true crime audience, Horeck says, is their expectation that the genre literally be interactive—that “justice” is something that can be accessed through binge-watching.
There is something deeply human about fascination with crime. The central enigma of murder is death, a painful reality that comes for us all, and one that we instinctively fight throughout our lives, differentiating ourselves from victims like Mortensen and her housemates by judging their choices and hunting their killers, as if that protects us from random acts of violence.
But whatever we might learn at Bryan Kohberger’s trial, there can never be a tolerable explanation for what happened to Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin. We want to believe in social media’s immense power to reverse or at least rectify injustices. The alternative is that we’ve bought into a massive conspiracy, surfing and shaming and buying, fooled by the idea that our addiction to screens is productive, virtuous. Never mind the destruction we leave in our wake.
The Idaho Murders: How 4 College Kids Lived and Loved
The brutal murders of four Idaho college students shocked millions. Through social media posts, court records, and other primary sources, author Kathleen Hale forensically reconstructs their lives before the crime, and the night they were killed.
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