As far as movies go, Kong: Skull Island is an Entenmann’s donut. There’s no denying its plasticky look, and its scent is equal parts stale and intoxicating. It’s been designed, manufactured, and tested to ensure satisfaction. And yet, there must be some art to it because—if you can excuse the unnatural sheen, the mechanical formulation, and the absence of substance—isn’t it delicious?

Those familiar with the classic King Kong, or any of the major remakes, will recognize in this 70’s-set reboot the ape and little else. Taking significant departures from the original story, Kong: Skull Island sends a cadre of scientists, government agents, and soldiers to survey Skull Island, one of the last uncharted places on planet Earth. As happens in this sort of movie, government official Bill Randa (John Goodman) and his geologist protégé (Corey Hawkins) assemble a ragtag team: an uncompromising Army Lieutenant Colonel (Samuel L. Jackson), a suave British hunter-tracker (Tom Hiddleston), an anti-war photojournalist (Brie Larson), and about a dozen others—too many to keep tabs on. Each top-billed star gives a convincing performance, but once Kong makes his ferocious entrance, smacking down helicopters and annihilating half of the film’s ensemble, it’s hard to remain invested in such inane human activity as Brie Larson’s excessive photography.

One of film history’s earliest and most enduring monsters, King Kong symbolizes cinema’s power to inspire wonder, and the creators of Kong: Skull Island seem to understand that. This Kong, a massive feat of CGI filmmaking, doesn’t just look stunning; he has a life force beneath his 19 million masterfully rendered hairs. He carries himself with an undeniable swagger, and in quiet moments, like one that has him snacking on a giant octopus, Kong has as much personality as his living, breathing co-stars. Human standouts like American castaway Hank Marlow (an exuberant John C. Reilly) give the beast some competition, but Kong owns the screen.

With a wordless ape as its centerpiece, the film benefits from a spare plot. Most of the convoluted reasons that bring this group to the island fall away once they discover the hellish creatures that live there. What remains is a story of survival and escape, a routine monster movie with some mildly interesting ideas thrown in about war and national identity. The plot of Kong: Skull Island, as the second entry in Legendary Entertainment’s attempted MonsterVerse franchise (following 2014’s Godzilla), really only needed to provide a reason for Kong to reappear on the big screen. That the film is often engaging and sharp feels like a bonus.

The idea of a King Kong movie in 2017 reeks of corporate greed. Kong: Skull Island already has a connected theme park ride at Universal Orlando’s Islands of Adventure, and a 2020 sequel, Godzilla vs. Kong, has been on the books since 2015. Although not itself exceptional, the film owns its franchise identity, and somehow, Kong: Skull Island, a breezy, clever two-hour romp, justifies the giant ape’s cinematic resurrection, provided you aren’t on the market for fresh baked goods.

By the time this article is published, Ryan Seacrest will have signed off for the last time from the Dolby Theatre, bringing to a close Thursday’s two-hour finale of American Idol’s fifteenth and final season. Seacrest, a friendly robot in a dapper suit, stood as one of the few remaining elements of the original cultural phenomenon. When this last season premiered, long gone were the iconic trio of judges, the hokey Ford commercials, the Coca-Cola sponsorship, the makeover episode, and about two-thirds of viewers. Although I haven’t yet seen the finale, I can be certain it was huge—an opulent memorial for what may be the last mammoth of traditional television. And when it’s all over and a winner (whose journey I haven’t followed) is crowned in a sea of blue confetti, I’m certain I’ll be pondering one big question: what did it all mean?  Or rather, how and why did this long-neglected show once manage to score huge audiences week after week for nearly a decade?  

The answer is so simple it’s almost radical, kind of like Idol itself: It was great.

A short anecdote from a fan (me): My third-grade teacher held a weekly poll throughout the third season of American Idol. Despite the fact that this poll had no bearing on the show’s outcome, I’d make a strong case every week for Jennifer Hudson (and time has proved me right). The week America sent JHud packing, my third-grade nemesis did the unexpected. She came over to my desk and gave me a supportive hug.

Sure, people still watch “television” shows, and many of these shows become huge hits. But chances are there won’t ever again be on live television another program that reaches nearly everyone, a truly by-the-people-for-the-people extravaganza airing three times a week—a show that forces childhood enemies to find common ground.

Created by a Brit, Simon Fuller, American Idol premiered on Fox in the summer of 2002 to a mid-sized audience. Fresh face Ryan Seacrest (along with Brian Dunkleman, who left the show after the first season) at this point had no pull with audiences, and few could have predicted the magnetic chemistry of judges Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. Word quickly spread about this singing competition with an unlikely mix of charm, talent, and humor. By the end of the season three months later, it was the number one show in the country, and more than twenty-two million viewers tuned into the finale to see who would become the first “American Idol,” right after the commercial break

Kelly Clarkson, a waitress from Burleson, Texas, took that first Idol title. While it would be an exaggeration to pin Idol’s success entirely on Clarkson, the show’s producers couldn’t have gotten a more spectacular first winner if they’d sold their vocal chords to Satan. Genuinely likable and enormously talented, Kelly sailed straight to the finish line, and despite a lukewarm response to her first album and the nightmare that was From Justin to Kelly, Clarkson quickly found her footing in the pop music industry, translating reality-show domination into real-world stardom.

Her win established the ideal narrative for a season of American Idol: a rags-to-riches tale of an average American with a heavenly voice, an endearing personality, and a dream. Sure, plenty of people watched for the painful (“dreadful,” as Cowell might say) auditions, but enough viewers stayed to the end for there to be more to this phenomenon than watching deluded people find out they couldn’t sing. Following Kelly, underdog stories continued to drive Idol, and the show kept striking gold along with them, finding superstars in first-place finishers Carrie Underwood and, to a lesser extent, Jordin Sparks. Even if Idol winners lacked pop appeal, remarkable talents like Fantasia Barrino and Ruben Studdard, briefly, were able to establish niches in the music world. You didn’t even need to win to win, as Idol launched dozens of careers for those who got sent home early. Simply put, American Idol actually worked as a talent search as well as it did a reality show.

An oddly inspiring bit of Idol trivia: it took five seasons for America to select a white, male winner (after which there were far too many, but alas). With more than just its champions, Idol placed portraying an inclusive, multi-racial America at the forefront of its mission. And while it wasn’t until 2014 that Idol featured its first openly gay finalist, the show stood out for its time as refreshingly diverse family entertainment. Part of what made the show’s early seasons so special was that many Americans could find people like themselves up on the Idol stage having their once-in-a-lifetime “moments like this.”

In an unexpected way, American Idol was a political show, too. Despite its foreign roots, Idol rose to fame on the wave of idealistic patriotism that defined post-9/11, pre-recession America. It’s no shock, then, that a week after Kelly Clarkson’s win in 2002, 19 Entertainment (the management company with which America voted her into a contract) arranged for her to sing the national anthem at a September 11th commemorative event at the Lincoln Memorial. While this move earned some criticism in 2002, it seems like a natural honor, almost an obligation for a newly crowned American Idol. Beginning with gestures like this one, American Idol would entrench itself into the country’s cultural identity at a time when the United States desperately craved symbols of nationalism.

It’s an oft-quoted statistic that, at the show’s peak, the Idol finale received more votes than the presidential election. This point is usually thrown out to bemoan the state of American democracy, but that’s a rather limited way of viewing it. Setting aside  the facts that American Idol set no minimum voting age and allowed each person multiple votes, Idol was a celebration of the democratic principles that guide the country. A truly direct democracy, Idol proved how effortless casting a vote could be, allowing viewers to pick their favorites just by dialing a phone number. If you’re willing to follow me a step further, Idol also encouraged people to challenge democratic systems, as fans began to question Idol voting’s lack of transparency and call for reform. In the case of Sanjaya Malakar, a weak contestant who endured thanks to an Internet effort to “Vote for The Worst,” the public witnessed an abuse of a democratic system, and oddly enough, comedian Pete Davidson and former Trump strategist Stephanie Cegielski have both compared the Donald to Malakar as twin trolls of democracy. American Idol didn’t detract from the country’s political landscape. It embodied it.

A cartoonish take on art sums up its goal as “holding a mirror up to society.” Whether or not it was ever art, American Idol held up that mirror better than anything on TV, and the reflection was a glittering two-dimensional spectacle. Highly commercial, brazenly optimistic, and simplistically patriotic, Idol captured something of how we for a short moment saw ourselves as a country until we got too bored or discouraged or cynical to believe it anymore. The show, which felt unstoppable ten years ago, of course feels out of place in 2016. Despite its many updates and modernizations, the later years of Idol were a time capsule that was making enough money as a sideshow that none of Fox’s executives wanted to bury it. As it finally lies down to rest in the void of television history, maybe we can start remembering it for what it was: an American giant.

Hey, fellow conspiracy theorists, here’s a lead for you: Leap Days and presidential elections follow the same four-year pattern. Like fraternal twins of different heights, these two phenomena may seem unrelated, but you’ll never see them apart.* Even if you’re not a truther dead set on spending your Leap Day tracking down the lizard person responsible for this “coincidence,” there are still ways for you to take advantage of this special circumstance come Feb. 29. Me? I plan on using my Leap Day to figure out what the fudge is going on in this election.

To start, what’s a caucus? I remember googling it in 2008 and then again 2012, yet here I am in 2016 imagining a desert plant. Sure, I know it’s a vote, but what’s the reasoning behind a bunch of Iowans (no offense) getting to have a say before everyone else? I’ll look that up on Leap Day.

How about that John Kasich? He definitely seems more reasonable than his fellow Republicans. That being said, I have no clue what his views are. Will look it up on Leap Day.

What are Bernie Sanders’ chances in the general election? There has to be a person somewhere with a computer, a calculator, or some kind of chart who can give a rough guess. If the answer’s there, I’ll find it on Leap Day.

Isn’t Ted Cruz from Canada? Leap Day.

Hillary and Wall Street? Leap Day.

Rubio on immigration? Leap Day.

Replacing Scalia? Leap Day.

When do I get to finally vote in a primary or something? Leap Day. Well, not on Leap Day, but you get what I mean.

As you can tell, I’ve read most of the political headlines. I’ve just put off reading the articles. Luckily, 2016—one of those special years in which these two arbitrarily scheduled events coincide—is handing me an extra day to do the necessary research. U.S. citizens, feel free to do the same. Keep in mind if you don’t study up this time around, President Trump may have stricken leap years from American calendars come 2020.

*With the exception of every 100 years because leap years are weird; also sometimes fraternal twins aren’t together.

3  Total number of Grammys won by Taylor Swift on “Music’s Biggest Night”
1989  The year communism in Poland came to an end, leading to a revival of Judaism in Poland
22  The number of paths between Sephirot in Jewish Kabbalah
15  The age at which Jewish teenagers celebrate the two-year anniversary of their Bar/Bat Mitzvahs
2.2 Percent chance that Taylor Swift is secretly Jewish

Sources: 1) CBS, 2) Wikipedia, 3) Historyofalchemy.com, 4) Jewfaq.org, 5) U.S. Census

Credit:  The poster for the movie Carol

For film buffs, there are three kinds of movies: the artsy ones (aka “cinema”), the YA ones about dystopias, and the rest. The new movie Carol is definitely in the first group.  Unfortunately, Carol is only playing in New York and LA, so chances are most of us haven’t seen it yet. Instead, movie theaters outside those two cities just have the poster for Carol. I’m sure the movie is great, but boy, that poster is pretty darn amazing on its own. In the poster, Cate Blanchett looks to the left on the top while Rooney Mara looks to the right on the bottom. It suggests they’re staring deep into each other’s souls when in reality they couldn’t be facing in more opposite directions. They both look very cold—not unfriendly, just chilly—and the font is a crisp, yet non-threatening sans serif. The whole package miraculously distinguishes the title “Carol” from a Melissa McCarthy comedy where she goes on a road trip with her accountant to the Grand Canyon, the very thing any thinking person should assume a movie called Carol would be about. Carol has been getting a lot of Oscar buzz, but looking at that poster, it seems the best picture of the year isn’t even a movie.

D: Christmas Carols

Thanksgiving’s over, the turkey’s digested, and Mariah Carey’s back on the radio.  It must be the holiday season. Starting Tues. Dec. 1, it is illegal to tell someone to stop playing Christmas music, which might be too much power for one genre of music to have. Don’t get me wrong, a handful of these Christmas classics deserve to be played on repeat until Santa comes to town and commits a mass home invasion, but too many of them are nothing special. Like one of those middle reindeer (Dander? Xander?), these songs don’t have much purpose and are only there to fill the airwaves. Does anyone really hear, see, and know what it is that Bing Crosby hears, sees, and knows?  From the mildly amusing Chipmunks ditty to the truly heinous “Christmas Shoes,” are these songs, whether or not they’re technically “carols,” adding anything to your holiday season? For a little less than a month, one set of music rings loud in almost every public space.  There’s an opportunity to build up a solid collection here, but instead, we keep listening to a song about a Christmas donkey.

Fail: Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates, prolific author and high-fiber cereal waiting to happen, tweeted last week, asking if there was “nothing celebratory & joyous” in ISIS. If not wholly offensive, this tweet reads as painfully out of touch, especially since she signed off by pondering, like a relatable human, “or is query naive?” I mean, first of all, she obviously hasn’t heard about Starbucks’ new ISIS cups, but that’s beside the point. The tweet basically came off as, “ISIS are people too. Too soon?” Oates is an intelligent person, so what ISIS celebration does she think the media is hiding? The Islamic State Fair?  My theory is that this tweet was a publicity stunt for her upcoming novel The Man Without a Shadow. So to Oates I ask, is there nothing dark & shady on the ground beside this man? Because I don’t know anyone who just doesn’t have a shadow.

Homeland, which returned Sunday for its fifth season, is allegiant to no one. After the spy thriller ended its fourth season with a finale devoid of both espionage and thrills—Carrie spent the hour fighting with her mom and meeting her long-lost half-brother—it became clear that whatever you (you, powerless Homeland devotee) want from the show is irrelevant. Still, however frustrating, the show’s power to keep people watching because it constantly betrays their trust is its ultimate strength. This season’s sudden shift to Germany comes out of left field, but within a few minutes, the changes feel justified. With the complex and politically relevant plots introduced in the first episode, Homeland has already sucked me back in, despite my better judgment. I suspect it will do to the same to its other regular viewers. We’re just in too deep.

The new season, which jumps ahead a couple of years from where season four left off, begins with a shock. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), the brilliant intelligence agent with a boundary-pushing moral code, has started going to church. More than that, she’s quit the CIA to take a security position at a foundation in Berlin. She’s made her daughter Franny a priority. And she appears to be in a healthy, stable relationship with Jonas (Alexander Fehling), the legal counsel for the foundation.

Without any mention of her previous struggle with bipolar disorder, season five gives us a grounded, relaxed, and happy Carrie. At first, it seems like a mistake or a shortcut to so drastically abandon what we know about this character, but the show makes good use of these sudden changes, taking steps to emphasize how stability makes Carrie let her guard down. The meticulous Carrie who fixates on color-coded bulletin boards and complex conspiracies is gone, at least for the time being. When she drops Franny off at school, she doesn’t even lock up her bike.

While Carrie has made a break with U.S. intelligence, Saul (Mandy Patinkin), Quinn (Rupert Friend), and Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham) are still very much involved with the CIA. In leadership roles, Saul and Dar Adal focus on the fight against ISIL, both in the Middle East and globally, and Quinn, who has returned from a mission on the ground in the Middle East, has become almost robotic in his ideologies and service to the agency. Of course, Homeland doesn’t keep Carrie isolated from her former world for too long. In bridging Carrie’s new life with the CIA, the show displays its clever side, making these connections with multiple intriguing plot lines. Carrie’s new employer wants to arrange a visit to a refugee camp in war-torn Lebanon, forcing Carrie back into contact with the CIA as she looks for information about what to expect. At the same time, a Snowden-esque cyber attack on the CIA threatens the leak of an unlawful surveillance agreement between Germany and the U.S. and brings Saul to Germany.
Throughout the show’s history, the complex relationship between Saul and Carrie has provided Homeland with an emotional and narrative core. Keeping with the theme of drastic change, season five has wedged more than just a few thousand miles between these two. With more details sure to come in the following episodes, Saul and Carrie have stopped speaking, and only a chance encounter brings them together. In this harsh moment, Saul expresses anger about Carrie’s abandonment of the CIA. This falling out, while intriguing, seems like a bit of an overreaction given all the pair have gone through together—they, at different points, have literally saved each other’s lives. But considering all the things Homeland asks viewers to accept, this tension is easy enough to buy.

Five seasons in, Claire Danes’ remarkable performance as Carrie should not be taken for granted. Despite the constantly evolving situations in which the writers place her, Danes manages to make Carrie a consistent character, rather than a series of moods. Danes allows Carrie to find her calm, while letting a few small moments of mania slip through.

Patinkin, too, remains an acting powerhouse. Saul, with his concentrated stoic patriotism, feels just as essential to the show now as Carrie does. His anger, punctuated with sharp speech and a blank face, is almost as startling to watch as her impassioned episodes. When they’re together, the show is unstoppable. Here’s hoping this season gives them some sort of reconciliation—although, again, Homeland’s plots rarely turn out in the ways viewers hope.

The supporting cast includes both some old favorites and some fresh faces, although with a narratively packed first episode, it’s unclear which ones will show up again any time soon. Rupert Friend’s Quinn will certainly be a significant presence, as he embraces his coldness and takes a covert job from Saul as an assassin in Germany. Quinn, as well, appears to have given up pining for Carrie, which should provide Friend with some fresh material and more notes to play.

At the end of episode one, Carrie has put her life on the line to arrange a safe passage through a Hezbollah camp en route to Lebanon. For the first time in the series, she seems completely uncomfortable with the idea of “going back in,” yet it looks like she doesn’t really have a choice. Her lack of confidence as she enters the Middle East as a private citizen as well as her complex connection to the CIA’s surveillance disaster has me excited for whatever comes next.

As it constantly reinvents itself, Homeland has begun to feel like an ongoing experiment, with each premiere finding the show’s characters in new jobs, relationships, and, usually, countries. Because of its unpredictability, Homeland is perhaps best appreciated on a moment-to-moment basis, since there’s no promising that anything you love about the series will stick.

However, it seems like a guarantee that whatever path the show embarks on has the potential for jaw-dropping television. Looking back at the last few seasons, I’ve managed to block out some idiotic twists and turns, and what emerges are the hours when I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. If you can get past the show’s minor betrayals and occasional missteps, Homeland’s performances, production, and action pay off with good—at times incredible—moments, wherever its erratic story decides to go.

Looking at 2015’s crop of new network series, a batch of mostly misfires that seems less significant this year than ever, it says a lot that The Muppets, a fresh take on Jim Henson’s beloved characters, is one of the season’s most original ideas. While the concept—an “adult” Muppet sitcom—is worth some attention, the show’s pilot struggles to find a balance between the Muppets’ childish charm and the mature sitcom nature. Not all of the jokes land, and the pace sometimes stalls. Even so, as the show finds its footing, the potential of a weekly peek into these characters’ lives remains an exciting prospect.

The Muppets is framed as a mockumentary—or maybe an attempted mock-mockumentary—that gives a behind-the-scenes look at a late-night talk show hosted by Miss Piggy. Kermit, here as Miss Piggy’s producer, acts as the sitcom’s anchor, and his much-publicized break-up with Miss Piggy propels the pilot’s plot and emotional tension.
The rest of the gang shows up as the talk show’s staff, although The Muppets hasn’t quite figured out how to use them. Fozzie Bear gets a slightly amusing sub-plot, but the pilot seems more concerned with celebrity cameos (Elizabeth Banks, Tom Bergeron, Imagine Dragons) than any of the many Muppets, beyond Piggy and Kermit.

For what it’s worth, the moments between the pig and the frog really work. Miss Piggy’s shameless theatrics translate well into this mature format, and she delivers the episode’s sharpest and funniest lines. And the touching flashback to the couple’s breakup proves the Muppets’ capacity to show real emotion. This bit, at once amusing and touching, gives me hope for the show’s future—that is, if it can figure out what works before people stop watching.

For months, ABC has been heavily promoting the show as an “adult” comedy. This shift is subtle, but noticeable and emphasized a little too much. Some suggestive lines feel inserted only to make the point, “Hey, we can say this stuff now!”

If there’s anything to worry about with the show, it’s not the language or subject matter, but the structure. The mockumentary format puts the brakes on the Muppets’ spontaneous energy, and if the show is attempting to parody the mockumentary style, that distinction is vague. It’s tough to judge a show on its pilot alone, and this pilot especially does not make clear what the rest of the series will look like. Still, one or two impressive moments (and about 40 years of Muppet good will) will keep me coming back for at least a few more weeks.