TV’s biggest night delivered on fan-favorite wins, uncomfortable bits, tearjerking speeches, and more

‘Widow’s Bay’ Wins Outstanding Comedy Series at 2026 Emmys.

A lot of questions lingered in the air before the 2026 Emmys: Would Vince Gilligan go-to Rhea Seehorn finally take home an Emmy? Would producers find a way to shoehorn variety-special nominee Taylor Swift into the broadcast? Was Widow’s Bay going to clean up after entering the awards with 19 nominations? Should the writers have questioned their judgment if they decided to open up the show with an extended “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” parody featuring dancers with TV sets on their heads? The answers to those questions are yes, yes, yes, and yes.The Widow’s Bay team did indeed take home a boatload (no pun intended) of Emmys: six on the night, which, added to the eight they’d already won at the earlier Creative Arts Emmys ceremony, brought their total to 14 — one more than the record for a comedy series set by The Studio last year. There were deserved honors for Jean Smart, Noah Wyle, and Stephen Colbert, and a moving speech by Michael J. Fox, who took home the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award for his advocacy for those living with Parkinson’s disease. But as with most awards shows, there were plenty of downs to go with those ups. Here, our list of the night’s highs, lows, and huh?s.

The only thing Kate O’Flynn is missing now is an antler crown. The Widow’s Bay actress and English-born “Lancashire lass” (as she called herself from the microphone) took home the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Patricia Moyer, the neurotic and socially awkward assistant to Matthew Rhys’ mayor Tom Loftis in the Apple TV comedy-horror hybrid. Flynn’s performance was praised by critics and audiences alike for its unhinged take on the outcast queen, which made her win a perfect start to the Emmys night. “I want to thank our mayor and all the residents of Widow’s Bay,” O’Flynn said onstage. “This is for all the Patricias out there.” —CT Jones

The Emmys took a rather unorthodox approach this year by having Law & Order star and non-comedian Mariska Hargitay host. She’s a tremendous talent, but the writers did her an enormous disservice by having her kick things off with a parody of the Arrows’ “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” entitled “I Love TV Screens.” It was painfully short on laughs despite cameos from Jalen Brunson and Jennifer Coolidge (sample lyric: “I got six hours so I should probably snooze/Memorize this script or read the news”), and featured dancers with TV screens on their heads. It felt like some weird fever dream of an award-show opener, but it was all too real. To be clear: We love Mariska Hargitay, the Arrows, Joan Jett, and many of the shows and stars nominated this year. They all deserved better. —Andy Greene

In a just world, the inaugural season of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer sequel series would have begun this year, and maybe even been nominated for an Emmy down the line. In this horrid, fallen world, Hulu pulled the plug on the new Buffy series after the pilot filmed. And we didn’t even get to see that. Instead, starved fans had to settle for the sight of former co-stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz presenting the award for Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. “I always thought Buffy and Angel would end up together,” said Boreanaz, setting Gellar up with a killer retort: “I guess we’ll never find out.” If any Hulu executives were in the audience, we hope they felt shame. Deep, deep shame. —A.G.

The Emmys screwed up over and over by not giving Rhea Seehorn a single award for her work over six seasons of Better Call Saul. (She was nominated for supporting actress twice.) Thankfully, Saul creator Vince Gilligan gave her another opportunity by casting her as the lead in his brilliant Apple TV show Pluribus. As Carol, one of the only people on the planet not infected with a mysterious alien mind virus, Seehorn was rageful, sarcastic, tender, bitter, funny, desperate, and everything in between. She had stiff competition for Lead Actress in a Drama Series from Zendaya, Kerri Russell, Chase Infiniti, and Carrie Coon, but it was finally Seehorn’s moment. “This is me on a beta blocker,” she said at the podium, appearing genuinely shocked. “Thank you, Vince Gilligan, for giving me not only the role of a lifetime, but creating space where we all get to collaborate and where we get to take risks as artists.” Let’s hope this inspires Gilligan to get Season Two of Pluribus onto the air. We’re tired of waiting. And Seehorn needs a second Emmy. —A.G.

Yes, it’s practically a legal requirement for awards shows to feature a bunch of cheesy jokes, so we can forgive all who are forced to deliver them during these televised ceremonies. But watching John Mulaney turn two minutes of presenter prattle for Lead Actor in a Drama Series into a laugh-a-second rant about how the night was finally recognizing men really drove home just how much skill it takes to make awards-show work look easy. Only a world-class comedian could manage to fit an excoriation of billion-dollar streamers, an excerpt from the Frank Vincent self-help book A Guy’s Guide to Being a Man’s Man, and an immediately censored joke about DJ Khaled’s strong belief on the power of going down on your wife into one completely smooth speech. Television Academy: That feels like a successful job audition to us. John Mulaney for Emmys 2027 host? —CTJ

Tom Pelphrey’s career has had a bit of a journeyman quality. He’s been kicking around Hollywood for 20 years now, turning in solid work in series like Iron Fist and Ozark. Still, there was little indication he had a performance in him like the one he delivered in Season One of Task. As the doomed Delco trash man Robbie, who wanted to do right by his family but chose the wrong path to get there, he was vulnerable and haunted, reckless and scared, desperate and hopeful all at the same time. Yes, he may have been in a category where three Pitt actors drove a vote-split, but Pelphrey didn’t steal that Supporting Actor in a Drama statue — he more than earned it. —Maria Fontoura

The Emmys had a tricky Taylor Swift problem this year: Her concert special, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour: The Final Show, was nominated for five awards, but none of those categories were part of the primetime broadcast. The Emmys also happened to coincide with a Kansas City Chiefs game, and the newlywed was obviously going to support her NFL-star husband. So it wasn’t really plausible for Swift to attend the ceremony — even though she’s such a huge Mariska Hargitay fan that she named her cat Olivia Benson. The solution: Have Swift cameo in a pre-taped bit where the Law & Order: SVU detectives try to figure out whether Taylor Swift would actually appear at the Emmys. Swift emerged midway through the segment as one of the officers, at one point cuddling Olivia Benson the cat in her arms. She even rattled off a code (“saccharide, Aries, from the vineyard, north or south”) that Swifties are surely working hard to decipher right now. —A.G.

Matthew Rhys isn’t just celebrating two Emmys win tonight — he’s also celebrating making history. The Widow’s Bay and The Beast in Me star took home the trophies for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, making him the first actor to win two lead-acting spots in the same ceremony, and the first male actor to nab all three lead acting spots overall. (Rhys won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2018 for his work on The Americans.) Not only that, when Widow’s Bay took home the night’s final award, Outstanding Comedy Series, Rhys racked up another statue as executive producer. If it had to be any male actor to bring home all that hardware, thank god it’s the delightful Welshman behind such memorable characters as Widow’s Bay mayor Tom Loftis, murderous real-estate magnate Nile Jarvis, and Soviet KGB sleeper agent Philip Jennings. Makes sense that his first words onstage were as strong as his filmography. “If you try to play me off, I’ll stab you in the eyes with this,” Rhys joked to the orchestra, holding his spiky-winged statue high. —CTJ

We got pretty misty watching Macaulay Culkin, Dan Levy, and Annie Murphy pay tribute to the great Catherine O’Hara. Then Noah Kahan stepped up to the mic to sing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” for the In Memoriam segment, backed by a string section, and all bets were off. It’s a difficult song to deliver, with some fairly high notes, but Kahan nailed every one as images of Hayden Panettiere, Robert Carradine, Robert Duvall, Robert Carradine, Vincent Pastore, Gene Shalit, Sam Neill, Tim Curry, James Burrows, and even Bob Mackie — who died just hours before the broadcast — flashed onscreen. By the time Jamie Lee Curtis stepped onstage to honor Rob Reiner, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. —A.G.

There are many lessons to be gleaned from Season Two of The Traitors, Peacock’s smash hit reality TV competition based on the parlor game Mafia: 1) that you should never drink from an ominous-looking rusty chalice, particularly if it has been offered to you by a notoriously cutthroat former Survivor contestant; 2) that virtually everyone looks cool in emerald-green velvet cloaks; and 3) that Peacock has an insanely high budget for both breakfast pastries and Alan Cumming’s headgear.

Perhaps the first and foremost takeaway from this season of The Traitors, however, is that if you are a defendant in a criminal trial and you see a former Bravo reality TV show cast member on the jury, you should probably resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to jail.

Throughout this season, the crux of the show’s tension has been the rivalry between the “gamer” alliance, or reality TV stars who cut their teeth on more strategically oriented shows, and former cast members on Bravo TV shows (heretofore known as “the Bravo girlies”). The purpose of the game has (ostensibly) been for the Faithful members of the group to identify and vote out Traitors, thereby reducing the risk of a Traitor winning a more than $100,000 cash prize and leaving them with nothing. Yet time and again, throughout the season, the “gamer” alliance has correctly identified a traitor, attempting to use logic and reasoning to get the Bravo girlies to vote with them to oust them. And time and again, the Bravo girlies refused to do so, leading to them voting against their best interests. It is absolutely fascinating to watch; Thomas Frank should write a book about them. 

By the season finale of The Traitors, the tension between the Bravo girlies and the gamers comes to a head in the most dramatic way possible, testing longstanding loyalties, throwing unsuspecting players under the bus, and making viewers even hornier for Chris “CT” Tamburello than previously thought possible. 

To recap, at the beginning of the episode, there are six contestants left: the three Bravo girlies Sherée Whitfield (Real Housewives of Atlanta), Mercedes “MJ” Javid (Shahs of Sunset), and Kate Chastain (Below Deck), and the three “gamers” Trishelle Cannatella (Real World and The Challenge), Chris “CT” Tamburello (Real World and The Challenge), and Sandra Diaz-Twine (Survivor). After Bravo girlie and Traitor Phaedra Parks had been banished in a highly emotional roundtable, Sandra embarked on a quest to sniff out the remaining traitor, immediately setting her sights on Kate (who is, in fact, a Traitor. But she is far better at complaining than she is at strategy or forming alliances or physical challenges or anything else, in the game really). 

Back in the turret, where Kate must choose her final contestant to murder, she resorts to her favorite activity. “I don’t know what to do. This is so hard,” she says, blaming Phaedra for not leaving her with a coherent strategy to follow before she was ousted. When it’s time to decide who to murder, Kate vacillates between Trishelle and Sherée, though honestly, the choice seems fairly obvious: as a member of the Bravo girly alliance, killing Sherée would somewhat alleviate the other players’ suspicions about her while killing Trishelle would just have the effect of…significantly reducing the number of weird hats that appear onscreen. Nonetheless, by the time Alan Cumming implores Kate to “commit thy name to power,” she’s made her decision. God, will I miss Alan’s ominous purring in the turret. It’s giving cunty ASMR.

At breakfast, MJ struts in, looking fabulous in a white turtleneck dress, white tights, and boots. I realize that in looks, voice, and temperament, she is a dead ringer for Kathy Najimy in Hocus Pocus. It is, honestly, a testament to the indefatigability of the human spirit (or, alternatively, Bravo/Peacock brand synergy) that MJ has stuck around for so long. “I’m genuine, loyal, and that’s the reason why I’ve made it so far,” she says in a confessional. Whatever helps you sleep at night, babe. 

Next, CT, Kate, and Sandra walk in, with Sandra wearing one of her trademark neutral-toned ponchos (will Traitors bring about a J. Peterman catalogue resurgence? Probably not, mostly because it doesn’t exist anymore, but one can dream). CT has set his sights on Kate, telling Sandra she “was acting funny” during the roundtable with Phaedra. (While I did not personally observe this during the roundtable — Kate was just acting like her regular sourpuss self — CT is a burly northeastern Irish/Italian man with eyes the color of the swirling Epstein Island seas, so I am willing to agree with virtually whatever he says).  Meanwhile, sweet, precious MJ is convinced Sandra is the culprit, saying, “Kate is giving me faithful energy. My gut is telling me Sandra is a traitor.” If this woman is able to use a can opener, it would, frankly, shock me. 

It’s down to two possible murders: Sherée and Trishelle. When Trishelle strides in her Burberry pants and Stupid White Vanderbilt Mom at Steeplechase Hat (™), the contestants (somehow) realize that Sherée has been the unfortunate victim. In her final testimonial, Sherée has, apparently, figured out what show she has been on for the past 10 episodes, something that fans have genuinely been wondering due to her utter inability to accomplish anything of note. She, too, has set her sights on Kate: “Kate came in hot, and it was written all over her face,” she says. Good for you, babe! You figured out a thing. Now, try taking the LSAT.

Alan Cumming (yes, it is necessary to say his first and last name on every mention) comes in wearing what appears to be a CT eye-colored quilt, which he has paired with a Thirties haircut and little nanny glasses. He looks like he’s been cast as FDR in a drag version of Annie that would make Ben Shapiro absolutely apoplectic (and that I, personally, would love to see). He hints at the upcoming mission involving a helicopter. Then the helicopter comes, and everyone acts as if they’ve never seen or heard of a helicopter before in their lives, despite the fact that most of these people live in Los Angeles and get paid tens of thousands of dollars for shitting out Instagram sponcon about hair gummies. MJ makes a gushing comment about “flying over the beautiful Scottish lands,” further reinforcing my belief that someone at Peacock is trying to have sex with someone who works at the Scottish tourism bureau. 

The gang arrives at a bunch of cliffs, which Alan Cumming introduces, but I can’t remember the name; they may or may not have been named after the actor Colin Firth. They are told they have to get to a pirate ship and raise the mainsail within 60 minutes to add $50,000 to the $158,000 prize fund. There are various detours along the way where they have to complete tasks to add to the prize pot before they reach the ship. Alan Cumming refers to this as “my ship,” just as he refers to the castle as “my castle,” as if he spent all of his own money on this production. Co-directing 2001’s The Anniversary Party with Jennifer Jason Leigh couldn’t possibly have paid that well, Alan! That was a good movie, though.

Kate, who is, if nothing else, committed to constantly being on brand, declares, “I hate missions.” The tasks during the detours are not really worth describing — one of them involves fishing a flag out of a lobster trap — but almost all of them are entirely dependent on CT, and CT alone, doing immense physical labor while the Bravo girlies stand to the side with their mouths open, fantasizing about doing blow off a twink’s abs at a BravoCon afterparty. “Let’s be honest, I’m doing all the heavy lifting,” CT says in the understatement of the century. With 16 minutes left into the mission, he has to run back to the start to retrieve a code for a padlock so they can add $10k to the prize pot, and his slow-motion jog back to the group is the sexiest thing I have seen since Jacob Elordi called himself “babygirl” in his Saturday Night Live promos. Would I be so dramatic as to say I would die for this man? No, but I would probably steal a flat-screen TV or something from Best Buy for him. That’s serious! You can get like 10 years in prison for that. 

Then, the group has to rappel down a cliff. Despite Kate being a giant pain in the ass (“Is it possible for the body to throw up and pee at the same time?” she says. YES, OF COURSE, KATE, IT’S POSSIBLE HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO A NON-PROFIT OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY BEFORE) they somehow make it down and get onto the boat, hoisting the mainsail with just nine seconds left. Everyone seems genuinely happy, and it’s a lovely cathartic moment. 

In the copter on the way back, CT and Kate chat about the upcoming roundtable. “Good job today for a yacthy,” CT says, while Kate fires back, “I’m a gamer, get it right.” It’s giving Parvati and Peter doing their from-lovers-to-enemies erotic fan fiction arc a few episodes ago. On the ride, Kate is making a last-ditch effort to frame Sandra, prompting CT to ask if she’s a Traitor. “How dare you, so rude, why,” she says in a manner that is so unconvincing I am briefly under the impression she is purposefully being sarcastic. CT, however, somehow — CT! My king! Why? — appears to be swayed, saying he is “starting to second-guess” his decision to vote her out. 

CT tells Sandra about this conversation, prompting Sandra to confront Kate, who tries to deflect the blame onto CT. Kate then goes to CT and informs him Sandra will be voting for him at the roundtable. “Everyone is telling everybody what they want to hear,” CT says. “I don’t see why she’d vote for me unless she’s a Traitor.” These people have the structural integrity of marshmallows. 

At the roundtable, Alan Cumming welcomes the players “to this grand hall of gargantuan lies and grandiose bluster” (apparently, the writers brought back John to help out with some dialogue behind the scenes after he was murdered. If so, I hope he gets paid more than he did when he was Speaker!). It takes Sandra about three seconds to realize she’s been set up and that Kate had been lying to CT and Sandra all along. She is justifiably pissed and puts up a relatively convincing argument in her own defense, saying she wished she had been selected for the “privilege” of being a traitor but was not. “Her whole outfit is screaming Traitor. I don’t know what else to tell you guys,” Sandra screams, prompting Kate, who is wearing a cream-colored jumpsuit that indeed looks Traitor-like, to smile and say, “Thanks,” in a moment that immediately gives her away as a Traitor but also seems to have been engineered in a lab exclusively for the enjoyment of the reality TV millennial gays.

It is now time to vote. CT votes for Sandra, as do Kate and MJ. An irate Trishelle, who had previously planned with CT to try to oust Kate, votes along with the group, casting her ballot for Sandra so she can be with the majority. It is a move that would have made a lot more sense earlier in the game with more players when voting outside the majority would have invited suspicion, but it is frankly inexplicable given how far along they are. Sandra seems genuinely floored. “My heart is really broken. I never once doubted you. I don’t regret anything I’ve done in this game,” she says before revealing herself as a Faithful. For reasons that are far beyond anything the mortal brain can attempt to ascertain, MJ seems both shocked and heartbroken. 

Narrowly escaping banishment has emboldened Kate in the most obnoxious way possible. “Somehow, I’ve gotten the least amount of accusations this evening. How charming am I?” she says. “I’m expecting them to next storm the castle and pursue Fergus and Alan.” (Honestly, she probably could.) Meanwhile, Trishelle is consumed by what she views as CT’s umpteenth betrayal during the game, which is clearly sowing the seeds for her to ultimately betray him in the final round, despite the fact that they have known each other for decades and have been allies throughout the season. Alan Cumming does little interviews with everyone in the group, none of which are notable except for MJ’s because she says that while she “trusts everyone in the group,” she has somehow deduced that “there must be a Traitor left because Sheree was murdered.” No, MJ, Sheree wasn’t murdered. She decided to symbolically kill herself. Again, it is a mystery that these people are able to tie their shoes.

The group heads to the “fire of truth,” which is essentially just the same kind of fire pit you’d find at an upper-middle-class suburban couple’s wedding. You half expect an eight-piece band to be playing “Uptown Funk” while the mother of the bride ralphs in the bathroom sink. Alan swans in wearing a sapphire jewel-encrusted cape and explains the rules: the group must decide whether to end the game, thereby risking that there is still a Traitor in their midst who may take all the money or banish another person. Everyone except Kate votes for banishment, which, again, instantly reveals her to be a Traitor. This time, everyone votes for Kate to be banished, and she pretends to be OK with it, even though literally three minutes before, she had been gleefully saying that she “hoped someone would cry” when she won the money. It is a pyrrhic victory. Or pyrrhic loss? I don’t know. I just know “pyrrhic” has fire involved. 

It is now time for MJ, Trishelle, and CT to decide whether they want to banish again or to end the game and split the prize money among them. MJ votes to end the game. “If I’m wrong to love these guys, I don’t want to be right,” she declares. “I just trust them.” Both Trishelle and CT shockingly vote to banish again, with CT declaring to Trishelle, “There’s only one person here I’m willing to trust to share that pot of gold with.” It becomes clear that they intend to fuck over MJ, something that their alliance has been hinting at throughout the season, but MJ is justifiably pissed. CT then votes for MJ to be banished, while MJ votes for Trishelle; Trishelle, however, votes for CT, leading to a draw. 

It’s unclear why Trishelle votes for CT for banishment; she cannot possibly think he is a Traitor due to their hardcore alliance throughout the show, and judging by CT’s vote to banish MJ, they seem to have orchestrated a plan prior to ousting whoever they were competing against in the finals. Apparently, however, Trishelle did this for an extremely Trishelle reason: pettiness. “We had a plan to vote out Kate, and when we got to the banishment room, you were defending her all of a sudden. It just didn’t align,” she says. CT looks staggered, saying he has “never doubted” Trishelle. It is a major plot twist in what is surely the Anna Karenina/Count Vronsky dynamic of our times, a book I have frankly never read but am sure was about two professionally hot people who kind of hated each other and have appeared drunk on various reality television programs, one of whom has slept with Leonardo DiCaprio. MJ is watching this vaguely psychosexual drama play out, vacillating between feeling hurt and wildly uncomfortable, like a guy who asks his wife to have a threesome and then gets shut out and watches TV in the other room.

It’s time for the three to vote again. CT votes for MJ again. MJ votes for Trishelle again. Trishelle, however, has seemingly been convinced by CT’s blue blue eyes and show of loyalty; he votes for MJ. MJ is, once again, “heartbroken.” “It shouldn’t have ended this way,” she says. “C’est pas juste.” Why does MJ speak French in her goodbye message? I don’t know. I could Google it, but I have to think about other things, like keeping my two small children alive and raising them to never seek validation on reality television by scratching through snakes and rats in underground tunnels to retrieve a gold shield some PA bought for $5 at Party City.

As fireworks ring out over the Scottish countryside, CT and Trishelle reveal each other to be Faithfuls. They take turns lying on the fake gold; CT is so overjoyed that he kisses Alan Cumming on the cheek, a gesture that would have impressed me a whole lot more if it had been 20 minutes of uncensored ball-slapping sex in front of the Peacock viewing audience, but I suppose we can’t have everything. 

“You have wills of iron, nerves of titanium, and the strength of steel,” Alan Cumming declares as the three celebrate having fucked over a sweet, well-meaning, and ultimately very unintelligent woman.

Happy Traitors second season, everyone! Can’t wait to see your MJ-backing-out-of-a-room costumes for Halloween.

This post contains spoilers for the finale of True Detective: Night Country, which is now streaming on Max.

“Some questions just don’t have answers.”

This is Liz Danvers, towards the end of the Night Country finale. In the moment, she is dancing around the questions of a pair of investigators looking into the whole mess involving Annie K, Silver Sky, and the dead Tsalal scientists. But it in some ways also feels like a commentary about True Detective as a franchise that has generally been better about asking than answering.

The finale to the inaugural Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson first season felt like a letdown, whether or not you were invested in the idea that the Yellow King references were meant to be literal. The conclusion to the Colin Farrell/Vince Vaughn story took all of that year’s flaws and magnified them, by letting each moment drag on for eons. And the bounce-back third season with Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff still relied on a plot so convoluted, the last episode had to grind to a halt so a relatively minor character could explain it all to us in a long expository monologue.

So in one sense, Issa López didn’t have a very high bar to clear in order to resolve the intertwined stories of Night Country. But because this season leaned harder into questions of fact versus fantasy, she made the task more difficult on herself than Nic Pizzolatto ever did. Simply explaining who killed Annie K, and/or the scientists, wouldn’t be enough on its own. The finale would need to find a satisfying way to reconcile how much of what happened had a wholly mundane explanation, and how much, if any, should be ascribed to the spirits that Navarro believes lurk all around Ennis.

From this vantage point, the finale soared over wherever the bar was set. It feels like the appropriate conclusion to these stories, and for these characters. It leaves some of its mysteries ambiguous, while at the same time does a far better job than the original season did in terms of distinguishing reality from otherworldly forces.

In many instances, there are wholly real explanations for what happened. Annie K found out that the Tsalal scientists were not only falsifying pollution reports, but actually encouraging Silver Sky to increase its output of pollutants, in order to aid this search for miracles hidden in the permafrost. She destroyed their preexisting samples, and was a danger to expose the entire operation. So Lund and the others attacked her, and poor, pitiful Raymond Clark finished the job, suffocating her to death with his undershirt. And it turns out that the scientists — other than Clark, who hid in the same underground ice cave where he murdered Annie — were marched out onto the ice at gunpoint by Beatrice, Blair, and the other Ennis women who were fed up by the story being told by Tsalal and Silver Sky. Beatrice argues that the women themselves didn’t kill the scientists, but simply sent the naked men out there for Annie K herself to decide their fate. But when you strand a bunch of people in such a climate without any protective clothing, without any light to guide them by, and with the threat of armed, righteously furious women waiting back from the way they came, a ghost isn’t necessarily required to offer a verdict, you know?

Yet even within this, López and company leave a lot of wiggle room for grander explanations. Beatrice not only denies leaving Annie’s severed tongue at Tsalal, but seems mystified by the question. Even if you buy the suggestion that Hank — who, working on behalf of Silver Sky, spirited the body away from the ice cave — cut out Annie K’s tongue, the delivery truck driver found it at the lab long before any cops arrived on the scene. More likely, the entity responsible for the tongue is the same responsible for Navarro constantly being taunted by oranges (a beloved snack of her mother and sister, and something where, if you peel it all in one go, resembles the spiral symbol); for the visions that put both Navarro and Danvers into peril out on the ice; and for all the other weirdness lurking on the periphery.

Maybe it’s all madness, brought on by the isolation, the darkness, the cold, and, yes, the abundance of garbage the mine was pumping into the ground and water. But the finale doesn’t seem interested in that notion. Instead, it’s Danvers the skeptic who is converted, glimpsing Holden as he calls for her from below the ice, then sobbing in grief(*) when she finally allows Navarro to reveal her son’s message: “He says that he sees you. He sees you, Liz.” And during that same perilous walk out on the ice, Navarro is rewarded by finally learning her Inupiac name, which Beatrice later translates as, “The return of the sun after the long darkness.”

(*) Danvers’ tearful embrace of her once and future partner is accompanied by Monica Martin’s sad acoustic cover of “Twist and Shout” (first heard a few episodes back), rather than The Beatles’ version that brought back so many painful memories of Holden.

It’s a really graceful balancing of possibilities and tones, generating huge emotion from both the real and surreal moments. After, for instance, Danvers and Navarro have captured and subdued Clark while all three are snowed in at the lab, their chief suspect refuses to talk with them. In seasons past, this would have been answered with threats of death, prison rape, or, in the Colin Farrell year, talk of doing unspeakable things with the headless corpse of Clark’s mother. Here, Navarro opts to torture this killer with evidence of his own crime, forcing him to listen to the looped recording of Annie K’s final moments as he weeps like the hypocritical baby that he is.

The season has been dropping small references to the Rust Cohle/Marty Hart story, and here the homages get foregrounded. When Danvers is interviewed by the other cops, she’s shot just like Rust and Marty were in Season One’s framing sequence. And when Clark finally opens up about his belief that Annie K’s ghost came back for him and his friends, he cites the franchise’s single most famous line, insisting, “Time is a flat circle. And we are all stuck in it.”

There’s a sense throughout the finale of history repeating itself, sometimes in worse variations, sometimes better. Once upon a time, Hank Prior frantically chopped at the ice to save the life of his drowning son. Now, that son deploys a similar axe to dispose of the corpse of his criminal father. Like her mother and her sister, Navarro walks out onto the ice, but appears to survive the journey, returning in the episode’s closing moments as a guest at Danvers’ lake house. (Though even this is presented with enough ambiguity that perhaps Danvers is being visited by her spirit in the same way that Rose periodically sees her late husband.)

Various ideas from earlier in the season have effective payoffs here. Beatrice and Blair were introduced near the start of the premiere in the wake of Beatrice hitting Blair’s abusive boyfriend; in hindsight, it’s only the second most-violent act of vengeance Beatrice committed that week. For once, it’s Navarro pointing out that Danvers isn’t asking the right question, instead of the other way around. And in the closing montage, we see Danvers and Leah laughing happily as Leah drives them around, the girl’s tribal markings no longer inspiring racist meltdowns from her stepmother.

Not everything feels properly wrapped up, or at least essential after the fact. (Why was Christopher Eccleston needed, again?) But in terms of the mystery, and in terms of the big emotional moments for these two characters — who were so well drawn by López, Jodie Foster, Kali Reis, and the rest of the creative team — it all landed beautifully.

When I interviewed Pizzolatto before the Cohle/Hart year began, he said his primary concern was “the narrative conceit of a story being told,” and that he didn’t necessarily envision the show being a police procedural, season after season. (“It could be somebody taking over a radio station” was among his suggestions.) True Detective has, in fact, become an ongoing cop anthology, even without his involvement. But the idea of stories being told remains palpable no matter the showrunner. Beatrice explains that the women of Ennis decided to write their own story, and Danvers and Navarro ultimately get to decide how that story is finished — including Danvers telling yet another variation on the story to these two new investigators. 

Is it a happy ending? It depends on how you feel about the lake house scene, and about whether Danvers and Navarro will get to see their loved ones again in a world beyond this one. But if we step outside the story and look at this as a television show, then it’s a happy new beginning, which has been greeted with both critical acclaim and ratings that make it the most-watched season of the franchise. There will almost certainly be another story, whether López tells it, or Pizzolatto returns, or someone new ends up in charge. Whoever it is, and whenever it comes, a new standard has been set for how strongly a True Detective case can be closed.

This post contains spoilers for this week’s episode of True Detective: Night Country, now streaming on Max.

Midway through our penultimate installment, the combined investigation of Annie K’s murder and the death of the Tsalal scientists seems to grind to a halt. The forensics team in Anchorage attributes the Tsalal deaths to a “weather event.” And if Ted Connelly isn’t in the pocket of Silver Sky Mining, he’s at least political enough to decide that law-enforcement is not well-served angering big business just to solve the years-old murder of a single Native woman. He threatens Danvers with what he believes to have happened with Wheeler, and tells her to shut everything down.

That should be that, right? A wholly earthbound explanation for the frozen scientists, and pressure from a higher authority to leave it all alone. But Danvers knows that a weather event couldn’t explain everything that happened, both at Tsalal and out on the ice. And by this point, she and Navarro are so invested in the two cases — and so superhumanly stubborn — that there’s no way they’re letting this go. So instead of the plot grinding to a halt, the fifth episode instead starts bringing everything together, particularly where Silver Sky is concerned.

The tension between the mine and the local population has simmered all season. Annie K devoted her life — and perhaps gave it up — to protect her community from all the harm Silver Sky has been doing to Ennis and its ecosystem, and Leah and her stepmom’s uneasy relationship started to go south due to Leah’s own activism on the subject. Here, the tension goes full boil. The protests rise to the point where Navarro and her fellow state troopers are called in to protect the mine — and, really, to act as government-funded strikebreakers. Things become so violent, so quickly, that a horrified Navarro finds herself protecting the protesters and fighting another trooper. She’s been caught between worlds her whole life — between the rational world and the one her late mother and sister claimed they could hear (and that Navarro seemingly keeps slipping into this season), and between law-enforcement and the Indigenous community she doesn’t wholly feel a part of. She doesn’t wholly abandon policing, since she and Danvers keep investigating the murders. And perhaps you can just consider this another instance of Navarro, like Danvers, not caring about the bigger picture when faced with something upsetting in the moment(*). But the whole sequence is impressively ugly, and Danvers’ response — putting Leah in a jail cell and refusing entreaties by the other cops to stop being so tough on the kid — is even uglier. When Danvers briefly tries to play ball with Ted and let the cases go, Navarro loses her patience and releases Leah, who’s sad about how bad things have gotten with her stepmom. (“She’s not good with people she cares about,” she explains.) 

(*) Navarro does, however, make a choice regarding Qavvik, finally allowing him to be the little spoon, and affectionately kissing him on the mouth before heading out to work. She has accepted this as a real relationship, and also that she’s deserving of the adoration of this big-hearted guy with the lush beard.  

But the discovery that Silver Sky has been funding the Tsalal research in exchange for the scientists falsifying environmental impact studies — along with the revelation that Ennis has had nine stillbirths in the past three months as a result of the damage Silver Sky is doing — finally spurs Danvers to action. (If you got a look at the tiny coffin of a stillborn baby boy, you’d have trouble letting go of it, too.) She agrees to go with Navarro out to the ice caves — the titular Night Country — with the help of Otis Heiss, who insists on a drug fix in order to do the job. This is Danvers going way out of policy, but she does it, and then things explode in spectacular fashion. We learn Hank has been messing with the case because he actually is being paid off by Kate from Silver Sky, who needs to shut down any talk of bribery and environmental dangers, and implicitly tells her hired gun to murder Otis.

This leads to a brutal climax where an armed Hank comes to Danvers’ house, murders Otis, and is preparing to kill Danvers when Pete comes in at the right moment, his own gun drawn. We know things have long been bad between father and son. (Even when Pete temporarily moves back in with Hank, it’s only because it’s the least-bad option after Kayla kicks him out of the house for being more loyal to his boss than to his family.) Earlier in the episode, Hank recalls the day when nine-year-old Pete fell through the ice while skating, and Hank had to save his life by smashing through the ice with an ax. He should forever be his son’s hero, he feels, rather than this embarrassment who, like Kayla, resents the fact that Pete cares more about Danvers’ opinion of him than anyone else’s. He is also, as we were reminded last week, a sad and lonely man with little to look forward to, even in the event that he successfully murdered Danvers and took her job. So it’s not surprising that he would go for suicide-by-cop in this circumstance, even if he so cruelly allows the cop in question to be his own son.

It’s an utterly harrowing, awful sequence of events. And while none of it solves the central questions of what happened to the scientists, and who murdered Annie K, it puts our heroes on a path they can no longer get off of until they find answers. While poor Pete has to bury his father’s body in the ice with help from Rose, Danvers and Navarro are heading straight into the Night Country, and into an appropriately nasty blizzard, whatever the hell comes after.

This post contains spoilers for this week’s episode of True Detective: Night Country, which is now streaming on Max.

Early in our fourth chapter, Danvers comes upon Navarro’s sister Julia stripping off her clothes in the middle of the street. She flings her clothes behind her, unconcerned for the mess or spectacle she’s making, just trying to get free of the emotions that are always trying to crush her. Evangeline takes this for another episode in Julia’s lifelong struggle with mental health, and finally gets her sibling to check herself into the nearby Lighthouse facility.

Midway through the episode, Julia again disrobes in the frigid outdoors. This time, though, she stops to neatly fold her clothes, in the same manner that the dead Tsalal scientists’ ensembles were found. This time, it is a walk not down a street where someone like Chief Danvers might be there to save Julia, but out onto the cold, dark, fragile ice. And this time, her sister believes, it wasn’t Julia’s psyche pulling her toward her doom, but the same darkness that Evangeline believes claimed their mother, and will soon claim her. 

The first striptease is a visual mess with a seemingly tidy explanation, while the second looks orderly, but is much messier to consider. By the conclusion of the hour, the investigation itself is feeling more tangled than ever. And Navarro, who throws herself more deeply into the case as a way to avoid dealing with the loss of Julia, is instead beset by what appears to be her sister’s spirit, and ends the episode in a daze, her ears bleeding, perhaps hearing the same call that she believes came for the rest of her family.

So which version of Navarro is right: the one who wanted her sister under a doctor’s care, or the one convinced that the danger is beyond our understanding or ability to fight?

That final sequence takes place in and around an abandoned dredge — a once-awesome piece of machinery that’s now a rusting, forgotten hulk in the middle of the ice — where our heroines have gone to look for Otis Heiss, the mystery man who seems to tie the two cases together. He mapped out the underground ice caves where Annie K apparently died, and he once suffered similar injuries that plagued Anders Lund and the other Tsalal scientists. When Danvers finds him, he is standing in a corner, almost like a figure from The Blair Witch Project, so on edge that even the sound of his own name makes him cringe in terror. He has a drug kit with him, and one could ask whether the drugs are the cause of his mania, or the only way he can cope with the same kind of voices that spoke to Navarro from Lund’s mouth in last week’s episode. And when Danvers finds her partner in a trance, staring at an abandoned Christmas tree, Heiss insists that chief murder suspect Raymond Clark is “hiding in the Night Country(*). You’re all in the night country now.”

(*) [Extremely fake Ron Howard voice] Hey, that’s the name of the show!

But what’s impressive about the beginning of the season’s second half is how Night Country manages to tell stories of characters being consumed by darkness without being consumed itself. It’s not that the episode is a laugh riot, by any means. But there’s juuuust enough weird humor in the margins to keep the endless night(*) and bleak storyline from feeling too oppressive to watch. There is, for instance, the sad but whimsical image of Hank Prior waiting at the air strip, stuffed bunny in hand, for his non-existent Russian mail order bride to get off the plane and give his pathetic life meaning. And, for that matter, there’s the running gag of both Hank and Ted Connelly(**) watching Elf — which is apparently the Christmas Eve balm for sad and lonely men of a certain age. And there’s even some mild thawing of Navarro’s cold heart when it comes to Qaavik, who continues their light-hearted feud about his SpongeBob toothbrush, and who gets down on bended knee in front of her not to propose a marriage she obviously wouldn’t want, but to help patch up her injured hand.

(*) Seen early in the hour: a No Overnight Parking sign, which seems meaningless from our vantage point, even if people in Ennis have various means of telling a.m. from p.m.

(**) There is absolutely nothing in the story so far that would point to Connelly having anything to do with the murders. At the same time, Christopher Eccleston feels much too recognizable a guest star for what to this point has been a pretty minor part.

That injury comes from another instance of Navarro trying to push all her painful emotions outward, so she won’t have to deal with them. She picks a fight with the abusive boyfriend from the season premiere, as much as an excuse to get hurt as it is an excuse to hurt another man who inflicts pain on women. She’s seemingly too damaged and hostile to fit with a beautiful puppy dog of a man like Qaavik, yet he’s drawn to her. Meanwhile, the brief flashes we’ve seen of Danvers with her late son Holden suggests she has the capability to not be the most abrasive and off-putting person on the planet, yet Ted insists she was always terrible with people — it just got worse when her husband and son died. Leah looks at Danvers less as a stepmother than a warden, and flees to Pete and Kayla’s house after getting in trouble for writing “MURDERERS” in graffiti on the mining company’s headquarters. (Kayla Prior has plenty of reason herself to resent Leah’s stepmom, since Danvers keeps calling Pete back into work around the clock.)

Everywhere we look in Ennis, it seems to be a question of whether people are losing their minds — whether in the mental illness way or the angry way — because of who they were to begin with, or because of what this place has made them into. Before her sister’s death, Navarro enjoys a peaceful meal with Rose (in a scene where Fiona Shaw sports a killer red dress). The cop asks her host how she came to be in Alaska. Rose explains she was a professor who one day decided that everything she wrote about had no meaning, and she came up here to get away from the noise. As she notes, Ennis is a lot quieter, “Except for all the fuckin’ dead.”

Did Raymond Clark kill Annie and his colleagues? Could the mystery be wrapped up as tidily as Julia placed her clothes before going onto the ice? Or can a show that, in this episode alone, has Julia see a vision of her mother coming out from under the bed, has Navarro haunted by Julia during the final chase, and has the same scarred polar bear from the premiere now giving Danvers the business, end things so simply? We’ve got two more hours to find out.

The Vanderpump Rules Season 10 finale, aptly titled “#Scandoval,” concluded with a dramatic exchange between Tom Sandoval, two-timing paragon of Angeleno scumbaggery whose five-percent ownership stake in one of West Hollywood’s seediest bars made him think he was the second coming of Steve Rubell, and Scheana Shay, an aspiring pop star/vlogger who will fall head over heels for you if you mount a TV in under seven minutes.

During this coda, we saw Scheana — tears streaming down her face, because of course — read Sandoval for filth over his clandestine affair with Raquel (now Rachel), a failed beauty pageant contestant and close friend of both Scheana and Ariana Madix, Sandoval’s live-in girlfriend for close to a decade. It sorta made sense on paper: Scheana and Sandoval are the last remnants of the O.G. VPR cast who started out together at Villa Blanca (“where you take your wife,” according to Lisa Vanderpump), migrated over to SUR (Translation: Sexy Unique Restaurant, or “where you take your mistress,” sayeth LVP), and have absorbed all the slings and arrows of the messiest friend group on television. Given Scheana’s astonishing lack of loyalty, however, the entire scene felt off, like bad theater.

As I wrote at the time, “Why is the final scene of an otherwise gripping hour-plus of television between Sandoval and Scheana? Who cares about the two most self-serving people on Vanderpump Rules having a heart-to-heart?”

In the weeks and months since, we’ve been inundated with reports of Scheana (and Sandy’s lapdog, Schwartz) hanging out with Sandoval during filming and partying in his hotel suite during BravoCon. DJ James Kennedy even seemed chummy with Sandoval at the Vegas extravaganza, engaging in a shirtless, homoerotic display of strength with his ex-mentor. All of this seemed to fly in the face of everything that happened in that finale sit-down, and the subsequent shouty three-part reunion. Cue “We’ve Been Had” by the Walkmen.

Which brings us to the Season 11 premiere of Vanderpump Rules, which dropped the night of Jan. 30. And yes, Scheana is still making other people’s business all about herself (but more on that later).

We learn that Sandoval and Ariana are still living together, mired in a horror-movie scenario (they only communicate via his assistant); Scheana and Brock’s daughter, Summer Moon, is incredibly cute; and DJ James Kennedy and Ally the Astrologist have moved into a house of their own in the Valley that came with “a catch”: airplanes constantly flying overhead. Perhaps that buzzing sound is karma for DJ James Kennedy’s past treatment of women.  

Tom Schwartz talks to his many plants — “my only friends now” — like Mark Wahlberg in The Happening, Katie is still Ariana’s partner-in-sandwich/ride or die, Sandoval is in New Zealand shooting the Fox reality-competition series Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, and Lala’s mother lives with her (and her brother, Easton, is in the same apartment complex). Plus, she’s still embroiled in a custody battle with her seedy ex, movie producer Randall Emmett, over their daughter Ocean. She’s on high alert at all times, and skeptical of Ariana’s new long-distance boyfriend, Dan, a personal trainer in New York whom Ariana met at her friend’s wedding in Oaxaca, questioning his “motive.” This is the first hint we get of simmering tension between Lala and Ariana, whose friendship always seemed borne of convenience and/or opportunity.

While Katie gushes how “everything has been falling into place” with their WeHo sandwich shop, Something About Her, which was designed by none other than Jon Hutman, Nancy Meyers’ production designer, Vanderpump Rules die-hards know that it still isn’t open despite the duo raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to bankroll its opening. What in the Jill Stein is going on?   

Back to Ariana and Sandoval’s waking nightmare.

“What I think is psychotic is that he wants to buy me out and stay here,” Ariana tells Katie. “I’m sorry, but then you don’t have to move, and I do? What are you going to do, bring your little pen pal over here? I don’t fucking think so.”

The “pen pal” she’s referring to is Rachel. She and Sandoval “are still very much together,” Ariana says, since they’ve been sending mail and packages back and forth while Rachel is in an Arizona rehab, and Rachel even sent him “a postcard with lightning bolts all over it.” (The lightning bolt has long been their special symbol.)  

There’s a whole lot of fat in this episode. We see DJ James Kennedy (California sober now) and Ally the Astrologer building furniture in their backyard and discover that Sandoval’s best friend dating all the way back to high school, Ali, has tragically passed away. This prompts Scheana to reach out to Sandoval, only for her to discover that she’s been blocked on every platform. He even blocked Scheana’s daughter, Summer Moon, on IG. Justice for Summer Moon!

Schwartz, still an emotional infant — who’s resembling Crispin Glover’s weird cousin more and more with each passing day — gives DJ James Kennedy some housewarming gifts, including a plant and a candle that he says is an “olfactory delight,” and whines about how he’s still being shunned by Ariana for his active participation in the whole Rachel affair ruse. In fact, Ariana has blocked Schwartz over his shambolic Watch What Happens Live appearance where he told viewers to show grace to Sandoval and give him a hug, leading to the episode’s funniest moment (other than Summer Moon getting blocked), as Schwartz reads Ariana’s last text to him out loud before she blocked him:

“It says, ‘Fuck you. I’m blocking you. Go choke on Sandoval’s dirty-ass dick somewhere.’”

The Season 11 premiere is named “Notes on a Scandal,” and frankly, it could’ve used some sociopathic-Dame-Judi-Dench energy. Its big centerpiece is a DJ James Kennedy set at TomTom, the aforementioned train wreck of a bar owned by Lisa Vanderpump that Sandoval and Schwartz have a teeny-tiny stake in. But Sandoval is still on the other side of the world, so a montage of TomTom moments set to sad music doesn’t quite land. TomTom is also the place where Sandoval transformed into a douchebag before our very eyes, lashing out at Stassi over her book party, and where Ariana found the mutual-masturbation video of Sandoval and Rachel on his phone. The notion that she’d have fond memories of this place seems like a stretch.

Lisa Vanderpump, once the grand doyenne of Vanderpump Rules, is now more or less an afterthought on the show she birthed. Now that none of the cast members work for her in her restaurants and can’t be dressed down in staff meetings, Notorious LVP is seemingly devoting most of her time to Vanderpump Villa, her upcoming Hulu reality series, and her Vegas restaurant Vanderpump à Paris. She pops up briefly to listen to Lala — who once coined the term “Bambi-eyed bitch” and turned it up to 11 during the three-part reunion — express remorse over her treatment of Rachel, relating it to her own treatment during the Randall Emmett affair fiasco. So, she leaves Rachel a friendly Voice Note, presumably at the urging of LVP. Now, if you’ll allow me to speculate a bit, it seems as though a large part of this can be chalked up to Lala’s tenuous position on the series at present. With her one close friend in the group, DJ James Kennedy, playing house in the Valley with Ally, and the drama with Emmett mostly in her rearview, what is there for her to do other than stir shit up? And we know Lala loves stirring shit up.

That comes over girls drinks at The Den, a bro-y hellscape of a bar in WeHo, when Lala tells Ariana that she’s reached out to Rachel — much to Ariana’s chagrin — and a scenes from the next clip of Lala bemoaning how Ariana has become a “god” in the wake of #Scandoval. This all builds to Sandoval returning home from New Zealand to an empty home, and another scenes from the next bit of Schwartz telling everyone that he made out with … Scheana. Because if there’s one thing we can rely on when it comes to Scheana it’s that she’s unreliable.

It’s worth noting that filming on Season 11 of Vanderpump Rules began June 28, 2023 — only a few weeks after the third reunion episode aired — and ended in early September. With all the podcast interviews its various players have done, their much-ballyhooed BravoCon appearance in November, and the way its fans have feverishly documented the shoot on social media, all of this drama feels rooted in the past. What made the Season 10 finale (and the reunion) so explosive is that they picked up filming in the spring and rushed them out. That recency, that sense of urgency, is gone.

Overall, “Notes on a Scandal” was a pretty uneventful hour of television that begs the question: Did Vanderpump Rules peak with Season 10? And where does it go from here?