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FX
action takes place inside a giant
floating gold cube) and a score
(by Ben Salisbury, the Insects, and
Geoff Barrow) that will follow you
into your nightmares. Offerman’s
understated affect plays incredibly
well (and very different from Ron
Swanson) as a master of his uni-
verse. And Devs finds compelling
things to say about this industry
— “You need to stop seeing them
as a tech company,” a friend warns
our heroine. “See them as the
Mob” — about free will, and even
about the act of watching televi-
sion itself. (You may find yourself
wanting to go outside and play
Frisbee after each episode.) What
are Offerman and his minions,
including a whip-smart Alison
Pill and a terrifying Zach Grenier,
really up to? Damned if I knew half
the time, but I was riveted by the
entire season.THE DARK WEB
Devs
NETWORK FX on Hulu
AIR DATE March 5th
$One character describes the
events of this sci-fi thriller as
“transcendently weird.” This isabout right. On the one hand, the
plot — in which the mysterious
plans of a Silicon Valley mogul
(Nick Offerman) threaten the exis-
tence of one of his coders (Sonoya
Mizuno) — has long stretches that
are inscrutable. Even those in the
know often accuse one another
of not understanding what’s hap-
pening. On the other hand, every
episode is written and directed by
Annihilation’s Alex Garland to be
spectacularly unnerving, in both
the baroque imagery (much of theRolling Stone | 91
Tracy Flick ending up the queen
bee of Shaker Heights (or Madeline
from Big Little Lies, if she had a bit
less empathy and self-awareness
than that character). Tigelaar tries
to be generous to both antago-
nists, but her sympathies are so
clearly (and rightly) with Mia that
Fires’ burn can sometimes feel
painfully slow. A.S.CLASS WARFARE
Little Fires Everywhere
NETWORK Hulu
AIR DATE March 18th
#Reese Witherspoon and Kerry
Washington team up to produce
and star in this miniseries adapta-
tion of Celeste Ng’s bestseller, in
which two women with wildly dif-
ferent lives — Witherspoon’s Elena,
a wealthy supermom; Washing-
ton’s Mia, a nomadic artist — find
their families painfully entangled
with each other in 1990s suburban
Ohio. In the book, Mia is white;
casting Washington allows writer
Liz Tigelaar to add more layers to
Ng’s story of white liberal hypocri-
sy gone awry. Washington is dyna-
mite as an enigma who only opens
herself up to daughter Pearl (Lexi
Underwood), and not even entirely
to her. Witherspoon’s also great,
but typecast to within an inch of
her life, as it’s not hard to imagineSQUAD GOALS
Twe n t i e s
NETWORK BET
AIR DATE March 4th
#In the premiere of this dramedy
about friends negotiating love,
life, and showbiz, Marie (Christina
Elmore) praises a black movie
simply for existing, arguing, “We
should support black shit.” Hattie
(Jonica T. Gibbs) replies, “We
should support good shit that just
happens to be black.” Hattie is lay-
ing down a gauntlet on behalf of
Twenties creator Lena Waithe, for
whom she’s an obvious stand-in.
Waithe doesn’t want us to like the
show just because it’s about black
female friendship, nor because
Hattie is a rare gay woman of color
on TV. Fortunately, Twenties is
good shit that just happens to be
black, and queer. It’s not always as
funny as it aspires to be — outside
of a great running gag where yoga
instructor Nia (Gabrielle Graham)
is baffled by her boyfriend’s refusal
to own a phone — but in its use
of Old Hollywood movie music
and the buoyantly physical and
expressive lead performance by
Gibbs, it has the verve and bounce
of a Forties musical.WitherspoonWith AMC’s ‘Dispatches From
Elsewhere,’ Jason Segel is
maximizing his oddball appealJason Segel is a weird dude.
From the day the teenage Segel
was cast as wanna-be drummer
Nick Andopolis on Freaks and
Geeks, he has made a comic art
form of lingering on the border
between kind and creepy. With
his gangly frame, broad smile,
and aw-shucks demeanor, he’s
a master of playing nice guys
who never realize when they’ve
gone too far. Freaks producers
Judd Apatow and Paul Feig
used this quality to mortifying,
hilarious effect in portraying the
hopelessly one-sided romance
between Nick and Linda Car-
dellini’s Lindsay. For the series
finale, they gave Segel its comicThe King of
Quirkiness
SNAPSHOTcenterpiece: a graceful yet too-
intense disco dance routine set
to Heatwave’s “The Groove Line.”
Segel would ironically
become famous by bottling his
inner goon; as Marshall Eriksen,
married best friend of How I Met
Your Mother hero Ted Mosby, he
was primarily the show’s straight
man. But its success allowed him
to make movies where he wrote
to his own bizarre strengths, like
the overly emotional dumpee
in Forgetting Sarah Marshall or
a puppet’s older brother in The
Muppets. That’s the energy he’s
harnessing as creator and star of
the new AMC anthology series
Dispatches From Elsewhere
(premieres March 1st). It’s an
aggressively quirky tale in which
he plays Peter, a bored-to-death
wage slave who finds new
purpose (alongside new friends,
played by Sally Field, André Ben-
jamin, and Eve Lindley) in a war
between an evil corporation and
a society of artistic renegades.
On paper, this Peter could seem
relatively normal, but the mere
fact of Segel playing him makes
him a suitably eccentric fit for an
offbeat story. To thine own weird
self, be true. A.S.What to stream, what to skip this monthWATCH LIST
Gibbs, Graham,
and Elmore (from
left) on the road
to successSegel and
Lindley
chase down
a mystery.Mizuno