A review of this week's The Vampire Lestat, "New York" — with spoilers — coming up just as soon as I wallpaper a basement sex dungeon with billable hour invoices...
Alan Sepinwall
As much as I've come to love this series under both its titles, there are times when I can find the plot kind of impenetrable. I still have no idea what Talamasca actually does, and have just had to shrug it off and accept that I will try to enjoy Justin Kirk's performance whenever he appears, without caring what it is his character is trying to do.
By shifting to Lestat's coked-up, ADD narrative voice, this season has become more confusing, thought much of that is by design. He is having a hard time keeping track of his own thoughts, and the order in which all these events happened, so of course we should have a hard time, as well, right? That said, there have been a few occasions this season — and in "New York" in particular — where I found myself hitting the 10-second rewind button multiple times to make sure I was at least vaguely following everything. When Lestat's narration, for instance, referred to the album we see him working on as posthumous, I don't think I had fully absorbed that he was using the assassination attempt to fake his own death. And the internal dynamics among the rest of the band feel like something that's a lot clearer to the writers who think deeply about this stuff every day in the room than for those of us watching each week.