Pandora’s Box: The Greed, Lust, and Lies that Broke Television by Peter Biskind

Pandora’s Box: The Greed, Lust, and Lies that Broke Television Reviews

• 
  Muffin

  Peter Biskind has written extensively about the movie business but when it comes to television it feels like he really doesn’t have much to say. Most of what he says about HBO is either addressed previously or directed quotes from the HBO oral history that came out a year or two ago. His analysis of antihero television post-Sopranos is basically a retread of Bret Martin’s Difficult Men. He has a tendency to assume that a show that does poorly in ratings was inevitably bad, as though there’s any connection between a show’s success and its quality, or any way to predict either. He repeatedly refers to the hiring of any woman in an executive role as a byproduct of MeToo which is just straight up sexist. This book has very little to say about the past couple of decades of television and works better as a lit review.
• 
  Mark

  If you need to read a history of cable and streaming TV from The Sopranos to the present, you'll find Peter Biskind's account interesting, but lacking the magic that made Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (ERRB) so incessantly entertaining. Biskind alternates between the executives who decide what gets done and the creatives who actually do it. The creatives are much more interesting. The boardroom stories lack a character like Bob Evans from ERRB and are pretty boring; people seem to get fired before we really get to know who they are.
  
  The formula will be familiar to those who read ERRB. Oddballs who buck the system spark a creative revolution, which is eventually mainstreamed by the suits upstairs. Perhaps that summary sells the book a bit short, as Biskind's accounts does embrace many contradictory elements. As a non-regular television viewer I learned plenty and I now realize there are some interesting shows I still need to see. But unlike ERBB which celebrated 70s cinema, this is definitely not a celebration of the triumphs of the peak TV era (although Biskind acknowledges the creative flourishing that occurred), but more of a dive into the venality of the entire industry.
  
  As the leader of a nonfiction book club, I'm usually looking for books that will generate interest in a subject rather than just support that interest. Pandora's Box is strictly a supporter.
  
  Thanks to netgalley for providing an early copy for review.
• 
  Sean Carlin

  Fascinating and, with copious integrated citations and exclusive one-on-one interviews, exceptionally well-researched analysis of the creative and socioeconomic evolution of televisional storytelling from network (during the late-20th century) to cable (at the turn of the millennium) to streaming (the 21st century).
  
  Biskind demonstrates how broadcast television started out as advertiser-driven, middle-of-the-road dreck before the "cable revolution" of the aughts, which led to post-Sopranos "Peak TV" -- a so-called "golden age" of prestige premium-cable drama. Then streaming services -- Netflix and Apple and Amazon, whose
  Big Tech business model isn't beholden to profit like the capitalistic studios/networks of yore -- turned everything into "content," and shows incrementally became unwieldy "ten-hour movies," and now with the return of ad-supported subscription tiers, TV is undergoing a creative regression:
  
  

  When a streamer known for originals remakes itself in the image of a studio or a network, it is indeed on its way to becoming a studio or network, producing studio and network content: bland, bloated, and inoffensive. All in all, there are too many streamers making too many shows, a lot of them of questionable quality, leaving consumers oversubscribed and underwhelmed.

  
  
  Biskind spins a compelling, even persuasive narrative, but it is ultimately predicated on an ethically dubious premise: that the only artistically worthy period of television history was the one that showcased uncensored stories about antiheroes -- Tony Soprano, Raylan Givens, Don Draper, Walter White, Vic Mackey, et al. Because those characters were complex. They were real.
  
  

  These are the vigilantes and revenge figures whose appeal lies in doing the wrong thing, refusing to play by the rules because their bullshit detectors tell them the American Dream is a fraud, constructed by the powerful to benefit themselves.

  
  
  Yeah, okay. Maybe. Not really. Jesus, what is it about old white men (speaking as one) and
  our holier-than-thou antiheroes? These "vigilantes and revenge figures" aren't social justice warriors "breaking the rules" for the greater good; they're rage-addicted grievance collectors, cursed to be the
  righteous voice of reason in a world full of idiots. This is the same faulty logic displayed by
  Quentin Tarantino in
  Cinema Speculation (reviewed
  here) when he asserts
  
  

  the curse of eighties cinema. . . . was that the complex and complicated lead characters of the seventies were the characters that eighties cinema avoided completely. Complex characters aren't necessarily sympathetic. Interesting people aren't always likeable. But in the Hollywood of the eighties likeability was everything. A novel could have a low-down son of a bitch at its center, as long as that low-down son of a bitch was an interesting character.

  
  
  Biskind reveres the violent, antisocial, nihilistic antiheroes of '00s "prestige" TV the way Tarantino exalts the violent, antisocial, nihilistic antiheroes of '70 exploitation cinema. And I can't help but wonder: When it comes to characterization, why do both Biskind and Tarantino equate violence and nihilism -- the antisocial values of a "low-down son of a bitch" -- with complexity?
  
  That is the same fallacy on which
  Kyle Buchanan's effusive paean to
  George Miller's Mad Max,
  Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road (reviewed
  here), is premised: violent antiheroes are complicated characters. It's the same mentality that fuels
  Michael Mann's 470-page ode to hypermasculinity
  Heat 2 (reviewed
  here).
  
  I would argue -- as did
  James Poniewozik in his excellent history of television
  Audience of One: Television, Donald Trump, and the Fracturing of America -- our culture's endless glorification of tough-guy antiheroes, "the vigilantes and revenge figures whose appeal lies in doing the wrong thing [and] refusing to play by the rules," has played no small part in the degradation of the social compact and the fraying of the social fabric that is now threatening to break Western democracy.
  
  The aughts may've very well been a "golden age of TV," but if that's in the rearview now... well,
  that's just fine by me. Hollywood's
  ongoing existential crisis might very well mean -- call me an optimist -- less cultural pollution, i.e., fewer stories promoting individualism, antiheroism, and
  petro-masculinity. That would be a true golden age indeed.
• 
  Cara

  An eye-opening look into the current state of one of my favorite things: television.
  
  From premium cable practically inventing prestige drama to basic cable following suit to streamers exploding on our devices to...whatever sub-era we're in now, Pandora's Box covers it all. I really dig post-modern dives into our current culture; it's always fun and interesting to assess what we're all experiencing in real time and to guess what the future will bring. This would pair well with a few recent books written about HBO as well as Reed Hastings' book about creating Netflix.
  
  Minor nitpick: I could have done without the author's editorializing, only because it wasn't consistent. It read like a straight nonfiction until he would randomly make a snarky comment, which put me off.
  
  Good stuff. Thanks to the publisher and NG!
• 
  Eric

  The evident effort and insight in other Biskind show-biz books isn’t found too much here. Although he interviewed dozens of industry players, he could’ve cobbled together a good 90% of Pandora’s Box with only streamer subscriptions and access to Variety and Hollywood Reporter online archives. I enjoyed more the book’s second half, focusing on the streamers’ business machinations, than the first half, which is primarily a series of brief write-ups of the bigger shows seen on pay services and the basic cablers.
• 
  Jeff Bursey

  An adequately-written (some sentences get away from the author) overview and occasional deep dive into the genesis and life of streamers and cable channels that, at one time, challenged the networks. It's a light read, and Biskind chooses apt quotations to show that everyone, or maybe only 99.5%, of those involved in this industry are rotters (to some people, or to all people). The book takes us up to sometime in 2023 so it is close to where things are now.
• 
  Marissa Dobulis

  This book felt like a series of those "for you" articles that hold your attention for only half the story.
  
  Part 3 was the most interesting.
• 
  Kristofer Dubbels

  I learned about this one from
  James Meek’s terrific review essay in the London Review of Books. Every now and then the LRB will run a review of a book that is superior to the book itself, and this is one of those instances. Anyone looking for a thoughtful meditation on peak TV ought to read Meek’s review; Biskind’s book itself is gossipy and lighter than air.

  There’s no particularly developed argument to Biskind’s book; instead the reader is treated to a succession of anecdotes interspersed with catty quips. Illustrative of the quality of the latter, we are treated to this assessment of the DC Extended Universe:

  …the only hive of superheroes that could conceivably challenge the MCU, is no treat, either: see 2016’s embarrassing Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Boredom (oops, that’s Justice) (270)

  Wowza - zing!

  The quality of the jokes aside, this book perhaps would have benefitted from more extensive fact-checking. At times, it is easy to infer the correction. For example we learn that “In October of 2012, Jeff Bezos surprised everyone by praising Netflix for its hit Squid Game. (241)” Squid Game came out in 2021, so it’s an easy error to spot, and to correct. Simple mistake. But a more substantial error occurs earlier in the book, as Biskind related the development of HBO’s memoryholed Vinyl from 2016:

  The Wolf of Wall Street, written by Terry Winter, had been Scorsese’s biggest grosser, so the director called him in 2008 and asked if he’d be interested in helping him with Vinyl. (170)

  The Wolf of Wall Street came out in 2013. So maybe this is just another example of a simple mistaken date. But in the following paragraph we learn: “But the stock market crashed in 2008, and it was not the time for a $100 million Scorsese movie.” (171) Wait - what? An odd assertion, given that The Wolf of Wall Street’s budget was - you guessed it - $100 million.

  Much earlier on, we encounter perhaps the most egregious example of Biskind’s penchant for confused chronology. Discussing the prehistory of HBO��s Oz, we learn that writer Tom Fontana developed a show for NBC called The Philanthropist. After Iron Man was released, NBC wanted The Philanthropist to be more like the debut MCU film. So they fired Fontana from The Philanthropist, then rehired him later. The show, we learn, was never picked up because NBC decided to give Jay Leno a ten o’clock time slot instead (19). Apparently freed up to do something more creatively fulfilling, Fontana is contacted while shooting Homicide - HBO CEO Chris Albrecht is interested in Fontana’s show about life in prison, Oz (20).

  What is trivially wrong in this telling is that Iron Man was released in 2008, a full five years after Oz was off the air. The entire anecdote about The Philanthropist - which aired eight episodes in the summer of 2009 - had to have taken place well after Oz’s development. The immediately following paragraph notes that Fontana was shooting Homicide when Oz began production. Is this just sloppy editing? Biskind would seem to be trying to shoehorn Fontana’s treatment by networks into the creation myth of HBO, but this particular story happened after the series finales not just of Oz, but of Sex and the City, The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, and after the premieres of Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Whatever it is Biskind is trying to relate here, it is chronologically out of place and, moreover, misleading.

  There are other errors in the book I won’t detail, and I’m certain there are many more errors I didn’t catch (full disclosure, I have not watched more than a few minutes of most of these shows, and I did not watch any of them as they originally aired - I just have access to Wikipedia). The density of errors presumably is an artifact of the way the book was composed - there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of a central guiding thesis, and Biskind’s knowledge of the world appears to extend no further than Hollywood itself as an industry. But he does like interviewing disgruntled former employees and cast members! So the book takes the shape of a series of gossipy anecdotes that do not always appear to advance the book’s argument. Accordingly, I found it very difficult to follow the truly colossal number of “characters” in the book. Since the first names are typically dropped after the first mention, I found myself repeatedly making Google searches like “Albrecht HBO” or “Fuchs HBO” and so on.

  Is this book a profound meditation on the cultural impact of “prestige TV”? No. Is it reliable a history of the emergence of prestige TV within the broader entertainment industry? Also no. Does it paint a vivid picture of the conflict between commerce and art? No, not really - Biskind doesn’t seem particularly committed to artistry, so much as he is interested in the whole milieu of money and gossip and awards and so on. We know The Sopranos is good because the critics and award shows say it is good; but what exactly makes The Shield “good”? And, for that matter, aside from the quantum leap in violence and graphic depictions of sex, what is it that makes prestige TV a quantum leap in quality over, say, The Simpsons or Seinfeld (or, for that matter, Homicide or Twin Peaks or an even more defiantly middle brow blockbuster like Law and Order)? (Meek makes this suggestion in his LRB review.)

  Anyhow, this book was bad and you’ll save time reading James Meek’s LRB review instead. If you still have a hankering to read it after reading Meek’s piece, go for it - the only significant flaw of Meek’s otherwise admirable review is he does not give the full impression of just how bad the experience of opening Pandora’s Box truly is.
• 
  Rebecca Oliver

  this was interesting but weird. it was very condensed, like you couldn’t skip a sentence. it was abrupt. it also was so much fact and so little perspective for a lot of it—i’ve never seen someone present so much information that condemns media figures without moralizing or going on at all about the consequences of what they did? it also became tiresome in the last 100 pages because it stopped feeling like it was about the competition between hbo and cable, and was more about the mass tangle that is streaming. that’s history’s fault more than the authors. interesting, but not amazing, and late at the library !
• 
  Nadia Zeemeeuw

  There were segments in this book which truly fascinated me. There was a whole parade of some very bad but frustratingly influential people - and in this madness sometimes I was completely lost.
  In the end it turned out to be a nice book to listen to while walking - it gives you a lot of insights into show making world but not demands too much from you as a reader.
• 
  Amber

  I enjoyed the informative breakdown of the history of the golden age of television that is in a state of transition to who knows where, but I find Biskind’s attempts at humor and witticisms lacking if not outright cringe. He also lacks a real understanding of trans-ness and I often felt his age and cis-whiteness. Further he has a great grasp of the history of these execs and studios but not of the creative side of the industry - saying for instance that the Spiderverse films “do away with actors entirely” just because their characters are animated.
• 
  Belaraniel

  Бискинд лучший, тв сосет, и все такое прочее
  На самом деле, реально офигенная журналистская работа, проделанная по горячим следам, но с удивительной цепкостью взгляда, выхватывающего in the eye of the storm главное.
• 
  Megan Hurley

  This was interesting. Seems like a very incestuous industry and that a few hubristic men have kinda ruined it for all of us.
• 
  Alex Nagler

  It's not TV, it's HBO. It's not HBO, it's streaming. It's not streaming, it's why the WGA and SAG are striking/about to strike. Peter Biskind's "Pandora's Box" covers the history of how TV became today's TV and why we will likely never see anything akin to one show receiving four Leading Actor nomination for a single show on broadcast television. Biskind gets everyone relevant to talk on the record about the last 24 years of television and content. A must read for everyone either interested in watching TV or working in TV.
  
  My thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy
• 
  Sean Wicks

  Peter Biskind has written some of the best books about film and the entertainment industry, but this one is one of his weakest efforts. It feels like a whole lot of proclaiming "the sky is falling" with an extra doomsday vibe that it always has been falling and always is. A lot of the information felt like it has been relayed better in other books (the HBO sections for instance) and while all the companies have huge hits which he talks about, it seems they are always followed by massive failures where Biskind claims companies like HBO are suddenly in the doghouse. I remember the shows he mentions as dropping in quality as being so-so (John From Cincinnati, the on-set disaster that was Luck, etc.), but I don't remember ever thinking HBO was in a disastrous glut following Deadwood, The Sopranos or Sex In The City. It's this handwringing of "everything is a pending disaster" that gets frustrating after a while. He does thankfully and correctly call out many of the toxic creators that are often tolerated because they are "artists", not to mention the lack of diversity in many of the writer rooms and executive suites.
  
  Yes, entertainment is broken (for the moment) and the fact that the book covers the business right up to the recent strikes makes it up-to-date. Entertainment has been broken before, then righted itself, and will break again. That's just how things go. This gives you at least a snapshot of where we are at now, but the how we got here feels weak and overblown. You can get this information and handled more competently from listening to Kim Master on The Business podcast, Matt Belloni on the Town podcast or via the Puck newsletter (which Biskind does reference in this book a few times) or by reading the trades.
• 
  Beth

  I greatly enjoyed this book until I got to Part IV: Back to the Future. Why? because in that section, the author's bias over what is "worthwhile" entertainment and what isn't became glaring apparent.
  
  Up until that point, the book seemed to be an unvarnished look at and deep dive into how the television landscape changed, starting with the evolution of HBO from ho-hum cable to "appointment television" and how its success rolled out to influence changes at AMC, FX, Netflix, and more, leading to the creation of shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Shield, House of Cards, etc. And for the first three parts of the book, it seemed pretty even handed in covering the successes, failures, and excesses of the various executives along the way.
  
  But then in Part IV, when new streaming services emerged that carved out identities for themselves through genre entertainment like Marvel and Star Wars at Disney+, Rings of Power and Wheel of Time at Amazon Prime, For All Mankind and Foundation at Apple TV+, etc., less attention is paid and the comments about those services and existing ones incorporating genre entertainment, such as HBO's transformation into Max, the comments aren't just snarky. They're utterly dismissive. Warner Bros is called out for having nine Batmen, completely ignoring counterparts like the six official James Bonds (not counting the comedic version of Casino Royale), or the many versions of Robin Hood throughout the history of film, etc.
  
  So terrific reporting in Parts I-III but pathetic bias in Part IV. I'd be fine if the author called out mistakes and bad behavior related to those other streaming services -- I loved the book Disney War -- but the problems would be bad executive choices, not the genre of the entertainment.
• 
  bencreeth

  A deeply strange reading experience, to be honest. The overall message - the TV landscape is slowly morphing into the cable landscape that it disrupted - is interesting. But whenever our man Peter Biskind ventured onto a topic I was familiar with, I realised that a lot of his points are either weird or just plain ... wrong. "There are no shootouts in The Wire", he says, except there are - there are loads. Jeff Bezos praises squid game in 2012, a full decade before it came out, while Martin Scorsese uses the success of Wolf of Wall Street to fund another project in 2008, five years before WoWS was in cinemas.
  
  This is lazy stuff, but at least it's obviously unintentional. I was more weirded out by some of the cultural commentary, particularly Pete's coverage of Transparent, which came to a rocky end when Jeffrey Tambor was accused of sexual harassment. The lesson, for Pete, was that this proved "you can't bring a straight male to a trans party". What?! The lesson is don't sexually assault anyone! On that topic, Pete also claims that an executive who had an affair with an actress was "#MeToo-ed off the lot" - Pete, #MeToo doesn't mean "don't have affairs", it means, once again, don't sexually assault anyone. That, and a description of Issa Rae's "dazzling white teeth which she displays in an ear to ear smile", had my dinosaur-grandad radar on full alert.
  
  Biskind is an 84 year old man who seems to have cobbled together this book from existing interviews and Wikipedia, and he just doesn't seem to have the knowledge or cultural nous to provide the nuanced commentary that this topic deserves. Sorry, Pete.
• 
  Chris Barsanti

  Fun yet frustrating, as Biskind so often is. It would be nice to see him getting back to the business of movies, which is really where he excels, but in the meantime this busy and gossipy chronicle of Peak TV and the coming crash will have to do. The tale is most enjoyable when he's tracking the rise (and rise and rise...) of HBO at the pinnacle of its decadent The Sopranos arrogance and reporting on what seems like some truly detestable behavior from most every big showrunner out there. There's a miniseries just in that for somebody to run with.
  
  But once the story hits the streaming wars, the parade of indistinguishable executives with big egos, short fuses, tens of millions in unearned compensation, and tunnel vision becomes a bit hard to track. Also, unlike in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Biskind doesn't seem to have a strong opinion on the art he's writing about, relying too often on what random critics said. Sure, he doesn't have to think TV is its own art form, and we could use more writers willing to puncture a few balloons there. But there's little appreciation for the fact that some of the mid-tier shows being chucked out there by even second-rate streamers are incomparably better than what was being broadcast a few decades ago. Also, given his distaste for the genre, wasn't it "broke" to begin with?
• 
  Brandon

  There is a lot to like about this book, but there is also a lot to dislike, and for me, the dislike won. On the one hand, it is an interesting look at the rise of the modern "golden age of television" and what has happened to it due to streaming. On the other hand, it is a book that sets out to praise the work of white men who focus on entertainment for white men. At the beginning of the book, you can hear the complete enrapture of the author over the creation of shows like OZ, Sapranos, and HBO in general. As the book continues, you can hear the author's complete disdain for "wokeism," "diversity," and "#metoo." Every man is unjustly kicked out of power just because they are little handsy or a bit too crass for "women." The only woman he talked positively about in the book is a show writer who has spoken out against "PC culture." Multiple times in the book, he calls female antagonists bitches, while speaking lovingly of men who do the same thing. I think Cracked did a better job of explaining the "New Golden Age of TV."
  https://youtu.be/UHWM2r-UWzs?si=eedYi...
• 
  Wil Carpenter

  Peter Biskind has a reputation for writing excellent, though somewhat divisive, books on the history of the film industry. His masterwork, “Easy Riders and Raging Bulls,” perfectly captures the style and feel of Hollywood throughout the 1970s, though it has provided controversial due to many of the those featured in the book citing it as a twisted retelling of the era. Despite the controversy, Biskind’s books continue to shape the way that film history is documented in the twenty-first century. It was exciting to discover then, that Biskind has now turned his attention towards the weird and wonderful world of HBO and post-HBO premium television shows.
  
  Weaving a narrative that takes us through the formation of the Home Box Office into their ventures into scripted television dramas, such as “The Sopranos” and “Deadwood,” before moving into the modern world of streaming dominated by Netflix and Amazon, Biskind’s televisual history yarn is fast and frantic as it covers a stunning amount of material both in front of and behind the cameras.
  
  From the weird and wonderful worlds of showrunners like David Chase, David Milch and Matthew Weiner, to the impact that Netflix and streaming had on the success of shows like “Breaking Bad,” Biskind takes us on a journey that proves to be informative, engaging and endlessly entertaining. There is a lot of promise in the world of television and Biskind illustrates for us just how lucky we are to have any of it at all.
  
• 
  Cynthia

  If you've read 2022's "It's Not TV" you can easily skip the first two thirds of this book which also (mostly) concerns the rise, and later travails, of HBO. This one covers it with more snark and writerly flair, though, e.g., of “The Mandalorian” and its action-heavy, character-light story, he writes: “it’s all sound and fury, signifying money” and re: "And Just Like That": "The best thing about the sequel is that the show's most entitled character, the preening Mr. Big, is the victim of his Peloton, dropping dead at the end of the first episode, his aorta clotted by self-regard."!!!
  The book comes into its own in the last 40 pages or so when it turns into more of an essay/opinion piece about the largely self-inflicted wounds that are troubling the entertainment business today and (rightly, I think) suggests that "the post-network streaming world could turn out to look like the pre-streaming broadcast world".
• 
  Nabil

  We see this happen frequently. A writer gets a lot of cache from writing something they are an expert in and try to cash in on that cache but those follow up efforts tend to be poor, as they are not experts on those matters. See Superfreaknomics or anything Yuval Harrari has written post Sapiens. Biskind is really stretching himself here.
  
  But it does pain me to give this book such a low rating as Easy Riders is essential for anyone who wants to know about that period of Hollywood and it also happens to be compulsively entertaining. Some might even say a classic of movie history.
  
  This book retreads things anyone who has been paying attention would already know. There aren't really any insights, rather obvious descriptions of what has recently happened, although certainly with a few juicy details.
  
  "The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies" covers a lot of the same ground is just a far superior book in almost every way.
• 
  Danny Marcalo

  When I read "Easy Riders, Raging Bull" as a teenager it was kind of life-changing for me. I also liked "Down and Dirty Pictures". Here I am now, years later, reading the newest Biskind.
  
  Well, it's a fine read, with some flaws. The most important is none of the books fault. I have recently read James Andrew Miller's oral history of HBO, so there is a lot in this book I already knew. However, if you follow Hollywood a little bit, there is not a ton in this book, that is new.
  
  There are also some factual errors as well es typing errors, or maybe printing errors. Also the massive wordplay, sometimes works, but a lot of the time does not. Also it makes the text somewhat old-fashioned.
  
  And what do I take from this book? In the end it is about money, it always is, the streamers are consolidating the market, under the supervision of their parent companies. A story that is still being written. This is a decent overview, but mindblown, as a was at age 16, I am not.
  
  3,5/5
• 
  Desi Pilla

  This book was a bit tough to read because it’s all over the place. Granted, Biskind tries to detail the entire history of streaming, which is difficult, but the storytelling was quite fragmented. Biskind tells the story of the streaming industry by speed-running individual shows that were critical in the development of the sector. He throws a bunch of names in your face from each show, that don’t mean much if it’s a show you haven’t seen. He simultaneously tries to tell you too much about each individual show (to the point where it can be quite boring), while also not telling you enough about any of them (an entire book of its own can surely be devoted to the making of The Sopranos). The narration style makes this book seem to drag on and on, whereas it may have been better to just stick to the broad strokes of the industry.
• 
  Kirsti

  Disappointing. I've enjoyed Biskind's earlier books, and I was hoping that he would select a dozen or so "peak television" shows and explain what made them successful, unusual, memorable, or otherwise worthwhile. Instead, this is a mostly business-focused account of scores of TV shows. We ping-pong around in time, so it's hard to get a sense of trends or sea changes. And there's a lot about harassment, humiliation, and general misery on the set. I did get one memorable image out of this book, though: David Chase, at the top of his Sopranos success, a multimillionaire, with his teeth rotting out of his head because he was so phobic about going to the dentist. What a shame for him and for the people around him.
• 
  Scott

  I think I really liked Easy Riders etc., Peter Biskind's chronicle of how the auteurs of the early 1970s saved a bloated Hollywood (until Spielberg and Lucas ruined it again), though I don't really remember it. Nor do I know if it would stand up! Either way, I had less fun with Pandora's Box, his chronicle of how HBO saved a bloated... Network TV landscape? But then streaming ruined it all over again. The broad strokes of the story are interesting in a cultural history sort of way, but the book spends more time among the industry's asshole execs than I wanted to. And then he gets weirdly snide in the last couple of sections? I don't know maybe I'm just less emotionally invested in these shows. 
• 
  Adam

  What a strange, uneven page-turner. I expected something insightful about contemporary popular culture, maybe some understanding of what the future holds and why, but all Biskind seems to offer is trivialities like a list of FX shows that you forgot existed and the Rotten Tomatoes scores of Apple+ shows I never watched. The jokes don’t work. My gut tells me Brian Cox, Lena Dunham, and Steven Soderbergh didn’t all read this book despite blurbing it. I am fascinated by my irritation — maybe I’ve got it wrong — and wish Biskind had written about why he loves the movies and hopes for their comeback as he mentions in the afterward.