Can such a gap in experience and circumstance ever be bridged? The show seems to take a glass-half-empty approach to that question. It’s true that Black Baltimoreans bust up a Nazi rally, since the Jews’ enemies are their enemies too. But the last images of such unrest are the riots and brutal crackdowns that erupted following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination; Cleo, meanwhile, wearily scoffs at the idea that she and Maddie could be friends. The severing of Maddie’s ties to Ferdie and to her adopted neighborhood are other datapoints to consider when assessing the show’s take on cross-racial solidarity against robber barons and fascist mobs. In Lady in the Lake’s world, at least, the outlook is grim.

I did a little explainer for the end of Lady in the Lake for Decider. These are servicey, but I try to have some fun and say something interesting with them.

But the nice thing about racism is that it has no basis in fact. It’s entirely made-up nonsense. It’s bullshit, it’s bupkis, it’s a fabrication, it’s a myth. This is why all the groups rattled off by that awful Officer Bosko in the previous episode — the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, presumably Polish people like himself — have been able to “overcome” racism and “become” white. Race is sociopolitical Calvinball: The people in charge get to decide who counts, and it has nothing to do with any qualities that are innate to anyone. They make up the rules as they go along!

In other words, people are treated differently, and their different experiences make them different in many ways, but people are the same. The family you see on the news, crying for their slain child in a pile of rubble half a world away, feel the same grief and pain as the family you see on the news, crying for their slain child at a school shooting in an American suburb, who feel the same grief and pain as the family you see on the news, crying for their murdered daughter/sister/mother killed by cops for committing no crime at all. Lionel, Cleo’s son with sickle cell anemia, and Anne Frank, seen in a photo hanging from the wall near Maddie’s desk, are united by far, far more than what separates them. But you don’t have to take my word for it: Ask the Nazis in this very episode.

I reviewed the series finale of Lady in the Lake for Decider.

Filmmakers love putting Natalie Portman’s face in the mirror. It’s easy to understand — if I were a director who had access to a face like Natalie Portman’s, I’d put it everywhere I could. But like Perseus defeating Medusa by her reflection in his shield, there are some faces simply too powerful to gaze at directly for too long. Studying such a striking person from that reflective remove can be more revealing than looking at them directly. 

It certainly is in Episode 3 of Lady in the Lake. Adapted from the novel by Laura Lipmman, Alma Har’el’s Apple TV+ series stages this sex scene involving Portman’s character, fed-up ex-housewife turned cub reporter Maddie Morgenstern Schwartz, and her lover, Baltimore police officer Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel), in front of a mirror. And there’s a lot to see. 

A few weeks ago, Lady in the Lake had a scene where Natalie Portman has sex in front of a mirror. This got me to thinking about Natalie Portman, sex, mirrors, and the relationship between all three across her career. I wrote about it for Decider.

When Maddie talks to Shell Gordon and Reggie Robinson…okay, I’m gonna break format here and just say when this happened I practically cheered. Here we have Academy Award winner Natalie Portman sitting across from Wood Harris, The Wire’s Avon Barksdale, commanding the screen just as effortlessly. That show’s deep bench of talent is just extraordinary.

Anyway, when Maddie talks to Shell, he chooses and delivers his words with the kind of skill and care an unpracticed speaker and interviewer like Maddie can’t match. When she tries to be coy about his racket, he makes her come out and say it. He’s the person who finally makes the racial subtext of their conversation text, praising Jewish people like her for surviving a genocide and overcoming racism, but ultimately letting her know that for all intents and purposes, she’s as white as anyone else to a Black person like himself. It’s like watching a serious version of Zorro making a few quick swordstrokes and his opponent (or lady friend)’s clothes all falling off at once, effortlessly torn to shreds. 

Shell isn’t the only other person in the room, though. There’s also Reggie, who for all his gravelly soft-spokenness may as well be an open book. He lets slip that he’s a boxer — you know, the kind of hobby that leaves you with a black eye — and reveals that he and Shell collect tropical fish — you know, the kind that a Black guy with a black eye might have been seen buying at certain store the day a certain girl goes missing. The cherry on top is that, seemingly just for the fun of it, Shell reveals that Reggie was an item with Dora Carter, Cleo’s best friend. (Even now, when it’s in his best interest to do so, Reggie can’t hide his feelings: When Maddie asks if they were in love, he replies with a surprisinagly humble and tender “I’d like to think so.”)

I had a grand time reviewing this week’s excellent episode of Lady in the Lake for Vulture.

This was the big one. In retrospect, the fourth episode of Lady in the Lake makes the first three look like they were holding their breath (when they weren’t gasping it out while fucking or dancing or running for their lives, of course), waiting for this big inevitable exhalation of raw unadulterated plot movement. A lot happens in this episode — some of it above and beyond what seems strictly necessary, or even advisable, to tell the story of these two women.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Lady in the Lake for Decider.

Lady in the Lake is two shows in one. Each half has a charismatic female protagonist, a murder-mystery/crime-thriller plot, and an awareness of the race, class, and gender power differentials at work. But they don’t feel the same, do they, despite all that? And it goes beyond the skin color and religion of the leading players, too. Creator-director Alma Har’el and writer Briana Belser make this not just a tale of two cities, but almost of two genres.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Lady in the Lake for Decider.

I’m not agnostic on whether it’s hot to watch a baked Natalie Portman come on to, and I mean come on hard to, a younger man she barely knows, from across any number of racial, religious, class, and career divides. The formation of desire, from its first primordial stirrings to the moment when the chemistry between mind, heart and body bursts into sensual life, is one of the core features of cinema. Har’el captures that spark of desire, the moment when the idea of sex goes from “huh! interesting!” to “I am making this happen,” beautifully here.

I reviewed the second episode of Lady in the Lake for Decider.

“They say,” the narration begins, “until the lion tells its story, the hunter will always be the hero.” Crime stories, true or otherwise, often bear this out; you don’t have to be an aficionado to notice that, but it helps. I once spent an unhappy time in my life learning about serial killers, and one fact kept stopping me short: While the killer’s story begins when he starts killing, the victim’s story ends at the same time. Killers take away a person’s right to tell their own story, in their own time.

Based on the novel by Laura Lippman, creator/writer/director/co-editor Alma Har’el’s Lady in the Lake aims to redress this problem. “Aims” may be understating it: From the very first lines, spoken by a woman who’s talking to you from beyond the watery grave we’re watching her get dumped into, Lady takes a damn sledgehammer to the killer-centric narrative. It’s not subtle, is what I’m saying. But maybe it shouldn’t be.

I reviewed the first episode of Lady in the Lake, Apple TV+’s new Natalie Portman/Moses Ingram murder mystery, for Decider.