Posts by Trace William Cowen

If the road never ends, why not take the occasional detour?

We might risk the journey to shed our baggage, but we’ll simply just gain new baggage along the way.

“Sleepover” offers a break from the (thoroughly enjoyable) onslaught of emotional, visceral messiness which defined the first chunk of Season Five.

‘Louie’ is plagued by surreal, Lynchian nightmares in “Untitled.”

Whenever ‘Louie’ tackles the elusive concept of death, it broaches the subject with a peculiar – if not entirely skeptical – eye toward its more popular counterparts: life, rebirth, starting over.

Loneliness without celebrity is just loneliness, and Louie seems to be at odds with both.

Louie gives a young comic some valuable advice in this week’s episode.

After the experimental highs of ‘Louie’ season four, we are now in the throes of a character in some sort of recovery mode.

“Severance” seems to suggest a slightly different Don Draper altogether — though still warring against himself, his past, and the illusion of the present.

The season three finale asks just as many questions as it answers — which is to say, the lives of Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna are as “up in the air” as ever.

This frustrating episode brings each main character “back home,” so to speak — with each enjoying a damaging dabble in their greatest flaws, flaws a large portion of this season of ‘Girls’ seemed to lack.

The subtly infused sadness of ‘Role-Play’ works well for Lena Dunham, who gives perhaps the most focused and rewarding performance of her career thus far.

The more isolated, single-character-centric episodes of ‘Girls’ have been not only some of the best of this season, but the best of the entire series. Naturally, this week’s offering, “Flo,” is no exception.

The understated satisfaction of witnessing Adam accomplish something as truly boast-worthy as a Broadway role is brilliantly handled. The rest of the episode doesn’t quite live up to this triumph, but still offers plenty for which to stick around.

Louis C.K.’s ‘Tomorrow Night’ is far from perfect, but therein lies its charm and inarguable justification for its very existence and recent re-release.

A far-fetched pop fantasy involving the collision of ‘Girls’ and ‘Mad Men’ is surely something that exists. Thankfully, such a fantasy is somewhat indulged in this week’s episode — though not lightly.

The disappointing but inevitable turning point initiated by last week’s episode continues with resilience in “Only Child,” pitting Hannah and Caroline against each other in what essentially is a battle of selves.

This week’s episode deals with a variety of deaths, both literal and metaphorical.

The groundwork vibe of episodes one and two pays off quite nicely in a tidy, classic display of exactly why this show really works.

This episode, a sort-of tongue-in-cheek half-nod to the road trip as plot device, is loaded with even more signs of how much Hannah and Adam have grown as a couple