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Share<\/a><\/p>\n Sean T. Collins joins us again today to write about the recent series The Terror: Devil in Silver, whose central metaphor about being trapped in the “heath care system” in this country and dealing with mysterious malevolent forces will be familiar to all of us. <\/p>\n He also talks to showrunner Chris Cantwell (also the co-creator of the great Halt and Catch Fire) about trying to strike the right balance of evil and hope in the series. <\/p>\n “This idea of complacency is very resonant and potent today,” Cantwell says. “You wake up every day, and here\u2019s the situation at hand: How do I address that? Can I address that? Do I have any agency to do so? How do I just survive from the morning until when I can crash into the bed at night, and hopefully make it another day? Does that make me complicit in some way in the system that perpetuates over all our heads and grinds us up into meat fuel?”<\/p>\n Collins most recently wrote for Hell World about the 1984 under-appreciated classic The Return of Godzilla.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It does as it pleases and continually destroys<\/p>\n Sean T. Collins\u00a0on Godzilla and America<\/p>\n He also wrote about The Chair Company and I Love LA<\/a>;\u00a0One Battle After Another and Kneecap<\/a>; The Hunting Wives<\/a>; Sinners<\/a>;\u00a0Fargo, The Curse and the 2024 election<\/a>;\u00a0Sexy Beast, vampires and class warfare<\/a>;\u00a0Godzilla Minus One and the trauma of war<\/a>; and\u00a0the surveillance cinema of The Curse, The Zone of Interest and Skinamarink<\/a>.<\/p>\n This will be sent out in the next edition of the newsletter. You’ll need to be a paid subscriber to read it in full. Here’s a 50% discount good for a couple days. <\/p>\n by Sean T. Collins<\/p>\n \u201cI am done calling for help. I used to think this system was broken, and people out there just didn\u2019t know. But now I realize nothing is broken. The system is working perfectly. That\u2019s why they never fix it.\u201d The Terror: Devil in Silver is like Franz Kafka\u2019s The Shining. Adapted by novelist Victor LaValle from his novel The Devil in Silver in collaboration with showrunner Chris Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire), this bleak and brilliant eight-episode series (on AMC, AMC+, and Shudder) is also about a small group of people trapped in an evil place. But it\u2019s not a snowy winter that keeps its protagonists prisoner. It\u2019s the NYPD and the American mental healthcare system. Snow melts. The system does not.<\/p>\n Devil in Silver stars Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) as Peter \u201cPepper\u201d Coffin, a heavy metal drummer from Queens entering early middle age in the still wears a band t-shirt every day way so many of us do. He\u2019s full of energy, hence the Pepper nickname \u2014 air drumming, working his day job as a mover, trying to start up a drum-lesson side hustle. He\u2019s everyone\u2019s best friend. \u201cI help people,\u201d he explains helpfully.<\/p>\n Pepper\u2019s a white guy with a Latina girlfriend, Marisol (Juani Feliz). She\u2019s got a daughter he dotes on to a financially irresponsible degree, buying her a $4,000 drum kit on a whim and wiping out their savings in the process. He\u2019s the kind of man who thinks he\u2019s a hero because he can trick a kid into looking at him like one.\u00a0<\/p>\n And he smiles a lot but he\u2019s angry, this guy. He\u2019s quick with his fists, hoping this too makes him look like a hero. He breaks up an argument between Marisol and her shitty ex by attacking the guy. Then he goes after the bystanders who try to break it up, and who happen to be a trio of undercover cops. Just like that, he goes from white knighting to getting arrested for assaulting an officer.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s late, and the cops\u2019 shift is almost over, and they\u2019re tired, and they don\u2019t want to fill out the paperwork. So \u2014 because they can, and because they have a deal with the place\u2019s management \u2014 they drop him off at New Hyde Hospital, a run-down psychiatric facility in the only wing of a massive building that\u2019s otherwise been completely closed down.<\/p>\n Pepper is placed on an involuntary 72-hour hold. He\u2019s doped up with meds, knocked out cold by them, and marked noncompliant because he doesn\u2019t wake up to take more meds. His mandatory stay is extended to two weeks. An escape attempt, a physical altercation, a bad attitude: The more he fights to get out, the longer he is forced to remain.\u00a0<\/p>\n This post is for paying subscribers only![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Screenshot-2026-10-12-at-7.55.24---AM.png\")
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\u2014Coffee, The Terror: Devil in Silver<\/p>\n
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