jacobclifton.com · Criticism
Twenty-five years of paying close attention.
I spent fourteen years at Television Without Pity writing about television in a way that was never really about television. It was about grief, transformation, the cost of paying attention, what it means to love something that will eventually disappoint you. The criticism is still happening — here, on Patreon, and in the WATCHING series.
The WATCHING series
The recaps, grown up.
Each volume takes a body of work — a show, a season, an era — and finds the thing running underneath it. Not a reprint. A remix. These are what the recaps were always actually trying to be.
WATCHING
Gossip Girl
WATCHING
Battlestar Galactica
WATCHING
Pretty Little Liars
WATCHING
True Blood
23+ volumes. New releases ongoing. All at Stag + Birch →
Recent criticism
From the archive:
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Chapter Six: The Oath
Most Virtuous Mother Joan broke away from a dancing clutch of older Sisters to greet them. “Welcome to the Bonfire Circle, Dreamers. Merry meet. I hear you’ve been busy.” She said it in a light tone, her earlier snideness replaced with something a bit more like respect.
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The Seven Lands, Explained
Seven Dreamers. Seven Lands. The Dreamers get the myth treatment — immortal, amnesiac, larger than the story can quite hold. The Lands don’t get that luxury. Somebody, or something, has to inhabit them. This is not a travel guide. Nobody chooses a Land the way you’d choose a city. You wake up somewhere on the…
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The Diamond Dogs — Extended Portrait
Synchronized figures in chrome fox masks who lead the hidden utopia of Arcadia toward an ideal called Baseline — and a faction within them that no longer believes in it.
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Chapter Five: The Eagle
The Covens didn’t travel in groups, sadly — you generally would get one Sister and one Warden from any Coven looking for a fifth member, while the rest stayed home to cover their duties. As Holder and Nora explained it, Daughters who are ready to join a Coven would arrange to meet with Sisters to…
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Benjamin of the Beasts — Extended Portrait
The Prince of Trees, a wild boy who can flicker into a bearcub or a wolf. His emotional state and the health of the Redwoods are the same thing — this is not a metaphor.