This nine-episode revenge saga is equal parts crime drama and nighttime soap about the clash between two families and the ruin that follows. However, it hinges on the duo of Etta Tiger Jonze (Shannon Gisela) and Lovely (Brittany Adebumola), and on the seemingly predestined sisterhood that re-anchors Etta after tragedy upon tragedy. 

Created and executive produced by Bill Dubuque (“Ozark”), with Karen Campbell (“Dexter”) as showrunner and executive producer, alongside Alethea Jones (“High Potential”), and executive producer/director, the ongoing series stars Gisela, Cary Elwes, Danay Garcia, Adebumola, Dylan Jackson, Alberto Guerra, Maurice Compte, Gerardo Celasco, and Marta Milans—with Elwes giving his best quirky’ Florida Man’  detective. 

“M.I.A” gives us a first season that starts and ends with family. Set in the Florida Keys, we meet the Tiger Jonzes, a big, loving blended brood that looks respectable from the outside, but is covertly running drugs for a cartel. That cartel is another family affair, led by the legendary Edward James Olmos. Of course, it wouldn’t be a crime drama dripping in revenge if the criminals played nice. 

The series opens with a pair of action set pieces: The first is a splashy, breakneck chase; the second is an intense volley of bullets and fire. It’s in the action where the series does its best work throughout its run. Fight scenes pop, and desperation fuels ingenuity. The early family dynamics are engaging as well. The cast continues to work well together, while shocks and reversals pop up throughout.

Where did the series lose me? The cultural accents. They’re odd. I don’t mean to call Adebumola out—she’s an engaging actress who makes you believe in Etta’s struggles. But is her accent meant to be vaguely French-Caribbean, or possibly Haitian? I’m just not sure. That’s not necessarily the point of disconnect, but it is distracting.

“M.I.A” breaks down into two basic plot lines with several tributaries fueling each. We have Etta and her developing underground network of outsiders, and the three Rojas siblings as they vie for control of the legitimate and illegal sides of their business.

Standouts include Gisela, Garcia, and Guerra, with a nod to Jackson and Adebumola—despite the accent. However, the storytelling feels disjointed tonally. I’m a fan of genre mashups, or even genre-defying stories, but Etta’s nightlife escapades in opposition to the ‘big villain energy’ of the Rojas family’s dirty dealings don’t mesh well. It’s as though they exist in different worlds. 

The writing does a nice job of establishing Etta as special, reckless, and compassionate. It also grounds both sides of the thriller equation in human upsides and foibles. But this particular combination of elements doesn’t add up to much, and it makes you feel very little about these characters and their struggles.

If you’re looking for a darkly violent Florida revenge saga with its vices and its sensationalism right up front, and a cliffhanger to close it out, give it a try. All I’ll say is, no more for me.

Full season screened for review. All episodes will stream on Peacock May 7th.

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A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

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Now, in its fifth season, the show’s infamous time jumps have taken us to an alternative 2012 in which Mars has not only been colonized, but might well be on the cusp of asserting its independence from Earth. It’s not quite the near-future fantasism of “The Expanse,” but as the years go by, it’s getting pretty damn close. And, blissfully, it’s carried all of its human heartache, expansive scope, and staggering production values into that great beyond, as mankind reaches further out into the stars than ever before, bringing all of its relatable foibles with it.

After the usual flurry of news headlines that accompanies the start of a new season (including hilarious Easter eggs like a still-alive John Lennon and Jay-Z collaborating on the hit “Grey Album”), “For All Mankind” gets its wheels and asteroids spinning fairly quickly. Years after the Happy Valley colony hijacked the Goldilocks asteroid in Mars’s orbit and defied Earth’s greed, the Martian colonists live in an uneasy peace with their terrestrial neighbors (thanks to a multinational coalition called the M-6 that manages the colony, alongside Costa Ronin’s Russian governor, Leonid Polivanov). And, of course, it’s still 2012, so the kids are still doing flash mobs and “Gangnam Style,” even in space.

Astronaut Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman, rocking some of the show’s signaturely crunchy old-age prosthetics), now in his hobbling eighties, enjoys his final years in exile on the station, as a new crop of Martian kids—including his grandson, Alex (Sean Kaufman)—usher in the first generation of young adults who’ve grown up completely on the Red Planet. Meanwhile, Helios founder Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi) advances his plans to turn Mars into a self-sustaining colony, with none of those pesky supply runs from Earth required. On top of that, a small group of political activists, dubbing themselves the Sons and Daughters of Mars, and led by Season 4 man of the people Miles Dale (Toby Kebbell), begins murmurs of their own “Free Mars” independence campaign.

Like so many situations in “For All Mankind,” the colony is a powder keg just waiting for a match, and the first of many arrives in the form of a mysterious dead body found outside the habitat, which is quickly pinned on beloved Martian citizen (and North Korean defector) Lee Jung-Gil (C.S. Lee), who’s arrested by Martian peacekeeping forces (led by Mireille Enos, who gets to reunite with her “Killing” co-star Kinnaman this season). A hasty attempt to bust Lee out of prison sets off a chain of events that tests the Happy Valley colony more than ever before, forcing the hands of both Earth and Mars as the colonists begin a sincere bid to overthrow their Terran masters and strike out on their own.

Meanwhile, the spirit of exploration that dominated previous seasons of “For All Mankind” lingers, as Ed’s daughter, Kelly (Cynthy Wu), and Helios CEO Aleida Rosales (Coral Peña) begin a race to the next frontier: The moon of Titan, which might well be the first step in looking for new life in the universe. For all the domestic and, forgive me, terrestrial concerns that follow the show’s emphasis on Mars this season, it’s this eternal stretch further into the frontier that keeps the show’s bittersweet, humanistic idealism churning.

As always, the show’s far-flung environs manage to stay grounded in the personal and political wrinkles of our age; this season touches on everything from immigration (intergalactic refugees known as “Craters,” so called because they sneak inside supply crates) to the threat of automation to the endless fight for workers’ rights. Corporations fight amongst each other to be the first to reach Titan, all while competing governments squabble for the fate of Mars and the people living on it.

And all of these concerns are informed by a rapidly expanding and shifting cast of characters as expansive as they are endearing; this far into the future from the show’s alt-’60s remit, it’s astonishing that Wolpert and Nedivi are able to realistically keep some of its oldest characters around, while introducing new faces each season who fit seamlessly into the show’s ornate fabric. (Alongside Kinnaman, we also see series stalwart Wrenn Schmidt as the now-imprisoned Margo, still dispensing advice to Aleida about her Titan mission.) Enos and Sanchez stand out as some of the best new faces this season, and Ines Asserson excels as a young Earth marine with a chip on her shoulder related to some complicated characters from previous seasons. Even Kebbell’s Miles grows in prominence and passion as an everyday guy thrust into a leadership role by sheer entropy.

For all the elegantly rendered visual effects and meticulous NASA-core production design of the show, what wows most is the incredibly relatable human drama that plays out in between. The show’s third episode is a heartstopper, a moment of transition that feels like the end of an era, not just for the families who’ve poured multiple generations into this story (the Baldwins, the Stevenses, the Dales), but for all of humanity. Love, loss, maturation, all of these things play out in the brittle walls of spaceships and extraterrestrial habitats as strongly as they always have. While this review can’t speak to the final two episodes of the season, the first eight episodes elegantly set up a conclusion that should speak to the show’s interest in human endeavor at both the micro and macro levels.

At the end of the day, “For All Mankind” is a lush testament to humanity’s dogged desire to better itself, whether in individuals and communities finding the strength to build something where they stand, or in braving the unknown. With knowledge that this is the show’s penultimate season, and a Russian-set spinoff, “Star City,” is on its way, it’s tempting to hope that the whole series will stick the landing. No matter where it ends up, it’ll be worth the ride.

First eight episodes screened for review. New episodes air Fridays on Apple TV.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

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First, a bit of background with a disclaimer. I have been writing about video games in some capacity for over a decade and playing much, much longer than that. My handheld gaming experience extends back to the Game Boy, through the Nintendo DS, diverted by the PlayStation Vita, and as a regular player of the Nintendo Switch (and now its sequel). However, I have not been a Steam Deck or even much of a gaming laptop guy, and while I love gaming, I don’t get deep under the hood regarding specs, which can often be the breaking point for someone considering a machine like the ROG Xbox Ally X, Microsoft’s new handheld gaming deck that comes with a notorious $1k price tag. There are numerous sources that have tested this system and its AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip in ways that don’t mean as much to someone who writes for an entertainment site and not a gaming one. This is a good one that breaks down the FPS across certain games on the system, and the results generally seem impressive across the board, but those details may be a factor for you in ways I can’t unpack.

With that out of the way, I can get into my personal experience with the most impressive handheld gaming system I’ve ever used. Coming out of the box with Windows 11 installed and a familiar Xbox UI, there’s a remarkable ease of use to the Ally X that’s wonderful. You should know that, like a lot of systems and games nowadays, the Ally X had a few early glitches. I had a game that wouldn’t register as owned by me despite being on Game Pass (“Silksong”) and an issue wherein vibrations led to a metal sound in the fan, but both have been resolved, and it’s now a consistently impressive and entertaining machine, one that’s addictively easy to pick up and play for an hour before getting back to real life.

So how did I “test” my Xbox X? Most of the gameplay has been “Hollow Knight: Silksong” through the Xbox UI and “Hades II” through Steam. While I also played bits and pieces of “Gears of War 5,” “South of Midnight,” “Keeper,” “The Outer Worlds 2,” “Evil West,” and even “Fortnite” to see how different kinds of games feel on the Ally X, it’s the two platformers that have been dominating my attention.

Two of the best games of the year, “Silksong” and “Hades II” fit this system like a glove. While I often find shooters a bit tricky on handheld systems—call me old, but I need the TV in front of me not between my hands to be accurate with a reticle and feel like I can move quickly enough to respond to an enemy—platformers and similarly structured Metroidvania games have always been better on a handheld. Maybe it’s just the memories of playing actual “Metroid” and “Castlevania” games on Nintendo handhelds (yes, I’m old), but the joy I’ve gotten from “Silksong” (well, joy mixed with outright rage at a game that’s sometimes ridiculously hard) and “Hades II” have been highlights of the last month. Taking these two games—one through the Xbox interface and one through Steam—anywhere is to casual gamers like me the real draw of a system like the Ally.

It helps to be able to play them on a system that feels as sturdy as an Xbox controller. The grips on the handles really replicate the feel of an actual controller in your hand instead of the flatness of the Switch model. And the interfaces, while they might take getting used to for people accustomed to the simplicity of the Switch, are actually relatively user-friendly. There’s a button the left side of the device that allows you to jump into any of the interfaces with one click, including the Xbox UI, the Steam one, Epic games, and Armoury Crate, wherein you can adjust settings to maximize performance for your gameplay.

The system also includes a full Windows 11 experience, which means you can surf the web and use other Windows apps. Given our focus at the site, I also watched Netflix and YouTube TV on my Ally and they both had crisp presentation, another great thing to do with this device. Of course, it’s primarily a gaming machine, but the fact that it can basically be a handheld entertainment system too shouldn’t be ignored, especially if you’re looking for a way to take streaming libraries and live TV on the road.

You should know there are some hiccups to the gaming library. Apparently, not all games purchased on an Xbox are allowing for play on the Ally, including the recent “Battlefield 6.” Other than the weird glitch with “Silksong,” I had no problems accessing the games mentioned above, but they were primarily through Game Pass, which appears to have no access issues. Even the games received in advance that I technically “own” like “Outer Worlds 2” and “Keeper” (both really fun, by the way—more on them later this month) were also technically Game Pass games.

Of course, there’s also the price. In today’s collapsing economy, four figures for a handheld gaming system does seem like a steep ask for people who might just want to play “Silksong” and “Hades II.” With that in mind, the Ally X does feel like a system for people who are already hardcore gaming laptop or desktop gamers, people looking for a way to take their already robust Steam and Xbox libraries on the road. The truth is that this is an incredible machine, but also one that costs about as much, if not more than some strong gaming laptops. Although it does feel like most people buying an Ally X will already have one of those and are trying to expand their gaming empire instead of just starting one.

If you’re one of those, and the price tag doesn’t push you away, it’s hard to believe you’ll be disappointed in system that truly did give me flashbacks to playing handheld games for the last four decades of my life. When I was a kid, there was something so magical about the idea of taking what was in arcades or even on my TV and holding it in my hands. That magic remains in the ROG Xbox Ally X, a system that may not be the future of handheld gaming as much as a reminder of what you loved about its past.

The company provided a review copy of this hardware. It’s now available.

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