He/him Chief TV Critic at Rolling Stone, author. Now searchable on Tubi. I am not Alan Sepinwall III. https://alansepinwall.ghost.io
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Say goodbye to The Two Genders. Now we've got The Two Countries.
Me considering the existence of a show called Sheriff Country...
Amen to everything Dan said. Especially how great — and funny — he was on Reservation Dogs. Related: all of Reservation Dogs — one of the very best shows of the last decade — is currently streaming on Hulu.
Again, it’s not the book thing for me. It’s that he does all of the various Bond things at a level of at least very good, and often much higher than that. He has no holes in his game like pretty much all the others do. Connery included.
who's your pick?
He’s to me the perfect balance of all the contradictory elements of the character. He’s tougher than Moore and Brosnan, suaver and more deft at the lighter moments than Connery and Craig, and obviously acts Lazenby off the screen. Others may be better at a single aspect, but he’s the whole package.
Timothy Dalton is the best Bond, even though his movies were both sketchy.
Author insert characters often don’t age well.
Earlier in the evening, at least half of them delivered Abe Simpson's union-busting monologue along with him.
Currently listening to a half-dozen young adults recite every single line of "Steamed Hams" right along with the scene.
The first movie I recorded off of HBO after we bought our first VCR. I watched it approximately a bajillion times. But yes. Murray is basically the only part that works. Though did you spot character actor Matt Craven as Hardware?
Boy, even more glad I made the move earlier this year.
Was wondering why I’d held onto a 1979 issue of Electric Company magazine, and then found these two bits of nerd-nip.
Justice League International, in the style of Charles Schulz
Tommy Monaghan and the cast of Hitman in the style of Darwyn Cooke.
In this week's free What's Alan Watching? newsletter: Always Sunny's incredible [checks notes] *17th* season, Task, Alien: Earth, Disneyland notes, an awful Strange New Worlds ep, and more. Read! Subscribe! Share! Find a bench!
Oh, wow. Yeah, that is... VERY Darwyn Cooke.
The classic Avengers lineup, in the style of Darwyn Cooke. (Not *that* offbeat, but I'd nonetheless have loved to see his take on Marvel in the Silver Age.)
I did. Even if your and Dane's conclusions were level-headed, it's silly that such a story exists at all after a single game, even if I understand the business reasons why it would be written.
Good to see we’re all being patient and chill about Arch Manning.
See, opinions vary wildly. I have always found Odo and Kira a super creepy ship.
There were a couple of good episodes before this one!
I don’t wanna spoil it for you if you’re going to watch. But it is drastically more final than the Felicity situation.
And of course one of the most famous cases of a finale made with the assumption the show would be canceled, only for an unexpected renewal to force everyone to scramble around a definitive ending.
None of them good.
Well, that's the last time I try to pay you a compliment!
Burgers.
Usually, I’m all for making current TV seasons longer. But here, 1. Everyone in the cast is now so busy, and 8 feels like the max they can make without everyone getting annoyed they can’t do other stuff. 2. It’s s17, so quality over quantity is the way to go. It was their best season in YEARS!
He tried doing the straightforward leading man thing in Masters of the Air, and it didn't quite work there. But it also filmed in 2021, so perhaps he'd gotten more confident in it by the time he made Caught Stealing (which I haven't seen).
Turn down for WHAT?
Do you want me to schedule the angioplasty now, or wait until you get home?
They made *Happy Meal toys* for this movie. Amazing that nobody at Warner Bros. thought to interfere with Burton's vision. Or maybe he just had so much juice from the first one that he could get away with ignoring them.
Would love if he could turn out to be more than just a trade throw-in down the line. (I still don't expect him to ever wear a Knick uniform.)
In this week's free What's Alan Watching? newsletter: Always Sunny's incredible [checks notes] *17th* season, Task, Alien: Earth, Disneyland notes, an awful Strange New Worlds ep, and more. Read! Subscribe! Share! Find a bench!
The greatest bee-related piece of entertainment since we found out the reason why Homer had to go to college:
It really is amazing how Hawley decided his take was to the greatest horror movie ever made into a body swap comedy.
I don't know exactly. I believe she is mostly Marcy. I'm just responding to @mattmitovich.bsky.social's initial question about how there could be any argument at all.
I mean, I mostly think that, too. I'm just saying there's an argument that *could* be made that Wendy /= Marcy. If I could somehow upload all of my memories into your brain, would you be me, or would you still be you?
Yeah, she could be a new being that just has Marcy’s memories.
The Mare of Easttown creator has somehow doubled down on both the grimness and the Delco accents in his new HBO miniseries, Task, which boasts some great performances by Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey, and others, and some strong later episodes. But it's a punishing slog to get there. My review:
A shame. Just can't stay healthy.
So... every now and then, what seems like schmuckbait actually turns out to be an actor who wanted off the show, and got the writers to kill them off.
There's a term in writers rooms: "schmuckbait," where the character is put in peril in a way that anyone who knows anything about TV knows will amount to nothing. This isn't quite schmuckbait, but it feels close.
The Mare of Easttown creator has somehow doubled down on both the grimness and the Delco accents in his new HBO miniseries, Task, which boasts some great performances by Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey, and others, and some strong later episodes. But it's a punishing slog to get there. My review:
Tried and failed to move a couch into our basement because we couldn't get it around a corner.
Such an odd collection of heroes and villains assembled by the Monitor in this one: Earth-2 Superman, John Stewart, Blue Beetle, Dawnstar, Cyborg, Obsidian, Firebrand, Geo-Force, Dr Polaris, Firestorm, Killer Frost, Psycho Pirate, Arion. Covers a wide swath of DCU Earths and eras, but still.
I look at the clone as a largely different entity from the human Ripley. But fair.
I do! That's one of the reasons I mentioned her, because as wonderful as that episode was, it didn't feature nearly enough Maude content.
I mean, obviously Walter is the real answer. But Maude never quite gets her flowers. Even the three-hour Blank Check episode on Lebowski this week largely glossed over her.
Who is the funniest Big Lebowski character, and why is it Maude?
I have sad news for both of you on this front...
How do you feel about young Andre Braugher as young Jackie Robinson?
That was an HBO, I believe. Maybe the best TNT movie/mini was John Frankenheimer's George Wallace biography with Gary Sinise? Funny thing was, when Frankenheimer later made Path to War for HBO, he brought Sinise back for a cameo as Wallace.
Alien: Earth starts to kick into high gear, as Wendy wakes up with some new powers, and we get to see the eyeball monster do its thing. My recap: www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...
I do think that is a big part of what I was referring to about broadcast drama at its best. ER, St elsewhere, even Hill Street blues and NYPD blue were able to find that balance.
In addition to The Pitt being great, I can easily see it getting a lot of votes from older Academy members who work/worked in broadcast and want to celebrate a show that represents a lot of the values of broadcast drama at its 80s/90s/00s best.
24 season 5 is an all-timer season. But, yes, also a marker of a different time. And it was up against the first part of Sopranos s6 which is one of the less-beloved stretches of that show.
I feel like voters had largely moved on from celebrating broadcast by then (even though Sterling K deservedly won a few times). Of course, I'm biased about Better Call Saul never winning *anything* over that same stretch.
In hindsight, it's amazing it took Emmy voters til Sopranos s5 to give it best drama — a mix of West Wing love and reluctance to celebrate both a show about scuzzy criminals and this insurgence from cable. Only non-cable/streaming dramas even nominated in last decade are This Is Us & Downton Abbey.
Parts of it are substantially better, particularly that it now saves your place. (YEARS after they asked me what changes would be most welcome, and I told them that.) But the organization is worse, and requires more steps if you're looking for a particular show.
Your winners since then: The Sopranos Mad Men (4x) Homeland Breaking Bad (2x) Game of Thrones (4x) The Handmaid’s Tale Succession (3x) The Crown Shōgun The Good Wife and This Is Us won in other categories, but not the big prize. And broadcast has largely become procedural-only in recent years.
Alien: Earth starts to kick into high gear, as Wendy wakes up with some new powers, and we get to see the eyeball monster do its thing. My recap: www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...
Excellent. Glad to feel even less FOMO about Sports Twitter.
Me when Dianne Wiest pops up in a screener:
Just make sure you call all the vendors before she can.
The puzzle is impossible to solve unless you misspell the answer for 5-across.
THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001, dir: Wes Anderson)
RIP, Jerry Adler, an indelible Sopranos presence as Hesh Rabkin. www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...
But what's Donna's idea? You can't end a show on a cliffhanger like that!
Keep and eye out for JD and Dr Cox there. They’re so much older, too!
After the Mr. November game in the 2001 World Series, I pile into the D train with a bunch of euphoric and stunned Yankee fans. It’s the quietest I’ve ever heard a subway car that full. No one knows what to say, until one guy quips, “It’s not fair. Like Jeter doesn’t already get laid enough.”
Hell yeah!
George Costanza bragging about the parking space he got, only it’s me talking about how we did both of the rides at Galaxy's Edge with no wait (and no Lightning Lanes pass).
The team behind BoJack Horseman and Tuca & Bertie are back with Netflix's Long Story Short, an alternately hilarious and poignant story of a dysfunctional Jewish-American family. My review: www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...
In this week’s free What’s Alan Watching? newsletter, the BoJack creative team reunites for Long Story Short, plus thoughts on this week’s Alien: Earth and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Read! Subscribe! Share! Have nightmares about space dragons!!
No. Carson is brought in because Chigurh killed the first two guys.
Peacemaker is finally back on HBO Max. ICYMI, my thoughts on season 2: www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...
He’s looked very good adjusting to pressure in the preseason. But those are vanilla defensive schemes. That’s definitely the next test. My hope is Russ gets benched after the bye and Dart gets a long stretch of games to show whether there’s something real there or if it’s another Danny Dimes mirage.
uproxx.com/sepinwall/wh...
In this week’s free What’s Alan Watching? newsletter, the BoJack creative team reunites for Long Story Short, plus thoughts on this week’s Alien: Earth and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Read! Subscribe! Share! Have nightmares about space dragons!!
That will be the subject of an upcoming newsletter. Subscribe if you haven’t already: alansepinwall.ghost.io
The team behind BoJack Horseman and Tuca & Bertie are back with Netflix's Long Story Short, an alternately hilarious and poignant story of a dysfunctional Jewish-American family. My review: www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv...
I remember those days. For you and me. It was… unmanageable.
Do you feel any differently about him now? Again, Daniel Jones looked great his first preseason, too. But this feels different.
Vince Gilligan told me that the Coen Brothers are a huge influence on him. Rewatching No Country for Old Men, the stylistic parallels to so much of the Mike Ehrmantraut stuff in both Heisenberg shows really stuck out. boxd.it/aOOimJ
No, I think this means I can draft late season episodes of fries at night lights next time.
Why would she do that?!?!
Turns out making it 1997 again through science or magic is actually a great idea for television!
