I ain't afraid of no Ghost

Whats alan watching july 11 2025

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This week's new What's Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I refuse to kill the Pope...

Move it on over

Welcome to the new home of What's Alan Watching? As I mentioned in my Substack farewell, I made the move for a few reasons, most notably that I find Ghost's business model to be much more creator-friendly. And later this month I'll be introducing a paid tier for subscribers who want more content beyond the Friday newsletter, which will remain free. I'm still working out all the specifics — and don't hesitate to make requests in the comments, by email, on social media, etc. — but the paid tier will feature at least one additional newsletter per week, rotating these features, and more to come:

• More timely discussion and lengthier analysis of the TV news of the week.
• Mini recaps of current shows I'm enjoying, like the Poker Face discussion at the end of this newsletter, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, etc.
• Looks back at classic series. Still TBD as to whether I'll be doing episode-by-episode rewinds like I did in the old Blogspot days, or if I'll just write a little essay on a different older show each time. Regardless, I'll let you know in advance what's coming up, in case you want to rewatch it yourself.
• A return of the old video Q&A segments like the ones I did in my HitFix days.

In addition, there will be a paid subscriber-only Discord that will allow you to chat with me, as well as with your fellow TV nerds. If there's a show a lot of you are enjoying that isn't my tempo, you can have a place to talk amongst yourselves. And I won't be commenting on the Friday newsletter quite as often, because I'll be juggling all these extra things.

I'll have most of the specifics, including price point — likely in the $5/month range — nailed down before this launches. I wanted to make the move first and be sure all the basics were working before getting into these new bells and whistles.

To that end, if anyone is having problems with the new site/app, with their emails, etc., please let me know here, on social media, by shouting off a rooftop, etc. I know there are a few glitches with this week's audio narration (plus several items I wrote after the audio was recorded), but those are problems on my end, not with the migration.

Lena goes to London

I've got two Rolling Stone columns this week, but the second one doesn't drop until tomorrow; more on that when we get to Poker Face. So the one I can link to now is my review of Lena Dunham's new Netflix comedy Too Much, starring Megan Stalter from Hacks as a woman who moves to London after a bad breakup with her longtime boyfriend, and Will Sharpe from The White Lotus Season Two as the recovering addict musician she falls for. Girls was divisive, but I almost always loved it, and a lot of Dunham's strengths as both writer and director are on display here. In particular, she gets great work out of Sharpe, and writes him with extreme specificity. And the dramatic parts of the romance work very well. I was much more mixed on Stalter's character, who seems to veer back and forth between cartoonish obliviousness and keen self-awareness, in a way that feels less seamless than when Girls would do the same with Hannah; I'm not quite sure if the problem is the writing, the performance, or a combination of the two. But there are a lot of funny moments strung throughout, as well as some entertaining cameos or supporting performances by Richard E. Grant, Rita Wilson, Rhea Perlman, Naomi Watts, Andrew Scott, Andrew Rannells, Adele Exarchopoulos, and Dunham herself.

Duster in the wind

On Wednesday afternoon, I had just finished drafting a newsletter section about the end of Duster Season One, and my thoughts on how it might work for a second season, given how messy I found some of the plotting in the last few episodes this year, as the writers strained to keep Jim in play as an FBI informant. I concluded by saying, "If there's a second season, I'll watch it. But there's definitely potential for this to all spiral out of narrative control in a hurry."

Then news hit that made this a moot point: the newly re-renamed HBO Max canceled it after this one and only season. So let's get into a few thoughts on that front before I give you the stuff I already wrote prior to the announcement.

• Inevitably, some of you will ask, "If I haven't watched it yet, should I bother?" In this case, I think you're fine. The last few scenes of the finale set up the status quo for a second season, but 1)the arc of the first season comes to a pretty definitive close, and 2)the setup for a hypothetical Season Two felt very much like what Alias had to keep doing after SD6 got shut down. Threads are left dangling, but nothing that will make the overall experience feel incomplete. If you liked the way I described it in my review, you'll have a good time and won't feel like you got jerked around. And if it helps, here is the opening title sequence:

• This show was in development for nearly five years, though the pandemic and the strikes played a part in that. Still, as of now, it's the only show HBO, HBO Max, or Max has released out of the deal Warner Bros. made with J.J. Abrams' company Bad Robot back in 2019. The TV business is strange, when even someone with Abrams' name and track record has this much trouble getting projects greenlit.

And now, here's what remains of the random spoiler thoughts from my original draft:

• Of the show's various early Seventies pop culture references, my favorite might be from the episode where Jim steals Elvis' blue suede shoes. Early on, actress Adrienne Barbeau plays the wife of the FBI agent who preceded Nina on this case. Then, when Jim is at a Palm Springs party looking for the shoes, Mikaela Hoover plays a young Barbeau, who's looking for help getting cast as Bea Arthur's daughter on the sitcom Maude. It's an in-joke that requires you to recognize the real Barbeau. But since I did, I was amused.
• On the other hand, the show missed a chance for another good casting in-joke, as well as a Lost reunion, when it didn't hire Terry O'Quinn as Howard Hughes — a role O'Quinn previously played in The Rocketeer. (Side note: The Rocketeer is on Disney+, and remains one of the best superhero movies ever made.) The amount of time between that film and this show is roughly the amount of time between the events of the two projects, so O'Quinn would have still be the right age.
• Speaking of age, I know I already complained about it in the review, but as much as I enjoyed the vibes of the show and the charm of Josh Holloway, I could never entirely get past the idea of an actor in his mid-50s — who in 1972 would have been old enough to have fought in World War II — playing a character who fought in Vietnam and is at most in his early 30s, and treated as a relative newcomer to Sax's organization. It's silly, and it meant that Keith David and Corbin Bernsen were way too old to play their characters, too.

Bosch's legacy

This week in Alan Watched An Entire Season of TV That He Then Didn't Review For Reasons Too Boring To Explain, Amazon just debuted Ballard, a spinoff of Bosch and/or Bosch Legacy, based on the main character of another Michael Connelly book series that periodically crosses over with the Harry Bosch novels. The TV version stars Maggie Q as an LAPD detective leading a new cold case squad that's otherwise all made up of volunteers — a mix of curious civilians and retired cops who miss the job. (The great character actor John Carroll Lynch plays one of the latter.) Titus Welliver appears a few times, as do several other characters from the Bosch shows. But the crossovers are almost unnecessary, because Ballard as a character is very clearly modeled on Bosch: a lone wolf type who cares too damn much, was kicked out of the elite Robbery Homicide Division for something that was someone else's fault, and who is still wrestling with the pain of losing a parent at a young age.

I've always liked Maggie Q as a screen presence. (It's a shame she didn't get more to do in Mission: Impossible III, which doesn't care much about Ethan's teammates.) She doesn't quite have the dramatic chops of Welliver, though, and Ballard is ever so slightly more relaxed than Bosch; my buddy Brian Grubb won't be making a ton of screencaps of people saying, "Fucking Ballard." So it at times feels like a slightly watered-down version of its predecessor.

Like Bosch, it does a good job of combining enough different story ideas from various Connelly books , and even throws in a couple of standalone cases in the middle of the season, just to keep the main arcs from feeling too padded. There are maybe a few too many coincidences in terms of overlap between the cases and the lives of Ballard and her teammates, but it's solidly made, and may scratch an itch for some of you.

Sunny, Sunny, Sunny

Last week's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Paley panel is now on YouTube, if you want to hear the Gang talk about the last 20 years of mayhem, including some candor from Glenn Howerton about the period where it seemed like Dennis was leaving the show, and TV legend Danny DeVito being TV legend Danny DeVito.

As for this week's two new episodes, Season 17 seems off to an excellent start, particularly with the first of them. I wondered if the Sunny half of the Abbott Elementary crossover would feel wildly different. Instead, it was structured as an Abbott episode, with talking heads from most of that show's regulars, and Ava overseeing the whole thing. It just offered a much darker take on what the Gang was up to at the school, including multiple hilarious set pieces, like the Gang discussing 9/11, or the guys trying to recruit an Abbott student in the worst possible place. And Janine's description of Sweet Dee by itself explained why Quinta Brunson seemed so worried about her show's younger viewers tuning into Always Sunny.

All-time classic comedy remains funny. Some things are still good.

Odds and/or ends

• If you don't already have a copy of The Sopranos Sessions, or if you're looking to get a copy as a gift, it's part of this year's Prime Day(s) promotion, and is on sale for only $14 (and 2 cents). If you're a relative newcomer unfamiliar with the book, co-written with Matt Zoller Seitz, it has essays on every single Sopranos episode — designed to be read as you watch each one (no spoilers for first-time viewers), but also if you're just in the mood to think about "Pine Barrens" or "Long-Term Parking" — as well as a series of in-depth interviews with Sopranos creator David Chase.
• With all of Ironheart now available, I don't have much to add beyond my review, except that now I can laugh more overtly about the fact that this, of all the Disney+ shows, is the one that (spoiler alert) finally brought Mephisto into the MCU, in the form of Sacha Baron Cohen. Given that Marvel seems to have given up on Ironheart even before it debuted, it almost feels like they chose this as a show to spite all the fans who spent the first few post-Endgame years convinced that the big bad of any new project would turn out to be Mephisto. We've gone from "It's always Mephisto!" to "It's never Mephisto!" to "Well, this time it's Mephisto, but nobody's paying attention!"
• My old Uproxx colleague Keith Phipps and his old A.V. Club colleague Scott Tobias have a terrific movie newsletter, The Reveal. I make a guest appearance in today's installment (publishing around 10 a.m. Eastern, I believe), writing about one of my favorite comfort food movies: Paul Newman's 1994 small town comedy Nobody's Fool. (Currently rentable or streaming on Hoopla.)
• I could use your help with the section of the Rod Serling biography I'm working on at the moment: If anyone has ridden The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at any Disney park, and has thoughts about how it incorporates Serling and Twilight Zone, I'd love to hear them — whether you're a Twilight Zone fan or not. Post in the comments, reply to the emailed newsletter, write to me on social media, etc. (Maybe don't shout from rooftops about this.) I'd want to be able to use your full name for the book, though, so if anyone's not comfortable with that, let me know. I'm curious for your opinions, either way.
• There's yet another Dexter spinoff out this weekend, Dexter: Resurrection. I tapped out on the franchise for good after the first four episodes of Dexter: New Blood. The reviews for this one for the most part seem to express relief that it's better than New Blood or the prequel show, though a subplot about Peter Dinklage as a serial killer fanboy sounds at least vaguely interesting. I will once again note that the Season Four finale of the original series would have been a perfect ending for the show and the character, and this is one of the most obvious examples of the business side of things overwhelming what makes sense creatively.
• Duster is dead, but HBO Max isn't done working with big name producers. This week, in What Exactly Are We Doing Here?, comes the news that Big Bang Theory creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady will team up with screenwriter Zak Penn for a sci-fi/sitcom mash-up spinoff, built around Kevin Sussman's character, called Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. The premise: “Stuart Bloom is tasked with restoring reality after he breaks a device built by Sheldon and Leonard, accidentally bringing about a multiverse Armageddon." So he and a new supporting cast will hop from reality to reality, bumping into alternate versions of other Big Bang characters along the way. I find this less annoying as yet another Big Bang spinoff, since that show was a huge hit, and maybe the last massive sitcom hit we'll see in our lifetimes, than that it's yet another multiversal saga at a moment when that's become the most overused and dramatically inert idea in pop culture.
• In more odd HBO Max news: Tracy Ifeachor won't be back as Dr. Collins for The Pitt Season Two. I kept waiting for Collins to return at some point during the mass casualty, and she just... didn't. In general, it felt like Ifeachor wasn't given material as rich as most of her co-stars — where everyone else's season-long conflicts were job-related, Collins was largely wrestling with her feelings about her pregnancy, and then about the miscarriage — but it's still strange that she just went home after Robby told her to, and we'll never see her again. And per Variety, this was the show's choice, not hers.
• On the other hand, I'm on board with news of ABC ordering a Scrubs revival series starring Zach Braff, Donald Faison, and Sarah Chalke. It's among the few sitcom revivals that makes creative sense, because medicine just goes on, and there are things you can do with JD, Turk, and Elliot in middle age that will differentiate it. I just hope everyone learned their lesson from Scrubs Med about letting JD grow up and stay grown up. And in the meantime, let's celebrate with some dancing:

Poker Face recaplet: "The End of the Road"

You'll be getting a short bonus newsletter tomorrow morning, because we're saving my interview with Rian Johnson — which addresses a lot about the end of this Poker Face season, but also touches on other things like the Benoit Blanc films and The Last Jedi — for the weekend.

One of the things Johnson told me is that, while the writing staff was talking about the idea of giving Charlie her own version of Dr. Watson, Laura Deeley, who wrote the Season Two finale, asked, “What if it’s a Watson who turns out to be a Moriarty?” Hence, Alex goes from plucky, congenitally honest sidekick to supervillain: the Iguana, who's both the world's deadliest assassin and the only person on the planet who can lie to Charlie. As good as Patti Harrison was in the former mode, she's even more fun as the Iguana. She's such an arrestingly weird performer (and the star of my favorite I Think You Should Leave sketch) that it feels like a better long-term use of her to let her play a remorseless killer who grows easily bored with how good she is at her chosen profession.

The revelation that Alex is the Iguana, and that Charlie thus unwittingly aided in the assassination of a government witness and her handlers, also brings an end to the brief stretch of Charlie Cale, non-fugitive. Now she's on the run not from the Mob, but the government, and she no longer even has the Barracuda to take her from place to place. Maybe she'll be able to afford a replacement set of wheels at some point in a hoped-for third season, but for now, she's more of a pocket-sized Jack Reacher, thumbing rides from town to town, with a motor mouth as her weapon rather than fists the size of dinner plates. As with the Alex/Iguana shift, I think it's probably better for the show's ongoing health if Charlie has to keep moving around, has to come up with creative solutions for justice rather than just calling the cops, etc.

My only real gripe with "The End of the Road" was the Thelma & Louise gag, where it appears that Charlie and Alex have driven off the cliff together in a freeze-frame, only for the action to rewind so we see that Charlie escaped. On the whole, I've enjoyed the slightly goofier tone of several of this season's episodes, but this felt like an odd moment for something that formally weird, given how tense the closing act of the episode was.

On the whole, though, very happy with Season Two, and hoping for good news soon from Peacock on a third season. And I'll have lots more to link to tomorrow with the Johnson interview.

What did everybody else think?