Thanks for Theo
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, 'South Park,' Ozzy Osbourne, Marvel TV contracts, the 'Stick' finale, 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,' and more
This week's What's Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I don't call them "zombies"...
Malcolm in the middle
Alan Sepinwall
The week in TV began with the sad news that Malcolm-Jamal Warner died of accidental drowning during a trip to Costa Rica. He was only 54. In TV (THE BOOK), I wrote about how complicated it is to even think about The Cosby Show these days, let alone watch it. But Warner's death forced me to revisit my favorite Theo Huxtable episode, "A Shirt Story," to find a way to celebrate his work in one of the funniest scenes in TV history, even if it was part of a show starring a sexual predator. Obviously, by far the worst thing about Bill Cosby's crimes are the crimes themselves. But it still stinks that people like Warner did great work that's now tainted by its association with a monster. I did my best to wrestle with that in the column, and hope I got the delicate balance right.
I would enjoy a very long break from writing stories about the deaths of artists whose work I admire, and also about how a show I once loved is now permanently linked to awful deeds. Just give me some unqualified goodness for a bit please, world?
Paramount of madness
Alan Sepinwall
I woke up Thursday morning from multiple texts about the South Park Season 27 premiere from friends — some of them still active fans of the show, others long-lapsed viewers like me — which made me curious to see what it was that Trey Parker and Matt Stone were up to. A lot, as it turned out, with an episode that unloaded with both barrels on both President Trump and all the people in the media — including their own bosses at Paramount — who have been cowering in fear of Trump. So I wrote about it, including the perfect timing of the episode, as well as the complicated nature of Parker and Stone specifically being the ones to do an episode like this, given the role they played in helping to create the current environment.
If you've been reading me a long time, you know I don't write much about politics. In certain times — like this very strange era in which we live — it's impossible to avoid entirely.
The incredible shrinking cinematic universe
I saw — and mostly enjoyed — Fantastic Four last night, and we can probably talk more about it next week when more have had a chance to see it. Part of the promotional tour for it involved Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige meeting with a small group of reporters to discuss the challenges that Marvel has been struggling with since 2019, between Avengers: Endgame offering a natural stopping point to many casual fans, the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman taking away arguably the core piece of the post-Downey and Evans MCU, and Disney leadership demanding that Marvel start churning out far too many shows and films than Feige could reasonably supervise.
The plan, Feige says, is to return to the quality-over-quantity approach, which could mean some years where there's only one new season of an MCU show on Disney+. Wonder Man is still debuting later this year, as the last remnant of this pre-contraction era. After that, the only shows definitively on their way are Season Two of Daredevil: Born Again — which will hopefully be better than the Frankensteined first season — and Vision Quest, another WandaVision spinoff that's going to debut at least five years after its parent show ended.
For the most part, I agree that less-is-more is maybe the only strategy to win back at least some of the audience that's peeled off since Endgame. And if it eventually leads to the Marvel version of Andor — a great show that just happens to be set in the MCU, rather than a show we're meant to love because it's set in the MCU — then that would be improbably wonderful. That said, there are aspects of the previous strategy I'll miss. First, as a lifelong comic book fan, I definitely got a kick out of seeing the less famous heroes and villains brought to life. (And as someone whose favorite Avenger is for some reason Wonder Man, I'm pleased that the era of largesse lasted just long enough to give him his own show.) Second, I appreciated the swings some of these shows took, like building a fourth wall-breaking sitcom around She-Hulk, or spending so much of Ms. Marvel talking about Partition and her Pakistani heritage. Third, as I said in my Ironheart review, it's unfortunate that this stretch of overproduction happened just as Feige was making a well-meaning attempt to diversify the kinds of heroes the company spotlighted. Correlation is not causation in this case, even if some people want to claim it is. And fourth, while there were only occasional stretches of greatness, and some shows that were outright bad, there were also perfectly solid shows like the buddy action comedy of Hawkeye in there. And I wonder if Marvel will only try for home run swings from now on in TV, since they'll only get so many turns at bat, and give up trying for the occasional single or double.
This also seems like a good time to revisit my rankings of all the shows set either in or adjacent to the MCU, going all the way back to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (I would probably slot Ironheart in behind Moon Knight but ahead of The Defenders.)
Alan Sepinwall
Odds and/or ends
- I accidentally flipped the wrong virtual switch last night and launched the paid tier ahead of schedule. So either the Ghost support team will help me unflip that switch until it's ready, and make sure anyone who got charged in the meantime gets their money back, or anyone who already signed up will be getting bonus content next week. I have a family trip coming up in a few weeks and had otherwise been thinking I should wait until after to get this going to avoid an early interruption. Apologies. One way or the other, this will get addressed ASAP. In the meantime, just as a reminder that one of the recurring features will be Ask Alan video Q&As, so if you have any TV questions you want me to answer, email me at whatsalanwatching@protonmail.com. You can also write to me there even if you don't want something answered in a video.
- Over the weekend, I made the drive to Philly to see "Weird Al" Yankovic in concert at The Mann Center, which was delightful for any number of reasons. Even at 65, Al puts on an incredibly high-energy show, and one that managed to work in nearly all the big hits, albeit some in medley form. The songs were great, the band was great, and the video montages shown during his many costume changes were hilarious. One of them featured clips of Al being mentioned by other movies and TV shows, including a scene from The Goldbergs where young Adam begs his mom to let him go see Al at... The Mann Center. The crowd's reaction to this was the loudest of its kind I've heard outside of when Springsteen makes a New Jersey reference while playing at the Meadowlands.
- This week's other notable TV passing was the death of Ozzy Osbourne. I'm a Black Sabbath casual at best, and only watched a few episodes of the first season of The Osbournes, so I didn't weigh in on any aspect of his career. Fortunately, I work at a music magazine that had lots of qualified people to write about it, like this Kory Grow piece about getting to know the real Ozzy. Meanwhile, Dan Fienberg wrote an excellent column about how The Osbournes, for good and for ill, kicked off the 21st century trend of celebrities reinventing themselves as reality TV stars.
- A number of my critic pals are very excited about The Hunting Wives, a new Netflix drama that was originally produced and then abandoned by Starz. It's a soap opera starring Malin Akerman and Brittany Snow as wives of powerful Texas businessmen, who get mixed up in affairs, crime, and the like. I watched a couple of episodes, enough to know that it's not really my kind of show, but also that it's an entertaining example of the kind of show it's trying to be, particularly in how unapologetically, relentlessly horny it is. It does exactly what it says on the tin.
- Random movie recommendation, inspired by my friend Emily St. James musing about Encyclopedia Brown the other day on BlueSky: while doing research for my The O.C. oral history book (still on sale!), I watched Adam Brody's 2020 film The Kid Detective, a neo-noir about a former Encyclopedia Brown type still doing the job as an adult, even though it now seems sad rather than precocious. (See also the Veronica Mars movie and Hulu season.) Brody's very good as a guy who hates being stuck in this persona he feels he's outgrown, but isn't sure what else to do with his life, and the mystery feels well-crafted for the genre. It's not currently on any streamer, but is available for digital rental at all the usual places.
Did they Stick the landing?
The season finale of Stick dropped earlier this week, along with the unsurprising news that Apple has ordered a second season. You might recall that I was mixed on the show, enjoying Owen Wilson's usual charisma, and being susceptible to some of the usual underdog sports story cliches, but that it eventually felt too cliche.
Alan Sepinwall
In particular, the season goes through way too many cycles of Santi distrusting Pryce, Pryce winning him over, Santi feeling betrayed by Pryce and moving away, Pryce winning him over again, etc., etc., etc. There were so many of those, and to a lesser extent of similar ups and downs in Santi's relationship with Zero, that it undermined what was otherwise probably the season's best episode, where the whole team pulls a con job on Tim Olyphant.
The finale at least tweaked this particular trope ever-so-slightly, by having Santi turn away from Pryce this time only because his terrible father came back into the picture. (Played by Mackenzie Astin, having a big year between this and The Pitt.) Pryce rescues him, not in time for Santi to win the tournament, but at least to give him a Tin Cup-style moment involving an impossible shot being hit in a losing cause, giving Santi something more to play for in the second season. The finale ends in a way that also suggests Pryce might be taking up the game again, and there could maybe be some new tension from the two of them now being competitors as well as friends. This is never going to be a great show, but just as some of my friends are hard-wired for something like The Hunting Wives, I'm an easy mark for this. Curious how y'all felt, and whether you intend to come back for the second season, whenever it is.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds recaplet: "Shuttle to Kenfori"
Among my larger concerns about Strange New Worlds is that the short episode order per season creates pressure for almost every installment to be A Very Special Episode, when Star Trek so badly depends on ordinary Mission of the Week stories to both develop the characters and make the format-breakers stand out more.
After Season Three kicked off with a Gorn war action episode and then a Spock comedy episode, "Shuttle to Kenfori" is our first outing this year to play things largely by the book. There are serialized elements: the secret mission is a last-ditch attempt to save Captain Batel's life after her Gorn infection returns, while Ortegas' PTSD from the Gorn mission badly affects her judgment and gets her in trouble with Una. And of course it's a sequel to the Season Two episode "Under the Cloak of War," as the Klingon warrior that Dr. M'Benga killed in that one has a daughter seeking revenge. But there are objectives introduced and resolved within the hour, and the structure is classic Trek: crew arrives on a planet, something unexpected happens, quick thinking saves the day, ship leaves.
I just wish the creative team wasn't so fascinated by M'Benga's past as a fierce killer of Klingons. I understand the dramatic idea behind taking the show's gentlest character and revealing that a brutal warrior lurks beneath that serene bedside manner. But the show has already gotten that point across in several prior episodes, and we know that Babs Olusanmokun can do so many other things. I'd love to see more material about the challenges of being a warm and peaceful man when things go as awry as they usually do for a Starfleet officer.
The zombie action on the planet was a mixed bag. It's a specific genre mash-up that Star Trek hasn't done a lot of, so it's interesting to see Pike and M'Benga in a The Last of Us kind of situation. But the zombie threat waxed and waned depending on the needs of the primary conflict between M'Benga and the Klingons. The strongest part of the episode was back on the ship, with Ortegas putting the whole crew at risk because of her PTSD from the fight with the Gorns, while Spock's attempt to mind meld with Batel had a violent side effect that seems to portend problems to come later in the season.
Not a bad episode, but a B- sort of outing, which matters a lot more when you only get 10 episodes a year than when you're getting two dozen.
That's it for this week! What did everybody else think?
