Television

A review of this week’s Winning Time, “Memento Mori,” coming up just as soon as I ask not to be buzzard fucked… Two of the three main stories of “Memento Mori” involve making the best of a bad situation in the moment, while the third seems to involve someone taking advantage of a great situation and instead making the worst possible choice. The hour is primarily concerned, unsurprisingly, with the aftermath of Jack McKinney’s brutal bicycle accident from the end of “Pieces of a Man.” Though Jack looked near death...

Curb Your Enthusiasm is still going strong as Larry David reveals that the improvisational comedy series will return for a twelfth season. The actor, who stars in the series derived as a follow up to the 1999 HBO comedy special Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, revealed the news at an HBO Max-presented Directors Guild of America Emmys event hosted by Rich Eisen. So, I was honored to emcee an @TheEmmys panel for “Curb Your Enthusiasm” tonight here in LA with most of the cast and asked Larry David the ultimate...

John Oliver began his show by discussing the vile Russian propaganda the country’s state-run television networks have been spewing since the invasion of Ukraine, then transitioned to a totally different topic: vile American propaganda. Specifically, the ooze aired on One America News Network, or OAN, which famously became Donald Trump’s favorite source of policy guidance once Fox News got too liberal for him. As an example of the network’s programming, Oliver brought up “pillow prince Mike Lindell’s election fraud documentary, ‘Absolute Proof.’ And yes, I am using the word ‘documentary’...

After six seasons of anticipation and teases, Better Call Saul has finally confirmed the moment fans of the Breaking Bad spinoff have waited for: The return of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.  It was long-rumored that the characters played by Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul would eventually appear during Better Call Saul, a prequel series of sorts. With the Bob Odenkirk-starring show entering its final season, AMC revealed the return of the meth-making duo in a tweet Saturday. “They’re coming back,” the tweet announced alongside a photo of Pinkman and...

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic appointment as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court was the focus of Saturday Night Live’s cold open. In the Oval Office, Jackson (played by Ego Nwodim) and President Biden (played by James Austin Jackson) recreated the photos of them watching the Senate’s confirmation vote earlier this week. “I promised to put a Black woman on the court, and that is what I did. So that is one campaign promise down and only 74 to go,” Biden said. Jackson’s response: “I was...

A major Kardashian drama you won’t see on TV is about to play out inside a Los Angeles courthouse, with four members of the famous family due to give live testimony later this month as they battle Blac Chyna’s $100 million defamation lawsuit alleging they ruined her reality television career. At a final status conference on Friday, lawyers for both sides confirmed Chyna “rejected” a recent settlement offer in the long-running case. That means jury selection is set to begin next Friday, with defendants Kim Kardashian, her mom Kris Jenner,...

This post contains spoilers for the finale of Season One of Severance, which is streaming now on Apple TV+. The notes I took on my first viewing of the Severance finale, “The We We Are,” look like the scribbles of a madman, full of all-caps profanity, screaming at the characters to do all the things they were taking their sweet time doing. But that’s the genius of both the finale and Severance in general. As created by TV newcomer Dan Erickson and primarily directed by Ben Stiller, the show’s high-concept...

A review of this week’s Atlanta, “The Big Payback,” coming up just as soon as I accidentally steal some madeleines… After a couple of stories in a row following Earn and friends on their European escapades, Atlanta heads back home for another anthology-style episode. “The Big Payback” is very much in conversation with the season-opening “Three Slaps.” Not only does it bring back Tobias Segal as the white Earnest (who here explains that his friends just call him “E”), but its focus is on characters we haven’t seen before, and...

The trailer for Russian Doll Season 2 introduces audiences to a new character: a time-traveling train. On Thursday, Netflix released the official trailer for the show’s return — after three years — on April 20. And Natasha Lyonne’s character Nadia is facing her wildest ride yet. “The universe finally found something worse than death. I broke time,” Nadia says in one clip. (This time, she isn’t just going back to the day she died, she’s traveling across eras.) Nadia is also reunited with her love interest from the last season, Alan...

In one episode of the new HBO Max crime drama Tokyo Vice, American-born newspaper reporter Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) is running his Japanese editor Eimi (Rinko Kikuchi) through the many deceased victims of the elaborate criminal conspiracy he has uncovered. After a moment, she interrupts his generic descriptions to point out, “Jake, they have names.” Hearing this, Jake looks ashamed. He has insisted to anyone who will listen that he is not seeking an exotic adventure to dine out on when he inevitably returns to his homeland — that he...

Cassie meets Cassie meets Cassie meets Cassie! On Monday, HBO Max released the trailer for the second season of The Flight Attendant, teasing an action-packed and emotional season in which Kaley Cuoco‘s beloved character will have to face several versions of herself as she heads overseas. “There are a lot of weird things going on around me. I’m starting to think that someone is pretending to be me,” Cassie says after seeing a woman who looks like her making out with a dude in a hotel room. In another scene...

The upcoming third season of Star Trek: Picard will be the last one, but a new trailer reveals that they’re going out in spectacular fashion by bringing back the entire Star Trek: Next Generation crew for their first adventure since 2002’s massively disappointing Star Trek: Nemesis. The trailer shows Jean-Luc Picard taking his old Starfleet uniform and communicator out of storage as we hear the voices of old comrades like Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton), Worf (Michael Dorn), Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), and Deanna Troi (Marina...

UPDATE (4/4): The Sex Pistols cook up an explosive concoction of incredibly marketable anarchy for a disaffected generation in the new short trailer for Pistol. The clip doesn’t offer too much in the way of plot points, but sets a distinct tone as the budding punk outfit and their peers rail against Britain’s monarchy and dream of causing mayhem in London. The show is set to premiere May 31 on Hulu. ** Danny Boyle’s Pistol, the FX limited series about the Sex Pistols, will make its streaming premiere in full...