We’re still seeing fallout from one WWE developmental talent testing positive for COVID-19 after attending TV tapings, something the rest of the workers didn’t even find out about until basically when the public did. It doesn’t help matters nobody at the tapings has been wearing masks (whether or not WWE specifically told them not to). The company had to cancel tapings on Tuesday so they could test everyone for the virus, leading to chaotic and overstuffed tapings on Wednesday as they attempt to catch up. One WWE Superstar who didn’t attend those tapings, and may continue to stay home for the forseeable future, is Kevin Owens.

Fightful Select first reported that Kevin Owens has decided not to attend WWE tapings in light of Coronavirus concerns. They also added that WWE officials didn’t put pressure on him to attend when he decided not to, and that there’s reportedly no heat on him over this decision.

It would be in pretty poor taste if WWE wasn’t accepting his decision, considering that according to Dave Meltzer at the Wrestling Observer, KO’s wife’s grandfather just recently died from COVID-19, so understandably his family would be especially concerned about the virus. Although honestly, what seems strange to me at least is how unconcerned most other people seem to be.

It was around this time last year when Vanity Fair published the first major cover story about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, even if it seems like that (and the public’s subsequent disappointment) was about 17 years ago. But it’s been long enough that the article’s writer, Lev Grossman, is now sharing what didn’t make it into the final piece.

One of the big things Grossman learned from speaking to the cast and crew is that Adam Driver wanted to explore Ben Solo/Kylo Ren’s backstory, “to show us more about why he turned to the dark side,” as the writer told Inverse Happy Hour. “[Adam] had a lot of interesting thoughts,” specifically about Ben Solo’s childhood. Grossman continued:

“This is actually something Adam Driver said. He said that both Han Solo and Leia were way too self-absorbed and into this idea of themselves as heroes to really be attentive parents in the way a young and tender Kylo Ren really needed. There wasn’t really that much of it in the movie, so I just think we have to assume his childhood sucked.”

That’s a fair assumption, and something that would have been interesting to see in The Rise of Skywalker (maybe Disney will make a Kylo prequel series about a young boy who turns to the Dark Side and becomes the ultimate evil — I don’t think that’s been covered in Star Wars before). Instead, we got Ben’s instantly iconic final words: “Ow.”

(Via IndieWire and Inverse)

Well, guess what: Perry Mason is back. Kind of. Perry Mason is kind of back. HBO is rolling out a gritty reimagining of the old Raymond Burr lawyer show from the 1950s this Sunday night, June 21. It’s got a loaded cast and a lot going on and, as we’ll get to shortly, bears little resemblance to any version of Perry Mason you might be familiar with. The show was developed and produced by Robert Downey’s production company (Downey himself was originally attached to star), and there are pieces in there that are very good and bordering on great. Unfortunately, there are also some parts of it that are… less great.

What I’m saying here is that if you, like me, were very excited about the idea of this show from the blurbs and teasers and general concept, I have some good news and bad news for you.

Good news

The cast of Perry Mason is incredible, top to bottom. Matthew Rhys plays the title character in his pre-lawyer private investigator days, all hard-scrabble and hard-boiled and unshaven and usually drunk or hungover or both. If you, like me, have been missing images of Matthew Rhys looking incredibly sad and beaten down by the world since The Americans ended its run, fear not, because there are so many shots of Matthew Rhys looking incredibly sad and beaten down by the world in Perry Mason. For such a giggly and fun man (please do watch him as himself in The Wine Show for reference), he plays downtrodden like he was born into it. His Mason is tough and troubled and burdened by a failing family farm and PTSD from World War I, and that’s before he even takes on the tough and troubling case that winds its way through the season. Matthew Rhys is good.

Also good: Tatiana Maslany as a thundering megachurch preacher whose family finds itself wrapped up in the case, too. Tatiana Maslany is the best. I’m not entirely sure she’s properly cast here, just because some of her top-end thundering doesn’t quiiiiite land, but who cares? She is such a dynamic performer, such a presence on screen, that most of the concerns fall away at some point. She does this thing where she looks at people and you can see the gears grinding away behind her eyes, revealing her true and sometimes devious intentions. She should be in more things, if not everything.

The rest of the cast is a sometimes literal murderer’s row, too. Stephen Root plays a duplicitous district attorney, John Lithgow plays the defense attorney who hires Perry to investigate, Shea Wigham plays Perry’s cohort. Put those three guys in anything and it’s going to be at least a B/B+. Chris Chalk turns in a really good performance as the one good cop dealing with the racism and corruption of 1930s Los Angeles. The real surprise here is Gayle Rankin (She-Wolf from GLOW) as a grieving mother. She’s in there with some big personalities and she holds her own in every scene. None of it really works without her pulling that off.

Bad news

This is a bleak affair. It’s all very dark and brooding, which is sensible enough for a 1930s noir, but it never really clicked for me. Some things seem to be done for shock value alone. The first 10 minutes feature a dead infant, full-frontal male nudity, and a sex scene involving food and the slathering of food that will definitely burn itself into your brain for a while. Possibly forever.

The plot slogs in places, too. Without giving too much away, it goes something like this: there’s a baby that is kidnapped and killed, there are hidden identities and corruption up through the justice system, the Tatiana Maslany mega-church gets roped in, and only Perry Mason can untangle things. It’s fine. It’s really fine. The biggest problem is that, with everyone involved (in addition to the cast, the show is helmed by Boardwalk Empire veteran Tim Van Patten, himself no stranger to violent period pieces about corruption), it feels like it should be better. I kept wanting it to be. It’s still a pretty good watch, but there’s something left on the table there.

This brings us to the larger question in all of this: why? Why are we rebooting Perry Mason, a show about a television lawyer from the 1950s, and making him a gritty private eye? I know having a familiar name can hook in a few extra viewers but a) the people who might be interested because of the old series will barely recognize the action here, and b) most of the viewers they’re shooting for are too young to be moved by the Perry Mason of it all. I wonder if this would have been better served by stripping away the IP and just making a gritty noir — everything else exactly the same — about a guy named, like, Rex Manhattan or Mick Rockledge. Those names are freebies for anyone else working on a noir project. My gift to you.

Good news

Really just a tremendous collection of mustaches in this sucker. Look.

That’s John Lithgow’s character up there sporting a bushy gray caterpillar on his upper lip. Solid, for sure, but not the best one on the show. Give me a pencil-thin old-timely mustache. Come on. Hit me.

There we go. God bless Stephen Root. The man has never been bad in anything. Newsradio, Barry, Justified, an all-around treasure. And here he is with a tiny little mustache that screams “I’m a corrupt public official who is up to no good.” It’s beautiful. Almost perfect. And still only the second-best mustache on the show. Allow me to present Shea Wigham in what I promise is a very real promotional picture that was released by HBO.

Just magnificent. If this show could have been 80 percent as successful at what it set out to do as Shea Wigham’s mustache is at what it’s doing, we could have just canceled the Emmys and dropped all the trophies off in HBO’s parking lot via dump truck. Perhaps you consider this hyperbole, or at the very least a silly and useless aside for a serious television review. I would disagree. And I stand by my statement.

Bad news

With increasingly limited options on the television and movie front due to various pandemic-related issues, I was really hoping Perry Mason could be the show that galvanizes everyone through the summer. One we could all watch and enjoy and dive too deeply into. This may have been unfair on my part. I might have been putting too much pressure on a show that wasn’t meant as a big broad smash. Again, the show is fine, good in some parts, loaded with great performances and mustaches, but it still feels like a missed opportunity.

If it does catch on, though, and it starts a trend of bringing back old detective shows from decades ago, and all that ends up getting me a fun Columbo reboot starring, say, Jake Johnson or Natasha Lyonne… well, then all will be forgiven.

BET announced the 2020 BET Awards nominations this week and as usual, a superstar artist is unhappy with their lack of nominations. Artists arguing that BET has snubbed them has become something of a tradition for the network. In 2017, Dreezy went off on BET for only nominating female rappers who didn’t even put albums out in the year before, while in 2019, Nicki Minaj was miffed at a Facebook post comparing her to Cardi B and pulled out of her appearance. This year, it looks like it’s an R&B artist’s turn to be annoyed as PartyNextDoor vented his frustration on Twitter.

“When did Black Entertainment Television get so Complex and forget Partynextdoor is the RNB artist of our generation?” he wondered. “Is it because I don’t wanna be friends? Is it because i put value in the art instead of people? Is it because it’s not the popular opinion? I am BET. I am Complex.” It seems he thinks that his recently-released album PartyMobile deserved at least a mention in the R&B category. Instead, Anderson .Paak, Chris Brown, Jacquees, Khalid, The Weeknd, and Usher were all nominated for Best Male R&B/Pop Artist, while the Album Of The Year category features strong contenders like Beyonce, Lizzo, and H.E.R.

It seems the tradition of BET making artists mad remains intact for another year, but it’s to be expected. There’s more music than ever these days and as the category field have to remain capped at some manageable number, someone is always going to end up feeling left out. As for why the BET Awards have a particular prickle factor, the answer likely lies in Black artists’ responses to their Grammy snubs. While being ignored by outsiders probably doesn’t surprise anyone, having one of the few Black-focused outlets overlook you probably stings a lot more. But no artist, including Party, should feel too hurt; he’s accomplished more than enough to feel like his spot in the game is solid. After all, he did change the modern sound of R&B forever with his self-titled debut.

Check out the Uproxx review of PartyMobile here.

PartyNextDoor is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Masks help reduce the spread of COVID-19. No one can confirm the precise percentage of reduction, but the plummeting rates in East Asian countries confirm that their take on the mask issue is working. And here in the U.S.? Well, it’s become a point of political contention with some people insisting that wearing a mask violates their personal freedom. Sadly, that mindset doesn’t take into account the health of everyone the non-mask-wearers will infect, and as a recent sentiment expressed on Twitter points out, “[M]asks aren’t exactly comfortable, but neither are bras, and a good portion of the population wears those regularly for far less important reasons.” Well, Bill Burr gets it.

During the stand-up comedian’s visit this week on The Joe Rogan Experience, Burr and host Joe Rogan dug into a number of issues, including the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. When the pandemic part of the discussion began, the The King Of Staten Island star lamented how people are out and about in the community while maskless, acting like the novel coronavirus is not a big deal. When Rogen started to coyly prod Burr on the issue, Burr immediately pushed back:

“I don’t want to start this bullshit. I’m not gonna sit here with no medical degree, listening to you with no medical degree, with an American flag behind you smoking a cigar, acting like we know what’s up, better than the CDC. All I do, is I watch the news once every two weeks — I’m like, ‘Mask or no mask? Still mask? Alright, mask! That’s all I give a f*ck about.”

The banter between the two continued…

Burr: “I just love how wearing a mask became like this f*cking like soft thing…like being courteous…”

Rogan: “It’s for bitches.”

Burr: “Why is it for bitches?”

Rogan: (Fakes weak cough)

Burr: “Oh God you’re so tough with your f*cking open nose and throat…and your five o’clock shadow. This is a man right here!”

As this Twitter user noted, Burr basically tells Rogan to “shut the f*ck up” in the most polite way possible. You can watch the full episode here, if you have three hours to spare.

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In early 2019, Ariana Grande teamed up with Starbucks for her own drink. Lately, though, there have been rumors that the relationship between the pop star and the coffee chain has soured. Starbucks recently prohibited employees from wearing Black Lives Matter clothing (a stance they later eased up on), after which people noticed Grande doesn’t follow the brand on Instagram.

Whatever the case may be, at the very least, Grande is trying out different coffee destinations. She has been shopping around in recent days: Earlier this week, she enjoyed a drink from the wizard-themed Nimbus Coffee. She also swung by South LA Cafe for an iced drink and shared a photo from her visit on her Instagram Story (as she did during her Nimbus stop). Both of those businesses are Black-owned, and South LA Cafe reported a huge increase in business following the Grande co-sign.

South LA wrote on Instagram, “Did y’all know that @arianagrande stands with the Movement for Black Lives and Black-Owned businesses like @southlacafe? We’ve been fortunate to win her over from Starbucks this past week, as well as her incredible #arianators. (Click the first pic) They showed up in full force for today’s live of the South LA Grocery Giveaway, sending big love for our mission. This is an example of people with influence and privilege using it to forward the movement. We welcome the support and are grateful to be recognized for our impact and community leadership.”

The post also notes that they served 150 people in 29 minutes following Grande bringing increased attention to their establishment, which they say is “one for the record books.”

Grande hasn’t made a public comment about her relationship with Starbucks, but as they say, money talks.

Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger formed The Fiery Furnaces during a golden era of indie music: The year 2000, in New York City. The band went on to release eight records over the course of the next seven years following their 2003 debut. After a lengthy hiatus in 2010 in which both halves of the duo pivoted towards a solo career, The Fiery Furnaces are making a triumphant return.

“Down At The So And So On Somewhere” marks The Fiery Furnaces’ first release in ten years. Along with releasing the single digitally, the track will be pressed into a 7-inch vinyl with the bonus single “The Fortune Teller’s Revenge.”

The duo was slated to make their on-stage return at Pitchfork Music Festival this summer, which has since been canceled due to the pandemic. While the band can’t make an on-stage return for the foreseeable future, they still wanted to make an impact. Consequently, The Fiery Furnaces will donate a portion of proceeds from their 7-inch and accompanying merch to Black Lives Matter and AACM Chicago, an organization composed of Black artists who aim to preserve their craft and showcase their unique talents.

In a statement alongside the single’s release, The Fiery Furnaces said they penned the track back in February as a reflection on regret, but it has since morphed in meaning in light of recent events:

“This is the first new music from The Fiery Furnaces in ten years. The songs were recorded in New York City and a few hours north of New York City on February 3 and February 10 – 12, 2020. ‘Down at the So and So on Somewhere’ is a regretful song about having regrets. Now it seems even more sad than we thought it was back then: ‘Will you meet me,’ etc. Matthew was happy to use a Soviet drum machine. Eleanor was happy to play real drums. ‘The Fortune Teller’s Revenge’ is another sad song. We cut out the lines from the first and third verse: ‘with me; just kidding’ and ‘leave everything to me.’ Matthew likes hearing Eleanor sing ‘I’m sorry to say I’ve never made a mistake.’ Eleanor likes that you can’t quite tell who’s singing what, when.”

Listen to “Down At The So And So On Somewhere” above. Get the 7-inch release via Third Man Records here.

10 years ago, Eminem released Recovery, a musical return to form for the once-masterful chief mischief maker of hip-hop. In 2010, Em was in an odd place with both critics and fans. His previous albums, Encore and Relapse, had received criticism for leaning too heavily into his comedic personas and he was “still finding his feet” after getting sober as he told Rolling Stone in 2013. Recovery saw him find that balance and while it’s far from his best album — that honor still goes to The Eminem Show — it was a major turning point in Eminem’s career, bridging the gap between his drugged-out Slim Shady era and the hyper-focused technician he was to become.

There’s one major difference between this album and those both before and after it. Unlike his more recent output, he still sounds like he’s having fun, while still taking his job seriously enough that it doesn’t feel like he was making an endless, recurring fart joke. By finding the balance between those warring impulses, Eminem made an album that sounds like he was making music, not trying to make a point. For sure, he targets critics and celebrities, but he doesn’t fixate on them — Recovery is about Eminem. Some songs have aged better than others, but this is the first flash of the “mature” Em that the world has had a decade to become accustomed to.

That balance between earnest and playful is most evident in the album’s anthemic singles. “Not Afraid” is defiant without indulging Eminem’s grudges, while “Love The Way You Lie” features some of his most emotive language. Collaborations with Rihanna on “Love The Way You Lie” and Pink on “Won’t Back Down” were Em’s first and most successful experiments with bringing a feminine touch to his song construction. While they may have been as focus-grouped and algorithmically calculated as more recent attempts like the lackluster “Walk On Water” with Beyonce and the head-scratching “Nowhere Fast” with Kehlani from Revival, the chemistry he has with his first female collaborators made the plug-and-play tracks sound organic.

The proof is in the pudding; “Love The Way You Lie” became Eminem’s best-selling single ever. It showed that he could update his sound while remaining thematically true to his core content — the soul-baring, confessional raps that people related too, not the Triumph The Comic Insult Dog jokes that only appealed to a certain brand of frat humor aficionados. However, Em also showed that he was unafraid to get busy, busting out his old battle-rapper persona on songs like “On Fire,” then trading bars with the rapper who would become one of hip-hop’s most influential figures in the coming decade, Lil Wayne, on “No Love.”

There’s even a precursor to Music To Be Murdered By‘s “Those Kinda Nights” in “WTP,” on which Em coins his storytelling club-rap conceit and executes it much better than he would a decade later. Recovery‘s efficacy in comparison with latter-day efforts comes from the comfort he displays on this track, on which he sounds less invested in whether anyone thinks he’s a good rapper. He’s just rapping. In fact, he just raps on the rest of the album as well, poking just enough fun at himself throughout — admitting to the overuse of accents on his previous albums — that the focus remains on the world-class wordplay, not trying to mystify listeners into missing the genericness of his lightspeed fast flow.

While, yes, many of the issues that plague his newer albums crop up here as well, Recovery was still early enough in his career that those nitpicks hadn’t yet become nagging complaints. Some of the beat choices are a bit anachronistic and jarring — particularly “Cinderella Man” and the album closer, “Untitled” — and Em’s frequent and flagrant use of homophobic slurs firmly freezes Recovery as a product of pre-Twitter media society. In today’s world of crowd-sourced accountability, wherein Em deletes the “F-word” from a rap about Tyler The Creator and still gets dragged online, many of Recovery‘s tracks would see the chopping block or the editing room before the album saw store shelves.

But there’s a lot to admire about Eminem’s first middle-aged effort. He definitely shows his age, but he’s still in fighting shape. He hadn’t yet evolved into the crotchety commentator, grousing about how things were better “back in my day.” The stultified affect of albums like Kamikaze and Music To Be Murdered By hadn’t settled in and he was still close enough to the trauma of his past that him rapping about it felt therapeutic rather than wearying. It’d be a trap to hope that Eminem would go back to the version of himself he was on Recovery — a trap he himself couldn’t seem to avoid on his more recent offerings — but it’d be nice to hear him recover some sparks of the sense of fun and maturity he displays on it.

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