If you aren’t watching Abbott Elementary at this point, it’s a little embarrassing. The Emmy-winning comedy just began its sophomore season with special guest star Gritty, who will likely win an Emmy next year. The gang is back with more public school shenanigans and trendy pop culture Halloween costumes (a very public school thing to do!) for season two, though if you don’t have cable it’s a little harder to tune in.
Even though the Quinta Brunson sitcom airs on ABC on Wednesdays at 9 pm, episodes are not readily available until Thursday at 3 a.m. ET. Under a new agreement between Hulu and HBO Max, new and past episodes will remain on Hulu, while complete future seasons will be available to stream on HBO Max before the next season premieres on ABC. So if you are looking to wait until the end of the season to catch up, you have many options!
This strategy is relatively new for cable shows as they get their bearings on their respective streaming services (the first season of Ghosts had a similar strategy on Paramount+ last year). Thankfully, networks and streamers have been working to make sure things are available by the next morning so that you will have something to talk about with all your friends at the proverbial water cooler. Congrats! You’re up to speed on the times.
In the days immediately following PnB Rock’s murder earlier this year, his girlfriend Stephanie Sibounheuang, who was with him when he was shot to death at a Roscoe’s House Of Chicken N Waffles restaurant in Los Angeles, became the focal point of a fierce debate about whether or not her social media played a role in his death. The Philadelphia rapper’s supporters wondered whether her post showing their location gave his killers the chance to carry out the attempted robbery that led to the shooting — a theory that was seemingly corroborated by police reports.
Now, a month later, Sibounheuang has made her first public statement since his death, writing on Instagram that she believed PnB Rock’s actions “saved my life” while recounting both the chaotic events of that day and the emotional aftermath. “I am 100% not ok,” she wrote.
The truly heartbreaking part of all this is that, after multiple arrests were made, police revised their working theory, determining that the crime was merely one of opportunity. A passerby had informed the suspected killers that PnB Rock was dining at the restaurant wearing a lot of jewelry and they simply decided that they could get rich quick.
As part of Peacock‘s larger foray into the world of documentaries, the streamer unveiled a new two-part docu-series on Barney this week: I Love You, You Hate Me. Despite the cheery, children’s show nature of the subject, the unusual project attempts to chronicle “the rise and fall of Barney the Dinosaur’s furious backlash — and what it says about the human need to hate.” Turns out, Barney was subject to an insane amount of hate back in the day, and not just from parents who had to watch the hit series on an endless loop.
As for why anyone would dredge up something as awful as the Barnie backlash, director Tommy Avallone offered a dark yet fascinating reason for why he was inspired to make the limited series after seeing a messed up video on social media. Via Variety:
“These college kids were beating up Barney,” says Avallone. “Ripping him apart, hitting him with a mallet, and at the end, the newscaster says, ‘That’s the future of our country, right there.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ We are in that future right now.’ There is a higher level of hate going on right now. Then I wondered if I could tell a story about love and hate but told through the story of Barney the Dinosaur.”
With the docuseries now out in the wild, it’s already revealed one wild fact about the beloved children’s series. The guy in the Barney costume? He’s now a tantric sex guru, but as Avallone told Fox News (whose heads somehow didn’t explode), “it’s not as weird as you would think” because, and this is important, “he’s never doing any of this tantric stuff in the Barney suit.” Oh, good.
I Love You, You Hate Me is available for streaming on Peacock.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Alison Brie didn’t get to portray this “Alison Brie type” role, but hey, we’re getting Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany, who has so much fun relishing this role. She’s smart and silly and she Hulks out like a pro while also being the MCU’s very green attorney for superheroes. Expect a lot of cameos, and Mark Ruffalo is on hand as Bruce Banner. There’s no word on whether we’ll eventually see the Hulk Butt like we received in Thor: Ragnarok. Admit it, that’s on your wishlist, too. Watch it on Disney Plus.
10. (tie) Hasan Minhaj: The King’s Jester (Netflix)
NETFLIX
According to Hasan Minhaj, the soul of his howlingly funny and revelatory new Netflix comedy special, The King’s Jester, came from a prompt from his director (and Patriot Act co-creator) Prashanth Venkataramanujam: “I just need you to bleed on the page. Anything that you’re too humiliated or scared to talk about, you should talk about it.” And he did. Packed with self-aware observations about his teen years, fertility struggle, time on Patriot Act, and how the show’s success and his “clout-chasing” collided with his family life, Minhaj showcases a level of vulnerability that many comics promise but never deliver on. It’s bold, visually compelling, and funny as hell. Watch it on Netflix.
A comedy all-star team of Judy Greer, Keegan Michael Key, Johnny Knoxville, Rachel Bloom, and Paul Reiser come together to gently mock the reboot gold rush and the entertainment industry, providing a Larry Sanders-y kind of inside baseball show that benefits from the presence of Modern Family co-creator Steven Levitan and Party Down mastermind John Enbom. Did we mention Judy Greer? The legend that is Judy Greer grows as she totally steals these early episodes as an actress turned duchess turned actress trying to stave off Hollywood irrelevancy, which is something that could never happen to the real Judy Greer because she is an American treasure. But acting! Watch it on Hulu.
Atlanta is back — and back in Atlanta — for one last ride after a season-long jaunt to Europe. It’s kind of remarkable that this show has even existed. In a good way. It’s strange and silly, thoughtful and artistic, and not really like anything else out there. Donald Glover was a star before any of this got underway, but it’s made the rest of the main cast stars, too. That’s kind of cool. Get in there and appreciate this show while we still have it. You could be waiting a long time for anything even remotely similar. Watch it on FX/Hulu.
Charlie Hunnam and Shubham Saraf told us how chaos fueled this odyssey, and they aren’t messing around. Hunnam, as well, is a world away from Sons of Anarchy’s Charming, California setting here. He’s semi-similarly an outlaw, though, in this adaptation of Gregory David Roberts’ same-named book, which details the life of an Australian convict who flees from prison for a new life in India. This may or may not be a semi-autobiographical turn from Roberts himself, whose life experiences are incredibly similar. Hunnam’s character finds himself both enthralled and struggling to avoid the trouble that got him into prison in the first place. Then he meets an enigmatic woman, and life grows even more complicated. It happens! Watch it on Apple TV Plus.
Fresh off his Dahmer success, Ryan Murphy is here to freak people out again with this true-crime miniseries about the Broaddus family, who thought they found the greatest home ever, but it’s haunted. Not literally, but it’s being stalked by somehow who actually calls himself “The Watcher” and claims a deep attachment to the home, and god, this sounds horrific. Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale portray the terrorized leads, but rest assured, some light moments will exist because Jennifer Coolidge portrays the house’s realtor. Sold!
6. Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime)
AMAZON
Jeff Bezos is finally getting his version of Game of Thrones, and this even more enormously expensive franchise looks to be worth the price tag to bring J.R.R. Tolkien’s fabled Second Age to the screen. A young Galadriel will be one of the bigger highlights of this series’ exploration of relative peace that’s shattered when evil reemerges. Expect stunning visuals that leap from the Misty Mountains to an island setting to majestic forests. Between this and House of the Dragon, we’re sure getting our fill of epic fantasy shows these days. Watch it on Amazon Prime.
George Lucas has frequently insisted that, like Wu-Tang Clan, Star Wars is for the children. But Andor sure looks like it’s geared more towards adults. The Rogue One prequel starring Diego Luna, reprising his role as Cassian Andor, is gritty, mature, and other words you use to describe movies and TV shows that aren’t messing around. And with this being the first Disney-era Star Wars show to be filmed in real-life locations, Andor isn’t messing around. Watch it on Disney Plus.
You’ve surely seen the 1990s movie starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Kirsten Dunst, and now, Anne Rice’s most popular gothic novel gets the small-screen adaptation. Great news: this version is better than the film for several reasons. Jacob Anderson of Game of Thrones gives us a very different Louis while Sam Reid swaggers about as Lestat de Lioncourt, and Claudia’s story gets expanded with Bailey Bass giving us a brazen and tragic performance and a secondary narrative framing device. The leading duo takes their sexual tension out of the closet, too, which adds a lot of layers (and fun) to this update. Watch it on AMC Plus.
Mike Flanagan might be the king of Halloween-streaming programming, given his success with The Haunting Of Hill House (and its followup), along with the more recent Midnight Mass. This series gears itself toward a younger crowd as it adapts Christopher Pike’s novel about a hospice for terminal teens. They form an organization devoted to telling scary stories at night, and there’s a twist: they all take a pact to send messages from the grave, if they go before the rest. Sadly, there will be no vampirish Hamish Linklater here, but hopefully, the show can do penance for this venial sin. Watch it on Netflix.
The first season of Abbott Elementary was a feel-good network sitcom that caught a massive wave of popularity and won a bunch of Emmys in a time when feel-good network sitcoms are kind of not supposed to do that. Credit for this goes to creator and star Quinta Brunson, who realized that an underfunded inner-city public school was exactly the right place to show us people with good hearts working inside a system that can be cold. Kind of like Parks and Recreation but in Philadelphia. The second season is underway and does not appear to be missing a beat. This is basically a miracle, all around. Watch it on Hulu.
Game Of Thrones seems like the easiest greenlight in the world. How could a sister project miss even with the mixed reception to the original’s finale? But House Of The Dragon is the second attempt (with one pilot failing to generate a series order) and it starts with one particular question hanging over its head: was it the world or the characters that inhabited it that made the original so widely adored? We’re about to find out as a new creative team tries to walk a line between old and new, creating fresh stories with a ring of familiarity. On their side: dragons, face-smashing combat, and Matt Smith’s good kinda bad energy. Watch it on HBO Max.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish movies available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Disney continues its efforts to remake its iconic back catalog of animated treasures, bringing them to new audiences through live-action, big-budget adaptations. Thus far, the results have been mixed, but also highly profitable, so here we go again with Pinocchio. In their favor, a lead performance from Tom Hanks as Geppetto and the guiding hand of Robert Zemeckis as director and co-writer (with Chris Weitz). Zemeckis is, of course, a trailblazer when it comes to storytelling through a heavily CG-influenced lens, which is required here to bring the tale of a marionette turned real live boy to life. But the challenge is in doing that while maintaining the soul of a fable that is imprinted on so many of us from previous adaptations and, of course, Disney’s 1940-made gem which still looks fantastic despite being more than 80 years old. Basically, the degree of difficulty is high here and audiences are likely to be unforgiving if this impressive creative team either veers too far from the much-beloved classic or feels too much like a carbon copy. Watch it on Disney Plus.
Baz Lurhman’s Elvis biopic is trash. Beautiful, glorious trash. The kind you leave out on your front porch for your neighbors to marvel at in grotesque disbelief. It’s hip-gyrating, finger-thrusting, sweat-pouring theatrics packaged in lush cinematography, contained in a classic underdog story that reaffirms everything you thought you knew about the King of Rock and Roll, and then adds some weird personal fodder that makes you question everything you thought you knew about the King of Rock and Roll. Austin Butler is mesmerizing, and so is whatever the hell Tom Hanks is doing in this thing. Enjoy it for what it is – a beautifully-shot fever dream filled with some great tunes. Watch it on HBO Max.
Thor is back once again and he brought some new friends with him. Natalie Portman, to be specific. Which is fun. This follow-up to the also-fun Ragnarok has made the move from theaters to streaming and into your living rooms. That’s another fun thing. It is almost unreasonable how good Chris Hemsworth is in these movies. You should not be allowed to look like that and be that funny. Someone should make a rule about it. Until then… watch it on Disney Plus.
What do we have here? Well, Kaley Cuoco, for one, in a Groundhog Day-style situation that sees her living the same date over and over again, in a good way, thanks to a magical tanning booth. We’ve also got Pete Davidson doing his whole thing and tiny rips in the space-time continuum and little changes in the past causing big ripples in the future, kind of like if you crossed Back to the Future with Palm Springs. That’s a good place to start from. Watch it on Peacock.
Oh look! Another glorious sequel. Fans have been clamoring for a followup to this spooky childhood classic for so long that, now that it’s finally here, there’s some understandable apprehension. Can it capture the magic (pun intended) of its predecessor? Will the surprise musical numbers go as hard? Will Disney allow more tongue-in-cheek one liners about Satanic worship and child cannibalism to flourish (because we really need to hear Sarah Jessica Parker confirm she smells children, just one more time)? We don’t have all the answers but it’s never a bad thing when Bette Midler, Parker, and Kathy Najimy get together on screen. And we wouldn’t be caught dead talking smack about the Sanderson sisters. Watch it on Disney Plus.
A revenge fantasy set in an impossibly luxurious school where impossibly rich kids trade impossibly sharp and smart barbs, Do Revenge is not to be believed as a real slice of teenage life, but it is to be enjoyed. A lot. Led by Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes, Do Revenge is the perfect mean-teen movie, giving us all the fun and fierce cross of Mean Girls, Clueless, Heathers, 10 Things I Hate About You, Cruel Intentions, and Throw Momma From The Train (!?) that we didn’t know we needed, but we so, so did. Watch it on Netflix.
Mila Kunis stars in this adaptation of Jessica Knoll’s bestselling novel that will remind people of a glossier version of Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places. The story follows a writer (Ani) who happened to survive a mass killing at her high school. Naturally, some PTSD is involved, and a documentary filmmaker surfaces some memories that would best be forgotten. In the end, some dark truths might shake up her whole world even more, and here’s a bonus: Scoot McNairy’s along for the horrific ride. Watch it on Netflix.
So here’s what happened. The Dream Team took the world by storm at the 1992 Olympics, with Magic and Michael and Larry and a slew of other Hall of Famers coming together to win gold in almost hilariously dominant fashion. Then, over the next 15 years, playing for USA Basketball became less appealing and things all got weird. Until, that is, 2008, when everyone from LeBron James to Dwyane Wade to Kobe Bryant had enough and got the band together for what became known as The Redeem Team. Now, 14 years after that, there’s a documentary about it. Feels like a must-watch for hoops fans. At least a should-watch. So… watch it on Netflix.
You are probably at least a little familiar with Hellraiser, the 1987 horror classic directed by Clive Barker. It’s been depicted on the screen in one way or another 11 times now, so that feels like a pretty safe assumption. The 11th and most recent version comes to Hulu and stars Odessa A’zion and Jamie Clayton. The official description goes something like this: “A young woman struggling with addiction comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon the Cenobites, a group of sadistic supernatural beings from another dimension.” It is always a bummer when that happens. Watch it on Hulu.
Hulu is continuing its tradition of taking dusty old romance classics and reimagining them for our more modern, thumb-swiping times (see Fire Island) by tackling, who else, Shakespeare. If you’ve ever heard the tale of two teenagers from warring families who off-ed themselves instead of, I don’t know, giving group therapy a try and thought to yourself, “Huh, this is really messed up,” then this rom-com is for you. Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever plays Rosaline, the girl Romeo drops like a hot potato soon after meeting his Juliet. Jilted and craving revenge, she enacts a plan to keep the lovers apart and … well, you know how things go. Sharply smart and wickedly funny, it’s the kind of Shakespeare re-telling no one knew to ask for but you’ll be happy it exists anyway. Watch it on Hulu.
To many, Barney The Dinosaur was a foundational and positive part of their childhood, filling their days with song and love, but the icon also found himself caught in the middle of a still-raging war between snark and sentimentality, sparking hate from hate groups of the early internet era that, in I Love You, You Hate Me, get credit for helping to unlock the culture of grievance and rage that feels more prevalent and caustic now. Throw in side stories about a tantric sex guru, a shooting, and some Blues Clues Steve wisdom on the uncomplicated positivity of Barney and you get a pretty rich and compelling 2-part docuseries. Watch it on Peacock.
The Halloween franchise is back for one last ride. Probably. The word “ends” is right there in the title so it’s a decent assumption, at least. For now. Jamie Lee Curtis is running around with a gun and there will be spooky music and ominous shots of Michael Myers and tons of callbacks to all the previous installments in the series. The bigger issue here is that Michael Myers has been terrorizing these poor people for almost 50 years now. Leave it alone, buddy. Move on. Watch it on Peacock.
When you think about it, 18 years really isn’t a lot of time to learn all the things you need to know before you move into adulthood. Any parent or caregiver can attest that the first five years of a child’s life is spent trying to make sure they don’t accidentally seriously maim themselves, or worse. But just when you think that stage has passed, it rears its underdeveloped frontal cortex again in the early teen years. That doesn’t leave much time for solidifying all the “common knowledge” things parents need to teach their kids before they move out.
Someone on Reddit asked the question, “What’s some basic knowledge that a scary amount of people don’t know?” and the people did not disappoint. Or maybe they did disappoint since this is about things that should be common sense, but aren’t. Either way, the people on Reddit had a lot to say about the things that should’ve been learned before adulthood and some of them may surprise even the adultiest adult. There were more than 28,000 responses. Here’s the top 10…
1. Water and grease don’t mix.
This little bit of advice seems like a no-brainer until you add in the element of fire. One commenter explained that you should never put water on a grease fire, which can go against some people’s instinct when they see a fire blazing. A grease fire can occur when you’re cooking with something that requires grease, such as fried chicken or sauteed vegetables. The grease catches a flame under the pan and whoosh, you no longer have eyebrows. Grease fires are best smothered with a lid, or a substance like flour, salt or whatever is inside fire extinguishers.
2. Mixing cleaning products can be deadly.
Most people know not to mix bleach and ammonia, but not everyone knows not to mix other cleaning Items together. A commenter reminded people that mixing bleach and Pine-Sol can create toxic fumes that can absolutely be deadly if too much of the fumes build up in the room. Someone else chimed in that mixing any cleaning solutions together is not a good idea unless you’re a chemist and know exactly which compounds are safe to mix.
3. Having a basic knowledge of female anatomy is helpful.
Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, a lot of people don’t seem to know that people with female anatomy do not in fact urinate out of their actual vagina. There was some confusion as to where it actually come from and for some users the Pikachu shocked face was definitely happening on the other side of the screen. If you are also unaware, I won’t tell. Just lean in close so no one else hears. There’s a small hole above the vagina called a urethra. That’s where pee comes from.
4. Don’t believe natural always means good for you.
This little tidbit of information may make some people upset, but one user said, “Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it is automatically healthy. Just because it is artificial or synthetic doesn’t mean it is automatically bad for you.” Lots of things are natural that are not good for you, for instance, arsenic. It’s certainly natural, but I wouldn’t be in a rush test its healing properties.
5. If you’re being questioned, the police are not your friend.
Maybe some people missed this in TV shows centered around law enforcement, but as one commenter helpfully pointed out, “cops can lie to you.” They can, they will and they do. Police officers are allowed to make up anything they want in an effort to gather information from someone who could be a person of interest. The advice under this comment is to ask for a lawyer and invoke your right to remain silent.
6. How to spot an obvious scam.
You’d think if it was obvious then people wouldn’t fall for it, but the truth is, scammers have been getting more and more clever. According to commenters, people have been posting about falling for scams that involve a fake astronaut and one where they send you money only for you to send it back, so in turn they send you a larger amount. There’s even one where people call you and have more information than they should but then they demand you pay off your debt in Apple gift cards. Some of these may be really obvious to some people, but to others, fear kicks in and they do what they’re told, which is what the scammers are banking on.
7. Accounting for the weight a semi-truck carries.
We’ve all seen it happen, someone cuts in front of a semi-truck and slows down or slams on brakes because they didn’t realize there was a slower car in front of the truck. This is dangerous and can be deadly. One Reddit user is imploring people to know how long it takes for a semi-truck to stop and hundreds of others are nodding their heads in agreement.
8. How to tell if your food has gone bad.
Ahh, the old sniff test. One commenter used to work at a meat department and says he would regularly get phone calls from people asking how to tell if their food had gone bad. Though the person didn’t have a “smellophone” to help answer the callers’ questions, he does make a good point by saying everyone should know how to tell if their meat or food has gone past the point of no return.
9. Not all news online is real.
Remember back in the day when our parents were super skeptical of this wizardry known as the internet and would wag their finger saying “don’t believe everything you read on the internet”? I do. The funny thing is, it was probably much safer to believe what was on the internet in the early days of the world wide web than it is now. Not all news sites are created equal and some sites deliberately put out false and inflammatory information. Deciphering what’s true and untrue is a skill everyone should hone.
10. Evidenced-based reading should be focused more heavily on in high school.
Researching information on the internet isn’t enough if you don’t know how to search for and read scholarly peer-reviewed articles. Not only should you know how to read scholarly articles, but you should also know how to read the research included in the articles. The commenters feel that this skill will help people stay educated and better able to decipher truth in things shared online.
While some of these things may seem like common sense to you, they’re not common sense to everyone. Hopefully someone learned something new today. If you want the nearly 30,000 responses, you can see them here.
Fargoseason five is about to go into production, and its star-studded cast just got even bigger. The ensemble anthology drama will include such stars as Jon Hamm, Juno Temple, Joe Keery, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lamorne Morris, and Richa Moorjani. On Thursday, per The Hollywood Reporter, actors David Rysdahl, Sam Spruell, Jessica Pohly, and Nick Gomez also joined the cast. Production on season five of Fargo, inspired by the 1996 Academy Award-winning Coen Brothers film of the same name, begins next week.
When Fargo season five was announced earlier this year, FX Chairman John Landgraff said that this particular season is more comedic than the previous four. “It’s particularly comedic this year,” Landgraff told THR. “It’s always a balance between how dramatic versus comedic it is, and this is the more comedic end of the spectrum. I really love it.”
Season five of Fargo will take place in 2019, its most current season to date. Not much is known about the plot, but it will involve a kidnapping. Here’s vague synopsis:
Fargo has traveled through decades, cities and families, and the fifth installment will be no different: Set in 2019, when is a kidnapping not a kidnapping, and what if your wife isn’t yours?
Season one of the series, which came out in 2014, was set in 2006 and 2007. Season two was set in 1979, season three in 2010, and season four in 1950. In August, Landgraff told THR that Ted Lasso star Juno Temple’s character in the series is “a housewife with a secret and is surprisingly capable.”
There is currently no release date set for season five of Fargo, but given that it starts shooting soon, you can probably expect it to debut sometime next year.
Even though Ken Jennings only recently stepped in to host Jeopardy!,he has a long-standing history with the show. After winning 74 consecutive games in 2004, the trivia connoisseur would frequently return to the signature deep blue set for some good, old-fashioned fun in the form of a question.
After Alek Trebek passed away in 2020, Jennings became an obvious choice to step in as host, which he will continue to do throughout season 39 alongside Mayim Bialik. Of course, this is a very hard legacy to continue, as nobody is quite as pure as Alex Trebek. It’s a wonder they kept the show going anyway! But they did, and Jennings recently revealed that he has a small but sentimental gift from Trebek on his person when he’s on set.
Jennings was given a small gift from Trebek’s wife Jean as a surprise which turned out to be a very heartwarming gesture. “I showed up at the morning writer’s meeting where we went over all the day’s clues and responses,” Jennings recently told Vulture. “One of the producers motioned to a little box that was sitting in front of me. I opened it and it was a little jewelry box with Alex’s cufflinks and a very kind note from Jean Trebek offering support. It must have been a super hard time for her, and she was thinking about the poor schmuck trying to do her late husband’s old job. That was such a lovely gesture.”
The current Jeopardy! host confirmed that he wears “The Alex Cufflinks” whenever he sports a specific shirt while filming. “And I’m in his dressing room, so I’m thinking about him anyway,” he added. He did not confirm if the cufflinks contained some secret Trebek power, or if they light up when someone is about to say a wrong answer. But still! It’s cool! “Alex and I had a professional relationship. We weren’t, say, hanging out and going camping together, but every time I saw him, we got along well. It sure seemed like [Jean] was trying to give a sense of continuity to Jeopardy!, even after her loss and our loss as viewers.”
Jennings added that even though he is the one reading the clues, there is still some signature Trebek energy on set. “It’s hard not to feel his presence there. He was there for almost four decades. You do kind of feel like he must be in the building. It’s not quite the same as a spectral form peering around a corner and saying, ‘No, no, what is Bucharest? Bucharest, Romania.’ [Laughs.] But it’s nice to feel like he’s still there and part of the show.” Even though he’s not around, it’s still nice to remember that one time when he hosted the show without pants. But hopefully, Jennings will not continue that legacy.
Save for a brief hiatus in the 2000s, Blink-182 has been active since 1992. The band’s past two albums, 2016’s California and 2019’s Nine, were different from the ones before it, though, as they were recorded after founding member Tom DeLonge left the group. Now, though, things are going back to how they used to be, as it was just announced a few days ago that DeLonge has rejoined Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker and returned to the band.
As for how we got here, it was quite the ride.
In 2001, DeLonge and Barker formed a new group called Box Car Racer, which DeLonge said in a 2005 interview with MTV “was really hard for Mark” and “caused a great division in the band.” Later, in 2005, Hoppus and Barker started a new band, +44, which DeLonge noted happened “even before Blink was finished.” He also said that in Blink, he “had to compromise all the time,” although he also said that “was part of the magic of that band.”
For these reasons and others, the group went on an indefinite hiatus starting in 2005. In 2009, though, the trio reunited and released the 2011 album Neighborhoods. Everything wasn’t perfect, however, as Hoppus later noted of that era, “Everything was just always very difficult. Everything was always very contentious. There was always just a strange vibe. I didn’t know that Tom was going to quit necessarily, but I knew there was something wrong.”
Indeed, DeLonge left the band in 2015. It wasn’t initially revealed why, but Barker later claimed it was because DeLonge wanted to focus more on his company, To The Stars… Academy Of Arts & Sciences. Whatever the case may be, Barker and Hoppus pressed on with Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba replacing DeLonge, first performing on 2016’s California.
For some of that period, there were rumors about DeLonge reuniting with the band, rumors sparked by the band members themselves.
In a 2020 Rolling Stone interview, for example, DeLonge was asked about a reunion and he noted, “Everyone wants to know, ‘Are you guys gonna play again?’ Yeah, of course we are. We just gotta figure out the timing, how it works for everybody.”
In June 2021, Hoppus revealed he was diagnosed with cancer, and it appears that brought the band closer together and got the ball more seriously rolling on a reunion. That September, DeLonge noted his relationship with Hoppus improved after the diagnosis. Then, that November, DeLonge told James Corden, “I feel like I’m always talking about some kind of reunion. We always talk about playing together again and I think that that’s definitely something we’re all interested in. Finding the time to do it where it lines up with everybody’s priorities is really all that’s needed, and getting Mark healthy again, getting him strong again. But yeah, I’m down, I think those guys are down. I think just finding the time to do it and when is really what we just got to figure out.”
This past summer is when things really started to pick up. In July, Skiba indicated he wasn’t sure if he was still in Blink-182. Later that month, DeLonge appeared to hint he had returned to the band. Then, a few days ago, it finally happened: The band officially announced that DeLonge was back and that a new album and tour are on the way. The first taste of the reunion will come tomorrow (October 14) with “Edging,” a new single.
So, that’s the story of DeLonge’s latest reunion with Blink-182, a tale that pop-punk fans are pleased to know is still being written.
Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Halfway to achieving EGOT status, the Emmy and Grammy winner sat down with Lisa Robinson for a frank conversation about internet criticism, the nuances of positivity, and the “love of [her] life.”
In the detailed interview, Lizzo talks about growing up in Houston and how she was bullied in high school. The story says that while she did listen to her share of rap (Houston rap, especially, obvs) along with her peers, she was listening to Radiohead a lot. However, she kept her affinity for the British rock band a secret for fear of inviting more bullying than she was already experiencing.
“It was a Black school,” Lizzo explains. “Mostly Black and brown, Caribbean, I had Nigerian friends… They were all listening to what was on the radio: Usher, Destiny’s Child, Ludacris, and I was into Radiohead’s OK Computer. I kept it hidden, even when I was in a rock band because I didn’t want to be made fun of by my peers — they’d yell, ‘White girl!’ Also, I was wearing these flared bell bottoms with embroidery down it — and they’d say, ‘You look like a white girl, why do you want to look like a hippie?’ I wanted to be accepted so bad; not fitting in really hurt.”
Even though she kept her passion for the music of Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and company silent, she said that she overcame bullies by being funny. Surprised? Neither are we.
“My defense mechanism was humor,” she said. “I became the class clown, that’s a kind of perceived confidence. And I have the type of social anxiety where I get louder and funnier the more stressed I am.”
Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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