The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.
ITEM NUMBER ONE – KARL
Succession is a show that is filled to the brim with beautifully shaded-in characters. The children are all such specific little monsters, each deeply crappy in their own way that comes from a lifetime of their specific crappy experiences with and involving their also crappy father. There are finance vultures and eccentric Swedish billionaires and gangly cousins and all of them are playing their little games in ways that feel right and true to what their characters want in the moment. It’s an incredible feat of fiction and one of the main reasons I enjoy the show even though I hate all of them very much, even Cousin Greg, who has morphed from a lovable Gumby into a soulless self-interested cretin like the rest of the people on the show.
Actually, that’s not true. I do not hate all of them. There is one character I still enjoy, even if he is technically a high-ranking executive at an organization that is opposed to just about every single thing I stand for in the world. It is Karl. I love him.
Karl doesn’t… do much. A lot of times he doesn’t even say anything. He’ll just be there when other people are talking and he’ll attempt to fade into the background because he — like his counterpart Frank, who I will also discuss shortly — has realized that the best way to survive in this shark tank is to be the kind of fish who blends into its surroundings to disappear instead of the kind that tries to physically fight off the predator. Sometimes when someone asks him something directly he’ll just do this instead of give an actual answer.
Just a beautiful spineless man. The actor who plays him, David Rasche, does such a good job at nailing his various uncomfortable shifting and throat-clearing, too. It’s not easy to do so much with so little, especially when it’s deliberate like this. We do a lot of public fawning for — to choose an example not so much at random — the kind of stuff that Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook did in the last episode, but please keep in mind that nailing the delivery of a line like this in such a tiny moment also takes a whole heap of skill.
Also, it’s just extremely funny. Which is not nothing on a show that sometimes rips your guts out.
Speaking of Succession and things that are funny (this is what professional writers refer to as “a real good transition”), I’ve also really come to appreciate Karl’s relationship with Frank lately. Frank is another one of the high-ranking, non-family figures at the company. He and Karl have probably known each other for decades. They’ve probably fought for the same positions and watched the crappy Roy children grow and gain influence after knowing them as bratty little toddlers and are both just trying to hang on to the little slivers of authority and power they have left right now. These are men who are brothers and enemies and have seen things. Sometimes they’ll hang each other out to dry. Like this.
It’s delightful. I think I would honestly watch a prequel series about the two of them rising up the ranks. I would definitely watch a spinoff about just Karl. Or a standalone movie. Send him on a golf vacation. I know for certain Karl golfs. I bet he’s a six-handicap and is pretty sure he can get it down to a four once this merger is done and he can get back out on the range a little bit. I just closed my eyes and saw him in a golf cart. I wasn’t even trying to think of it. That’s just how invested I am in all of this now.
He’s just so… “pure” feels like the wrong word because, once again, he’s a suit at a goon corporation and if I met a person like this in real life I would probably groan for 25 straight seconds and then spit a little bit. It’s definitely fondness by comparison, the thing where the company he keeps is so much worse than he is that it makes him look like a prince. We barely even know him. He could be stealing millions from the company and stuffing it in numbered accounts on a dozen islands. Actually, wait. No. That would just make me like him more.
I don’t know. I need Karl to thrive. I’m at the point where I do not care what happens to anyone else on this show. Hit them all with hammers at the beginning of the next episode. Just leave Karl alone. Send him on that golf vacation. Or just let him hang around and chime in with useless garbage like this.
It is all I ask for at this point.
ITEM NUMBER TWO – More movies should have Chris Tucker in them for at least a little bit
I went to see Air last weekend. That was fun. It’s a good movie that I would put in the category of “a thing I would start watching on a basic cable channel some rainy Saturday afternoon and end up finishing even though I’ve seen it like 20 times,” which I mean very much as a compliment. I love those kinds of movies. It’s been a while since we had a good one. And it was fun to see it in the theater. There was a red-band trailer during the previews and, when that blood-red screen popped up to let us know cusses were coming, a lady in front of me let out an audible “oooooo.” I wish her nothing but the greatest things in life.
Another thing I liked about Air: It had Chris Tucker in it. Did you realize it’s been seven years since Chris Tucker was in a movie? That’s too long! I’ll come back to this. There are facts I need to share first. Like this one: Tucker took the role of Nike executive Howard White in part because he’s friends with Howard White in real life. Here’s what he told People about the process of all that.
“My agent called me and said they got a movie about something to do with Michael Jordan, and they want you to play this character called Howard White.”
“There wasn’t no words, it wasn’t no character, it wasn’t there in the script. I said, ‘Wait a minute, that’s my friend.’ So I called him [White] and found out that it was, he was in this movie and I said, ‘Whoa man, but they said it’s not much, but you know, I’m considering it cause it’s you.’ “
A few notes here:
- I am willing to place a $100 wager that you, like me, heard that entire quote in your brain in Chris Tucker’s voice, which is how most quotes should be heard, now that I think about it
- Imagine how weird it must be to have one of your friends play you in a movie
- Imagine how much weirder it would be if that friend were Chris Tucker
But yes, more importantly: He was such a blast in this movie. Just an absolute charisma bomb that breathed life into every scene he was in. I need more. Seven years is too long between Chris Tucker appearances. He doesn’t need to full-on lead a movie if he’d rather stay home and chill at this point, but I do think more movies should at least try to sprinkle him in. Just give me, like, 15 minutes of Chris Tucker. In any movie. As many movies as he’s willing to do. Ask him which of his other friends he wants to play on the big screen. Ask him to play literally anyone in a Knives Out. Ask him to start doing a voice in every Pixar movie like he’s John Ratzenberger or something. Let him swear. Throw money at him if it will help.
I do not care how we make this happen. I just want someone to handle it.
ITEM NUMBER THREE – Today is a great day to rewatch the Barry dirtbike chase
Barry is back this weekend for a fourth and final season. It’s so, so good. Bleak as hell and as silly as it is bleak and just a pleasure to watch. I’ve seen most of the season already because I’m a big fancy television critic who writes reviews of these things, but please know that this is one of those times where that’s not a good thing. I want to talk about it so much with everybody and there are so few people to talk about it with. It’s like one of those cartoons where a dude asks a genie for a billion dollars but he gets it in like fake Chuck E. Cheese money and can’t spend it. It’s a real problem.
Since I can’t talk about the new season, let’s talk about the previous season. Specifically, let’s talk about that dirtbike chase. The one in the video up there. You can probably still get the idea even if you don’t watch Barry. But also… go watch Barry. Dude. It’s so good and the episodes are 30 minutes each and there are three seasons on whatever exactly HBO Max is calling itself now.
My colleague Josh Kurp wrote a great breakdown of the scene last year after it aired, so that’s a good place to start. There’s a GIF in there of the failed gun handoff that I should be using in more group chats and will try to going forward because it is just outrageously funny. Barry is a good show.
ITEM NUMBER FOUR – Think about this one a little bit
Here’s what happened: Last month, we found out Matthew McConaughey’s wife Camila Alves was on that terrifying Lufthansa flight that just dropped like 4,000 feet out of nowhere. Everyone was basically okay, which is good. But what we didn’t really know was whether Matthew was on the flight, too. Until now. Now we know. Because he talked about it on Kelly Ripa’s podcast.
“My tray table is what held me down,” the actor, 53, recalled. “I did not have my seatbelt on, and there was not a seatbelt warning right before it happened.” The Oscar winner noted that he “immediately reached over” to make sure his wife, Camila Alves, had her seatbelt on.
The “hell of a scare” left McConaughey feeling like he had “no way to get control of this situation the moment.”
So, three things about all of this:
- I am glad everyone, including the McConaughey family, is safe, because that does not sound fun
- It is a little hilarious that this story was broken on Kelly Ripa’s podcast
- Please think about how weird it would be to be sitting inside an airplane that suddenly drops 4,000 feet and sends you into a panic about whether your life is about to end and whether you’ve done everything you want to and told the important people in your life how important they are and then you look over at the person in the seat across the aisle and you lock eyes with this stranger and you blink twice quickly to be sure you are seeing what you think you are seeing and you realize that the person you have now connected with on a very deep level during this horrifying shared experience is FREAKING MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY
You’d probably think you were hallucinating.
ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Beef chat
It’s been a week now since Beef dropped on Netflix, so I feel like it’s safe to talk about the thing from the end of the first episode, which I have been laughing about since I saw it. Quick Beef backstory, which you can grasp from the trailer up there and would also be a fun name for a tough guy in an action movie (“The name’s Beef Backstory”): Two strangers have a little traffic run-in in a parking lot and proceed to try to ruin each other’s lives. That’s really it. It’s so good.
Anyway, stuff goes down at the end of the first episode and then, just as a big reveal hits and these crazy people launch into their journey of revenge and self-destruction, a few notes of a song start playing in the background. And they sound familiar. And if you’ve taken my advice from years ago and started watching television with the captions on, this pops up on the screen.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. We have a Hoobastank sighting. And I laughed very hard when I realized that was what was happening, in part because it’s a perfect fit for the action and in part because… well, the Hoobastank of it all.
But then I read this from an interview with Beef star Stephen Yuen and I started to feel bad about laughing.
“You grow up past your teens, what we call our awkward phase, [but] when we’re probably the most pure and having the most fun. The perfect analogy is Hoobastank. Everybody really s— on Hoobastank for a while. And turns out, when you hear the needle drop at the end of an episode, you’re cheering up and down. Like ‘What’d ya’ turn on Hoobastank for?’ They’re just trying to put out music.”
That’s a fair point. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I once saw Hoobastank in concert. Not, like, just Hoobastank. It was at the 2002 Sprite Liquid Mix Tour in Camden, New Jersey. Jay-Z and Talib Kweli and 311 were there, too. I got really drunk in the parking lot and don’t remember much of anything. Money well spent.
The lessons here are as follows, I guess:
- Beef is a good show
- Leave Hoobastank alone
- Maybe don’t mix Captain Morgan and Mountain Dew at noon before an all-day outdoor concert
All useful.
READER MAIL
If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.
From Paul:
I was texting with a friend of mine about the big death in Succession this week (I won’t say who died just in case you publish this email and it spoils it for someone, although you do have to admit that that would be a pretty funny way to have it spoiled for you), and we were trying to think of the funniest possible character to kill off in the middle of a season. Like if Frasier Crane had a heart attack and died with four episodes left in Frasier, or if they had killed off Bosch in season two and made three more seasons of the show without changing the title. I figure you have a take on this. The people are waiting.
This is a good email. I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now. Both of these examples are so funny to me that I kind of can’t get over them to come up with a better idea. The closest I’ve come so far is if Ted Lasso — a very nice show about humans dealing with stuff and also playing soccer sometimes — killed off Ted Lasso in next week’s episode. Like, violently. Crazed fan with a rocket launcher or something just splatters him on the field. Or even deeply stupid, like he’s walking down the street and a piano falls on his head. Either one. I’m laughing a lot right now.
The sick thing here is that I enjoy Ted Lasso a lot. I am legitimately looking forward to seeing how things wrap up. But the little rascal in me is thinking about the chaos that would unfold in the wake of this — on-screen and off — and I’m doing what can best be described as a hushed supervillain cackle at my desk. I do not know why I am like this.
AND NOW, THE NEWS
To Philadelphia!
Police are investigating after someone broke into a trailer containing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of dimes in Northeast Philadelphia.
DIME HEIST
WE HAVE A DIME HEIST
I… I DO NOT THINK I HAVE EVER SEEN A DIME HEIST BEFORE
…
…
…
DIME HEIST
Police on the scene say an estimated two million dimes, worth $200,000, were stolen. That’s an increase from an earlier estimate of one million dimes.
A total of $750,000 worth of dimes were in the truck, police said.
Two million dimes is so many dimes. I can’t even get an image in my head of what two million dimes looks like. So far, the best I’ve been able to picture is, like, “a lot of dimes,” but even then, it’s probably not two million dimes. I would consider 100 dimes to be a lot of dimes. So would most people, I think. If you walked around a convenience store and grabbed $10 worth of food and tried to pay for it with 100 dimes, everyone in line behind you would be so mad about the ridiculous amount of dimes you were counting out.
Now think about 1,999,900 more dimes than that. Maybe this isn’t helpful. If you couldn’t picture two million dimes, I doubt you can picture 1,999,900 dimes. It’s really a lot of dimes. That’s my point.
Action News has learned the truck driver picked up the dimes from the Philadelphia Mint on Wednesday but then went home to get some sleep before a long drive to Florida.
“This is common practice – to pick up a load going to Florida and go home for the night, get to sleep, and get on the road in the morning,” said Capt. Jack Ryan of Northeast Detectives.
Well, okay. I guess if it’s common pract-… hold on. Did that say “said Capt. Jack Ryan?”
JACK RYAN?!!!!
I’m sorry, but now I’m picturing Harrison Ford in character as Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger — or any of the other Jack Ryans from the other movies based on Tom Clancy books — on the scene briefing the media after someone stole two million dimes from a parking lot in Northeast Philly. Maybe he’s there because he got demoted after his various shenanigans.
This will be all I think about this weekend. That, and what these people plan to do with all those dimes. It’s so many dimes. It’s not like you can just go spend them all on a Ferrari, or buy a house in cash with two million dimes. And I feel like even if they try to go to the bank and cash it in, they’re going to get caught. The people at the bank will be like, “Well, where did you get all of these dimes from?”
I’m not alone on this, am I?
One bystander wondered what the thieves will do with all of those coins.
“I feel like if they try to go to the bank and cash it in, they’re going to get caught. They’ll be like, ‘Well, where did you get all of these dimes from?’” said Jasmine Waters.
Thank you, Jasmine.