The Rundown: Nobody Has Started 2024 Better Than Paul Giamatti

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 – Honestly, good for Paul

It brings me great pleasure to report that Paul Giamatti is absolutely crushing it in the first two weeks of 2024. He’s been crushing it for a while, honestly. Many years. Paul Giamatti seems like a pretty righteous guy. But he’s especially crushing it right now. Start at the top, with his win at the Golden Globes for The Holdovers, a role that is also getting him a bunch of Oscar buzz. Then add in this, the thing where he was spotted housing a cheeseburger after the ceremony while still wearing his tux, with the trophy on the table next to his soda.

I know Hollywood types are pretty jaded about stuff like this after years of seeing celebrities in public, but still. Imagine being the person at the table next to him while this is happening. I would talk about it every day for the rest of my life.

We also learned, during his speech, that he is dating a woman he met while working on Billions.

During his speech, Paul thanked his girlfriend, confirming their relationship for the first time in public.

“I want to say, I love my beautiful girlfriend Clara Wong. Why you bother with me, I don’t know why,” he said during the speech.

It’s unclear how long Paul and Clara have been dating, but they’ve worked together for years. She has appeared in seven episodes of his Showtime series Billions, dating all the way back to season one in 2016.

Which is lovely. I’m happy Paul Giamatti is happy. But that’s not why I’m noting it here. I’m noting here because, well…

To recap so far: Paul Giamatti…

• Won a prestigious award
• Celebrated by housing fast food in his tuxedo
• Is currently dating the woman who played his character’s dominatrix on a premium cable television show

Already tough to beat. But then please factor in this, the thing where he’s getting invited to big-deal awards-season roundtable discussions to talk about his craft and getting to say stuff like this out loud in front of Robert Downey, Jr. and Jeffrey Wright and everyone.

To be an ape in The Planet of the Apes? If that had been it for me, I would have died happy. I couldn’t believe I was going to be able to play a talking orangutan! My agents were like, “Don’t you want to be a human so they can see your face?” And I was like, “If you tell them I want to be a human, I’m going to burn the agency.” Who wants to be the human? And Pig Vomit? I couldn’t believe I was being allowed off the chain like that. I’d just been in a drama school, which always felt terribly confining. I mean, look at me, man, I’m not like a Shakespeare guy. I got out and got this opportunity to do something that was absolutely bananas.

God, that’s awesome. Paul Giamatti is the best. Just a dude who seems to have his head on straight about everything. I love to see people like that thrive, in almost exactly the way he’s thriving so far in 2024. It’ll be tough to keep up this pace for another 50 weeks to finish out the year, but I’m not betting against him.

Good for Paul Giamatti, man.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – DAMMIT

I wrote about my love of Our Flag Means Death a few weeks ago. What a fun little show. Two seasons of swashbuckling pirates murdering and/or falling in love with each other, headlined by Rhys Darby as gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet embarking on a torrid — and surprisingly sweet — love affair with Blackbeard, portrayed by Taika Waititi. It was beautiful and weird and charming and funny and violent and a bunch of other things slammed together in a way a bunch of other shows with less ambition would never even attempt. Which is probably why, among other reasons, Max decided to axe it after just two seasons.

“While Max will not be moving forward with a third season of Our Flag Means Death, we are so proud of the joyous, hilarious, and heartfelt stories that creator David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, Rhys Darby, Garrett Basch, Dan Halsted, Adam Stein, Antoine Douaihy, and the entire superb cast and crew brought to life. We also thank the dedicated fans who embraced these stories and built a gorgeous, inclusive community surrounding the show.”

That… sucks. It sucks a lot. The show didn’t always work out perfectly, sure. Things could get messy sometimes. But that was the charm of it all. It took swings. I’m not entirely sure I even see the reasons behind cutting it, either. It didn’t seem like a very expensive show to make. It had a passionate little fanbase that wrote missives about it anywhere that would let them log in. There’s value in that somewhere, I have to imagine. Maybe it wasn’t a home run, but it was a solid and consistent single or double, which at the very least, gets people coming to the platform regularly where they might stumble across your other shows. Again, that seems like a useful thing in an era where most streaming networks would kill for any show of theirs to cut through the noise and get people yakking about it.

But what do I know, you know? I’m just a guy with a column who was brought to tears by the show and is genuinely angry won’t get to see where this could have all headed next. I mean, look at this passage from an interview at this very website with showrunner David Jenkins.

Without spoiling anything, does season two end in a way that if that was the last bit, that people aren’t going to light things on fire, that people will accept that as an ending? Is it satisfying or do you have to leave it open to try to push?

It was very important to me to land season two in a place where if this was it, this particular audience would feel like Ed and Stede had their due and it wasn’t just pain, but it was something that could be construed as a happy ending. And I think there’s a clear way forward for a season three, but I think if this were it, I think this could be a kind and non-upsetting and gratifying way to wrap the show up.

With Muppets.

With Muppets.

So… yeah. Just a bummer on a lot of levels. I suppose the best way to end this is with a series of screencaps featuring my beloved Pirate Queen of China, who said this about a character on the show but might as well have been talking about the guy at the company the buck stops with, who we have discussed before. Take it away, ma’am.

I’m glad we got the two seasons we did but I’m still sad to see a relentlessly fun and original show get dumped when it still had a lot of meat on the bone. This has happened before and it will for sure happen again, but that doesn’t make it not suck.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – God bless Ayo

There are two things I know for certain that are relevant to our discussions here:

• Ayo Edebiri is awesome
• I love a rascal

Which, conveniently, brings us to the “Ayo Edebiri is from Ireland” ruse that she has been helping to keep afloat for a while now despite the fact that she is very much not Irish. I’ll quote my colleague Nina Braca here, who explains this better than I could.

Edebiri took home a Golden Globe for her work in The Bear when in reality, she should be taking home an Oscar for her ongoing performance of “Irish Person.” Edebiri has been committing to the bit that she is from Ireland, thanks to a 2023 video of the actress talking about living in Ireland to prepare for her role in The Banshees of Inisherin, a movie she wasn’t in.

Since this, Edebiri has frequently joked about Ireland being her “home nation,” despite being from Ben Affleck’s home nation, Boston. The joke has caught on, though, and Irish-based accounts even continue to perpetuate the idea that Edibiri is Irish, especially after her big Golden Globes win.

Two more things I know to be true:

• I love this a lot
• You guys should watch Bottoms if you haven’t seen it yet

I’ve been over that last thing a few times. Still. Watch Ayo cook.

Truly Ireland’s greatest actor.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – Yeah, I’ll watch it

This is the trailer for Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The series, not the movie. The one that was originally set to star Donald Glover and Sharon Horgan but now stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, which is also fine. The one that is described thusly:

Two lonely strangers land a job working for a mysterious spy agency that offers them a glorious life of espionage, wealth, world travels and a dream brownstone in Manhattan. The catch: new identities in an arranged marriage as Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Smith. Now hitched, John and Jane navigate a high risk mission every week while also facing a new relationship milestone. Their complex cover story becomes even more complicated when they catch real feelings for each other. What’s riskier, espionage or marriage?

Okay, yes, I will watch this show. I will watch it for… let’s go with four primary reasons, once again via bullet point:

• I have a longstanding policy of supporting projects where cool people are given tons of money and told to go ahead and cook, and this appears to be that
• Donald Glover has never let me down
• Look at this cast: Donald Glover, Maya Erskine, Parker Posey, Wagner Moura, Michaela Coel, John Turturro, Paul Dano, Alexander Skarsgård, Eiza González, Sarah Paulson, Sharon Horgan, Ron Perlman
• The trailer features the song “Love and Happiness” by Al Green, which probably has very little to do with the quality of the show itself, but also Al Green rules and, yes, I did stop writing this section to listen to “Let’s Stay Together”

It’s settled.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Dudes… let Emma go on Jeopardy

Emma Stone is the best. Not just as an actress. As a person, too. I mean, I think so. I don’t know her. I would like to, though. Emma, if you are reading this, let’s hang out. We can do karaoke and get onion rings. It won’t be weird. It might be a little weird. We’ll figure it out.

I’m already off-track. The point here is that I’ve never seen a story about Emma Stone that makes her seem like a bummer. There are ones about her being friends with Taylor Swift and ones about her almost landing roles on The OC and ones where she and Nathan Fielder commit deeply to a bit on a late-night talk show. Just the best.

And now there’s this one, too: Emma Stone desperately wants to be on Jeopardy.

“I apply every June,” she says. “I don’t want to go on ‘Celebrity Jeopardy.’ I want to earn my stripes. You can only take the test once a year with your email address, and I’ve never gotten on the show. I watch it every single night and I mark down how many answers I get right. I swear, I could go on ‘Jeopardy.’”

I would like to amend my earlier statement. Karaoke is out. Emma Stone, let’s do bar trivia instead. We’ll still get onion rings. It still won’t be more than a little weird. Let’s cook these schmucks and win, like, a t-shirt or whatever the bar is giving away.

Also: Please imagine you get on Jeopardy and you show up for your taping and freaking Emma Stone is standing next to you and just dominating the board the entire time. Imagine how strange that would be. I want to see it. Let Emma go on Jeopardy.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me 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 Jen:

In the spirit of the discussion of For All Mankind, if you got to make an alternative history show or movie, what would it be?

Okay, two preliminary pieces of business here. The first is that this email is from Jen Miller, who is great and is also a better writer than I am. The second is that it’s related to the thing I discussed last week in this column, where this happened at the end of an episode and made me howl with joyous laughter.

But to the question…

The temptation here is to pick something serious, something like “What if America lost the Revolutionary War?” or “What if Lincoln had not been killed?” I understand that impulse. But also, I am an idiot, and have these three thoughts in my head right now instead:

What if The Simpsons never existed?
What if my beloved Philadelphia 76ers had defeated Shaq and Kobe in the 2001 NBA Finals?
What if no one ever invented coffee?

These are all very stupid examples but it is fun to imagine a ridiculous butterfly effect from all of these leading to a very different world here in 2024. Think about it for a few minutes or maybe for three days straight. I know I will.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To New Jersey!

A man was arrested last week after passing counterfeit $50 and $100 bills at a Wawa in South Brunswick over several months, authorities said.

I need to be incredibly clear about something here: This was not me.

I swear.

The bills had the phrase “For Motion Picture Use Only” across the top and in smaller print on the left side.

I SWEAR IT WAS NOT ME SPENDING THE FAKE MOVIE MONEY AT WAWA, OKAY

Leonard went into the Wawa at busy times so cashiers didn’t have to time scrutinize the bills, Ryan said. It wasn’t until the money arrived at a bank that the fake currency was discovered.

While I do not support defrauding your local convenience store with counterfeit money money, I will say that I kind of appreciate the hustle here.

After the store learned Leonard was allegedly passing fake money, his photo was posted in the Wawa, officials said. A store manager told police Leonard had passed about $600 in fraudulent $100 bills since September.

I need this to be the plot of the upcoming sequel to The Accountant. Make it part of a bigger scheme, sure, but definitely include this. Open the movie with some man buying $600 worth of hoagies with money that was used in an action movie and then bring in Affleck to investigate. I deserve this.