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 – Please go outside
Hoo buddy. Let’s start at the top on this one.
The fourth season of True Detective, Night Country, wrapped up last weekend. Reviews were a little mixed on the ending — I’ve seen everything from “the best the show has ever been” to “okay Scooby-Doo” — but the general vibe was that the season was pretty good, if not even better than pretty good. Which is nice. Things had kinda run off the tracks a bit in the previous seasons and an infusion of new faces and ideas and energy was probably the right thing. HBO seems happy with it, too, as it pulled in record ratings and resulted in a big new deal with the creative team to keep it all going.
From Variety:
“True Detective” has been renewed for Season 5 at HBO. Issa López, the creator of “True Detective: Night Country,” will helm the fifth season under her new overall deal with HBO.
The renewal comes as little surprise, given the success of “Night Country,” which saw Jodie Foster and Kali Reis star in the fourth installment of the HBO anthology series. Per HBO, the season is the most-watched installment of the show to date, with 12.7 million cross platform viewers.
So, yeah. A pretty solid experiment here. Most people seem pretty pleased with it all. And it gave me this screencap of a cranky Jodie Foster, which I have been using a lot in my group chats lately. I appreciate that, too.
But this is where things get weird. Maybe you noticed up there where I said “most” people seem pleased with it. That’s because there’s at least one person who is very much not pleased with it all: Nic Pizzolatto, who created the first three seasons of the show before being replaced for this one. He is very mad. And he has been going online to tell everyone about it.
He started earlier in the season, actually, which prompted new showrunner Issa López to issue a diplomatic response about her history as a fan and her following her own creative vision. And you would think that’s where it all ended, you silly little naive fool.
This week, after the finale, Pizzolatto went on Instagram and started reposting the most blistering quotes about the show that his followers were leaving in his comments. Just a whole mess of them. He ended up deleting the posts later, but not before series star — and world champion boxer, which is not relevant here beyond picturing what would happen if the raging keyboard vigilantes ran into her in public — saw it all and went on Twitter to respond by saying the following: “That’s a damn shame…but hey I guess ‘if you don’t have anything good to share, shit on others’ is the new wave lol.”
And you would think that’s where it ended, once again, you impossibly pure little woodland creature. But nope. Not only have people been flooding Reis’s replies with angry lil screeds that she’s batting away, Nic Pizzolatto went BACK on Instagram and posted this block of text as the caption under a black-and-white picture of his own face.
TRUE DETECTIVE AGGREGATE POST – this here is the place for all your trolling/support/infighting around True Detective and the absolute moral degeneracy and misogyny of anyone who did not think it was good. Let’s move these screeds off my posts about my wife, true love, and my father’s death, kay?
I’d say “stay civil” but of course civility has no place when criticism of a television show indicates some form of Hitlerian evil that must be stamped out. So roll on, tide. Satire is welcome, and do try to have a nice dayWe’ll be capping comments at 1350, which seems like plenty of space for this manufactured proxy culture clash. Alas, all things must end, and boredom is real, so get your fill while you can. And again, do have a nice day.
Okay, a few things here, which we can knock out with bullet points:
- Creators have a right to be a little hurt when a thing they made is taken from them and interpreted by another person
- Talking a little shit is okay and fun sometimes, and please do stop here and think about Orson Welles, a man who spent almost every waking hour making genre-defining works of art and saying slanderous things in public about his enemies
- This, though, is just deeply sad and kind of pathetic, both Nic pouring gasoline on it all under an artsy picture of his own face and his fans rushing to post breathless treatises about it all under unrelated posts about his dad and wife
- Everyone involved here desperately needs to log off and go outside for a few hours
- Nic Pizzolatto seems like a guy who listens to some of the worst podcasts you’ve ever heard
It is not lost on me that this is the second straight week I have led this column with a lengthy discussion of a petty Hollywood feud. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I can be a little messy sometimes, too.
ITEM NUMBER TWO – I remain obsessed with Madame Web
Reasonable arguments can be made by reasonable people that Madame Web is my favorite movie. Have I seen it? No. Do I intend to see it? Also no. None of that is important. What’s important is that it has brought me more joy over the last few weeks than any movie has in months and I think that has to count for something. Madame Web and The Beekeeper. This is all I want to talk about in 2024.
Just last week we went over the absolute delight that is Dakota Johnson’s press tour for this movie, all chaos and popsicles and a charming willful ignorance of the entire Spider-Man mythology. Well, now the movie has been released to the world and everything is still beautiful, albeit in different ways. I have clicked on so many things people have said about this movie. Like, look at the review Mike Flanagan — yes, THAT Mike Flanagan — left on his Letterboxd page.
We come to this place… for magic.
We come to the theater to laugh, to cry, to care.
Because we need that, all of us:
that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim,
and we go somewhere we’ve never been before;
not just entertained, but somehow reborn…. together.
Dazzling images, on a huge silver screen.
Sound that I can feel.
Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this.
Our heroes feel like the best part of us,
and stories feel perfect and powerful.Because here…
They are.
If you got more than two lines into that without your brain automatically pivoting to Nicole Kidman’s voice, we could never be friends. Acquaintances, maybe. But not friends.
And then there was this write-up by John Paul Brammer, which I have read three times and INSIST you read in full but will blockquote in part here.
What are her powers?
Madame Web’s powers are the same as Raven’s. Not Raven from Teen Titans, but Raven Baxter from That’s So Raven. She has sporadic visions of the future, which allow her to change fate. Mostly, she is a normal woman who hits people with her car.
How does she get these powers?
She almost drowns in a car. Cars play an incredibly important role in this film. There’s spider nonsense in play, for sure, but she goes through most of her life without any vague future vision abilities until she is trapped in a car and nearly drowned. This near-death experience is a pivotal event, granting her the ability to hit people with cars with greater efficacy.
Wait, so are there superheroes in this movie?
No.
But I saw the trailer. There were superheroes.
I don’t care what you saw.
Is Dakota Johnson any good in the movie?
I can’t think of a less relevant question.
I hope we’re still talking about this movie in, like, July.
ITEM NUMBER THREE – Look at my beautiful little thespian boy
Anatomy of a Fall is in the middle of its big Oscar campaign right now. This is good news, less so because I have an opinion about the film’s merits as an awards contender (I do not) than because I love reading articles about the dog from the movie (I do.) His name is Messi and he is a very good and talented boy. He won the unofficial award for Best Dog Performance at Cannes (good) but was snubbed by the Academy Awards (bad). And he’s doing a whole media tour. Here’s an article from Variety about my beautiful shaggy boy.
Messi already knew how to play dead — a skill director Justine Triet and her team required of their canine actor. “What we did need to work on throughout was how to be able to carry him and have him remain in this play acting of being inert,” Contini says. “This was something I added over time by working every day. It started on the bed, and it was just how much disturbance was this dog going to be able to withstand whilst remaining limp.”
This is more acting than I’ve seen some stars do in big-budget action movies. Good for him. The only downside in all of this is, well…
“I’m a little bit scared that he’s just going to be typecast in roles where he has to die,” Contini says. “These are the kind of roles we’re being asked to do now.”
This will not do. Someone cast him in a movie where he and his friends rob a casino. Or one where he plays competitive basketball. Or soccer. His name is Messi, after all. My point is that we have options and my wonderful and talented son deserves to thrive in Hollywood for many years to come.
ITEM NUMBER FOUR – Shoutout to Dutch biologist and TV host Professor Freek Vonk
The biggest news here is supposed to be that some dudes found a new kind of very big snake. They were deep in the Amazon and swimming in a river — neither of which are things I can recommend in good conscience — and, yup. They found a big snake. Maybe the biggest snake. There’s footage of it all in the Instagram video up there. You can watch it if you want to see a huge snake. I’m going to stick to my little blockquotes.
The colossal snake is far bigger than the previous biggest known species – the reticulated python, which averages 20ft 5ins long.
Before now, only one species of Green Anaconda – also called the Giant Anaconda – has been recognised in the Amazon.
Okay, great. But remember how I said the story was supposed to be about the big snake? That’s because I read this sentence and it derailed any and all snake-based discussion my brain tried to engage in.
This Northern Green Anaconda was found by TV wildlife presenter Professor Freek Vonk in remote Brazil.
Freek Vonk
Professor Freek Vonk
The world’s largest snake was discovered in the Amazon by a Dutch biologist and TV host named Professor Freek Vonk
Prof Vonk added: “You can see in the video the biggest anaconda I have ever seen, as thick as a car tire, 26 feet long and weighing over 440 lbs – with a head as big as my head.”
Someone — anyone, but I’m looking at you, Netflix — please give Professor Freek Vonk a nature series. Let him travel the world to show us as many animals as he can find. Call it Nature Freek and have it on my television by 2025.
Professor Jesus Rivas, the lead author of the study, explained that they first realised there was more than one species of green anaconda over 15 years ago. […]
He stated: “I have been studying anacondas for 32 years so this begs the question of how many other species there are that we do not know about.
Okay, this was all fun and games until the snake expert who has spent his entire life studying anacondas just up and admitted there could be many other massive snakes out there that we don’t even know about yet.
Why have they been so quiet?
What are they planning???
Professor Freek Vonk, you are our only hope.
ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Pancake news
I do not often have the opportunity to write about pancakes in my column about television and movies and sometimes huge snakes apparently, so it thrills me to be able to type these words: We have television-related pancake news. And it thrills me even more that the television show it’s related to is Fargo, a fun and violent little flight of fancy we get to experience together every few years.
Context, very briefly, because I’m thinking about pancakes too much to do sentences good. Juno Temple played a character this season named Dot Lyon. She was a sweet Minnesota housewife who had secrets and survival skills and booby-trapped the family home to wipe out a squadron of goons like she was a more cutthroat Kevin McAllister. She also made pancakes. And biscuits. From a Bisquick mix. It was a whole thing that paid itself off in a memorable and sweet little moment at the very end of the season.
Which brings us to the pancakes.
Starting on Feb. 20, a limited-edition box of Bisquick that’s inspired by the acclaimed fifth season of Noah Hawley’s black comedy crime drama — specifically, the final moments of “Bisquik,” the season finale — will be available for purchase at a Scandia, Minnesota, grocery store. The batter packaging is inspired by Juno Temple’s season five battered wife hero, Dot (aka Tiger), and is designed with nods to the Midwest-set FX cult hit and sprinkled with for-fans-only Easter eggs.
This is good. This is how you do product placement. Very limited and very silly and preferably involving breakfast foods and then never spoken of again. Let’s all have pancakes for lunch. There’s nothing stopping us.
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 Ryan:
A few days ago, I saw the phrase “Oscar contender” in an article and I immediately started thinking about a guy named Oscar Contender. Then I saw “Oscar winner” and started thinking about that guy, too. And then I started doing it with Emmy and Tony. Emmy Nominee seems like a lady who runs a hair salon. Tony “Red” Carpet is her husband. I don’t see myself being able to stop doing this for a long time. This is your fault.
A few notes:
- I am sorry
- I do this, too, constantly
- The other day in the work chat someone posted a story that contained the phrase “Oscar hardware” and that’s my new favorite fake guy
I lied earlier. I’m not sorry. I feel great about it.
AND NOW, THE NEWS
To North Carolina!
Charlotte, a rust-colored stingray the size of a serving platter, has spent much of her life gliding around the confines of a storefront aquarium in North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains.
She’s 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) from her natural habitat under the waves off southern California. And she hasn’t shared a tank of water with a male of her species in at least eight years.
Good for Charlotte.
And yet nature has found a way, the aquarium’s owner said: The stingray is pregnant with as many as four pups and could give birth in the next two weeks.
…
…
Excuse me?
“We were all like, ’Shut the back door. There’s no way,” Ramer said. ”We thought we were overfeeding her. But we were overfeeding her because she has more mouths to feed.”
So two things here:
- I’ve heard “shut the front door before” as a folksy little workaround of “shut the f…” but I think this is the first time I’ve heard “shut the back door”
- Unless… is she implying maybe a male ray snuck in through a back door someone left ajar and got Charlotte pregnant?
It says a lot about me that we have an immaculate stingray conception on our hands and this is where I’m getting stuck.
Anyway, apparently this is a thing that happens sometimes in nature. In the absence of a mate, a female of a species will just kind of evolve to impregnate itself without a male. Which… let’s not explain this to a lot of the dudes in Nic Pizzolatto’s Instagram comments. They’ve got enough on their plates right now.
As for the suggestion that Charlotte could have been impregnated by a shark, Lyons said that’s impossible. Besides being different sizes, the animals wouldn’t match up anatomically. Neither would their DNA.
“We should set the record straight that there aren’t some shark-ray shenanigans happening here,” said Lyons, whose graduate work focused on the species.
I have never been more disappointed and relieved at the same time than I was when I learned that nature cannot concoct some sort of horrifying shark-stingray hybrid.
Yet.
Let’s put Professor Freek Vonk on this one, too.