Category: News

While Barney and Friends might have been “a happy family” on screen, apparently things weren’t quite so cheery for the purple dinosaur behind the scenes. Now, nearly 30 years since Barney made his debut on PBS, the NBC-owned streaming service Peacock has announced a Barney the Dinosaur documentary is currently in development for the streaming service. According to Peacock (via The Wrap), the series will examine “the rock star-like trajectory of Barney the Dinosaur” who “captured the hearts of millions of children and then became the target of hate and rage across pop culture, the early internet and playgrounds around the world.” The currently untitled three-part series is slated to hit the service sometime in 2022.

In the series, Peacock will shed light on “exclusive interviews and archival footage,” offering never-before-seen “first-hand accounts of the Barney phenomenon from the cast and crew to its most outspoken critics.” The project will also go over the PBS program’s 1992-2010 run — as well as the series’ spinoff various films — and the reception they received from the general public.

The Barney the Dinosaur documentary comes from Scout Productions, the executive producers of Queer Eye and The Hype, and will be directed and executive produced by Tommy Avallone of The Bill Murray Stories. In addition, Wendy Greene, Trent Johnson, Raymond Esposito, and Scout’s Rob Eric, David Collins, Michael Williams, Amy Goodman Kass, and Joel Chiodi are also all on board to produce. Rod Aissa, the executive vice president of unscripted content at NBCUniversal, said the television network is “thrilled” to be working on the series that is “bound to captivate audiences.”

“Barney the Dinosaur was a ubiquitous character for children and parents alike and we are thrilled to work with the Scout Productions team to bring this three-part series to Peacock. This documentary is bound to captivate audiences like Barney has over the years.”

On Monday, Microsoft celebrated 20 years of the Xbox and they made sure it was quite a party. During their live stream celebration, Microsoft announced that the multiplayer for the highly anticipated Halo Infinite would be going live in Beta form. All progress in the beta is going to carry over into the actual game when it launches on December 8. Since the multiplayer is going to be free-to-play, this is essentially the actual multiplayer mode launching over two weeks early. The campaign will of course still launch, with a price tag, in December.

If there was any title that was going to be perfect to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Xbox with it was always going to be Halo. Ever since the original Xbox was released, Halo has been the flagship franchise that has pushed the console. People bought Halo 2 so they could play Xbox Live with their friends. People bought the Xbox 360 so they could continue that experience with Halo 3. Halo Infinite is expected to continue that legacy with the Series X/S.

Halo Infinite is expected to be the title that shakes up the entire franchise. The campaign is going to be an open world, the multiplayer is free-to-play, and Microsoft is clearly putting a lot behind Infinite. This is going to be the title that pushes Microsoft and the Xbox ecosystem right back into the race with Sony as the video game industry’s top developer.

The NBA made a fairly dramatic change in officiating this offseason by putting a point of emphasis on not calling as many fouls when offensive players initiate contact by unnaturally moving into a defender. The results have been rather delightful for fans and defenders, while the players who used to stroll to the free throw line regularly have found them far less enjoyable.

Games have felt less stop-start and the league has already seen the fruits of that rule change in the form of fewer offensive players jumping into defenders to draw shooting fouls, stopping on screens, and sweeping through on drives. With how quickly we’ve seen players starting to adapt to new rules, it’s given hope that the NBA can take the other remaining scourge to the flow of games: the take foul (aka the Euro Foul).

Players stopping fast breaks by grabbing their opponent at midcourt has taken away so many possibilities for dunks and easy baskets, and it’s clear that the league’s clear path rules aren’t doing enough to dissuade players from eating a foul to stop an odd-man (or sometimes, oddly enough, an even-man) break. The league is reportedly already looking into options and there are plenty of options to consider, but when you take into account that the goal should be to improve game flow, further penalizing those fouls might not have the intended consequence.

Instead, a popular concept has been the addition of a soccer-style advantage policy, that allows play to continue until the team with the ball either scores within direct flow of action or, if they don’t, the referees go back and hand out the foul at the spot it happened. This would allow situations where a foul happens on a pass ahead to play out and a team get their bucket, without needing to stop play for a clear path review and take the ball out — Mike Prada has been among those pounding the drum on an advantage rule and highlights an example where it would’ve freed up a Zach LaVine fastbreak dunk on Sunday night in L.A.

It would take some getting used to, but it would improve game flow considerably if rather than blowing a play dead, officials simply raised an arm and let play go, noting that a foul took place but not stopping everyone. That alone won’t fix things, but it is the best starting point for getting away from all the whistles and stoppages that ruin fast breaks.

The first critique of an advantage system is that this will just lead to harder take fouls, but the answer to that is pretty simple: if players start trying to give harder fouls, it becomes much easier to hand out flagrants which are two shots and the ball, as well as coming with a fine attached. Players don’t want to get tagged with a flagrant, and if it’s a combination of letting play go on for soft fouls that don’t stop action and handing out flagrants for harder fouls that do, that would seem likely to be effective in pushing take fouls out of the game.

On top of that, since you have an official raising an arm to note a foul has occurred, even if you let play go on and a basket count, those take fouls can still be added to the scorebook to count against that player and team’s foul total during the next stoppage of play. That would add another layer of punishment to keep players and teams from still just trying a take foul, because even if play isn’t stopped, it would still count towards that player’s foul count and towards getting the other team in the bonus faster.

It would certainly be a major shift for the NBA to accept an advantage rule officially, but referees already do so in certain situations when they let minor contact go on some layups if the basket is made and blow the whistle if it rims out. It’s not the letter of the law, but it is part of their way of keeping the game flow going, and this would just be a formal application of that principle that would help both cut back on the efforts of players to break up one of the most exciting parts of the game in the fast break.

We are truly in the midst of Adele season. This past weekend saw the premiere of her CBS special Adele One Night Only, and today, she has added to her chart success: “Easy On Me” is No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the fourth straight week on the chart dated November 20.

As for the song’s performance, it actually went down in the streaming and downloads departments but saw a rise on the radio: Over the November 5 to 11 tracking week, the song had 8.1 million radio airplay audience impressions (up 12 percent) and 23.6 million US streams (down 8 percent), and sold 14,600 downloads (down 7 percent).

While the No. 1 spot has been the same for a few weeks now, there were some noteworthy shake-ups in this week’s top 10. Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits” and “Shivers” are now Nos. 4 and 5 respectively, making this the first time Sheeran has had multiple songs simultaneously in the top 5. Furthermore, two songs debuted in the top 10: Post Malone and The Weeknd’s “One Right Now” (at No. 6) and Silk Sonic’s (Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak) “Smokin Out The Window,” which enters the chart at No. 8.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

A recent promotional appearance for George Clooney‘s new movie, The Tender Bar, turned into a full-on dressing down as the writer/director blasted the producers of Rust for creating a situation that led to the accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. While recording the latest episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Clooney did not hold back his thoughts on the situation that led to Alec Baldwin pulling the trigger of a gun with live round in it.

“Look, he may be a dick, I don’t know the guy at all, but I’ve been on sets for 40 years and the person that hands you the gun, the person that is responsible for the gun, is either the prop person or the armorer, period,” Clooney said before hammering producers for hiring Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, an inexperienced armorer who had issues on previous productions. Via Mediaite:

“Why for the life of me, this low budget film with producers that haven’t produced anything wouldn’t have hired, for the armorer, someone with experience,” he continued, adding, “That is insane. It’s insane. It’s infuriating.”

Clooney also made sure to note that Baldwin’s claim that he was handed a “cold gun” doesn’t make sense, because he’s never heard the phrase in all his years of working on films. “It’s a series of tragedies,” Clooney said. “But also, a lot of stupid mistakes.”

(Via WTF with Marc Maron, Mediaite)

Tequila is going through a moment right now. The spirit is enjoying a renewed popularity, new expressions are entering the scene, RTD brands are reaching for agave more than ever before, and just about every celebrity who has ever been photographed with a glass in their hand is launching their own brand in the hopes of jumping into the booming market.

This brings us to Los Sundays, a new brand that attempts to reimagine the spirit in the image of modern millennials and the few zoomers old enough to drink. You won’t find old-fashioned labels or bottle shapes that would go unnoticed in a period-era film about Mexico. Instead, Los Sundays give us something that defies our expectations of what a tequila brand should look like.

Visiting the website will reveal just how different Los Sundays looks from your average tequila brand. They showcase young hip models drinking margaritas (a stark change up from old salt and pepper celebrities riding motorcycles through dusty agave fields), and even have a merch section that features streetwear-inspired basics like crew neck sweaters with slogans like “tequila kills.”

Positioning yourself as something different is cool, but streetwear and models aside, they also do it in the most annoying way possible. The brand describes itself as “sustainably farmed and naturally gluten-free, made from a blend of highland and lowland 100% Blue Weber Agave that is traditionally cooked and distilled in the heart of Jalisco Mexico at one of the most award-winning distilleries.” Which is full of so many Millenial-baiting buzzwords that it’ll make your head spin.

That all sounds great, sure, but it gets to me that Los Sundays makes a point of mentioning that it’s naturally gluten-free. No shit. It’s tequila. Of course, it’s gluten-free. The website doesn’t stop there though, “Not your standard-looking tequila company right? That’s because we aren’t. We are unlike anything you have seen or tasted before.”

Ok, calm down Los Sundays. The NOM (distillery number) on the bottle reveals that this tequila is made at Destiladora del Valle de Tequila which currently has 146 brands being produced under their roof. Interestingly, they also used to make Costco’s tequila.

Anyway, that’s a big game to talk so we put those claims to the test by tasting two of the brand’s three expressions, their blanco and reposado. Los Sundays also make a coconut-flavored tequila that we were unable to get our hands on. Since its existence, the brand has swept up a considerable amount of attention at the San Francisco Worlds Spirit Competition as well as the Consumer SIP awards, so we have high expectations. But consider our expectations tapered since this is from a distillery that makes tequila for 146 brands.

Let’s drink!

Los Sundays Blanco

ABV: 40%

Average Price $36

The Tequila:

Los Sundays’ Blanco is double distilled and features a blend of highland and lowland agave. The idea behind choosing a blend is that you’ll get some of the smooth floral notes of highland tequila grounded a bit by the earthy bite of lowland agave.

We’ll see.

Tasting Notes:

Sweet fruity notes reveal themselves on the nose which leads to a remarkably smooth flavor with a mellow profile. Vegetal notes are barely there on the backend but are mostly masked by soothing vanilla coolness that makes this one of the most refreshing blancos I’ve ever tasted at this price point.

I’m actually blown away by just how smooth it is. There is no bite here, so if you like your tequila with some edge, you’re not going to dig this.

The Bottle:

So far so good, but then we get to Los Sundays most divisive quality (aside from the name) the bottle, or more accurately the label. The construction of the bottle itself is great, a nice thick glass with a simple shape that’s easy to grab with a little embossed palm tree.

I dig it, but I’m less in love with the label. The varying typefaces, the minimalism of it all, it wouldn’t strike me as new, sexy, or modern if I was scanning the tequila aisle at a BevMo. Instead, it strikes me as cheap.

The Bottom Line:

Smooth, refreshing, and highly drinkable. It leans a little too sweet for my personal taste, but it’ll be hard to find someone that this expression doesn’t appeal to. At this price point, this tequila is far smoother than its similarly-priced counterparts. If you’re looking to impress on a tight budget, this is the play.

Ranking:

80/100 — It doesn’t blow me away, but this is simply a solid bottle of blanco tequila.

Los Sundays Reposado

ABV: 40%

Average Price $39

The Tequila:

For Los Sundays’ Reposado, the brand takes its blanco tequila and rests it in American Oak whiskey barrels straight out of Tennessee for just under twelve months. The results give off a mellow golden hue and provide noticeably sweeter notes on the nose.

Tasting Notes:

Los Sundays reposado is an improvement over the brand’s already delicious blanco. Those sweet enveloping notes of vanilla that I mentioned really jump out at you from the glass and on the palate the flavors of caramel and caramelized fruit (I’m getting roasted peach) collide and settle into a strong honey finish that goes down way too easily. Seriously, this stuff is too easy to drink, you could kill a glass without mixers or chasers.

The Bottle:

Same bottle as before but with a black label instead of the red. Tequila brands generally save black labels for añejo and even extra añejo expressions, so Los Sundays choosing black to represent their reposado feels like the brand trying to be subversive for the sake of being subversive.

It actually, surprisingly, doesn’t bother me. Maybe because in the back of my mind I’m hoping that when Los Sundays finally launch an añejo they take it as an opportunity to give us a vintage-inspired label. Knowing the brand though, they’re going to do something unexpected like give it a green label.

The Bottom Line:

For under $40 with a flavor profile this characterful and smooth, Los Blancos Reposado punches way above its weight class. If you’re starting anywhere with the brand, start here.

Ranking

90/100 — This is one of the best reposado tequilas I’ve had in a while. It doesn’t quite operate on the same level as the similarly priced reposado, but it’ll definitely appeal to a wider crowd thanks to its sweetness and ultra-smooth qualities.

Since the last time I spoke with Shea Serrano, he has reached another historic career milestone. His newest book, Hip-Hop (And Other Things), the third in his (And Other Things) trilogy along with Basketball and Movies, has reached the New York Times bestsellers list, making him and his collaborator, illustrator Arturo Torres, the first Mexican-Americans to reach the list four times (Serrano’s second book, The Rap Yearbook, was his first bestseller). The New York Times Book Review has been published weekly since October 12, 1931. Nearly 100 years. Just a huge accomplishment.

That’s the sort of odd factual tidbit that finds its way into Serrano’s writing, along with footnotes, off-kilter observations, funny asides, affecting personal anecdotes, and more than occasionally, startlingly astute insight into the various subjects about which he writes. The books are framed around questions that he poses that sometimes read as goofy or less than serious and the answers that he provides, which can seem goofy until he makes a comparison or uses a metaphor that whacks you over the head with a sound like a thunderclap, and you realize that you’ve just — shudder — learned something.

The questions in Serrano’s latest book range from the sort of thing that often crops up in conversation, like “Which was the most perfect duo in rap history?” to double take-inducing daydreams like “Is Action Bronson a good travel partner?” There’s a hypothetical interview with a chicken. There’s a debate between Kendrick Lamar’s magnum opus (undoubtedly Good Kid, MAAD City) and Kanye’s (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — questionable), and an extended analysis of Black Thought’s 10-minute Funkmaster Flex freestyle, which Shea can be seen evangelizing on Twitter every few months.

Over the course of our Zoom call, the author and I addressed some of these questions and more, but then things started to get really philosophical and personal — as they tend to do in the book, as well. It seemed fitting and it was funny and a grand time was had by all. Buy the book — you’ll thank me later.

What was the logic behind making hip-hop, the last one in your (And Other Things) trilogy?

Arturo and I, when we pitched the idea for the end of the thing series, we did it as a three-book thing and we knew we were going to do movies, basketball, and hip-hop. And so we just put them in order of what’s the one we want to do the most. And we both voted that it was hip-hop. And so we said, okay, well, let’s save that one for last, that way we could end on it. By that point, we will have been working on it for six years; we’re going to both be pretty tired. We’re going to both be ready for it to be over and so you end on the thing you’re most excited about. That way, it feels less like work and more like you’re celebrating the end of whatever journey it is that you’ve been on.

Even though it’s about hip-hop, I find it really amusing that you almost can’t talk about rap music without talking about basketball or movies and kind of vice versa.

I think those three subjects naturally fold over onto themselves. We’ve seen literal examples of it, of a person who was a basketball player, and then they would star in a movie.

Shaq!

Shaq, who was a basketball player, starred in Blue Chips and then put out a platinum-selling rap album. Tupac was a rapper and then he was in a movie about basketball. They’re all always together. For me, growing up, watching these movies, listening to this music, playing basketball, just felt like these were the three coolest things. So, of course, it makes sense that the three coolest things populated by the coolest people on the planet are all sort of co-mingling.

Bun B’s intro is such a cool full-circle moment. How did you feel when you finally got a chance to get Bun B to do this because he’s sort of the reason we’re even here talking about this? [Serrano’s first book was the Rap Coloring Book, a collaboration with the Port Arthur rapper.]

I was incredibly proud and humbled and Bun is, in my history of being a journalist, one of the three or four smartest people I’ve ever talked to. Whenever you have a conversation with him, he talks in paragraphs, which to me is crazy. You’re listening to me on this podcast now. And every six words, there’s a pause in there because I have to collect the things I’m going to say next that are coming out. He doesn’t do that. He has fully coherent thoughts about every single thing you could ask him. And I think it’s the most interesting thing, he also is just incredibly insightful. You ask him a question about one thing and he answers it but really he answers the question that you were meaning to ask that you didn’t quite ask. He’s just the best. To have Bun do the foreword for it was just a super cool moment. It really meant a lot to me.

The questions are always really funny in the context of these books but this one really goes super-duper left field, like the chapter where you do the Hunger Games hype music [“What’s The Order Of The Lottery Pick Songs?”]. Do you know which ones are the ones or is it a process of whittling them down? Do you pitch them?

I don’t pitch the ideas to anybody else. I might ask the editor, “What do you think of this? What do you think of that?” Or I might hit up somebody like you and be like, “Hey, tell me how you feel about this idea.” I’m fortunate to be friends with people who are smarter than I am, so I could throw something at them, and then they might say a thing that activates something else and then we end up with a new idea, but mostly it’s just sort of me sitting there trying to figure out how to write about a thing in a way that hasn’t been done yet.

I think a very common conversation people might have is, “What song would you have play as your walk-up song if you were a baseball player?” Or “If you were a boxer, what song would you have play when you come walking out to the ring?” In the movie, Creed, Donny has Tupac playing when he walks out to the ring. That collection of chapters is essentially a version of that conversation but you have to figure out a way that hasn’t been done yet. I searched all around and I didn’t find nobody had written about it in this particular way. It doesn’t always work a lot of times it starts out as one thing. And then you get 2000 words into it and you, it’s not as much fun as I thought it would be. It’s not as clever as I thought it would be. It doesn’t let me do all of the little tricks I want to do. So, you’re just trying out there and hoping it works.

I can’t talk about all of the successes and everything that has happened for you without talking about the FOH Army. I’m not sure how many Uproxx readers are going to know about the FOH. I know you’re tired of explaining it, but man, it is an incredible thing.

I’d never get tired of explaining it because it’s very important, it’s wildly important. The FOH Army is like a generic or general name somebody came up with for basically the group of us who interact or play around on Twitter or whatever, that’s what it is. And sometimes we’re doing philanthropic work, other times, we’re just sharing music, other times we’re buying books or whatever it might be. But it started out as this small thing in 2015 or so and then it has just grown and grown and grown and gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and more powerful.

This is the whole reason that any of my books have made the bestseller list. We’ve got four of them so far, and it’s not a coincidence that the first one happened right around when the sort of FOH was starting up because it was just like, “All of a sudden you have 30,000 people or whatever it is who will show up and buy a thing.” We sold 8,000 copies of The Rap Yearbook the first week, which at the time was like, holy crap. This is tremendous. We were supposed to sell 800. But we didn’t sell 8,000 copies to 8,000 people. We sold 8,000 copies to like 3000 people. So now, because of that, I have this remarkable freedom in my career where I can sit down with a publisher and I’ll be like, hey, I would like to write a book for y’all and they will just go, great. Here’s a check. They won’t ask me what it’s going to be about. They won’t ask me when I’m going to turn it in. They’re just like, that sounds good to us because they know what I know.

Then you’re going to give all the money away because you have this tendency of doing that. You are the first person to promote your work by doing things for other people. The last question is the question that I end all my interviews with. You do so many interviews. You get asked the same questions all the time. What question do you wish interviewers would ask where the answer is something you really want to talk about but they never have?

See the thing of it is, I’m not super interested in talking about myself or talking about how I feel about things. That’s the point of writing. This is why I like writing so much. Cause I can just put it on the screen and send it off and then everybody can see it. And then there you go.

That would be great if that was the only part of the writing job. It’s not. You have to do all the other stuff. You have to do all of the… when a book comes out especially, I start getting nightmares and shit like that. It’s a real thing because I know for the next three weeks or whatever, all day, every day, I’m going to have to be in these interviews and people are going to ask me questions and I’m going to be like, you just start to feel like, “Why are they talking to me?”

In the Time Is Illmatic documentary, there’s this really great part when they’re looking at a picture of Nas right when all the stuff was about to take off. It’s him and a bunch of other people sitting on the bench outside of where he grew up. The guy is going through person by person in the picture. He’s talking about a kid in the picture, grew up and this kid went to jail for this many years, this guy was in and out for this many years and he’s just going through it. And then while they’re hearing it, we’re watching Nas who’s listening to this as well.

And he is just overcome by grief almost. And he’s like, “Man, how lucky was I that this part didn’t happen to me. You look at everybody in that picture. This is one person, I happened to be the one person that, that didn’t happen to.” It might be one of my three or four favorite Nas moments. ‘Cause he’s so smart and so insightful. Very rarely is there a time where he doesn’t immediately have the right answer. And right there, you see him sit with it for a second and it’s going to be like, “Oh! Does he not know what to say here? Or is he going to say a stupid thing?” Nope. He starts talking and you’re like, “That’s exactly perfect.” That’s Nas. That’s what Nas does. But yeah, it’s some version of that feeling.

DaBaby and DaniLeigh have had an up-and-down relationship and this weekend added a new chapter to that story: On Sunday night, the two argued on Instagram Live and DaBaby appeared to have called the police on DaniLeigh, who is the mother of one of his children.

The videos (preserved above) show the pair arguing while DaniLeigh feeds their daughter. As Rolling Stone notes, the two swap insults back and forth and DaniLeigh claimed DaBaby hasn’t been around much since the birth of his daughter and that he was trying to make her leave his apartment. He later appeared to have called the police in order to get DaniLeigh to leave.

Following the incident, both DaBaby and DaniLeigh took to social media to share their versions of events. In an Instagram Story, DaBaby wrote in part, “End of the day no big deal I don’t want no charges pressed or nothing I just want her peacefully removed which they need to hurry up do as we speak I ain’t even want that behavior on display but it’s okay. Man this too shall pass it’s all good.”

DaniLeigh later offered a response, writing on her own Instagram Story, “Hey guys, since baby wanna put up a ‘statement’ with his cap ass I’ll put mine up… So we been living with each other for the past three months since our baby been born… doin us… and tonight he wanna come in the room talking bout ‘I need to go’ don’t matter where I go. […] I really shoulda jus listened to the cap ass internet about this man!!!! Ima learn and ima grow … but this right here, ain’t it.. And im sorry to my baby that her father is kicking her out her home at 3 months.”

Watch the video above and find DaBaby and DaniLeigh’s posts below.

“I would like to swiftly remove myself from any of the ‘hostile’ behavior put on display moments ago, this here thing has gone far enough for shawty to crash out on her own and it saddens me because I still got a queen to raise.

The last hour has been documented for my safety and business done based on my reputation. With multiple threats of setting up a internet scheme & a person refusing to not let me go.

Me and somebody else here knew to record her. I done been beat on and yelled at and chased around like one if them fatal love attraction type girls.

But I knew to keep it together.

My team will be in contact with any and everybody we’re in business with who mad need clarification.

End of the day no big deal I don’t want no charges pressed or nothing I just want her peacefully removed which they need to hurry up do as we speak I ain’t even want that behavior on display but it’s okay. Man this too shall pass it’s all good.

My focus right now is solely on this new project out and this
Liveshowkillatour starting nov. 26th.

Hate shawty went out that way but that ain’t my business I’m a father first always, and always will be.

This really me typing too no PR.”

“Hey guys, since baby wanna put up a ‘statement’ with his cap ass I’ll put mine up… So we been living with each other for the past three months since our baby been born… doin us… and tonight he wanna come in the room talking bout ‘I need to go’ don’t matter where I go.. mind u… I have a new born child, so he said I can go to a hotel… this man is mad bc I had a plan b sent to his condo, bc all he wanna do is c*m in me, with no responsibility .. obviously.. He prob want me out so he can f*ck on his baby mother and other hoes, who been known we been together this whole time, while I jus had my first child… This all goes to say that this man is a f*cking coward !!!!! I’m sleeping after cooking him dinner and he wanna say I needa go! F*ck u baby!!! And damn I really shoulda jus listened to the cap ass internet about this man!!!! Ima learn and ima grow … but this right here, ain’t it.. And im sorry to my baby that her father is kicking her out her home at 3 months.”

The Succession Report Card is a weekly recap feature where we attempt to assign grades to the important people, things, and themes from each episode of Succession. The grades are entirely subjective and the criteria for scoring will change from week to week and occasionally mid-week. Someone might get detention. It’ll probably be Roman.

President Raisin

PRO: Appears to be the only powerful patriarch on the show who is willing to admit his declining health and make a decision that puts the well-being of his family ahead of his own interests/ego.

CON: Every news station in the world appears to be implying that his brain is goo; he let a partisan news network basically run the country; being President seems like an awful job to have, just from a work/life balance perspective.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Hobbies, use of newfound free time

UTIs, generally

I did not expect to hear multiple people utter the phrase “piss mad” when I started watching this week’s episode (or, like, ever, under any circumstances), but here we all are, I guess.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Just, like, chilling out a bit

Megathump the Rabbit

This poor rabbit, just getting a camera shoved in her face and bagels fed to her by the biggest group of incompetent bozos you’ve ever seen, then getting treated by a people doctor because Kendall is the kind of rich doof who thinks any doctor can treat anything. I need next week’s episode to open with some animal rights group breaking into the apartment — wires, lasers, full black bodysuits, the full Entrapment — and setting her free at a nice farm upstate where he has lots of room to run and play. Either that or I need Jess Jordan to adopt her. We’ll get back to that.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Freedom, digesting breakfasts foods

Logan

Tough week for the old grizzly bear:

• Mumbling like a lunatic as his poisoned urine ravages his brain
• His mostly incompetent children went flailing/flopping about without him like deflated balloons still tied to a fence a week after the fair left down
• Thought he had a dead cat under his chair, which has to be unsettling

That said, by the end he was stable enough to pull the old “stick around and wait for me, bail out the side door, block this number permanently” move on Kendall, which was cold enough to give the people around him the same shivers/chills he had earlier. So… he’s back?

GRADE: D-

MUST IMPROVE: Hydration

Kendall

Is there anything funnier than Kendall thinking he has a situation under control — “Puppetmaster out” — only to watch it all fall to pieces in his hands as his entire face tries to droop and slide right off of his skull and onto the floor in front of him? The answer, surprisingly, is yes, as of this week, thanks to that image of him kind of slinking onto the stage in the dark with no real plan in place other than “commandeer the microphone.”

He’s such a goofball. Just incapable of doing anything correctly all the way through, like if Charlie Brown had a lot more money and a lot less self-esteem. I would pay upwards of $250 to see him try to, like, try to climb into and out of a hammock. He’d probably do a full-on cartoon spin and land on his head. I’ll go up to $300 if he’s holding an umbrella drink while he tries it.

GRADE: D

MUST IMPROVE: Puppet mastering, rabbit care

Tom

Things are generally not working out great for you when you have to defend a plan by saying phrases like “It’s not creepy!” and “It’s not horrible, it’s nice!” Like, regardless of the situation, but especially if the situation involves trying to impregnate your wife before you get sent to one of the prisons you’ve been researching at work.

GRADE: D

MUST IMPROVE: Being less… everything

Shiv

The good news for Shiv is that she took charge and got the deal done with Logan incapacitated by a cranky bladder, and she may have angled a board seat for herself, and she just — like, on a basic level — emerged from the situation looking like a reasonably competent and capable person for the first time in, maybe, ever.

The bad news is that no deal she made would have pleased Logan because he refuses to relinquish even the tiniest bit of control, and now she’s on his bad side again in part because she did that and in part because watching anyone do anything without his input makes him feel mortal and weak and that kicks the crankiness into an even higher gear.

Cool and normal family.

GRADE: C-

MUST IMPROVE: Hovering

Gerri

Held up pretty well, all things considered. Had Logan’s ear at the end when he yelled at Shiv to stop hovering, which was a nice little table-turn. Makes great little reaction faces. We like Gerri.

GRADE: C

Must improve: I feel like Gerri should go get a massage or something, just to relax for an hour

Daughter Sandi

Still unclear if she’s another incompetent lackey under the thumb of a powerful but declining patriarch or if she is a Svengali who is pulling the strings on the whole thing like the puppetmaster Kendall claims to be. My gut says it’s the former, mostly because, if this show has taught us anything, it’s that everyone is about 50-80 percent less competent than you think they are. Good lesson to learn.

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: I don’t have much to add here so let me just state for the record that I find it deeply hilarious that father and daughter are both named Sandy/Sandi

Various Karls, Franks, and Karolinas

The relationship between Frank and Karl is quickly becoming my favorite on the show. I feel there’s a bone-deep hatred in there that’s tempered a bit by a foxhole-related bond. They’re brothers, in a way, as two high-ranking executives with no blood ties to the boss, given orders like “GO VAMP” while the world spins into chaos, screwing each other and saving each other and trying to claw each other’s faces off while they’re floating in a life raft toward shore.

I want them to take a vacation together. Put them in the next season of The White Lotus. This is a good idea.

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: Vamping, etc.

Stewy

Stewy didn’t have much to do this week with the various Sandy/Sandis apparently leading the negotiations. I still know I should hate him and everything he stands for. I just… I can’t do it. I need an entire episode that just follows him around on a day-to-day basis. He appears to spend something like a third of his day inside a helicopter. He fascinates me.

GRADE: C+

MUST IMPROVE: I need him to be less likable so I can hate him

Bagels

GOOD:

• Delicious
• Filling
• Can be used to make the kind of greasy breakfast sandwich that does more to cure a hangover than all the Tylenol and orange juice in the world

BAD:

• Kills rabbits
• Go stale too fast

Solid performance overall

GRADE: B

MUST IMPROVE: Nitpicking here but it’s always frustrating when you try to cut one and it comes out a little uneven and then when you toast it you end up with one half all chewy and the other half crispier than a potato chip

Roman

Actually, against staggering odds, a decent performance by Little Slime Puppy. He was the only one of the children who seemed legitimately concerned about Logan’s health, he had a few decent ideas for once, members of the family turned to him when an important decision required a deciding vote, and he got put on the line with President Raisin to handle that whole thing. The last part didn’t work, and he started the conversation by saying “How you doing?” like he was talking to an aunt who lives alone and he only sees at holidays, but still.

That’s a lot for him. He’s got a low bar to clear to impress me. Sometimes I’m surprised he can dress himself. So, good for him.

GRADE: B

MUST IMPROVE: Access to PJs going forward

Colin the Body Man

So far this season he has:

• Leaned in extremely close to Kendall’s face and whispered “I know you,” which was so hilarious and stupid and theatrical that I made a GIF of it and I open it sometimes just to give myself a little chuckle
• Carried an imaginary dead cat out of a conference room

If he keeps this up, he could be approaching Jess/Greg territory. I have no higher praise to give.

GRADE: B

MUST IMPROVE: Consistency

Connor

Connor remains stupid and useless and self-important in ways that stand out even on a show filled with stupid, useless, self-important people, but I respect his commitment to chaos and I very much want to see him run for office just to see him on a debate stage trying to formulate an answer with the six brain cells he has clanging around in his otherwise empty head.

He’s going to bankrupt the European news division. I can’t wait. I would watch an entire spinoff about it.

GRADE: B+

MUST IMPROVE: Self-awareness

Ewan Roy

Ewan is:

• A cranky old rascal
• Cutting off Greg
• Giving all his money to Greenpeace
• “Not an uncomplicated man”

He’s a delight. I don’t think he’s ever been happy for a single day in his life. I like to picture him, like, out in the woods on a beautiful day, standing next to a picturesque waterfall, the beauty and power of nature all around him, just miserable and grumbling about greenhouse gases or something. I bet he cracks strange children on the knuckles with his cane when they throw something in a public recycling can that doesn’t go there.

GRADE: B+

MUST IMPROVE: Chilling out even a little

Cousin Greg

See, you would think Greg would rank lower on account of getting cut off and threatening to sue Greenpeace to get his inheritance and Kendall kind of telling him in a nice way that he might get served up as an appetizer to the DOJ. None of that is good. A reasonable argument can be made that I should have given him an F-, below even urinary tract infections.

The complicating factor, as always, is that he’s a sweet boy and I love him very much. Did you see the thing where they went to give him a note to pass along and he was so surprised to be given a real task that he said “Did you say Greg?” with the kind of incredulity usually reserved for sentences like “Did you say a purple alien named Igor who only eats Chex Mix?” Adorable.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: Financial security, not getting burned

Opening credits

The theme music remains perfect and unskippable but I would encourage you — while you’re not skipping it — to watch the screen and read the ATN chyrons on the bottom of the screen. It’s such a beautiful little touch. Like, they don’t need to do that, but they do it anyway, for us. I appreciate it.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: No notes, excellent work

Jess Jordan

This is the face she made when they found out the rabbit got sick from the bagels they told Kendall not to feed it, but it could have been the face she made reacting to anything he has ever said or done. And it’s a good reminder to always watch Jess when she’s on-screen because she’s always doing stuff like this, sometimes deep in the background.

It’s an extremely useful GIF. Feel free to right-click and save it. My gift to you. And Jess’s gift. Our gift.

GRADE: A+

MUST IMPROVE: Nothing, Jess rules

Back before Madden became the sole owner of the NFL license for video games, there were tons of football games to choose from. One of the original options fans could play was Tecmo Super Bowl. Back in the days of the NES and arcade machines, Tecmo Bowl was a favorite because it featured the likenesses of a couple of players and actual NFL teams. One of the most famous players featured in Tecmo Bowl was the then Los Angeles Raiders Bo Jackson. The multisport athlete was one of the biggest stars in all of sports at the time with his play not only on the football field but his time spent playing baseball for the Kansas City Royals.

While Bo was obviously famous for his accomplishments on the field, he may have become even more notorious for what he could do in the virtual world, because in Tecmo Super Bowl he was pretty much unstoppable. The Raiders became the original auto-ban team when friends would play each other because if someone had Jackson they could easily dance around the entire defense and score touchdowns at will. He’s arguably the most overpowered character in the history of video games and now he’s coming back.

The Twitter account for Madden 22 put out a teaser on Monday teasing that the legendary Bo Jackson would be making his return to the virtual world in their game. He’ll likely be showing up in Madden’s Superstar KO mode, which is where they like to showcase some of the more arcade-y aspects of the game, such as college football teams.

Honestly, this sounds really fun if they do it right. Put in Jackson and give him ridiculous stats that no player is allowed to have. Let players truck lineman with ease and run around safeties like they’re standing still. Make Jackson feel just like he did in the old Tecmo Super Bowl games. Video games are meant to be fun and we deserve that fun of using an overpowered Jackson in a modern game like Madden 22.