In addition to being a giant in the entertainment world, mega-magnate David Geffen—founder of DreamWorks, Geffen Records, Asylum Records, and more—is equally well known for his philanthropic efforts. Particularly when it comes to the arts and investing in the talent of the future, as evidenced by premier cultural centers like UCLA’s Geffen Playhouse and Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall.
While UCLA has been the recipient of hundreds of millions of Geffen’s dollars over the years, he’s now sending some of that same generosity to the east coast with a $150 million donation to the Yale School of Drama, which Deadline reports will allow approximately 200 students per year to attend the prestigious training ground—tuition-free.
“By reducing the debt burden of the average student, we create more resilient artists and managers who are able to make braver artistic choices—they’re able to take that downtown play and they don’t have to have a career selling real estate on the side,” said drama school dean James Bundy. “Not every artist is going to break through at the age of 25 or 26 or 27. Certain kinds of careers take time to build, and entering the professions with less debt is going to make for more interesting and more resounding choices in the long run.”
Yale offers one of the most competitive drama schools in the world and its alumni include the best of the best: Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, Frances McDormand, Angela Bassett, Tony Shalhoub, Patricia Clarkson, and Lupita Nyong’o are just some of the school’s acting alumni. But its programs include design, directing, and playwrighting, too, so they’ve got plenty of past students to boast about behind the camera and stage scenes, too.
Deadline reports that Geffen’s gift is the largest donation in the history of American theater. Appropriately, the school will now be renamed the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University.
In a letter to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, over 40 Democrats are calling for “immediate action” to rein in controversial Q-Anon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. While McCarthy made an attempt to soften Greene’s rhetoric earlier in the year, she’s only ratcheted up the crazy, and her recent appearance at Donald Trump’s rally in Ohio has her colleagues justifiably concerned that her actions “could lead to violence against members of Congress.”
The letter cites Greene’s “unacceptable level” of behavior, which includes her recent attacks on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Ohio Trump rally. Greene called AOC a “little communist” and “not an America” before joining in a chant to “lock her up.” The House Democrat members warn that Green is stirring up the segment of Trump’s base, which has already shown signs of violence during the January 6 on the U.S. Capitol building. Via CNN:
“Rep. Greene’s conduct does not comport with what we expect from a member of the House of Representatives,” the letter reads. “Moreover, we are extremely concerned that her conduct is creating an unsafe work environment for members, and that her actions could lead to violence against members of Congress.”
Of all the House Republicans, Greene has shown the greatest penchant for latching onto dangerous conspiracy theories and right-wing attacks. She’s physically stalked AOC in the halls of Congress, called Biden’s COVID vaccine passports “The Mark of the Beast,” and posted an anti-trans sign outside of her office specifically to harass a House member with a trans child. And that’s just a taste of Greene’s day-to-day insanity.
We’re in the midst of a week-long Ed Sheeran residency on The Late Late Show and there have been plenty of memorable moments to far. He gave the debut performance of “Bad Habits,” revealed his long-running prank on Courteney Cox, and became a cowboy. Last night, he performed “Thinking Out Loud,” but he also made time to re-work “Shape Of You” to make it about getting vaccinated.
The self-parody took place during the “Side Effects May Include” segments, in which Corden and Sheeran listed fake side-effects for non-medical things. Discussing the topic of “being in love with the shape of you,” the pair ran through some fake side effects, which ended up just being the song lyrics. They wrapped the bit up with the final side-effect, “adding a line in the song about whether or not you’re vaccinated.” From there, the two sang modified “Shape Of You” lyrics back and forth: “Moderna of Pfizer will do / You’ll be good after jab number two / But wait two weeks for it to take effect / It doesn’t fit in the song, but it’s important.”
Keeping track of all the new albums coming out in a given month is a big job, but we’re up for it: Below is a comprehensive list of the major releases you can look forward to in July. If you’re not trying to potentially miss out on anything, it might be a good idea to keep reading.
Friday, July 2
Attawalpa — Patterns EP (White Label Collective)
Bobby Gillespie And Jehnny Beth — Utopian Ashes (Third Man Records)
Broken Fires — New Friends EP (Phwoar & Peace Records)
Caitlin Mae — Perspective EP (Monstercat)
Chinatown Slalom — Meet The Parents EP (September Recordings)
Cloudland — Where We Meet (HeyHey Studios)
Cub Scout Bowling Pins — Clang Clang Ho (Rockathon Records)
Dennis Lloyd — Some Days (Arista Records)
Desperate Journalist — Maximum Sorrow! (Fierce Panda)
Earl Slick — Fist Full Of Devils (Schnitzel)
G Herbo — 25 (Machine Entertainment Group)
The Go! Team — Get Up Sequences Part One (Memphis Industries Records)
Izzy True — Our Beautiful Baby World (Don Giovanni Records)
Laura Mvula — Pink Noise (Atlantic Records)
Molly Lewis — The Forgotten Edge EP (Jagjaguwar)
Mr Jukes & Barney Artist — The Locket (The Locket Records/Virgin Music)
The Quireboys — A Bit Of What You Fancy 2 (EMI)
Risely — Meantime Fades (self-released)
Sebastian Plano — Save Me Not (Decca Records)
Snapped Ankles — Forest Of Your Problems (The Leaf Label)
Steve Marriner — Hope Dies Last (Stony Plain Records)
Stone Giants — West Coast Love Stories (Nomark)
Sun Crow — Quest for Oblivion (Ripple Music)
Supermilk — Four by Three (Specialist Subject Records)
Vince Mendoza — Freedom Over Everything (Modern Recordings)
Sunday, July 4
Lana Del Rey — Blue Bannisters (Interscope/Polydor)
Friday, July 9
The Academic — Community Spirit EP (Capitol Records)
Arushi Jain — Under The Lilac Sky (Leaving Records)
On July 3, 1971, Jim Morrison died in a Paris bathtub after he [extremely Jim Morrison voice] slipped into unconsciousness. But even though The Lizard King has been dead now for 50 years, people keep on burying him.
The late lead singer of The Doors has been slagged by contemporaries like Jerry Garcia (“I never liked The Doors”), Lou Reed (The Doors were “stupid”), and David Crosby (Jim Morrison is “a dork”). He has been listed among the worst musicians of all time, and inspired podcasts about how much his band sucks. On Twitter, he has been linked to the launch of the Vietnam War, of all calamities, and even inspired disgruntled fans to burn his infamous biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive, because he’s “a bad role model for youth.”
With the exception of Eric Clapton — who to be fair is way, way out in front in this regard — I don’t think that there is a significant figure in classic rock history whose reputation has taken a worse hit in the past several decades than Jim Morrison. And I think I understand why. Because I used to also hate the guy’s guts.
I came of age as a music fan in the early ’90s, which coincided with a wave of Doors revivalism inspired by Oliver Stone’s bombastic 1991 film, The Doors. At first, as an impressionable 13-year-old, I thought Jim Morrison was pretty cool. He sang in a deep, evocative baritone that seemed to signify a mix of sexual mystique and disturbing morbidity. Also, he could wear the hell out of a pair of leather pants. He seemed like a prototypical rock star. He drew me in.
But it didn’t take long for me to change my mind about Jim Morrison. And, again, that had a lot to do with Oliver Stone’s movie. In the film, Val Kilmer plays Morrison as a hellbent hedonist who is both an immature child and a self-immolating egotist. It’s a portrait that syncs with Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman’s 1980 book No One Here Gets Out Of Alive, which ranks with Stephen Davis’ Led Zeppelin bio, Hammer Of The Gods, as one of the most sordid works of rock ‘n’ roll pulp semi-fiction. (I mean that as a compliment.)
If I was better-read as a teenager, I would have also been aware of the chapter from Joan Didion’s epochal 1979 essay collection The White Album that witheringly profiles The Doors during the sessions for their third album, 1968’s Waiting For The Sun. Morrison (who is joined at the session by a teenaged girlfriend) comes off as a dim-witted himbo in Didion’s unsparing prose:
Morrison sits down on the leather couch again and leans back. He lights a match. He studies the flame for a while, and very slowly, very deliberately, lowers it to the fly of his black vinyl pants. [Keyboardist Ray] Manzarek watches him. There is the sense that no one is going to leave this room, ever. It will be some weeks before The Doors finish recording this album.
Manzarek later objected to Stone’s film (particularly the scene where a drunken Jim gleefully lights a closet on fire while his girlfriend screams madly inside) as crass and factually dubious exploitation. It was also horrible PR. The very things that boomer-era hagiographers chose to emphasize about the Morrison myth — the self-serious pretension, the heavy-handed pseudo-philosophizing, the frankly assholish behavior — are what fuels a lot of the animus his name inspires today. The caricature that was originally intended to make him look like a tragic hero has instead transformed him into an easily hateable villain.
That portrayal certainly turned me off for a long time. But not anymore. At some point, I realized that loving The Doors is a lot more fun than hating The Doors. If you can manage, I ask that you temporarily suspend your knee-jerk Doors hate and allow me to explain how I broke on through to Jim Morrison’s side.
First, let’s state a simple but weirdly overlooked fact: Even if you dislike Jim Morrison, you probably like the scores of artists he influenced. Iggy Pop has cited Morrison’s vocal style on The Doors’ 1967 self-titled debut as a crucial creative touchstone, while Patti Smith called him one of “our great poets and unique performers.” Ian Curtis of Joy Division, possibly the most seminal singer in the history of post-punk, was another Morrison acolyte who passed down their shared “mournful croon” vocal style down to everyone from Echo And The Bunnymen to Interpol and literally dozens of other punk, alt-rock, indie, and goth bands in between.
The Doors are so foundational in rock that they filter down to artists who either don’t like or even know their music firsthand. Basically any singer in a rock band who dips into a lower register owes something to Jim Morrison. (Glenn Danzig, meet Matt Berninger.) I would go even further and suggest that any group in which a person talk-sings over drone-y music is connected to Morrison and The Doors. To cite just one example, you can hear traces of The Doors’ influence in New Long Leg, the 2021 debut full-length by the acclaimed U.K. post-punk band Dry Cleaning, in which lead singer Florence Shaw talks over tribal guitar licks about how people are strange.
In a 1981 interview, Jerry Garcia dismissed Morrison as a Mick Jagger clone. But as much as I love Garcia, I must object to this reductive take. It’s true that Morrison, like Jagger, adopted a highly sexualized bump ‘n’ grind performance style designed to drive audiences into hysterics. But Jagger was also an emotionally remote cynic who could move freely between participating in the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll party of the ’60s and ’70s and commenting on it in his lyrics from a remove. There was no such remove for Morrison. He lived out the metaphors in his songs about unlimited excess and all-encompassing doom in his actual real life. Unfortunately, you can’t live like a metaphor in your actual real life, which is why he died.
In that way, Morrison is a lot like Lana Del Rey, another polarizing poet obsessed with death and glamour and messianic posturing and all-American decadence who sings her words in an artless but highly affecting croon. “No one’s gonna take my soul away / I’m living like Jim Morrison,” Del Rey sings in 2012’s “Gods And Monsters,” a title that perfectly captures Morrison’s duality. (I also suspect that all of those really long songs about the apocalypse on Norman Fucking Rockwell were inspired by Del Rey going through a “The End” phase.)
What separates LDR from Jim Morrison is that she had the benefit of learning from Morrison’s mistakes. She knows now that metaphors should be kept in their proper place. Jim Morrison was her rough draft. He was the rough draft for a lot of people.
If I had to distill the current cultural dislike of Jim Morrison down to a single cause, it would be that his very essence as an artist and performer is totally contrary to what is in vogue now. Morrison was highly theatrical and worked almost exclusively in larger-than-life gestures. He sang about setting the night on fire and dancing on fire and lighting your fire. He would carve out a good 20 minutes every night to perform something called “The Celebration Of The Lizard.” Again, he was his own metaphor; he sang about sex and self-destruction and lived a life of sex and self-destruction. He was never a chill, normal dude.
Today’s pop stars are praised for the opposite of this sort of thing. They’re expected to be accessible, relatable, and naturalistic while also being role models. They’re aspirational as ethical figures, which — if you can step outside of current cultural morés for a quick moment — is sort of nuts. Even in his prime, I don’t think anyone looked at Jim Morrison as a good person. That was never even intended to be part of the package. (It should be noted that Jim Morrison was extremely young when he died. How would you be remembered if you were defined forever by your behavior in your mid-20s?)
From the beginning, Jim Morrison was an anti-hero, which partly explains why there were so many waves of Doors revivalism in the years after he died. At every moment in modern history other than right now, anti-heroes have always been awesome. Of course there are many good reasons for anti-heroes being temporarily unfashionable. But it also makes me think that the next generation is poised to react against to the more puritanical leanings of our time. Because there will be some kind of reaction. (We have not reached ideological perfection in the year 2021, as much as we like to kid ourselves into thinking that.) And then, I wonder, will Jim Morrison be back once again?
Because as much people like to bury Jim Morrison, they also like to dig him back up. Put on a generation-defining movie from the 1980s like Less Than Zero or The Lost Boys and you’ll hear The Doors. In 1993, when The Doors entered the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame, they were inducted by that era’s generation-defining rock singer (and another obvious artistic child of Jim Morrison), Eddie Vedder. A few years later, grunge made way for nu-metal at Woodstock 99, but The Doors were still welcome. In 2001, in the wake of Sept. 11, Jay-Z sampled The Doors and Julian Casablancas credited Morrison and co. with making him want to start The Strokes. A decade later, as dubstep took over the culture, Skrillex collaborated with the surviving members of The Doors. Today, whenever I play “Break On Through” in the minivan, my kids know it because that damn song was in Minions.
And you know what? They like that song! And they like it for an obvious reason: Because it’s a jam. It’s fine if you think Jim Morrison is an amoral, obnoxious gasbag. I get that. But can we at least admit that his band did not suck and in fact had many, many jams? “Break On Through,” “Light My Fire,” “End Of The Night,” “The End,” “People Are Strange,” “When The Music’s Over,” “Hello, I Love You,” “Roadhouse Blues,” “Peace Frog,” “L.A. Woman,” “Riders On The Storm” — does anybody else feel like riding the snake right about now? You know that it would be untrue to say no.
The Doors are a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
After Britney Spears spoke about her conservatorship in court recently, some of her peers in music came forward with messages of support for the pop star. Now, Iggy Azalea — who collaborated with Spears on the 2015 single “Pretty Girls” and performed with her at at 2015 Billboard Music Awards — shared some experiences she had with Spears, her father, and her team.
In a tweet she tagged #FreeBritney, Azalea showed support for Spears and wrote that she “personally witnessed the same behavior Britney detailed in regards to her father last week.” One example she noted was, “I saw her restricted from even the most bizarre & trivial things: like how many sodas she was allowed to drink.” She also wrote, “Her father conveniently waited until literally moments before our BMAs performance when I was backstage in the dressing room & told me if I did not sign an NDA he would not allow me on stage.”
Azalea concluded her post, “Britney Spears should not be forced to co-exist with that man when she’s made it clear it is negatively impacting her mental health. This is not right at all.”
Find Azalea’s post below.
“Its basic human decency to at the very least remove a person Britney has identified as abusive from her life. This should be illegal.
During the time we worked together in 2015, I personally witnessed the same behavior Britney detailed in regards to her father last week and I just want to back her up & tell the world that: She is not exaggerating or lying.
I saw her restricted from even the most bizarre & trivial things: like how many sodas she was allowed to drink. Why is that even Necessary?
Her father conveniently waited until literally moments before our BMAs performance when I was backstage in the dressing room & told me if I did not sign an NDA he would not allow me on stage.
The way he went about getting me to sign a contract, sounded similar to the tactics Britney spoke about last week in regards to her Las Vegas show.
Jamie Spears has a habit of making people sign documents while under Duress it seems, and Britney Spears should not be forced to co-exist with that man when she’s made it clear it is negatively impacting her mental health.
On Wednesday, Roku quietly updated its homepage to prominently display the new remote for its recently released Roku Express 4k+. While this seems like an innocuous event, analysts are latching on to a significant development for the remote: It now includes a button for Apple TV+. After years of keeping its products walled off, this move is believed to be the first time that Apple has put its branding on a competitor’s device, and analysts are saying it’s a “shocking” sign that the streaming service is desperate for new subscribers.
“Nobody ever would have expected this,” LightShed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield told the New York Post. “The thought that Apple, rather than create a device that’s going to replace Roku is now buying a button next to Netflix or next to Disney+ just shows you that as they get into the content business, they need to be everywhere.”
While Apple TV+ shows like Ted Lasso and Mythic Quest have become critical favorites, that acclaim has not boosted subscriber numbers, which are reportedly “sputtering” compared to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. One major issue has been the company’s practice of extending free trials, which has led to a glut of users who aren’t paying for the service.
According to a January study by MoffettNathanson of nearly 19,500 customers, a whopping 62 percent of Apple TV+ subscribers are still on the free promotional offer. Nearly 30 percent said they don’t plan to resubscribe once the promo expires, while another 30 percent said they plan to renew at the $4.99 monthly price. The rest said they were unsure what they would do.
According to CNet, Apple plans to cut back aggressively on free trials ahead of the Season 2 premiere of Ted Lasso.
Wednesday was maybe not the best day for #MeToo. Just before 10 a.m., news broke that Bill Cosby was being released from prison after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his sexual assault conviction on what was essentially a technicality. Ninety minutes later, it was reported that James Franco—who was the defendant in a literal class action suit, as it was brought about by students in a now-defunct acting school he created—had settled his case for $2.2 million.
While Cosby, who has been accused of drugging and assaulting approximately 60 women, has not been acquitted of the crime that sent him to prison in the first place, he might as well be. Meanwhile, the details of Franco’s settlement—which go beyond monetary—require that the women who accused the actor of fraud and sexual exploitation must withdraw those claims. They also agreed to issue a joint statement with Franco, in which he continues to deny any wrongdoing and essentially paints the incident as a teaching moment for all involved. Which is all to say: If you have enough money and power in Hollywood, you can skirt the consequences of bad behavior.
As a Los Angeles judge still needs to sign off on Franco’s settlement agreement, not all of the details are being made public. His case was rare because of its class-action status; essentially, several women who paid to be taught by the Oscar-nominated actor at the Studio 4 Film Schools he set up in both New York and Los Angeles claimed the “school” was all a fraud. The suit, which was filed in 2019 by former students Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal, claimed that Studio 4—which offered a master class in sex scenes—was just a front for Franco to pursue women. Describing the school as an “orgy-type setting,” the suit contended that Franco “sought to create a pipeline of young women who were subjected to his personal and professional sexual exploitation in the name of education.”
Franco’s settlement allows him to walk away with less money in his pocket, but his reputation—at least as far as the official record is concerned—somewhat intact. According to The Hollywood Reporter:
The settlement will require Tither-Kaplan and Gaal to release claims, with the other students releasing fraud claims against the star actor. Those who are members of the class would have a couple of months to opt out. Unclaimed money would go as a contribution to the National Women’s Law Center.
As part of the settlement, the parties have also agreed to a statement that reads in part: “While Defendants continue to deny the allegations in the Complaint, they acknowledge that Plaintiffs have raised important issues; and all parties strongly believe that now is a critical time to focus on addressing the mistreatment of women in Hollywood. All agree on the need to make sure that no one in the entertainment industry — regardless of race, religion, disability, ethnicity, background, gender or sexual orientation — faces discrimination, harassment or prejudice of any kind.”
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.
Every few years, Steven Soderbergh pops up with a new heist movie, often starring George Clooney and/or Don Cheadle. This is one of the Cheadle ones, which is great because all Don Cheadle has ever done is make good stuff a little better. The rest of the cast ain’t bad either: Benicio del Toro, David Harbour, Jon Hamm, Amy Seimetz, Brendan Fraser, Kieran Culkin, Noah Jupe, Craig Grant, Julia Fox, Frankie Shaw, Ray Liotta, and Bill Duke. Heavy hitters straight through. Perfect for a hot summer weekend. Watch it on HBO Max.
2. Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Hulu)
HULU
Questlove’s loving documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), includes performances from Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mavis Staples, and B.B. King. To quote *another concert* from the 1960s, play it f*cking loud. Watch it on Hulu.
Hamilton set the American Revolution to music. Matt Thompson is setting it on fire, throwing fireworks on the pile while werewolves and founding fathers with chainsaw hands dance. Welcome to an utterly bonkers animated rewriting of American history where beer replaces tea at the Boston Tea Party and George Washington and Abe Lincoln are besties. Because to paraphrase Thompson in our recent interview, wouldn’t it be cool if that’s the way it happened? Watch it on Netflix.
Pixar is back with another sweet coming-of-age story, this time set in Italy and with humans turning into sea monsters. Which is actually kind of par for the course for Pixar. The difference is that this time the movie drops straight on Disney Plus, meaning you can enjoy the summer-y vibes from the comfort of your own living room if you want. A solid way to spend two hours when it’s too hot to go outside. Unless you can turn into a sea monster and cool off in the deepest parts of the ocean. Which would be cool. You have options, is our point. Watch it on Disney Plus.
The Tomorrow War is one of the few high-concept blockbusters coming out this year that’s not a sequel or based on an existing property. That — and the stacked cast, including Chris Pratt, J.K. Simmons, Yvonne Strahovski, Betty Gilpin, Sam Richardson, and Doughboys co-host Mike “Spoonman” Mitchell — makes it a potential sci-fi standout. Watch it on Amazon Prime.
After months trapped indoors, we deserve In the Heights. It’s a sticky, sweaty musical filled with memorable songs from Lin Manuel-Miranda, vibrant direction from Jon M. Chu, and a reassuring message about the importance of community. Who cares if summer doesn’t officially begin until June 20 — it’s summer the day In the Heights comes out. Watch it on HBO Max.
Liam Neeson is back doing his action thing once again, this time as an ice driver in a remote part of Canada who leads a rescue operation over a frozen ocean after a diamond mine collapses. It’s got almost everything you could want out of a Liam Neeson, give or take a few murdered organized crime figures. Watch it on Netflix.
Terrific news for all of you, provided all of you want to hang out inside on a weekend in June and watch spooky stuff on one of the various screens at your disposal: The Conjuring is back and it’s coming straight to HBO Max. In this go-round, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga investigate the case of a confused and blood-soaked young man who says the devil possessed him and made him commit murder. You’d think the devil would have bigger fish to fry than forcing random guys to commit single murders but, hey, we’re not the paranormal investigators here. Watch it on HBO Max.
Sam Richardson from Detroiters and Veep, Milana Vayntrub from the AT&T commercials, together at last, battling werewolves in a small town that has been paralyzed by a massive snowstorm. Yeah, that’ll do just fine. Watch it on VOD.
Epic in its emotional depth and scale (for a comedy special filmed within the space of one room during lockdown), this year-long voyeuristic musical voyage into Bo Burnham’s fraying mind seems at once deeply personal and stunningly relatable. It’s also a hilarious reclamation of satire that takes particular aim at tech and how it has impacted how we interact and live. Stunning and unlike anything you’ve seen before. Did we mention that it’s as funny as it is powerful? Watch it on Netflix.
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.
Tom Hiddleston has an absolute blast playing the mercurial trickster of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and we shall reap the benefits while he helps (and hinders) the Time Variance Authority during the process of cleaning up the timeline. Likewise, Owen Wilson is entertaining as hell (even while saddled with a lot of exposition) as the MCU’s smoothest time cop. This is definitely not the Loki you’re used to (he died in Avengers: Infinity War), but he’s still a delightful scamp, and the show is all about setting up the multiverse. We’re lucky to have this pair to guide us into the future. Watch it on Disney Plus.
Rick and Morty are back, once again, with spaceships and evil aliens and a mess of other science fiction to nod toward and/or poke fun at. This is good news because Rick and Morty is good, still, even today, a number of years after it first started getting weird on TV screens all over the country. Watch the new episodes as they drop, sure, but maybe take a spin through the back catalog too if you have some time to kill. You probably forgot a bunch of good stuff in there anyway. Go. Do it. Watch it on Adult Swim and Hulu.
Dave is a lot of things all at once. It’s childish and sweet, gross and thoughtful, powerfully weird but also extremely human. Mostly, though, it’s just funny. The series follows an aspiring rapper (Dave Burd aka Lil Dicky) as he attempts to make it big. There are cameos from huge stars and urological issues and awkward moments galore. It’s kind of like Curb Your Enthusiasm if that show was about a 20-something white rapper who had a hype man named GaTa. This is a compliment. Watch it on FXX and Hulu.
In the second two premiere of Betty, a stuffed cat-octopus falls from the sky (or at least from the roof of an apartment building) in front of Kirt, one of TV’s best stoner characters, who stops in her tracks, looks at the adorable hybrid-animal, and says, “Okay, I feel you.” Betty is so good. You will feel 75 percent cooler watching it. Watch it on HBO Max.
The first season of this show from Bob’s Burgers creator Loren Bouchard was fun and had a loaded voice cast. (Kristen Bell, Tituss Burgess, Kathryn Hahn, etc.) Kristen Bell isn’t back for the second go-round of the musical comedy, but everything else is the same, with the battle to save Central Park from evil developers still underway. Watch it on Apple TV+.
Bosch is a good show, as it should be with such a deep reservoir of The Wire veterans on both sides of the camera. The Amazon staple is back for one last ride in its seventh and final season, this time focusing on an apartment fire and corruption and, presumably, Bosch’s loose cannon shenanigans causing headaches for his superiors but getting results. It all makes for an excellent weekend binge. Watch it on Amazon Prime.
We’ve seen so many things hold our attention and inspire a sense of community at a time when we really needed it over the last 15 months. Remember The Last Dance? Remember how we all fell in love with Ted Lasso and smiled through the continuing adventures of Baby Yoda? Entertainment culture is good! Anyway, we heartily nominate Penguin Town as the next community watch. Because watching penguins navigate life in a South African town while Patton Oswalt smoothly narrates is the definition of feel-good content. Watch it on Netflix.
Lupin is a French-language heist-y thriller that follows an incredibly smooth thief and master of disguise played by Omar Sy. It’s got diamond robberies and corrupt police and evil businessmen and a conspiracy that goes both back 25 years and all the way to the top. There’s also a cute little dog named J’accuse that barks when anyone says the bad guy’s name. (It’s a good show.) Part I, the first five episode chunk, was a blast and ended on a kidnapping cliffhanger. Part II picks up right there and does not slow down. Watch it on Netflix.
This one will charm you and make you feel an unfamiliar sensation — hope? — despite dark and mature themes. Team Downey brings us this awe-inspiring story based upon a D.C. comic-book by creator Jeff Lemire, who whipped up a post-apocalyptic fairytale about a great sickness that ends with a miracle. That would be the appearance of “hybrids,” babies who are born half-human and half-animal. The comic has been described as “Mad Max Meets Bambi,” and Will Forte gets into serious mode, which is worth the price of admission all by itself. Watch it on Netflix.
Annie Murphy is entering a new phase in her career with this AMC original that takes the “sitcom wife breaks bad” concept and adds some trippy camera work to make it feel fresh and exciting and just a tad frustrating. Fair warning: you’ll hate most of the male characters on this show, particularly the titular doofus, but Murphy’s mesmerizing enough to distract you from all the blatant sexism and corny laugh tracks that come with them. And once her character, Allison, settles on a murderous plan of action to escape this Kevin James-inspired hellscape, all bets are off. We’re a long way from Schitt’s Creek but we’re kind of loving this journey for her. Watch it on AMC Plus.
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Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
