Back in 2021, the Milwaukee Bucks finally ascended to the NBA’s mountaintop. It came on the heels of a Giannis Antetokounmpo openly floating his desire to look around due to his desire to win a championship and a major swing by the front office to bring a big-time guard — in this case, Jrue Holiday — to Milwaukee.
If that playbook sounds familiar, well, that’s because the team did that exact same thing this offseason. Antetokounmpo said on multiple occasions that he won’t remain a Buck if the team doesn’t match his desire to compete. Not long after, the front office swung for the fences, pulling off a monster deal to bring Damian Lillard to the Eastern Conference for the first time in his career. There’s a lot of basketball that needs to be played, but if all goes right, this season will end the same way as their 2021 campaign, and Milwaukee will get to call themselves champions once again.
Biggest Question: Is Upgrading Their Offense With Damian Lillard Worth Downgrading Their Defense?
Milwaukee having to part ways with Holiday was not easy. As a player and as a person, Holiday was a beloved member of the organization, the sort of guy that you root for even if you have no stake in the Bucks. Watching him go to the team’s biggest rival in the Eastern Conference following a pit stop in Portland had to have been a gut punch.
And yet, it’s not hard to see why Milwaukee’s front office made the decision to turn Holiday (along with Grayson Allen and Draft capital) into Lillard. An issue for the Bucks is that their offense is prone to getting stuck in the mud, particularly when the game slows down and they have to play in the halfcourt. This comes with the caveat that Antetokounmpo was clearly not right as he played through injuries and essentially missed the first three games, but the Bucks’ offense in their first-round loss to the Miami Heat in the playoffs was brutal. Small sample sizes and what not, but in four losses, Milwaukee had an offensive rating of 109.4 with an effective field goal percentage of 53.2 percent. Their true shooting percentage came in at 55.9 percent. While a wonderful player, Holiday’s had some postseason warts over the last few years, namely when it comes to efficiency from the field (38.4 percent on field goals, 30.6 percent from three over 17 playoff games in the last two years).
Offenses do not stall out when Lillard is running the show, and the thought of a two-man game with himself and Antetokounmpo is legitimately one of the most exciting things in the league. The bet that the Bucks made was that all of this is that the gains they’ll make on that end of the floor will offset what losing Holiday — perhaps the most versatile defensive guard in the league — means on the other. While we don’t know what new head coach Adrian Griffin will want his defense to look like, it’s worth mentioning that Milwaukee’s defense in recent years has featured elite rim protection, and with Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez returning, that should remain.
X-Factor: Khris Middleton
Is it just me, or has everyone kind of just forgotten how good Middleton is at his best this offseason? There were glimpses where he looked like the multi-time All-Star last season, you just needed to squint sometimes as he was working his way back from surgery to repair a torn ligament in his wrist. He was hot and cold against Miami in the playoffs, but his good games looked great. His efficiency as a shooter took a step down, but his per-36 numbers looked an awful lot like what you generally expect out of him — from 2019-22, Middleton had per-36 averages of 23 points, 6.6 rebounds, 5.7 assists, and 1.2 steals. Last season, he was at 22.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, 7.3 assists, and one steal.
Between him being in a good place physically and his long-term future being settled, it’s not hard to foresee Middleton having a big bounceback season. His ability as a secondary playmaker should fit great next to Lillard, and after an awful season on catch-and-shoot threes (he only connected on a legitimately jarring 29.5 percent), don’t be surprised if he’s immediately the best third option in the league. How he holds up defensively — he might have to take on the opposing team’s best perimeter player with some frequency — is a real question.
Yoko Ono will forever be a significant part of the history of The Beatles, with some having blamed her and her relationship with John Lennon for the band’s demise. Now, Paul McCartney has spoken about how Ono’s presence during recording sessions wasn’t something the rest of the band necessarily liked.
In an episode of his McCartney: A Life In Lyrics podcast (as People notes), McCartney spoke about a time when the band was “heading toward” a breakup, during the recording of 1968’s The White Album.
McCartney said, “John and Yoko had got together and that was bound to have an effect on the dynamics of the group. […] Things like Yoko being literally in the middle of the recording session [were] something you had to deal with. The idea was that if John wanted this to happen, then it should happen. There’s no reason why not.”
He later added, “Anything that disturbs us, is disturbing. We would allow this and not make a fuss, and yet at the same time, I don’t think any of us particularly liked it. It was an interference in the workplace. We had a way we worked. The four of us worked with George Martin. And that was basically it. And we’d always done it like that. So not being very confrontational, I think we just bottled it up and just got on with it. […] It was the idea of The Beatles, it was also just this straight, practical thing of, ‘This was our job.’ This is what we did in life. We were the Beatles. That meant if we didn’t tour, we recorded. And that meant if we recorded, we wrote.”
Meanwhile, in 2021, Peter Jackson, who directed the Get Back documentary series about the band, said of Ono, “I have no issues with Yoko in the sense… I can understand from George and Paul and Ringo’s point of view it’s, like, a little strange. But the thing with Yoko, though, that they have to say, is that she doesn’t impose herself. She’s writing letters, she’s reading letters, she’s doing sewing, she’s doing painting, sometimes some artwork off to the side. She never has opinions about the stuff they’re doing. She never says, ‘Oh, I think the previous take was better than that one.’ She’s a very benign presence and she doesn’t interfere in the slightest.”
Drake’s weird gambling luck struck again this weekend. The Stake ambassador dropped $850,000 banking on Logan Paul to defeat Dillon Danis in the latter fighter’s debut match. While he was right in picking the winner, however, he banked it all on Paul to defeat Danis by knockout. Instead, Danis, who had never boxed but did compete in a pair of MMA matches — both pre-pandemic, by the way — tried to choke out Paul, resulting in a disqualification — and losing Drake nearly $1 million in the process.
Drake previously lost money picking the winner in March this year, after selecting the University of Connecticut to take home the NCAA National Championship. Unfortunately for him, he placed $250,000 on a spread of 6-10 points on the final score and “only” $100,000 on more than 10 with the final score at 76-59, resulting in a net loss of around $20,000 (the payout for the winning bet was only $230,000).
The For All The Dogs rapper is never down for long, though. He again picked the winner of a basketball championship in June, selecting the Denver Nuggets to beat the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. They did, and he took home $850,000 — the same amount he lost over this weekend. It just goes to show that the so-called “Drake Curse” may be a lot of hot air, but nobody is immune to taking an L, not even Drake. Considering how often his picks are good though, his luck should turn around soon enough.
Over the weekend, Madonna kicked off her Celebration Tour at London’s O2 Arena — much to the excitement of fans. However, the tour had originally been delayed, because the singer faced life-threatening health issues.
During the night, she addressed the crowd, as the news of her being in the hospital this summer made headlines.
“It’s been a crazy year for me,” Madonna said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it, neither did my doctors. That’s why I woke up with all of my children sitting around me.”
“I forgot five days of my life – or my death. I don’t really know where I was,” she added, according to Entertainment Tonight. “If you want to know my secret and how I pulled through and how I survived, I thought, ‘I’ve got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them.’”
At the time, Madonna had suffered a “serious bacterial infection” that led to her having to stay in an intensive care unit. Eventually, she used Instagram to update that she was recovering.
Given a few months have passed, she seems to be back in full swing, though. During the show, Madonna played a bunch of her biggest hits like “Hung Up” and “Like A Prayer” — with most of the setlist being songs she hadn’t performed in years.
Madonna is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.
This week saw Bad Bunny add to his growing legacy and PinkPantheress continue the launch of hers. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
It’s only been about a year and a half since Bad Bunny dropped Un Verano Sin Ti, but he’s already back with another new album, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va A Pasar Mañana. The album arrived alongside a video for “Monaco” and Benito even managed to snag an Al Pacino appearance for the visual.
Ice Spice and Rema — “Pretty Girl”
What a past few days for Ice Spice: She linked up with Afro-fusion star Rema on the delightful new “Pretty Girl,” which in itself is enough to celebrate. Then, though, the pair performed the track on Saturday Night Live, complete with an introduction from Taylor Swift.
Boygenius — “Black Hole”
Once upon a time, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker uniting as the Boygenius supergroup may have seemed like a one-off deal, but now they have multiple projects under their belt: A debut EP, a debut album, and now another EP, The Rest. Like the material that preceded it, the new EP is the sound of three friends enjoying each other’s company via vulnerable songwriting and performances.
Offset — “Say My Grace” Feat. Travis Scott
Offset’s second solo album, Set It Off, has arrived, and therefore so has “Say My Grace,” his new collaboration with Travis Scott. On the track, both reflect on their affluence while Offset gets some face-time with God and talks about the passings of his grandmother and Takeoff.
PinkPantheress — “Capable Of Love”
PinkPantheress is doing better than most 22-year-old musicians and she doesn’t even have a debut album yet. That’s changing soon, though, as she announced Heaven Knows last week and shared “Capable Of Love,” a fan-favorite song that has at last gotten an official release.
Woods just released her third album, Water Made Us, last week, but before that, she unveiled an aesthetically clever and skin-bearing video for “Practice.” The Saba-featuring track has a subtle groove and is perhaps the smoothest rendition of the classic Allen Iverson “practice” rant.
Tomorrow x Together — “Chasing That Feeling”
The K-pop titans are only a few months removed from releasing their latest album, the Japanese-language Sweet, but they’re already back with more, The Name Chapter: Freefall. They also unveiled a video for “Chasing That Feeling,” which combines ’80s pop aesthetics with a more modern sound.
Holly Humberstone — “Paint My Bedroom Black”
Humberstone has been a rising star for the past few years now, and at last, her debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black, is here. The title track is brighter than its dark bedroom setting might suggest and sees Humberstone feeling optimistic and wanting a fresh start.
Kaliii — “Say Too Much” Feat. Young Nudy
Recent Uproxx cover star Kaliii had a breakout single earlier this year with Area Codes, and now she’s followed that up with a fresh EP, FCK GIRL SZN. She linked up with Young Nudy on “Say Too Much,” a sultry song that’s clear about its subject matter from the opening line: “You ain’t gotta say too much / From the look in your eyes, I can tell you wanna f*ck.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
John Oliver zeroed in on the chaos happening in Congress thanks to the Republican majority’s inability to choose a new House speaker to replace the recently ousted Kevin McCarthy. Naturally, embattled congressman George Santos had a hand to play in the dysfunction, and Oliver couldn’t resist pointing out what he believes is Santos’ biggest lie yet.
During Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, Oliver played a clip of Santos being questioned by a reporter on why he didn’t vote for Steve Scalise, whose run at the House speaker position collapsed under the GOP insanity.
Santos moaned to reporters last week that Scalise hadn’t responded to his multiple requests for guidance, slamming it as a “dereliction of duty.”
“Is he snubbing you?” one journalist asked Santos.
“I don’t know. I don’t care quite frankly,” the congressman snapped back before leaving the scene.
Oliver didn’t believe Santos, which is usually the best route to take.
“Are you sure about that? Because it really seems like it’s because Scalise snubbed you,” Oliver said. “Honestly, Santos saying, ‘I don’t care,’ in a tone that makes it clear he absolutely cares might be the most transparent lie that he’s ever told, which is saying something.”
Mike Flanagan took one look at Edgar Allan Poe’s body of work – a collection of verses and stories that obsess over death, loss, immortality, the afterlife, and the purposeless exercise of human existence – and thought, “That sounds like a hit Netflix show.” He was right.
Over the course of eight episodes, Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher plays out like a supernaturally-splattered Succession on steroids. Filled with allegories, Gothic symbolism, morally deviant characters, dark humor, grotesque deaths, and Carla Gugino whispering poetic monologues while donning every wig in the Netflix prop department, the show is a lush cautionary tale littered with Victorian-era prose and 21st-century problems.
Oh, and death. Bloody, agonizing, unimaginably cruel yet oddly satisfying, death. It’s that last bit we’re most interested in at the moment — the hows and whys of each Usher family member’s demise and what it means in the greater context of the show. So, being the callous observers of pop culture that we are, we’ve ranked those deaths — delighting in most, mourning a few, and loudly cheering for how our number one pick kicked the bucket.
Netflix
11. Lenore Usher
Death By: Verna When: Episode 8
Young Lenore was the best of the Usher clan, a teen who saw clearly her family’s faults and their capacity to change — if they so desired. She was Roderick’s favorite for a reason, which makes the inevitability of her death all the more tragic. By making his deal with Verna, Roderick doomed Lenore to die before she was even born. Thankfully, Verna took no pleasure in doling out her fate, giving her a glimpse of the future and some hope that her memory would live on in her mother’s philanthropic work.
Netflix
10. Eliza Usher
Death By: Unspecified Illness When: Episode 1
Some might blame Eliza Usher for traumatizing her children to such a degree that they chose to become mass-murdering monsters rather than live in poverty and obscurity as she forced them to. So, for some, the idea that she was buried alive by her children after suffering from a debilitating illness, only to claw her way from a soggy grave, prowling the neighborhood in the pouring rain in search of her married lover whose throat she then strangles feels like a reasonable comeuppance. Again, for some.
Netflix
9. Madeline Usher
Death By: Cyanide and Treachery When: Episode 8
Madeline Usher was a brilliant, shrewd businesswoman driven by greed, the pursuit of power, and her loyalty to her brother — which is why her death at the hands of the person she trusted most seemed so horrifying. With their bloodline erased and Verna knocking on their door, Roderick poisoned his sister’s drink with cyanide, mummifying her still-living body by replacing her eyes with jewels to mimic the entombing process of the Egyptian pharaohs whose obsession with immortality she shared. She eventually gets her revenge, but for a woman whose life work was creating an Artificial Intelligence algorithm that could keep her consciousness alive indefinitely, we can’t believe this is how she’d want to go out.
Netflix
8. Roderick Usher
Death By: Deserved Strangulation When: Episode 8
Unlike his sister, who was so jaded by their father’s abandonment and their mother’s submissive penance, Roderick Usher felt like he had the capacity to be good. He married, had children, and almost took down a pharmaceutical company killing people for profits. His choice to make a deal with the devil that granted him the riches and power he yearned for while passing the burden of payment onto his own children revealed a moral rot that managed to eat away at his family tree as the years went on. Still, betraying his sister felt like the final nail being hammered into his coffin so having Madeline murder him in the same way his mother murdered their father felt satisfying … and morbidly ironic.
Netflix
7. Napolean Usher
Death By: Accidental Fall Orchestrated By A Black Cat When: Episode 4
Napolean Usher was a hard-partying Lothario who used his family’s fortune to erect himself a gaming empire built on other people’s good ideas and large amounts of blow. He was a prick, sure, but we weren’t actively rooting for his demise until he slaughtered his boyfriend’s poor cat, bought a demonic replica, and then tried to play the victim when Verna wouldn’t take it back to the kill shelter. Wearing black satin to a funeral we can forgive, but tearing apart your apartment with a mock-up of Thor’s hammer so you can murder an innocent animal is just vile. Toppling over your penthouse’s dangerously designed balcony is probably a cleaner death than this guy deserved.
Netflix
6. Victorine Usher
Death By: Suicide When: Episode 5
Victorine Usher, like her siblings, was desperate for her father’s approval. So desperate in fact that she sacrificed her soul and her life’s work for the chance to impress Roderick with her heart mesh technology. Her intentions may have begun altruistically, but the pressure and impossible demands made upon her by a selfish, self-serving parent slowly drove her to madness. Well that, and the fact that she accidentally killed her wife, used her dead body as a human trial for her device, disassociated the whole thing, and then was plagued by an incessant ticking noise that no one seemed to hear save her. Eventually, she put herself out of her misery, carving out her own heart because her tests needed a healthy organ.
Netflix
5. Rufus Griswold
Death By: Solid Masonry (And Cyanide) When: Episode 8
Technically Rufus Griswold isn’t a member of the Usher family, but his death was so deliciously horrible, that we had to give it a shout-out here. Everyone on this list (save Lenore) probably deserved to meet a gruesome end, but Griswold’s, while not as painful as some, felt the most satisfying. After blackmailing the Usher siblings, turning Roderick into Fortunato’s patsy, and taking credit for Madeline’s schemes, the pair enact their revenge at a New Year’s Eve party. Drugged with a paralytic and poisoned with cyanide, Rufus wakes up chained to a wall in the basement of the company’s building with Madeline and Roderick burying him alive with brick and mortar. Before leaving him to die in the dark, Madeline places his jester’s mask back on his face which explains why Roderick often hears bells as he blankly stares at the wall when Verna comes to collect her debt.
Netflix
4. Camille L’Espanaye
Death By: Vengeful Chimps When: Episode 3
Curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it also killed Camille L’Espanaye. The Usher family’s resident spin doctor was too good at her job, hounding her sister Victorine once she sniffed a whiff of deceit surrounding her medical trials. She came to the lab intent on getting proof of Victorine’s crimes so in that, she was successful. But, when you’ve been marked for death since birth and you don’t heed the warnings of a preternaturally wise security guard who looks like Carla Gugino, getting your face ripped off by an angry chimp your familial rival has been experimenting on is kind of your own fault.
Netflix
3. Tamerlane Usher
Death By: Mirrors (And Insomnia) When: Episode 6
Tamerlane Usher hopes that by building a wellness empire to rival that of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, she might finally separate herself from her name — and prove her worth to her disinterested, unfeeling father at the same time. Instead, her clout-chasing side hustle ends up costing her a marriage, a company, and her sanity. Technically, Tamerlane dies when dozens of glass shards impale her body after she breaks every mirror in her home to ward off Verna’s harassment but, would she have spiraled so quickly if she had just listened to her himbo husband and gotten some damn sleep? Who can say?
Netflix
2. Prospero Usher
Death By: Radioactive Orgy When: Episode 2
Poor Prospero Usher. A young, bisexual twink with more money than talent, more ambition than know-how, and a higher following count than IQ score. His revelatory idea to create a club franchise that caters to the rich and ready-to-behave-badly set is lost on his elders so, naturally, he picks an abandoned Fortunato lab to host a trial run. Unfortunately, despite Verna’s warnings, he goes ahead with the debauched revelry, signaling the start of the night’s climactic mass orgy by way of the building’s sprinkler system whose water source he neglected to check. Bodies were writhing and people were definitely screaming, just not in the way Prospero planned as acid rained down on his guests, leaving almost everyone charred beyond recognition. This is why we don’t leave the house.
Netflix
1. Frederick Usher
Death By: Swinging Pendulum But Mainly, His Own Idiocy When: Episode 7
A bumbling egomaniac with no spine and a taste for the nose candy, Frederick Usher was the last of his siblings to kick the bucket and his death was both nightmare-inducing and, honestly, well-deserved. After torturing his adulterous wife — an unresponsive burn victim — for a few episodes, Frederick enacts his ultimate revenge — injecting her with a paralytic so that he can slowly remove her teeth to keep in a tin box. High on committing the kind of crimes against humanity that the Geneva Convention was created for, Frederick takes his cocaine and his coddled-from-birth sense of entitlement to the warehouse where his brother died in order to see it finally torn down. But, while pissing on Prospero’s grave, he snorts the wrong drug, dropping like a drunk fly and laying prone, unable to shout for help as the building collapses around him and a pendulum of sharp debris slices its way through his innards. Unlike Taylor Swift, Karma is not Frederick’s boyfriend.
Mike Flanagan took one look at Edgar Allan Poe’s body of work – a collection of verses and stories that obsess over death, loss, immortality, the afterlife, and the purposeless exercise of human existence – and thought, “That sounds like a hit Netflix show.” He was right.
Over the course of eight episodes, Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher plays out like a supernaturally-splattered Succession on steroids. Filled with allegories, Gothic symbolism, morally deviant characters, dark humor, grotesque deaths, and Carla Gugino whispering poetic monologues while donning every wig in the Netflix prop department, the show is a lush cautionary tale littered with Victorian-era prose and 21st-century problems.
Oh, and death. Bloody, agonizing, unimaginably cruel yet oddly satisfying, death. It’s that last bit we’re most interested in at the moment — the hows and whys of each Usher family member’s demise and what it means in the greater context of the show. So, being the callous observers of pop culture that we are, we’ve ranked those deaths — delighting in most, mourning a few, and loudly cheering for how our number one pick kicked the bucket.
Netflix
11. Lenore Usher
Death By: Verna When: Episode 8
Young Lenore was the best of the Usher clan, a teen who saw clearly her family’s faults and their capacity to change — if they so desired. She was Roderick’s favorite for a reason, which makes the inevitability of her death all the more tragic. By making his deal with Verna, Roderick doomed Lenore to die before she was even born. Thankfully, Verna took no pleasure in doling out her fate, giving her a glimpse of the future and some hope that her memory would live on in her mother’s philanthropic work.
Netflix
10. Eliza Usher
Death By: Unspecified Illness When: Episode 1
Some might blame Eliza Usher for traumatizing her children to such a degree that they chose to become mass-murdering monsters rather than live in poverty and obscurity as she forced them to. So, for some, the idea that she was buried alive by her children after suffering from a debilitating illness, only to claw her way from a soggy grave, prowling the neighborhood in the pouring rain in search of her married lover whose throat she then strangles feels like a reasonable comeuppance. Again, for some.
Netflix
9. Madeline Usher
Death By: Cyanide and Treachery When: Episode 8
Madeline Usher was a brilliant, shrewd businesswoman driven by greed, the pursuit of power, and her loyalty to her brother — which is why her death at the hands of the person she trusted most seemed so horrifying. With their bloodline erased and Verna knocking on their door, Roderick poisoned his sister’s drink with cyanide, mummifying her still-living body by replacing her eyes with jewels to mimic the entombing process of the Egyptian pharaohs whose obsession with immortality she shared. She eventually gets her revenge, but for a woman whose life work was creating an Artificial Intelligence algorithm that could keep her consciousness alive indefinitely, we can’t believe this is how she’d want to go out.
Netflix
8. Roderick Usher
Death By: Deserved Strangulation When: Episode 8
Unlike his sister, who was so jaded by their father’s abandonment and their mother’s submissive penance, Roderick Usher felt like he had the capacity to be good. He married, had children, and almost took down a pharmaceutical company killing people for profits. His choice to make a deal with the devil that granted him the riches and power he yearned for while passing the burden of payment onto his own children revealed a moral rot that managed to eat away at his family tree as the years went on. Still, betraying his sister felt like the final nail being hammered into his coffin so having Madeline murder him in the same way his mother murdered their father felt satisfying … and morbidly ironic.
Netflix
7. Napolean Usher
Death By: Accidental Fall Orchestrated By A Black Cat When: Episode 4
Napolean Usher was a hard-partying Lothario who used his family’s fortune to erect himself a gaming empire built on other people’s good ideas and large amounts of blow. He was a prick, sure, but we weren’t actively rooting for his demise until he slaughtered his boyfriend’s poor cat, bought a demonic replica, and then tried to play the victim when Verna wouldn’t take it back to the kill shelter. Wearing black satin to a funeral we can forgive, but tearing apart your apartment with a mock-up of Thor’s hammer so you can murder an innocent animal is just vile. Toppling over your penthouse’s dangerously designed balcony is probably a cleaner death than this guy deserved.
Netflix
6. Victorine Usher
Death By: Suicide When: Episode 5
Victorine Usher, like her siblings, was desperate for her father’s approval. So desperate in fact that she sacrificed her soul and her life’s work for the chance to impress Roderick with her heart mesh technology. Her intentions may have begun altruistically, but the pressure and impossible demands made upon her by a selfish, self-serving parent slowly drove her to madness. Well that, and the fact that she accidentally killed her wife, used her dead body as a human trial for her device, disassociated the whole thing, and then was plagued by an incessant ticking noise that no one seemed to hear save her. Eventually, she put herself out of her misery, carving out her own heart because her tests needed a healthy organ.
Netflix
5. Rufus Griswold
Death By: Solid Masonry (And Cyanide) When: Episode 8
Technically Rufus Griswold isn’t a member of the Usher family, but his death was so deliciously horrible, that we had to give it a shout-out here. Everyone on this list (save Lenore) probably deserved to meet a gruesome end, but Griswold’s, while not as painful as some, felt the most satisfying. After blackmailing the Usher siblings, turning Roderick into Fortunato’s patsy, and taking credit for Madeline’s schemes, the pair enact their revenge at a New Year’s Eve party. Drugged with a paralytic and poisoned with cyanide, Rufus wakes up chained to a wall in the basement of the company’s building with Madeline and Roderick burying him alive with brick and mortar. Before leaving him to die in the dark, Madeline places his jester’s mask back on his face which explains why Roderick often hears bells as he blankly stares at the wall when Verna comes to collect her debt.
Netflix
4. Camille L’Espanaye
Death By: Vengeful Chimps When: Episode 3
Curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it also killed Camille L’Espanaye. The Usher family’s resident spin doctor was too good at her job, hounding her sister Victorine once she sniffed a whiff of deceit surrounding her medical trials. She came to the lab intent on getting proof of Victorine’s crimes so in that, she was successful. But, when you’ve been marked for death since birth and you don’t heed the warnings of a preternaturally wise security guard who looks like Carla Gugino, getting your face ripped off by an angry chimp your familial rival has been experimenting on is kind of your own fault.
Netflix
3. Tamerlane Usher
Death By: Mirrors (And Insomnia) When: Episode 6
Tamerlane Usher hopes that by building a wellness empire to rival that of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, she might finally separate herself from her name — and prove her worth to her disinterested, unfeeling father at the same time. Instead, her clout-chasing side hustle ends up costing her a marriage, a company, and her sanity. Technically, Tamerlane dies when dozens of glass shards impale her body after she breaks every mirror in her home to ward off Verna’s harassment but, would she have spiraled so quickly if she had just listened to her himbo husband and gotten some damn sleep? Who can say?
Netflix
2. Prospero Usher
Death By: Radioactive Orgy When: Episode 2
Poor Prospero Usher. A young, bisexual twink with more money than talent, more ambition than know-how, and a higher following count than IQ score. His revelatory idea to create a club franchise that caters to the rich and ready-to-behave-badly set is lost on his elders so, naturally, he picks an abandoned Fortunato lab to host a trial run. Unfortunately, despite Verna’s warnings, he goes ahead with the debauched revelry, signaling the start of the night’s climactic mass orgy by way of the building’s sprinkler system whose water source he neglected to check. Bodies were writhing and people were definitely screaming, just not in the way Prospero planned as acid rained down on his guests, leaving almost everyone charred beyond recognition. This is why we don’t leave the house.
Netflix
1. Frederick Usher
Death By: Swinging Pendulum But Mainly, His Own Idiocy When: Episode 7
A bumbling egomaniac with no spine and a taste for the nose candy, Frederick Usher was the last of his siblings to kick the bucket and his death was both nightmare-inducing and, honestly, well-deserved. After torturing his adulterous wife — an unresponsive burn victim — for a few episodes, Frederick enacts his ultimate revenge — injecting her with a paralytic so that he can slowly remove her teeth to keep in a tin box. High on committing the kind of crimes against humanity that the Geneva Convention was created for, Frederick takes his cocaine and his coddled-from-birth sense of entitlement to the warehouse where his brother died in order to see it finally torn down. But, while pissing on Prospero’s grave, he snorts the wrong drug, dropping like a drunk fly and laying prone, unable to shout for help as the building collapses around him and a pendulum of sharp debris slices its way through his innards. Unlike Taylor Swift, Karma is not Frederick’s boyfriend.
Travis Barker has been drumming for Blink-182 since 1998. Lest you think his passion for playing “Dysentery Gary” (my favorite song about a guy whose name rhymes with an intestinal disease) has waned over the years, the drummer showed off a gruesome hand injury he suffered for ~ rocking too hard ~ during a recent show as part of the band’s 2023-2024 world tour.
“In the Instagram Story, Barker raised his hand close up to the camera as he showed all of his fingers covered in blood and scabs — and a wide gash across the knuckles,” according to People. “The drummer also showed off his blood-stained pants — a result of his hand injury — in a subsequent snap.”
You’re welcome to see pics of the nasty injury here, but I don’t suggest it.
Barker and wife Kourtney Kardashian are awaiting the birth of their first child together. “I love experiencing life through their eyes and doing with them all the things I did as a child. Going to Disneyland or even just touching sand for the first time,” she told Vanity Fair Italia. “I love creating traditions and memories and making everyday things feel special and magical. Being able to do that now with Travis is a dream come true.”
Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Travis Barker has been drumming for Blink-182 since 1998. Lest you think his passion for playing “Dysentery Gary” (my favorite song about a guy whose name rhymes with an intestinal disease) has waned over the years, the drummer showed off a gruesome hand injury he suffered for ~ rocking too hard ~ during a recent show as part of the band’s 2023-2024 world tour.
“In the Instagram Story, Barker raised his hand close up to the camera as he showed all of his fingers covered in blood and scabs — and a wide gash across the knuckles,” according to People. “The drummer also showed off his blood-stained pants — a result of his hand injury — in a subsequent snap.”
You’re welcome to see pics of the nasty injury here, but I don’t suggest it.
Barker and wife Kourtney Kardashian are awaiting the birth of their first child together. “I love experiencing life through their eyes and doing with them all the things I did as a child. Going to Disneyland or even just touching sand for the first time,” she told Vanity Fair Italia. “I love creating traditions and memories and making everyday things feel special and magical. Being able to do that now with Travis is a dream come true.”
Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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