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The Daily Show is in a fascinating place right now, grabbing headlines and attention with splashy guest hosts and the fresh energy that they bring in a sort of audition process that keeps making a case that maybe it should never end. After all, complacency breeds indifference, and while ratings aren’t where they were in the era of Jon (Stewart) or at the high point of Trevor Noah’s run (an industry-wide situation), at least people are noticing, driven in part by this fascination with new.

This time around, the guest host is former Senator Al Franken, a veteran political satirist who was among one of the first writers on SNL nearly 50 years ago and a best-selling author (who once got sued by Fox News) and radio personality in another life before getting elected by the people of Minnesota to go to Washington. We all know what happened next. Leann Tweeden, who was performing with him on a USO tour made allegations of sexual misconduct against Franken, to which he apologized and readied for an ethics investigation. Several former colleagues came out in support of Franken, but members of his party pushed for him to resign fearing charges of hypocrisy if they didn’t come out as strong against Franken as they did with Donald Trump. Franken eventually stepped down but has said that he regretted the decision and that he should have allowed for due process to play out, saying, “Differentiating different kinds of behavior is important.” Several Senators who called for Franken’s resignation have also said, in 2019, that they regret their role in pushing him out.

A lot has happened since all of that with Franken slowly re-merging into public life as a comedian and commentator. This at a time when everything in and around Washington has gotten a lot louder and more chaotic with the pandemic, nationwide protests, a fiercely contested election, debunked charges of election fraud, the January 6th assault on the US Capital, revelations about FOX News’ role in stoking anger around those baseless charges, anxiety in the banking sector, and now a looming arrest of Trump for possible campaign finance crimes. And some of this stuff only just happened in the last two weeks.

We spoke with Franken a couple of weeks ago right after texts from Fox News personalities saw the light of day, calling bullshit on a lot of their on-air reporting around Trump’s stolen election narrative. We start the conversation there before going into the power of shows like The Daily Show to inspire change and the evolution of political satire and impact of bad actors on the cultural conversation.

Lachlan Murdoch saying that Fox News “reports without fear or favor.” Thoughts on that? Without Fear. No favor at all.

All of a sudden, no fear. Oh my God, our stock is tanking. That seemed like fear. And favor is “I’ve hated Trump forever, but we’ve got to say he’s great.” But other than that, no fear or favor.

None whatsoever. Very fair and balanced.

That’s amazing. You see, that’s what’s so funny about Fox is that you can’t get caught more red-handed, right? Which is, okay, they knew Dominion machines worked. They knew that Sidney Powell was lying. They knew that Hugo Chavez hadn’t programmed them, and Italian satellites weren’t changing Trump votes to Biden votes. They knew that, but they kept saying, “It looks like this election’s been stolen,” and they’re caught red-handed. And yet, three days later, Tucker releases this video, this edit of January 6th saying, “They were a meek and orderly crowd.”

Tourists.

And of course, they’re not covering this story at all. I wrote a book, Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at The Right, 20 years ago. And it was at a time when you didn’t call people liars. It was something you just didn’t do. And because of that, in the book, I proved that they were liars very methodically and very well-documented. And they sued me. They sued me before the book came out. They hadn’t read any of the book. So they weren’t suing me because they said I was lying. It was that I used a fair and balanced look at the right, and that had been their slogan at the time, fair and balanced. And so Bill O’Reilly was the one who made them sue me because I had embarrassed him at something. But he didn’t understand that satire is protected speech, even if the object of the satire doesn’t get it.

The idea of all this coming out, these statements, the Dominion stuff, does any of it make an impact on Fox viewers and the populace as a whole in terms of the interpretation of what Fox is? Is it going to shake anybody off that tree?

That’s a really, really great question. I don’t know the answer. As I said, immediately Carlson released that video of January 6th, which is ridiculous. And just a few days after all of his texts were revealed showing that he knew that Powell was lying, I think he called her a f-ing liar and et cetera, and then continued to have her on. But even after that, he just goes right back to, “it was a meek and orderly crowd.” And so does that work for them? I think they think so.

I think they think that, okay, we’ll weather this. And usually, things like this are weathered. With Trump, anytime some scandal hit or some weird thing he said, the first one was, “I like guys who weren’t captured.” This is about McCain being a POW. I thought well, that’s the end of him. And then there’s been a million of those. “That’s the end of him.” And I have the feeling that this does not affect Fox viewers at all. In fact, I think people have gotten accustomed to, “I believe them until it turns out it wasn’t true, but even so, I’m on that side and it’s okay.”

Where does The Daily Show fit in current-day political discourse as a tool for information and showcasing hypocrisy? And what are you looking to do with your time on the show?

Well, it’s interesting that one of the challenges of doing the show is if an event happens that day, 10,000 people have written jokes about it on Twitter by the time it gets to the show.

I think well over 13 of them are good.

All you need is one.

Yeah, I guess so.

And hopefully, you’re the one who thought of it. You’re a comedian or a comedy writer, and so are the people at The Daily Show. But that makes it harder, I think, to do a show like this than it was (before Twitter). So that’s a little different, but it’s the same format, and you’re just hoping that day something interesting that you can write something funny about happens.

Outside of being funny, does the show have the ability to still have an impact on politics, the discourse? When you were in the Senate, obviously this is a different time than a few years ago, but did the movements of a show like The Daily Show (or John Oliver or Sam Bee when she was on) still ring in the halls of power?

It was interesting. John Oliver did something on net neutrality. I don’t know if you remember that, but I was a big net neutrality advocate, and he did a really good piece on it, and it made a difference, and it crashed the website at the FCC. So these things can make a difference. Now, I don’t know how many people watched The Daily Show 10 years ago. And there’s a lot of late-night comedy so, I don’t know. I can’t measure it.

Obviously, you go from the Senate back to comedy. How has that transition been? Is that reigniting a part of your brain? Is it like riding a bike?

I did comedy for so long. I started doing it in school and started working with Tom Davis; we were two of the original SNL writers. And so comedy was my first career. I was a caddy actually for a while when I was younger. But then comedy. But it’s different after you’ve left it. I’m very impressed with a lot of the young comedians and not so young comedians who really work hard and churn out a new hour every year or something like that. I thought Chris Rock’s latest concert was really great and admire that work ethic and the talent. Now, I will say this, I don’t see a lot of comedians doing standup who do bits about pharmaceutical prices and why they’re the way they are. I do. They’re expensive.

Political comedy, obviously the relationship to the kind of jokes you can tell and how fully in you can go (is different). I think about how educated the audience is also. I think this is a more educated audience now than maybe back in the ’90s and ’80s.

I’m not sure about that.

More informed, I would say. Not smarter, but there’s more information in front of them.

Well, let’s see, I was at SNL from ’75 to ’80 and from ’85 to ’95. And during that period, I wrote a lot of the political sketches and a lot of them with Jim Downey and a lot of other people. And Jim is a very, very, very thoughtful and smart conservative. And we felt that the job of the show was to do well-observed comedy that rewarded people for knowing stuff, but didn’t punish them for not knowing stuff. That was how we viewed what we were doing. And I was really very happy with what we did then, and we were very often asking the audience, not demanding that they know stuff, but rewarding the ones who did. And I felt a lot of reward for that. We got, at that time, huge ratings, but that’s when there wasn’t streaming, and there wasn’t other stuff.

Where do you stand in terms of comedians when they step over the line with the level of offense, the term cancel culture, things of that nature?

Well, I think they’re real judgments. People can get up and say things that are truly offensive, truly obnoxious. And they could be saying something that’s truly obnoxious and offensive, and they were deliberately doing that to demonstrate, obviously this is I’m showing what’s obnoxious and offensive and doing it in a way that’s clearly demonstrating that, “I’m on the side of not being.” (Laughs) You know what I mean? That’s a lot of satire. That’s a lot of dark humor. And then there are also people who just do stuff that’s offensive, and they mean it. They are inappropriate. Genuinely racist humor is not acceptable. Making fun of racist humor in a way that is clear that that’s what it’s doing, depending on who you are and it’s complicated and you can go awry, but I think there are differences.

‘The Daily Show’ with Al Franken begins its week-long run tonight at 11PM ET on Comedy Central

Chris Rock brought down the house while joining an all-star line-up to roast Adam Sandler as he accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday night. The comedian, who’s riding high off his latest Netflix special Selective Outrage, showed up with more than just jokes about Sandler and proceeded to drag Donald Trump‘s upcoming arrest before taking more shots at the Oscars, likely due to both The Slap and a subject related to Sandler.

Rock ended his set by managing to both praise Sandler and rip the Oscars (which didn’t nominate him for his acclaimed turn in Uncut Gems) at the same time. “Nobody works as hard as the Sandman!” Rock said via The Hollywood Reporter. “Those folks at the Oscars, man… they’re f*cking a**holes.”

Before that happened, he went off on Trump: “Are you guys really going to arrest Trump?” Rock joked. “Do you know that this is only going to make him more popular? It is like arresting Tupac. He’s just going to sell more records. Are you stupid? He slept with a porn star and paid off someone so his wife wouldn’t find out. That’s romantic.”

After mocking Trump, the comedian couldn’t resist making a crack about his Will Smith incident after he spotted Paul Pelosi in the audience. Via Deadline:

One stand out moment came when Rock made a reference to being slapped by Will Smith on the Oscar stage last year. He quipped that Paul Pelosi, who was in the audience, was “the only guy who knows how I felt.” Pelosi, the husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, was seriously injured in a hammer attack by an intruder last year. He was in the audience with his wife.

On that note, Rock declared, “Just you and me Paul. Just you and me, babe.”

(Via Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter)

Donald Glover doesn’t need to write a memoir about his personal life. He already has Swarm. Janine Nabers, who co-created the Amazon Prime Video series about stan culture, told Insider that a memorable scene from the sexy show was inspired by something that actually happened to Glover.

“Donald told this funny story about a girl who he really liked, and how after they hooked up, he was standing there with a bowl of cherries, just being like, ‘Hey.’ She was, like, so not into it, because it’s so weird to hook up with a guy that you barely know and then wake up with him holding a bowl of cherries,” she said. Something similar (but with a different fruit) happens in Swarm:

In the scene, Dre (Dominique Fishback) wakes up after having lost her virginity to a random man (Rory Culkin) she met at a bar. To her surprise, the man is naked, washing a bowl of strawberries. He then walks over to her and offers her some fruit, with the glass bowl pressed directly against his flaccid penis.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the Swarm writers room when they debated whether the hookup should be holding cherries, like Glover did in real life, or strawberries. No one voted for a banana. Too obvious.

Swarm is available on Amazon Prime Video now.

(Via Insider)

Over the weekend, former Nickelodeon actress (and star of several hit movies in the aughts) Amanda Bynes had been scheduled to make an appearance at a 1990s-based convention event in Connecticut. For previously undisclosed reasons, Bynes pulled out of the event, and one of her All That co-stars, Kel Mitchell, expressed that he was “praying” for her. Mitchell and his other co-stars, including Kenan Thompson, further stayed mum on the subject, and TMZ is now following up on the reason why Amanda missed the event.

Notably, this would have been the first public event following Bynes’ bipolar diagnosis and court-ordered conservatorship, which wound down in spring 2022. However, TMZ now provides a sad update, which is that Amanda experienced what she described as a “psychotic episode” and began roaming the streets unclothed. Reportedly, she requested help from a passerby car and phoned 911 on her own accord. Here’s what TMZ is currently reporting:

An eyewitness tells us … Bynes was seen walking near downtown Los Angeles early Sunday morning without any clothes. We’re told Bynes waved a car down, telling the driver she was coming down from a psychotic episode. Amanda herself then called 911.

Our law enforcement sources say Bynes was taken to a nearby police station, where a mental health team determined she needed to be placed on a 5150 psych hold.

TMZ adds that Bynes remains on a 5150 hold pending further evaluation.

Bynes starred in All That for several dozen episodes in the late aughts. She went on to theatrical ventures with What a Girl Wants, Hairspray, She’s The Man, and Sydney White before stepping away from Hollywood amid ongoing personal troubles and being placed under the aforementioned conservatorship.

(Via TMZ)

Some things, like peanut butter and jelly, simply go hand in hand. Pasta and wine is one of them. However, when it comes to Sunday Supper, it’s not all about Italian red table wine. Stick with us, we’ll explain.

As with any meal, understanding the foundations of food and wine pairing is key, and actually not as hard as you may think. Simply take the main components in food — salt and fat — and marry them with the structural foundations of wine — which are acid, body, and in the case of red wine, tannins. In short, you definitely don’t want the wine’s body to overpower the pasta dish in question, and taking the acidity/tannins of a wine into consideration will go a long way when pairing a bottle with pasta…

This brings us to the star of the show itself. When pairing wine with pasta, it’s not actually the carb-based noodles you want to consider, but the sauce. Think about the salt, acid, and fat of the sauce in question—is it full-bodied and creamy, such as a carbonara or alfredo? Or light on its feet, such as garlic and oil? These factors will ultimately deem which wines will pair best with your main course.

If you’re still feeling a bit confused, worry not. We’ve got a few go-to pairings to get you started, as well as explanations as to why these wines will pair best with said sauces. Get the water boiling and dive into your one-stop pasta pairing guide below.

PAIRING 1 — PASTA WITH MARINARA / TOMATO SAUCE

Pairing:

Medium-bodied, high-acid reds – Sangiovese, Barbera

Explanation:

Tomato-based marinara sauce is the quintessential pasta topping—so much so, that small Italian restaurants have been called “red sauce joints” for ages. In terms of wine pairing, here’s where we go exactly where you’d expect—the equally quintessential Italian table wine. Sommeliers and industry pros alike will sing the praises of Sangiovese, which is the backbone to Chianti, Rosso di Montalcino, and Brunello, and rightfully so.

Sangiovese’s medium body, high acid, and moderate tannins, as well as its signature cherry-driven flavors and tomato leaf undertones, make it a no-brainer for sipping with simple sauce. Red wines of a similar structure, such as Barbera or Dolcetto, will also pair well here, too.

Go-to Bottles:

Pagliarese Chianti Classico, Cascina Alberta Barbera d’Alba

PAIRING 2 — PASTA WITH MEAT SAUCE

Pairing:

Medium to full-bodied reds with ample acidity — Nebbiolo, Nero d’Avola, Etna Rosso

Explanation:

While Sangiovese will also pair well with meat-based ragus, fuller-bodied red wines will also work here, as the fat in the meat can undoubtedly stand up to more prominent tannins. Nebbiolo-based wines, such as those from Langhe, Barolo, or Barbaresco, will work phenomenally here, as well as a number of indigenous Sicilian varieties. We’d recommend steering clear of anything overly oaked, as the natural sweetness brought on by new oak will clash with the savory notes found in the sauce.

After all, the sauce is the star of the show here.

Go-to Bottles:

Paitin ‘Starda’ Langhe Nebbiolo, Feudo Montoni ‘Lagnusa’ Nero d’Avola, Benanti Etna Rosso

PAIRING 3 — PESTO PASTA

Pairing:

Light to Medium-bodied, high-acid whites – Vermentino, Sauvignon Blanc, Grüner Veltliner, Albariño

Explanation:

Contrary to the heavier reds above, lighter-bodied sauces like pesto, garlic and oil, and more, call for equally lighter-bodied wines. However, what makes pesto unique is the innate green flavors that come from the ample amount of basil used to create it. Rather than reaching for any old high-acid white, look for wines that have signature greenness (in other words, herbaceous) flavors, such as Sauvignon Blanc, Grüner Veltliner, or Albariño. However, for the absolute best pairing, reach for a refreshing bottle of Ligurian Vermentino.

They say what grows together goes together, and in this case, the saying couldn’t ring more true.

Go-to Bottles:

Punta Crena Isasco Vermentino, Domaine Octavie Touraine, Sohm & Kracher ‘Lion’ Gruner Veltliner

PAIRING 3 — PASTA WITH CREAM SAUCE (CARBONARA, ALFREDO)

Pairing:

Medium-bodied whites – Chardonnay, Etna Bianco

Explanation:

Heavier sauce calls for—you guessed it—a fuller-bodied wine. However, the trick with cream-based sauces is to reach for a wine with a full enough body to stand up to it, yet also enough acidity to cut through the fat and keep your palate salivating. While Chardonnay can offer a mixed basket of options, looking for one from cooler-climate areas with restrained oak use (think Sonoma, the Côte d’Or, or Western Australia) promises to marry impeccably with your carbonara or alfredo sauce.

A number of professionals will also recommend earthy, lighter-bodied reds (think Pinot Noir or Chardonnay), and while those won’t clash with the dish, a luscious, high-acid Chardonnay will make the sauce feel like velvet.

Go-to Bottles:

Famille Paquet Bourgogne Blanc, Tenuta delle Terre Nere Etna Bianco

PAIRING 5 — SEAFOOD PASTA (WHITE WINE / GARLIC AND OIL BASE OR RED SAUCE BASE)

Pairing:

Light-bodied, medium plus to high-acid wines – Verdicchio, Pinot Grigio, Chablis (white) or Barbera, Schiava, Pinot Noir (red)

Explanation:

By now, you know where this is going – light and bright sauce calls for an equally light and bright wine. Garlic and oil is pretty versatile, and a number of white wines will go well here. The trick is to keep the oak use neutral, or simply stick to wines aged in tank to ensure that freshness is intact. To keep it classic, reach for a traditional Italian Verdicchio, Vernaccia, or Pinot Grigio, though for a cultural collision that promises to overdeliver, Chablis and aglio olio will never cease to disappoint.

For seafood pastas tossed in red sauce, stick to a light to medium-bodied red with ample acidity, such as Barbera, Schiava, or Pinot Noir.

Go-to Bottles:

ColleStefano Verdicchio, Louis Michel Chablis

Taylor Swift launched The Eras Tour with two shows in Glendale, Arizona this past weekend, and it has people excited. JJ Watt was in attendance one night and he was blown away by both the production value and by Swift’s stamina during the 3-hour show. Kelsea Ballerini (who you may have seen on Saturday Night Live earlier this month) is another celebrity Swiftie who is so obsessed that even in the middle of her own concert, she just had to know if one of her favorite songs made the setlist.

While performing in Atlantic City on March 17, between songs, Ballerini needed her curiosity satisfied, so she asked her audience, “Can I just level with you for a minute? Is anyone stalking The Eras Tour? Has it started? I just have one… I’m gonna stalk it after this, but I have one question: Is ‘Cruel Summer’ on the setlist?”

The audience cheered in affirmation, and once Ballerini got her answer, she gave a celebratory gesture and added, “Wow, that’s my Super Bowl, I gotta be honest. Alright, wow, that’s all I needed to know. Thank you for that. It’s like live updates.”

Indeed, “Cruel Summer” is on the setlist: It was the second song Swift performed on both nights so far.

Read our review of the debut Eras Tour concert here.

Back in March 2022, legendary action actor Bruce Willis was diagnosed with aphasia and took an official step away from the spotlight. Then, in February 2023, the beloved “Die Hard” star progressed into frontotemporal dementia, an incurable brain disorder often mistaken for Alzheimer’s that mainly affects personality, behavior and language, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Despite the tragic news, Willis is supported by loved ones, as seen in a video posted by ex-wife Demi Moore. The clip, posted to Twitter on March 19, captures Willis’ family surrounding him in celebration of his 68th birthday.

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“Happy birthday, BW! So glad we could celebrate you today,” Moore wrote in the video’s caption. “Love you and love our family. Thank you to everyone for the love and warm wishes — we all feel them.”

Happy birthday, BW! So glad we could celebrate you today. Love you and love our family.
Thank you to everyone for the love and warm wishes – we all feel them. pic.twitter.com/vcb50QP9hr

— Demi Moore (@justdemi) March 20, 2023

Moore’s tweet took over the internet with over 15 million views. Many left comments sharing how nice it was to simply see Willis so clearly happy with his loved ones, especially given his bleak diagnosis.

“This brought tears to my eyes. He looks great and the entire family looks happy and well. So beautiful to see. Happy Birthday, Bruce!!” one person wrote.

Another added, “Thanks to you for letting us be part of that moment, you know that we love and care about Bruce. Receive a loving hug to all the family and friends.”

One person noted how dementia affects an entire family, and a little compassion can go a long way.

“Dementia is a roller coaster which all the family rides. Ups, downs, spirals, and sudden turns. Relationships are stressed to breaking points. But pales to the depth of fear seen in the patient’s eyes when they can’t trust their mind anymore. Hugs and embraces helps their fear,” they wrote.

Willis’ daughter Scout also made a heartfelt Instagram post that’s simply too poignant not to share.

Alongside a childhood photo showing Scout as a sleepy kid resting on Willis’ shoulders, she praised her “Pisces King” of a father for his mastery of being “both action hero icon and gentle girl dad.”

See on Instagram

“Today is not necessarily an easy day,” she continued. “Because it’s a day full of so deep love, and our grief really does show us the depth of our loving for someone. So I’m trying to be with both today.”

Scout’s post concluded with the hope that her message might provide some comfort for “anyone who has ever felt their capacity stretched by the enormity of love and the humanness of grief.”

Losing a loved one is never easy. Losing them to dementia, however, is a very specific type of pain. But as these shared moments show, continuing to cherish life can be a very healing salve for everyone involved.

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches.”

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“I felt absolutely appalled when she said this, as me and the teacher have, up until now, always maintained a very friendly relationship. She added that the lunches I’m packing my son are ‘very distracting for the other students and have an unpleasant odor.’ I told her that I understand her concerns, as the lunches I pack are definitely not the healthiest, but the lunches are according to my son’s preferences.”

The mother added that she usually sends her son to school with small celery sticks, blue cheese and goat cheese, kimchi, spam and spicy Sriracha-flavored Doritos.

“I ended the call by saying that I very much appreciated her worries, but that at the end of the day, I am not going to drastically change my son’s lunches all of a sudden, and that it’s not my fault if other students are ‘distracted’ by his meal,” the mother continued. “It is very important to me what my son enjoys, and I want him to like my lunches.”

The teacher replied with an email saying the mom’s response was “unacceptable” and that his lunches were “just too inappropriate to be sent to school any longer.”

“I haven’t responded yet and don’t want to. I want to maintain a healthy relationship with my son’s teachers. I am confused as to what to do,” the mom ended her story.

It’s clear that the teacher is way out of line in this situation because the child is eating food that is entirely normal in Korean culture. It may have a strong odor to those who aren’t used to it, but that’s just an opportunity for the teacher to explain to the children how people from different parts of the world eat different types of food. It’s not that hard.

The only reason the teacher should have any choice over what the child eats is if it is egregiously unhealthy and may cause them harm.

The most popular commenter on the forum suggested that the mother bring the issue to the principal’s attention.

“Report her to the principal,” Thatshygal717 wrote. “Her comments regarding your son’s food are ‘disgusting’ and ‘have an unpleasant tone’ aka cough cough racist tone. She’s too inappropriate to be teaching at the school any longer.”

Another commenter, muffiewriters, assured the mother that she was doing nothing wrong. “Your son’s food is perfectly normal,” they wrote. “For a 5-year-old. Your family’s food is normal. The teacher is TA for not recognizing that.”

The mother hasn’t shared what she did next, but she’s handled the situation perfectly so far. She told the teacher that it’s not her fault if other kids are distracted by her food and that she will not change her son’s diet to please other people.

The beauty of America is that we are a country of many different cultures mixed like a beautiful bowl of salad. It’s great that so many people supported the mother and reminded her that her family has every right in the world to eat the food they love, and if it bothers anyone, they can keep it to themselves.

P.S. That teacher has no idea what she’s talking about. Korean food is delicious.

If you, a Better Call Saul fan who has watched every season except the last one because you’re waiting for it to be on Netflix, have somehow gone this long without having the ending spoiled for you, you probably stay off Twitter and Reddit, and therefore, live a happy, fulfilling life. It’s about to get even happier: Better Call Saul season six premiere is coming to Netflix next month

“The sixth and final season of Better Call Saul premieres April 18 on Netflix (in The US),” the streaming service’s Twitter account wrote. I will not spoil what happens in the final season, other than it’s great and you should check to see where the nearest Cinnabon is located before April 18th. Believe me.

Bob Odenkirk recently took part in a Reddit Ask Me Anything to promote his new AMC series, Lucky Hank. When asked of all the roles you’ve played, which one would you say is the closest to your actual personality?” Odenkirk replied, “In some ways Hank Devereaux Jr. [from Lucky Hank] is closest but he’s still pretty far away from me. I would say that Jimmy McGill as you see him in the final episode of Better Call Saul I felt was closer to me than any other Jimmy played and at any other time and by a fair margin.”

I thought he was going to say the triples guy from I Think You Should Leave, because triples is best.

While most fan-favorite, critically acclaimed shows seem to get better with every season, there are a few exceptions (sorry to The OC and Killing Eve). When a show becomes a hit, the pressure is on the writers to live up to the hype, which can sometimes make or break a show (see HBO’s short-lived Gossip Girl reboot).

The showrunners of Showtime’s dark hit Yellowjackets know that the is a lot riding on the upcoming season. While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson described the high expectations for season two as “soul-crushing,” but they had some solid advice from actor and friend Jason Segel, who worked with the duo on the 2020 drama series Dispatches From Elsewhere.

Nickerson explained, “Before [Yellowjackets] premiered, Jason Segel told us, “Don’t worry! There are three or four shows that everyone talks about and loves. There are three or four shows that everyone talks about and f*cking hates. The other 595 fall right in the middle. Find a little audience and it’s fine.’” Nickerson added that they never thought the show would become such a massive hit. “We thought we’d be one of those, so this season feels different.”

The fact that many shows are being canceled left and right doesn’t help, though Showtime seems confident in the series, seeing as they already ordered a third season before season two drops later this month. But they are jumping headfirst into the next season of the culty drama. Lyle added, “We go right into season three. We’re starting the writers’ room in April. No break.” How could you even take a break when those poor girls are stuck in the 90s out there in the Canadian wilderness?!

Season two will bring back the key cast alongside some fun guest stars, including Elijah Wood! It seems like fans will enjoy it no matter what… as long as they love cults, murder, and cannibalism.

Yellowjackets season two will premiere on March 26th on Showtime.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)