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The Righteous Gemstones has finished its second round of evangelical mayhem, which might be the prime example of how a show’s cast can have the same amount of fun as the audience while crafting gem after gem. Walton Goggins and Edi Patterson are both absolute delights while gobbling up all of the stage curtains, and the latter previously told us that she signed onto this show before even hearing Danny McBride’s initial vision for the series. When a co-working relationship works, it works, but at home, viewers are probably already wondering when they’ll see more “Misbehavin.’”

Those halos sure do stack up, and the show gives us delightful little surprises like Macauley Culkin outta nowhere, so when will the grand return happen?

Patience, grasshoppers. The show’s pilot aired in August 2019, and then obviously, the pandemic slowed everything down, to the point where we had to wait until January 2022 for Baby Billy and Company to glide back onto our screens. Hopefully, there won’t be as much of a wait next time around. Surely, HBO and McBride want to ride that momentum, given that the show keeps growing in popularity. And although HBO hasn’t pinpointed a precise return date for this show, we do know that a Season 3 is coming.

What we also know is this: Season 2 began filming in March 2020 and shut down after only three days. What followed was an extensive rewriting process, but if one takes out all of the pandemic setbacks, the seasons could have realistically come together in two years. So we can cross fingers for January 2024 or earlier for more. Yep, we’ll want it to arrive faster, but the John Goodman-starring series is always worth the wait.

Every month, Uproxx cultural critic Steven Hyden makes an unranked list of his favorite music-related items released during this period — songs, albums, books, films, you name it.

1. Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

This may strike some as hyperbole but I don’t care because it’s true: As strong as the other Big Thief albums are, they feel like rough drafts for what they’ve finally achieved here. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You already feels like the kind of album that’s destined to be handed down from generation to generation, like Automatic For The People or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It’s music I know I will reach for on epic road trips or in the midst of profound grief. An all-timer. A masterpiece. They really did it this time.

Turns out recording in different places with different engineers — drummer James Krivchenia is listed as the album’s producer — had real impact on the music. The seething Old Testament sermonizing of “Sparrow” has heavy Catskills vibes. The sweeping country rock of “Red Moon” (featuring excellent fiddle playing by Mat Davidson, among the small handful of non-band members appearing on the album) carries with it the dust of the Arizona desert. The stupendous “Simulation Swarm” is classic ’70s L.A. soft rock with one of the best guitar solos on any Big Thief album. The gorgeous title track evinces the restraint and simplicity endemic to their work with long-time producer Dom Monks on the previous records. But honestly, every song here is terrific, which is a minor miracle for a band that sought out to (in guitarist Buck Meek’s words) “lose our minds a bit.”

2. Gang Of Youths, Angel In Realtime

For frontman and singer-songwriter Dave Le’aupepe, Angel In Realtime is nothing less than an act of transfiguration, an attempt to bring back his father — who passed in 2018 at the age of 80 — in the form of impossibly monumental tunes that integrate a kitchen’s sink worth of sounds: chamber pop, U.K. garage, Britpop, hip-hop, and indigenous music native to his family’s Samoan and Māori cultures. Over that music, Le’aupepe opens up the innermost sanctum of his life via lyrics that spin a dense web of autobiography, cultural criticism, self-laceration, and sports references. At times, he adopts his father’s perspective; in other moments, he wonders how he’ll move on without him. It’s so personal that as a listener you feel as though you’re eavesdropping on something you shouldn’t. But then the insistent, driving music inevitably pulls you back into the fray. If Angel In Realtime is not ultimately remembered as the best album of 2022 — though it is certainly in the running for that distinction for what is already stacking up to be a year loaded with potential all-timers — it might very well end up being the most album. There is a lot to chew on here.

3. Animal Collective, Time Skiffs

I don’t know if this record will reach listeners beyond their cult of devotees, but it certainly sounds like an attempt by the animals to leave the wilderness. After two difficult (though in my estimation underrated) records, Time Skiffs is the sequel to Merriweather Post Pavilion that many fans probably would have wanted a decade ago. What do I mean by that? Let’s start with the pair of songs that open the album. They are both bottom-heavy, harmony-rich, and immediate indie-pop songs with grabby choruses in the vein of “My Girls” and “Summertime Girls.” The basslines are slippery and the synths are warm and zippy. It’s pretty much as close to “normal” as Animal Collective gets, and it’s remarkable how much of Time Skiffs colors within those very same lines. As the album unfolds, tracks like “Walker” and “We Go Back” amble along at the same amiable mid-tempo pace. Animal Collective’s music no longer emulates the sonic meltdowns of Brian Wilson’s most drugged-out Smile outtakes. Time Skiffs signals the beginning of their Full House period.

4. Black Country New Road, Ants From Up Here

Are we in the midst of a mid-aughts indie rock revival? I’m not just talking about Animal Collective’s comeback. There is also a growing corps of younger bands who grew up on the expansive sounds of that period — when it was standard to have a half-dozen people in your line-up and nearly as many words in your band name — which until recently seemed to be out of fashion. Take this British band, who emerged last year with their debut, For The First Time, that was lumped in with the crop of ascendent post-punk acts with jagged guitars and talky lead singers. But on this new Ants From Up There, they change course, openly embracing the indie-orchestral sound of grandiose throwbacks like Arcade Fire’s Funeral and Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise. It’s a surprising and entirely arresting shift that has resulted in one of early 2022’s buzziest indie records. Though it also comes with the news from last month that singer/guitarist Isaac Wood has exited the band. Will a Phil Collins figure emerge to replace this band’s departed Peter Gabriel? We shall see.

5. String Machine, Hallelujah Hell Yeah

This Pittsburgh band has a lower profile at the moment than Black Country, New Road, but they might ultimately have a more stable future. Their just-released new album, Hallelujah Hell Yeah, also evokes the earnest emotionalism and large-band arrangements of the mid-aughts. But whereas BCNR’s music often takes on a dark, sinister edge, Hallelujah Hell Yeah is full of sunny melodies and insistent hooks. At just 27 minutes, it’s also the kind of album that you feel compelled to spin again immediately once it’s over. I suspect that Hallelujah Hell Yeah will be a word of mouth hit as the year unfolds.

6. The War On Drugs, Live in St. Paul, Feb. 15-16

Having seen the band more than a half-dozen times over the course of a decade — and after digging deep into their bootlegs — I am confident in declaring that they have never played better than they are right now. The shows in St. Paul found them in an enviable sweet spot — the performances were focused and powerful, and the camaraderie between the band and the audience was funny and celebratory. Along with the “Against The Wind” bust out, the birthday show was distinguished by a pizza being delivered to Adam on stage, which he then gifted to the band’s lighting director. That was after an epic balloon drop during the set’s cathartic high point, “Under The Pressure.” It all felt simultaneously tight and loose. Like The E Street Band, each member of The War On Drugs now has a recognizable persona — Hartley is the stoic consigliere situated to Granduciel’s immediate right, drummer Charlie Hall is the kimono-clad showman, keyboardist Robbie Bennett is the swaying creator of synth-y moods, multi-instrumentalists Anthony LaMarca and Jon Natchez are the invaluable utility fielders, and new touring musician Eliza Hardy Jones is the Patti Scialfa figure.

7. Kurt Vile, “Like Exploding Stones”

Since I’m talking about The War On Drugs, I must also mention that a new Kurt Vile record, (Watch My Moves), is set to drop in April. This is the first single, and it’s a perfect slice of mid-period KV — a slow-motion reverie that drifts in like a THC-fueled dream and yet never overstays its welcome. There’s also that awesome part when Kurt drawls, “Welcome to the KV horror drive-in movie marathon.” Hell yeah. We can’t wait to dive into the rest of the record.

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

We live in a society where The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has been turned into a gritty drama, How I Met Your Mother is now How I Met Your Father (“So, Poochie…?”), and Kelsey Grammer still thinks his Frasier reboot is a good idea even without David Hyde Pierce’s involvement, so it’s inevitable that The Office will come back in some form.

NBC is “standing by” for whenever inspiration strikes co-creator Greg Daniels, but he warned Collider about the dangers of trying to replicate the success of The Office… again. “[The Office] was such a wonderful and rare experience that obviously you don’t want to just go back to it and kind of possibly disappoint people when right now, they couldn’t be happier about it,” he said. But let’s say, hypothetically, he were to make a reboot. What would it look like? Something like The Mandalorian, apparently:

“I can’t tell whether fans would want more of it, and when I say more of it, I don’t think it would be the same characters. I think it would just be sort of like an extension of the universe, you know what I mean, like the way [The] Mandalorian is like an extension of Star Wars. But I don’t know if that would be something people would want or not, it’s hard to tell.”

The Office tried to do a backdoor pilot for a spin-off series with season nine’s “The Farm,” but it was not a success. You know why? Not enough Baby Yoda. Get that green rugrat on a cross-country road trip with Erin as she looks for a new receptionist gig, and folks, you’ve got yourself a successful reboot of The Office.

(Via Collider)

Every second of a show’s season finale is precious, especially when it’s a show with such a jam-packed plot and massive audience like Euphoria. This is why watchers found it funny and a little weird that Dominic Fike, playing the role of Elliot, took up a whole scene performing a song.

When Rue (Zendaya’s character) visits Elliot, she’s coming to forgive him for snitching on her; his response is to play a song he wrote on acoustic guitar… for five whole minutes. The song, which remains untitled, is about creating distance from someone you care for with the hope that they’ll use the time to improve themselves and return as a better person.

While many fans were fawning over this emotional moment, most were posting memes to Twitter about how he was getting too much screen time for promoting his own music rather than being his actual character. (A lot of fans were also wondering what happened to the plotline with the suitcase…). All in all, the online conversation made Fike and other Euphoria-related keywords trending topics on Twitter.

To be fair, Fike has previously said that his character Elliot is “exactly like me.” So maybe Elliot is just the type of guy to break out into song at the most inappropriate of times. You know the type. The situation, at least, provided a lot of meme content, so check out some more of that below.

Squid Game was an absolute juggernaut on Netflix, pulling in record breaking views that paved the way for a second season, and now, the Korean series is proving to be just as powerful of a force on the awards circuit. Both of the show’s leads, Lee Jung-Jae and Jung Ho-yeon locked down the awards for Drama Series Actor and Drama Series Actress, respectively. It was historic wins all-around as Squid Game became the first non-English-language and first Korean series to score a win at the SAG Awards.

Both Lee and Jung beat out such power hitters as the cast of Succession, Elisabeth Moss, Reese Witherspoon, and Jennifer Aniston. The show also won for stunts over high-budget Marvel series like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki and the martial arts-heavy Cobra Kai. In fact, Squid Game only lost one of the categories it was nominated for: Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, which went to Succession.

Naturally, Lee and Jung were blown away by their wins, and they hope to see more Korean content make it to American audiences. Via Deadline:

“I think it’s just the beginning. There [is] a lot of amazing Korean content that’s just as entertaining and touching as Squid Game,” he said via an interpreter, “so I ask that you look out for [it], show us a lot of love and continue to watch a lot of great Korean content.”

Squid Game is available for streaming on Netflix.

(Via Deadline)

Eddie Vedder is on a solo tour right now, but the way he tells it, a few weeks ago, it appeared the trek may have been in jeopardy thanks to what he describes as a “pretty serious” case of COVID.

During a February 25 performance at Los Angeles’ YouTube theater, Vedder said between songs:

“I got the COVID right before we were supposed to start practicing, about five or six weeks ago, and literally saw my life flash in front of my eyes, and wasn’t quite sure, you know… I’ve done some very good things for my body and I’ve also had a lot of fun. I’ve done some things that […] I don’t want to get into the details. Just use your imagination [laughs]. But it felt pretty serious, and to get through that and then be back in a room like this, facing this many people facing this way, listening to us play music for you is really, truly, it’s been a gift and an honor. Thanks for listening; we’re so grateful.”

Fortunately, it seems like Vedder has recovered just fine, as he’s been vital enough to tour and bring his Mötley Crüe feud to the stage.

Watch Vedder speak about getting COVID below, at about 3:30 into the video.

Hey, do you want to see John C. Reilly eat a cheeseburger and wear a shirt with collars so wide they could wrap around the globe? How about an intense one-on-one basketball game at a Hollywood party that begins with one of the contestants wearing a full-length fur coat? Adrien Brody with a mustache? Sally Field as John C. Reilly’s mother? One character very casually asking another character if they’ve ever received oral sex from someone who had champagne in their mouth? A bunch of people just obliterating the fourth wall with fun asides about the 1980s and/or basketball and/or cocaine?

Of course you do. Everybody does. This is the beauty of Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, HBO’s new series about, well, the rise of the Lakers dynasty. It does all of that. Other stuff, too, which we’ll get to, but definitely all of that. The show is an absolute blast, right from the jump, especially if you, like me, care about basketball and prestige television a little more than a well-adjusted person would consider “a healthy amount.” It’s fun and a little salacious — you can see why basically every real person and organization depicted in it grits their teeth when it comes up — and it just does everything, so much, almost all of the time. As it should. This is a show set in Los Angeles in the 1980s based on a book and era both called “Showtime.” Anything less than too much would not be enough.

(A brief aside: The book — by Jeff Pearlman, a longtime sportswriter — and era are both called “Showtime,” which would have been a perfect title for the show in about four different ways, and there’s even a point early on where a band performs a song with “showtime” in the chorus, but the show is called Winning Time because it is on HBO and Showtime is quite literally the name of one of HBO’s biggest premium cable competitors. This is very funny to me.)

But let’s back up. Let’s take the basketball out of all of this, briefly. What we have here is an origin story, really, one that you’ve seen play out a bunch of times in movies and television shows, one that replaces characters like Batman or Iron Man with real-life figures like Magic Johnson and longtime Lakers owner Jerry Buss and, at least a little bit, Paula Abdul. You don’t even really need to like basketball to follow any of it, just the way you don’t need to like people murdering each other with swords to follow Gladiator. It helps, sure, but it’s not necessary. There’s a familiar structure to things here, a rise and fall and good guys and bad guys, some of whom are almost cartoonish in their villainy, some of which is deserved. It’s almost like Adam McKay — executive producer and occasional director of the series — knows what he’s doing a little bit.

Everyone seems to be having a great time, too, which helps. There are some performances in here, people. Quincy Isaiah plays Magic Johnson at the beginning of his career, out in Hollywood after growing up in Michigan, dealing with fame and temptation and a bubbling race issue within both the NBA and the country as the years flip from the 1970s to the 1980s and Larry Bird and the Celtics create a natural rival. Jason Clarke plays Laker legend (and literal NBA logo) Jerry West as the mercurial crank he allegedly is, throwing trophies and golf clubs and tantrums every few minutes. Gaby Hoffman plays Lakers executive Claire Rothman, a woman navigating a boys’ club, with a heaping scoop of understandable exhaustion.

There are more. You’ll see. I wasn’t joking about Adrien Brody with a mustache, as Lakers coach Pat Riley. But this is where we need to stop to discuss John C. Reilly as Dr. Jerry Buss. Look at this guy.

There are two things you need to know here. The first is that Jerry Buss — the show’s version, but also the real person — is a classic Los Angeles character, for better and worse, a genius and a swindler and a hedonist, a salesman and charisma bomb, a man who opens the series by telling you — like, you, dead into the camera — that the only things that make him believe in God are sex and basketball. The second thing is that John C. Reilly was born to play this role. It’s amazing. It’s his best performance since Walk Hard, which I do not say lightly. He saunters and charms and winks and appears to be having just a wonderful time straight through. Even if the rest of the series proves to be a little too self-indulgent for you (again, it’s a lot, mileage may vary, etc.), it’s almost impossible to not be in awe of everything he’s doing.

(A second aside: There is drama here. The role originally went to Michael Shannon, who pulled out due to discomfort with the utter lack of a fourth wall, reportedly. Will Ferrell, McKay’s longtime creative partner, allegedly wanted it, but McKay offered it to Reilly instead. It created an ugly scene, apparently. But, regardless of your take on any of that, it’s hard to argue with the results.)

HBO would very much prefer I not spoil some of the things that happen in the first few episodes, at least not the specifics, which is always tricky in a show based on real events, so let’s close with this and hope I don’t get yelled at too much. There is a scene, early on, before we get to the parties and the cocaine and the dancers, where Jerry Buss and Magic Johnson go grab a hamburger after things get weird at a fancy dinner. They’re just sitting on a car, chomping into their greasy burgers, with the aforementioned wide collars on, talking about the future. It’s kind of wild if you already know how things play out, with the championships and the rise of the entire NBA and Magic’s eventual earth-shaking HIV diagnosis. It’s just two dudes from completely different backgrounds dreaming a bit. It’s really pretty cool.

Again, to be clear, I suspect someone like me — a basketball sicko who writes about television for a living — was always going to like this. It’s like Narcos crossed with Space Jam, which could not possibly be more up my alley and I promise I mean as a compliment. But I think it could play for you, too, even if you’re not me. It’s fun and flashy and scandalous and a little delicious and anyone who is even loosely familiar with the story will get to do the “Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the television screen” meme at least once an episode. That’s really all you can ask for out of a television show sometimes.

The collars and fur coats do help, though.

Winning Time premieres on HBO at 9 pm on March 6

Last Week Tonight‘s delivered a main segment about sex work (and the problem with criminalizing the practice) on Sunday night, but as one might imagine, John Oliver also had harsh truths to offer about Russia’s attack on Ukraine. This, of course, differed from the unsavory (and self-promotional) approach of John Cena and the cringeworthy maternal-themed poetry from AnnaLynne McCord, but no one can deny that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a total badass, especially considering how he passed up an offer of extraction from the U.S. in favor of being a true ride-or-die for his people, all while Russia’s becoming persona non grata on the global stage.

For his part, Oliver has had absolutely enough with the journalist-killing, rival-poisoning president of Russia. “Putin is a lot of things,” Oliver declared. “[H]e’s an autocrat, a tyrant, a warmonger. But also, he’s kinda a huge b*tch.” And Oliver did not hold back while tearing into CNN for the hot mess of airing a butt-shaking Applebee’s ad amid visuals of an already war-torn Ukraine:

“CNN during its coverage of air-raid sirens in Kyiv somehow found a way to make it even worse with this terrible transition to break…. It’s not great, is it? It’s not just that they cut to a commercial for a restaurant whose food can only be described as ‘sometimes warm,’ it’s just so aggressively American. From the country song that thinks listing food counts as lyrics all the way to this human Boot Barn shaking his nonexistent ass.”

For its part, Applebee’s pulled its ads while expressing how “disappointed in the actions of the network” the restaurant chain was for how CNN juxtaposed the butt-shaking with images of warfare. Yet Oliver didn’t let them go lightly: “That’s some deft international diplomacy from the home of both the ‘grilled oriental chicken salad’ and the ‘tipsy leprechaun.’”

Oliver had plenty to say, as well, about the neoconservative-influenced George W. Bush (and his War in Afghanistan moves), who (as Oliver reviewed) stepped up while “condemning Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine.” Oliver couldn’t resist pushing back on that one. “Hold on, George. Not from you,” the host declared. “You are not the guy for this one. Because that statement only would have made sense if it ended with ‘Oh sh*t, now I hear it. Sorry. I’ll shut the f*ck up now.” As always, John Oliver’s not one to let go of historical screwups, and it’s a fair point.

Rep. Lauren Boebert has never been the sharpest knife in GOP’s drawer. In the 13 months she has officially been an elected lawmaker for the state of Colorado, her political career has become a seemingly never-ending cycle of her making comments that are both dumb and ignorant, then being dragged mercilessly for her lack of knowledge about everything from the American Revolution to the U.S. Constitution. So it’s hardly surprising that, given her cluelessness about American politics, her thoughts on foreign matters would be even more misguided—as she proved this weekend.

As HuffPost reports, the gun-lovin’ Coloradan chatted with Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany and Pete Hegseth from CPAC on Sunday, where her attempts to praise Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned into yet another terrible take, when she attempted to compare the innocent Ukrainians who are arming themselves in an effort to protect their country and freedoms to the truckers creating a massive clusterf*ck in Canada, simply because they don’t want to get vaccinated against COVID.

“I pray for Ukraine and I wish them the best,” Boebert said. “They have a great president right now who has really said clearly, ‘Live free or die.’ He said, ‘I don’t need a ride, give me ammunition. The fight is right here.’ But we also have neighbors to the north who need freedom and need to be liberated and we need that right here at home as well.”

If you’re thinking: Wait a minute, that doesn’t seem like an apt comparison—you’re not alone. As Raw Story reported, Canadian MP Anthony Housefather took to Twitter to kindly let Boebert know that if she ever wants to know why what’s coming out of her mouth is gibberish, he’d be happy to give her a lesson in all things Canada. (He did, however, praise her for breaking with Donald Trump’s way of thinking for once—because Canadians are nice like that.)

Bruce Heyman—the former U.S. ambassador to Canada—also called “dangerous” Boebert out on her bullsh*t, but wasn’t quite as nice about it. “Canada is our best friend-best trading partner- closest ally and should be treated as such.

(Via HuffPost)

Last month, Lady Gaga mentioned on multiple occasions that an on-camera moment from shooting House Of Gucci that didn’t make the final movie saw her and Salma Hayek engaging in a make-out session. She said there was no proof of it, but at least Hayek has confirmed the kiss happened, like she did on the red carpet of the SAG Awards last night.

In the interview, Hayek was asked what her most fun day on set was and she was quick to answer, “OK, I have to say this: The day that Gaga kissed me was… but of course, I couldn’t say before because they took it out of the movie, but now that the cat’s out of the bag, I have to say it was pretty fun because it was completely unexpected and she’s a genius… and a good kisser.”

Hayek noted the kiss was not in the script and was improvised by Gaga, saying she walked across the room to Hayek. Hayey said she “absolutely” went for it and noted, “It was thrilling because all her choices were always so interesting.”

Meanwhile, Gaga herself spoke on the red carpet as well: When asked about the story she was telling with her outfit, she responded, “The story I’m telling is the truth, which is that I’m just really honored to be here. This is a beautiful night when we get to celebrate art together, and celebrate each other. There’s so much going on in the world, and my heart really goes out to Ukraine. I think tonight we should all sit in the gratitude of this.”

Check out the Hayek interview above.