GoneTrending

Mariah Carey has become one of the best Twitter users of her generation, with her witty observations and responses to fans offering entertainment and insight to thousands — especially as she pretty much goes viral with every tweet. What she lacks in quantity she makes up in quality, such as when she roasted a Baltimore rapper who sampled “We Belong Together” and joked about risking a poorly lit photo for a COVID shot.

Today, she decided to reply to a viral tweet that has been floating around for about a month that praised her songwriting prowess. The tweet, posted on December 17 by a fan account, captioned a snippet of Carey’s video for her 2008 video “Touch My Body” by expressing amazement that the veteran pop star would rhyme the words “secret rendezvous” with “Wendy interview” — as in, Wendy Williams, she of the gossip-laden daytime television talk show fame (although at the time, it was radio with her syndicated show on New York’s WBLS).

Replying with a quote tweet, Carey seemed nonplussed. “Why wouldn’t one use such an obvious rhyme scheme?” she wrote. Within an hour, the tweet had accumulated well over 2,500 retweets and 16,000 likes. Responses from fans ranged from nostalgic reveals that Carey’s songwriting got them better grades in school to joking that Carey could out-rap the most committed of rappers. Carey’s vocabulary — at least in the pop world — would appear to be unrivaled… but for her, it looks like there really is nothing to it. Check out more responses below.

In a new excerpt from his upcoming memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, prolific actor Brian Cox reveals that he was offered. a role on Game of Thrones, but turned it down because the money “was not all that great, shall we say.” In a truly curmudgeony style reminiscent of his role as Logan Roy on Succession, Cox opens up about people constantly asking him why he wasn’t on the fantasy series and how he doesn’t want to know if the role he turned down ended up being crucial to the show. Via GQ:

I’m often asked if I was offered a role in Game of Thrones — reason being that every other bugger was — and the answer is, yes, I was supposed to be a king called Robert Baratheon, who apparently died when he was gored by a boar in the first season. I know very little about Game of Thrones so I can’t tell you whether or not he was an important character, and I’m not going to google it just in case he was, because I turned it down.

As Cox goes on, he reveals that Game of Thrones isn’t the only franchise that he’s pestered about. Harry Potter is also a constant source of questions. Although, he seems to be genuinely disappointed about never getting an offer to join the wizarding world and can we just say Brian Cox is one hell of a writer. The man has a way with words.

“Harry Potter. That’s another one they ask me about,” Cox writes. “Harry f*cking Potter. I think someone had a burning cross held up for me not to be in Harry Potter, because all my pals were in it.”

(Via GQ)

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Listen to me

Maybe you, like me, have had a Parks and Recreation-shaped hole inside you for the past few years. A hole that can only be filled by another similar show, a feel-good endeavor about public servants trying hard to make things better in the face of slow-moving government and lunatic citizens and all of it. Maybe, like me, you are also a lifelong resident of Eastern Pennsylvania and get a little excited when anyone on the television references Philadelphia or Philadelphia-adjacent things. (Go Birds, etc. etc.) If so, or even if not, allow me to recommend ABC’s new sitcom Abbott Elementary.

The concept, in short: A new second-grade teacher (Quinta Brunson, creator and star) starts working at a Philadelphia public school and tries — sometimes successfully, sometimes less so — to make a difference in the lives of her students. There’s a love internet brewing with a substitute tester. There’s a crazy and mostly incompetent principal. There’s a South Philly Italian lady who knows a guy who knows a guy who can get you anything. There’s Sheryl Lee Ralph as a kindergarten teacher given it the full Sheryl Lee Ralph. There’s a ton of adorable kids. It’s a good start. We can build from here.

The execution is the key, though. It uses the same mockumentary format as shows like Parks and The Office and Modern Family to drive home the message and give the characters a chance to tell the audience their fears and dreams and motivations. There is heart here. It can be very sweet in places. And also very funny. And at one point, this happens, in a touching moment that I will not spoil and which I point out mostly so I can once again say “Go Birds.”

It’s been a little while since we had a fun, smart, good network sitcom that we can all wrap our arms around. We’ve had other options, for sure. There are so many shows so many places. Some of them have a network sitcom vibe, to one degree or another, even if they’re only available online from a website that sells you books and kitchen appliances or an app made by a company that makes computers and telephones. (Ted Lasso would fit in on a network if Roy cussed less, which is unacceptable and therefore a non-starter, but you get my point.) But even then, they’re freed from the constraints. They can blow past 22 minutes. They don’t have to write for commercial breaks. It’s not that one is easier or harder than the other, they’re just… different.

And it’s kind of cool to see someone take a swing at this again. At making a smart and fun network sitcom in 2022. In another universe, this show ends up on a streaming platform and dumps its whole season on a Thursday and gets bumped from the home page in a week or two by 300 new releases. That would be a bummer. Now, it’s rolling out once a week and building steam through word of mouth and articles like this one. That’s kind of cool. A little throwback. You can still go get caught up on Hulu, too, if you missed the first three episodes on ABC. Best of both worlds, really.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Reese… what are we doing here?

Social media is weird. I know that’s not some grand revelation or anything, but still. It’s true. And social media is weird in a bunch of different ways, too. It’s weird that we all sort of know a lot about some people we’ve never met in person. It’s weird that you can wake up and eat breakfast and then just tell, like, Martha Stewart what you had for breakfast. But mostly it’s weird because you can just be sitting around minding your business and then THWAP Reese Witherspoon is tweeting about crypto and NFTs.

I need you to do something here. I need to read that tweet out loud. Every word of it. “In the (near) future, every person will have a parallel digital identity. Avatars, crypto wallets, digital goods will be the norm. Are you planning for this?” Okay, now read it a second time, this one just in your head, but in Reese Witherspoon’s voice. Give it the full Elle Woods. See what I mean about social media being weird?

It gets weirder, too. Turns out this wasn’t Reese’s first tumble into the world of crypto and/or NFTs. Turns out she has kind of a lot of opinions about them. Opinions like, for example, this one…

… and this one, too.

There are two equally important things going on here. The first is that this is very, very funny to me. I haven’t figured out exactly why yet. I think it’s that it’s Reese Witherspoon. I don’t know why but I would have had her way, way down the list of celebrities who are Way Into Crypto. It just doesn’t fit. Again, read these tweets in her voice and tell me I’m wrong. Maybe I am. But I don’t think so.

This brings us to the second thing, which is going to be a problem: I read this last tweet earlier this week and I don’t think I’ve gone more than an hour since without “REESE WITHERSPOON SAYS CRYPTO IS HERE TO STAY” shooting to the front of my brain unprompted. Like, sitting around, driving a car, trying to get back to sleep at 2 AM, pretty much any situation can be interrupted by this. If I can’t push it out soon, it could haunt me for years. This is just how my brain works. It’s all fun and games until you can’t remember your cousin’s name because Reese Witherspoon’s crypto takes are hogging up bandwidth in your noggin. “Hey, there… buddy. How is… your… school… or job?” Not ideal.

Luckily, for me, and less so for Reese, who had a real freaking whirlwind of a week on social media, this happened, too.

The takeaways here are as follows:

• Social media, once again, is very weird
• Crypto is here to stay
• Ina Garten rules

This was a nice chat.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Oh, look, it’s things for Brian to watch

The first episode of Atlanta came out in September 2016. That is, to use the official term, so freaking long ago. Over five years. Think about where you were and what you were doing in September 2016. Obama was still president. The Philadelphia Eagles had not defeated the New England Patriots thanks in large part to a trick play called The Philly Special. Reese Witherspoon didn’t even know about crypto. It was a different time.

Anyway, since then, there have been a grand total of 21 episodes of Atlanta. None since 2018. That’s kind of crazy, right? I can’t think of another show in the same period that has permeated pop culture so deeply in so few repetitions. Think about the Teddy Perkins episode. Think about how that took over the world for a while. That’s why I’m so excited about this teaser. Atlanta is the rare show where almost literally anything can happen. Like, there’s almost no limit to what these new episodes could be. That’s a little thrilling. It’s good. I like it.

Speaking of things that are thrilling and that I bet I’ll probably like…

This is the trailer for the next Steven Soderbergh movie, Kimi, starring Zoe Kravitz. It looks cool, which should not be a surprise because Soderbergh has been making cool-looking stuff for decades. The Ocean’s movies are cool, Haywire is cool, Logan Lucky is cool, Out of Sight is cool. There’s a track record here. And the description is fascinating as heck.

An agoraphobic tech worker discovers recorded evidence of a violent crime but is met with resistance when she tries to report it. Seeking justice, she must now do the thing she fears the most: she must leave her apartment.

Zoe Kravitz seeking justice from a cruel and unkind world she is basically terrified of? Yeah, that’s a premise I can dig. Let’s go ahead and pencil this one in as mandatory viewing.

Let’s do one more. Let’s add this one, too.

This is delightful. I always appreciate when the entertainment industry works together to produce a slew of things best categorized as Stuff For Brian. It’s nice.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — This is exactly how you do casting

The White Lotus was a good show. It took a bunch of attractive people and put them up in a luxurious Hawaiian resort and then made them just as miserable as all hell. It was almost like a magic trick, making the show so enjoyable while putting all of its characters through emotional chaos. The only real complaint I had about any of it was that it felt almost exactly like a show Aubrey Plaza would — should — be in, and yet, against truly staggering odds, she was not. At all. Not even a little. It was troubling to me.

Thankfully, finally, this historical wrong has been righted.

The six-part original series followed visitors vacationing at the White Lotus, an exclusive Hawaiian resort. The second installment — also written, to directed by and executive produced by White — will leave Hawaii behind for a new location and is expected to follow a different group of vacationers at another White Lotus property.

Plaza will play Harper Spiller, a woman on vacation with her husband and his friends. Imperioli plays Dominic Di Grasso, a man traveling with his elderly father and recent college-graduate son.

Harper Spiller. Aubrey Plaza in season two of The White Lotus as a character whose name is Harper Spiller. Something just feels cosmically correct about that, like the stars had been out of alignment but are now pulling themselves back into order. I don’t know if any of this will actually work, if the magic of the first go-round can be bottled and re-created a second time, but I do know that we appear to be off to a decent start.

That wasn’t even the only bit of borderline-perfect casting that was announced this week. There was also, well, this: Sharon Stone is going to play Kaley Cuoco’s mom in the next season of The Flight Attendant.

Stone will play Lisa Bowden, Cassie’s (Cuoco) estranged mother who would prefer to stay estranged. After a lifetime of dealing with Cassie’s alcoholism, she no longer has any patience or goodwill to spare.

The Flight Attendant was a blast in its first season. It was fizzy and fast and devious and, at one point, Cuoco’s character kicked her shoe at someone to try to evade them. Go watch it on HBO Max if you haven’t yet. It is a wonderful winter weekend binge-watch. Just make sure you finish in time for season two, because…

Season 2 finds Cassie Bowden living her best sober life in Los Angeles while moonlighting as a CIA asset in her spare time. But when an overseas assignment leads her to inadvertently witness a murder, she becomes entangled in another international intrigue.

I hate being entangled in international intrigue. I mean, honestly. Domestic intrigue? Yes, fine, sure. That’ll happen. We’ve all been to New Jersey. But international? No thank you. It does make for good television, though.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Hey, let’s check in with 9-1-1: Lonestar…

Two things you need to know about the current season of 9-1-1 Lonestar, the Texas-based spinoff of the California-set show where Angela Bassett reacts to various calamities and on at least one occasion ask a teenage delinquent to hotwire a cement truck:

• There was a massive ice storm
• Rob Lowe looks like this now

Perfect. No notes.

But let’s talk emergencies. That’s why we’re here. To see what kind of wild stuff this sucker can get up to. Don’t let me down, buddy…

To be clear, what we have here is:

• An idiot on a snowboard being towed down a frozen Texas highway by one of his idiot friends
• A chunk of ice breaking off of a passing truck
• The chunk of ice damn near decapitating the snowboard idiot

Did they have to pack him with snow to prevent the ice from melting so he wouldn’t bleed out from his slashed throat? Friends, you know they did. Other stuff happened in the episode, too. Character stuff. Talk-y stuff, to be technical. But you’re not concerned about that. You want the action.

I have you covered here.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Amanda:

Need your thoughts on something — I have just started watching a small, little known TV program called Succession (I’m way late to this, I know, which feels like something I should never stop apologizing for) and I was wondering if you had ever given thought to which role you’d like to see played by former Olympic high-diver Jason Statham.

This is no slam on the existing cast, which is uniformly excellent. But I am aware of your long-held theory that nearly every piece of pop culture would be better with Jason Statham, and it got me thinking.

I believe the obvious call here is Logan, as it’s canon that Statham is good at swearing, but the more I think about it, the more I think I’d like to see His Statheness as Kendall.
The answer is simple — I want to see Jason Statham perform an improvised rap while wearing a baseball jersey. Also, I want to see him sing Billy Joel. I feel like either of those things would weirdly delight me.

I would also not be opposed to a storyline where Statham plays himself, after someone appointed him to be part of Colin’s security team.

This is a wonderful email. Just checks all the boxes. Statham and Succession and… hmm. Actually, it checks two boxes. But that’s all there was anyway. So… yeah, checks all the boxes. Look at that. We did it.

The answer here, from a purely chaotic standpoint, is that Statham should play Roman. Everything else remains exactly the same. The character is still a little weasel and turd and everyone makes fun of him, the dialogue and action are unchanged, but now, instead of Kieran Culkin slinking his way through the action, Jason Statham is striding around. Statham does his own voice, too. Think about this scene, again, exactly the same in every way, but with Jason Statham…

I started picturing this moment after Amanda sent this email and I’ve only stopped briefly to think about a crypto-obsessed Reese Witherspoon.

Weird week.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Washington D.C.!

The Association for Dressings and Sauces’s decades-long battle to revoke the standards for French dressing has finally come to an end, with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agreeing to deregulate a label the group said “restricts innovation.”

Two notes:

• I am absolutely ecstatic to learn there is an organization called “The Association for Dressings and Sauces”
• We have a French dressing controversy

This changes everything.

The decision from the FDA revokes the so-called “standard of identity” on the books since 1950 that dictates what ingredients manufacturers must include in order to market their product as French dressing.

I like to picture one guy who was behind this and it’s been his life’s mission for decades. Like, for the past 30 years, he’s been working at the Association for Dressings and Sauces to lobby the FDA and just banging his head against the wall. I have this image in my head of him coming home and throwing his briefcase on the table and grumbling to his wife about the damn government bureaucrats and the French dressing lobbyists.

“How was your day, honey?” she says.

“Another defeat, Gladys,” he replies.

The group has since 1998 sought to eliminate the standard for French dressing, arguing that the “nonstandardized pourable dressing” world had seen an explosion in products to meet consumer preferences and that French dressing “no longer serves as a benchmark for other dressings because of the wide variation in composition to meet consumer interests.”

I am barely joking when I say that I want to see a feature-length film or maybe even a loosely-fictionalized limited series about the 24-year struggle to deregulate French dressing. Make a whole season of Fargo about it. I am joking even less as I keep typing. Greenlight this by Monday.

The rule noted that the proposal received just 20 comments, including some comments that “​​appeared to have been submitted as part of a university course assignment.”

“One comment said that the standard of identity for French dressing was ‘unnecessary red tape,’” the FDA noted.

God, I love this. Imagine being this passionate about salad dressing. Imagine you wake up and the first thing you think about, right after “turn off that damn alarm,” is something like, “these goddamn fat cats are stifling salad dressing innovation.” Imagine living that life.

The 1950 definition for French dressing wasn’t particularly specific, even noting that tomato-based ingredients were “permitted, but not required.” Low-fat varieties, however, were not meeting the standard that 35 percent of the product by weight must be vegetable oil.

I repeat: I need this television show. Cast David Harbour as the dressing warrior and Stephen Root as the person at the FDA who keeps thwarting him. I’ll watch every episode.

Russ is only a month removed from the release of his new album, Chomp 2, and he’s already back to releasing new singles weekly. However you feel about the guy’s personality, you absolutely cannot knock his hustle. His first new single of 2022, “Remember,” sees him getting back to the lilting lo-fi R&B that defines the other half of his catalog — after all, Chomp 2 is chock-full of brazen bars and punishing punchlines –, crooning to a former paramour with a few reminders of his commitment to their relationship and mourning its end.

In addition to his weekly single releases over the last year, Russ’ many, many hustles also included a strand of weed — fittingly named Chomp as well — he developed in conjunction with the LA cannabis brand Wonderbrett. By diversifying his portfolio, so to speak, he was able to have a lucrative year even though profits were mostly shaky across the industry as live entertainment returned with plenty of restrictions.

Of course, the key to his financial stability, as he’s so fond of pointing out, is passive income — much of which comes from the fact that he self-publishes most of his music and the major deal he did have licensed ownership of his masters rather than outright selling it. Russ continues to explain his business perspective in interviews, but it all starts with the music — and judging from how he’s kicking off the year, there will be plenty of it coming to help line his pockets.

Jack White made a real splash towards the end of 2021. After debuting his new blue hair, he dropped “Taking Me Back,” his first solo single since 2018. Not long after that, he revealed that 2022 will bring a pair of new White albums, Fear Of The Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive. The latter is out first on April 8, and today, he has offered another preview of it with his first 2022 single, “Love Is Selfish.”

While some of White’s recent material has been of the hard-rocking variety, “Love Is Selfish” is in softer territory, a space where White has also done well over the years. The gentle song is mostly just guitar and vocals, and the new video for the track, which White directed himself, is similarly simple, as it’s mostly footage of White performing the song in an empty American Legion hall, albeit with some cinematic shots and pleasing use of color throughout.

The release of Fear Of The Dawn will also mark the beginning of White’s “The Supply Chain Issues Tour,” which runs from April to August.

Watch the “Love Is Selfish” video above.

Fear Of The Dawn is out 4/8 via Third Man Records. Pre-order it here.

Entering Heaven Alive is out 7/22 via Third Man Records. Pre-order it here.

TV’s most smoldering lawman is coming back.

FX announced on Friday that Timothy Olyphant will reprise his role as U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens in Justified: City Primeval, a Justified spin-off based on Elmore Leonard’s crime novel City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. (Space Raylan was a warm up.)

The series takes place eight years after the events of finale, with Raylan pulling a reverse Dexter and moving to Miami. He’s now a “walking anachronism balancing his life as a U.S. Marshal and part-time father of a 14-year-old girl. His hair is grayer, his hat is dirtier, and the road in front of him is suddenly a lot shorter than the road behind,” according to the official plot description.

Here’s more:

A chance encounter on a desolate Florida highway sends him to Detroit. There he crosses paths with Clement Mansell, a.k.a. the Oklahoma Wildman, a violent, sociopathic desperado who’s already slipped through the fingers of Detroit’s finest once and aims to do so again. Mansell’s lawyer, formidable Motor City native Carolyn Wilder, has every intention of representing her client, even as she finds herself caught in between cop and criminal, with her own game afoot as well. These three characters set out on a collision course in classic Elmore Leonard fashion, to see who makes it out of the City Primeval alive.

No other casting information has been revealed yet, including whether any other Justified favorites, like Winona (Natalie Zea) or god-tier character Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns), will return. There’s also the Boyd Crowder of it all. It might cheapen Justified‘s near-perfect finale for Boyd to misbehave again. Then again, the more Boyd, the better. I have already checked Google to see if there are Dairy Queens in Detroit (there are).

Justified: City Primeval does not have a premiere date.

Following the tragic news of actor/comedian Bob Saget‘s death, CBS Mornings has released the final interview with the late Full House star, who opened up about how his sister’s death pushed him into comedy. He also became a fierce advocate for raising awareness of the rare disease that took her life.

In the interview recorded in early December, a candid and at times emotional Saget spoke to chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook about losing his sister, Gay, to scleroderma in 1994. Via Entertainment Weekly:

“We were all in the room when she let out her last breath, and I don’t know how to explain it, and I’m going to go woo woo here, it felt like the soul going past us, literally felt my hair kinda move,” he recalled. “You know being an actor, that’s a very important thing if your hair gets out of place.”

Following her death, Saget used comedy to cope with the grief. “It was a defense mechanism and it truly helped me survive,” he said. “It helped keep me mentally alive rather than letting [grief] destroy me.” The America’s Funniest Home Videos star also dedicated himself to battling the disease that took his sister by joining the Scleroderma Research Foundation’s Board of Directors where he raised millions for the organization. It was a cause that was dear to Saget’s heart, and he was still actively raising awareness just weeks before his death as seen in this Instagram post from December.

Saget’s death caused an outpour of tributes to his kindness and generosity, which left Jimmy Kimmel in tears while attempting to eulogize his late friend. Saget’s dedication to helping others not suffer the same loss as his family is another example of those positive attributes that caused so many emotional reactions to his passing.

(Via CBS Mornings)

Ten days ago, I hadn’t seen a single episode of Yellowjackets. Ten days (and 10 episodes, including this Sunday’s excellent finale) later, I am all caught up, and it’s the only thing I want to talk about. I’m not the only one: Yellowjackets has become a word-of-mouth sensation for Showtime. It’s not bringing in the same number of viewers as Dexter, but did you know the Dexter finale was last week? There’s a good chance you didn’t (although you can read about it here — it’s better than the OG finale!). Meanwhile, Yellowjackets is all over Twitter, and Tumblr, and Reddit; there’s even a “which character are you?” BuzzFeed quiz, the true sign of a show’s success.

Since binging Yellowjackets, I’ve had multiple people ask me if they would like it, maybe more than any other show in recent memory. If you’re wondering the same thing, these 10 questions should help you decide whether to make it your next TV obsession.

(There will be some light spoilers, but I won’t discuss the juiciest details.)

1. “Should I watch Yellowjackets if… wait, what is Yellowjackets about?”

This is a good place to start. Yellowjackets takes place in 1996 and 2021. The 1996 section follows the members of a high school girl’s soccer team who get stranded in the woods when their plane crashes on the way to nationals. The show doesn’t specify exactly where they crash, but it’s somewhere in Canada. The 2021 portion of the show follows the survivors as adults, although not everyone makes it out of the woods.

2. “Should I watch Yellowjackets if I can’t handle gore?”

Yes, although, fair warning, it is extremely violent. Within the first two minutes of the premiere, you see someone get impaled by spikes in a pit. There’s also cannibalism, a bone poking through someone’s flesh, and so much blood. The violence can be upsetting, but it’s not exploitative; not under the guiding eyes of creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson and Jennifer’s Body director Karyn Kusama, who helms the pilot.

3. Should I watch Yellowjackets if I’m trying to fill the Lost-shaped hole in my heart?”

Yes, because say what you will about the finale (I certainly have!), Lost is still one of the most compelling, exciting, and deeply weird shows to air on TV. It didn’t invent modern-day fandom, but it changed the way people engaged with shows, where every small detail, every twist and turn, was discussed among strangers on the internet; I’m still not sure whether I’m disappointed or relieved that it came out before Reddit culture was a thing. Yellowjackets isn’t a Lost clone, even with the plane crash and time-hopping framing, but it scratches the same fan theory itch. There are thousands of tweets and Reddit thread comments about the identity of the Antler Queen (a fan term that has become canon), an impressive achievement for a show that premiered two months ago.

Yellowjackets also smartly understands that for these kind of mystery shows with supernatural elements to work, they need memorable characters who are more than plot devices. As horror maestro Stephen King put it, “YELLOWJACKETS is a hell of a good survival story, a hell of a good mystery story, and has its fair share of horrifying moments. What it’s also got — so many current shows don’t — is sharp characterization and a mordant sense of humor.” That’s why generic Lost knock-offs like The Event and Flash Forward failed, and Yellowjackets is thriving.

It’s also worth mentioning that the creators have a multi-season plan. “When we were formulating and developing the idea, we always saw this as a multi-season story and our goal in the first season is to very much answer certain questions, because I personally get very irritated with shows that drag everything on forever and don’t give you any answers,” Lyle told E! Online. “So, we wanted to answers some questions and ask some new ones, so that is hopefully what we accomplished over the course of this season.”

4. “Should I watch Yellowjackets if I’m looking for a show with a dance sequence set to ‘This Is How We Do It’ by Montell Jordan?”

Yes, and buddy, you’re in for a treat. Other artists on the extremely mid-1990s soundtrack: Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, Belly, Collective Soul, Mazzy Star, the Prodigy, the Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Salt-N-Pepa, Portishead, the Cranberries, Dinosaur Jr., and “Mr. Mistoffelees” from Cats (not the one with Taylor Swift). It’s an eclectic mix.

5. “Should I watch Yellowjackets if I like free trials?”

Yes, because Showtime offers a 30-day free trial. (This is not a paid promotion. I just like free stuff.) It will not take you 30 days to watch Yellowjackets. You will be tempted to watch the whole thing in a day (never skip the theme song), but I would suggest stretching it over a week. Maybe two episodes a night. And definitely don’t watch if you’re eating steak. Or chicken. Or any meat, really. Once you’re caught up, you’ll have time to watch other Showtime shows before the trial runs out.

And that gives me time to finish writing, “Everyone Won’t Shut Up About Californication, But Is It For You?” Finger on the pulse over here.

6. “Should I watch Yellowjackets if I’m sick of comparing myself and other people to Sex and the City characters?”

Yes, because “you’re such a Carrie” is out and “you’re such a Laura Lee” is in.

One tweet that I think about a lot is: “Part of the appeal of Succession is doing the math on which character you’d become if you gave your personality disorder a billion dollars.” The same goes for Yellowjackets, except instead of money, it’s stranding your personality disorder in the middle of the woods. Are you a love sick lone wolf? You’re Nat. Did you peak in high school? You’re Jackie. Do you still think the “sweet-ass butt cut” is a good look? I’m sorry, but you’re a Travis. Do you have upsetting premonitions? You’re Lottie. Also, you may want to seek some professional help.

7. “Should I watch Yellowjackets if there’s no book club?”

8. Should I watch Yellowjackets if my favorite movie is Addams Family Values?”

Yes, and it’s time for Christina Ricci to get the Emmys recognition she deserves. The Casper actress gives a delightfully unhinged performance as the grown-up version of the show’s most Ma-like character, Misty. She’s as smart as she is scary, and Ricci plays Misty as a chipper-but-dangerous weirdo with a pet bird named Caligula. Never trust anyone with a pet bird named Caligula — or maybe anyone with a pet bird, period.

The rest of the adult cast includes Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures), Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers), and Tawny Cypress (Heroes), while you may have seen the younger Yellowjackets in The Kid Detective (Sophie Nélisse, young Shauna), The Leftovers and Scream (Jasmin Savoy Brown, young Taissa), and The Book of Boba Fett (Sophie Thatcher, young Nat). Also, Lottie is played by Courtney Eaton, who was also one of Immortan Joe’s wives in Mad Max: Fury Road, along with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Abbey Lee, Riley Keough, and Zoë Kravitz. The wives rule Hollywood.

9. “Should I watch Yellowjackets if I love horror movies, teen dramas, mysteries, survival thrillers, suspense, chaos, soccer, wolves, blackmail, While You Were Sleeping, Canada, orgies, drugs, eating dirt, and/or cult rituals?”

Yes.

10. “Should I watch Yellowjackets…?”

That’s enough questions. Yes, for the love of god, watch Yellowjackets. You can start now.

Growing up in Chicago, Saba had, as many Midwestern kids did, a fascination with the melodic double-time flow of the five-piece Cleveland rap band Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Their relative proximity and mid-90s radio dominance would have contributed to that, but also, Saba just seems like exactly the kind of rapper to have rooted out every single example of the genre to absorb and learn from — you can occasionally hear the influence in his flows on projects like Care For Me and Pivot Gang’s You Can’t Sit With Us.

Now, with the release of his third album, Few Good Things, just over the horizon (it drops on February 4 on Saba’s own Pivot Gang imprint), the Windy City MC gets to link up with one of his musical heroes on his latest single from the album. “Come My Way,” produced (as usual) by Daoud and daedaePIVOT, features none other than Bone Thugs member Krayzie Bone, who once won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance with another disciple, Chamillionaire, and recently participated in his band’s Verzuz with Three Six Mafia.

In the press release for the single, Saba said, “When I think back on first discovering Bone Thugs-N-Harmony as a child, it immediately stood out to me as unique. I started paying attention and really learning how to rap from listening to them and trying to recite it. It felt honest and completely true to themselves — authentic in a way that doesn’t come around very often and in a way that will be impossible to recreate. Their mix of melody and rhythms that I had never heard is what connected with me in a way that other music just didn’t. It inspired me to be more creative.”

Meanwhile, the inspiration for the song itself is “nostalgia and growing up, and I think ‘hopeful’ and ‘soulful’ are accurate descriptions of the song… I’m describing many things that are normal on the westside of Chicago so that it plays like just any other day — pretty stagnant but having so much life. ‘We ain’t got no time to relax’ is a harsh reality for so many people experiencing this type of poverty where the focus is on work and survival.”

Listen to Saba’s new single “Come My Way” featuring Krayzie Bone above and check out the dates for his Back Home Tour here.

Few Good Things is due 2/4 via Pivot Gang, LLC. Pre-save here.

To hear comedian Eric Andre tell it, we’re witnessing something quite special with his appearance in season 2 of Righteous Gemstones as a televangelist with great big intentions. And he’s not talking about his ascension up the style icon ranks with the hurricane of denim and cowboy swag that he’s rocking. (Though shouldn’t we all be talking about that?) Andre, the star and driving force behind The Eric Andre Show and Bad Trip simply isn’t used to having other people put words in his mouth, preferring to call his own plays in an effort to best get the “musicality” of a moment. It’s an understandable preference, especially when you think about how successful Andre has been at building his “brand” as the “hardest working man in comedy” (to quote our Bad Trip review).

But for Danny McBride‘s satire of American largesse and family dysfunction, he’s making an exception. Why? We spoke with him about that, the weird similarities between preaching and comedy, what’s next for him, and the Eric Andre Show super fandom of one particular Oscar-winning director.

So this is an interesting role for you. What’d you think when this came across your table?

I love Danny McBride, and I love Rough House [Productions] and everything they do. So I was coming into it like a super fan. I usually don’t pursue just regular acting gigs, but I trust them creatively.

What is it about regular acting gigs that you’re not feeling at this point?

I’m not an actor. I didn’t grow up in the theater. I’d rather perform something that I wrote rather than just reading a script and trying to be a mind reader and figure out what the writer wants and what the director wants. I don’t know. I don’t feel comfortable doing that. I’d rather be either on both sides of the camera or just behind the camera, except for something like this, or something I just did with Panos Cosmatos up in Canada. If it’s somebody that I’m a super fan of, like McBride and his crew, then I’ll pursue it. But I’m not a mind reader. I need to hear the musicality of it to know what the fuck they want. I don’t get it from a script if I didn’t help write it.

Bad experiences in the past? I know you did some stock… Not stock, but like “acting work” before.

Yeah. I did some stuff just to pay the bills in the beginning for sure. But it wasn’t as enjoyable as The Eric Andre Show or Bad Trip. It wasn’t until now that I’m having these opportunities where I… I love doing voiceover. That I’ll be an actor for higher forever. I love doing the cartoons, but I typically don’t just blindly audition for a bunch of willy nilly stuff like a regular actor.

The process with this, is it that it was just a totally different experience working with them? Or is it just the quality of the material?

All the above. I felt like I was in a very safe, nurturing, creative environment. I felt like I had the ability to improvise as much or as little as I wanted. The writing was so rock solid and strong and funny and well thought out that even if I just stick, fully committed, to the script, I would be just as happy im improvising my way through it. And yeah, they’re just a great group. And Charleston’s a really fun city. And I had a blast.

The spectacle of being on stage as a televangelist, what are you channeling there? Is there research as a part of that? Or are you just going?

When I first got to Charleston, Danny sent me a bunch of YouTube links of a bunch of televangelists that he thought were like really entertaining and hilarious. So I went down a YouTube wormhole. But it’s very similar to standup comedy, in a way.

That’s what I was thinking.

Yeah. It felt very easy to get into that.

You’re all over the place in a good way. On the stage there, it’s very, very much akin to what I saw you doing with the last special. So I imagine that feels right, which is a little off-putting, isn’t it? That stand-up comedy, the showmanship of standup comedy and the showmanship of televangelism are akin to each other.

Yeah. It’s kind of the same. It’s weirdly the same thing. It’s like you have to seduce and rope a herd of strangers into believing in you and liking you.

Saving souls. Because you’re saving souls with your comedy, obviously.

[Laughs] Saving souls. Yeah.

What about the central focus of the show? Is that something you’re into, obviously in certain ways, I think a lot of people mistake it as being anti-religion. I know Danny’s been really adamant about that not being the case. What’s your take on just the hypocrisy [that the show focuses on] and everything going on with people stuffing money into walls, et cetera?

Yeah. I think that like our art imitates live life. Life imitates art. But there’s nuance. There’s depth to the concept because there’s hypocrisy in all industries, and there’s dysfunction in all families. So it’s relatable in that respect, but it’s also calling it out in organized religion in these megachurch families that seduce a lot of working-class people and poor people into giving the last of their dollars over to God. And I think they thread the needle. I think whether you’re religious or not religious, or anti-religious, everybody can find enjoyment in it because everybody comes from a family with some level of dysfunction.

It’s interesting how this season in particular showcases what happens if you take somebody who’s very successful and you threaten to take everything away from them. And seeing how they react. It’s an interesting part of the family dynamic to see the levels that… people almost turn into animals, essentially, trying to defend what’s theirs.

Yeah. Yeah. We’re primates. I think that humans are flawed, and we’re basically glorified chimpanzees.

That’s accurate. I think that’s the takeaway from the article. We’re glorified chimpanzees.

A human being has more in common DNA-wise with a chimpanzee than an African elephant has in common with an Indian elephant. That’s how closely related we are to chimps and Bonobos.

Okay. I think we’re all primates is the headline. Do you have any alternate headline suggestions?

Hey, man. Then when you nail it on the first take…

What’s going on with you otherwise?

I just shot this thing for this Guillermo Del Toro anthology series for Netflix, with Panos Cosmatos directing. He’s one of my favorite directors of all time.

What genre is that?

It’s a psychological sci-fi thriller with comedic relief.

Is that a genre you’re specifically interested in?

Mandy was one of my favorite horror movies I’ve seen in the last 20 years. And I just called my manager and said, “Who is this director? I want to know everything about him. And I want to pester him until he gives me a job.” That’s what I did with McBride and Brandon James and all the Rough House guys. I just tapped them until they hired me.

Del Toro’s awesome. He crashed an interview I was doing at Comic-Com once. That guy has so much energy. It’s crazy.

He’s so sweet. He’s such a friendly teddy bear. He gave me a big hug in the parking lot. And he just gushed about the Eric Andre Show for 15 minutes with me. He’s awesome.

Now, I’m going to try to figure what his favorite Eric Andre bit is.

He knew specific bits. He was calling out. It wasn’t service speak. He was calling out specific little gags I did. So I was like, oh shit. He truly is a fan.

What about comedy? Are you back on the road yet?

Nah, I’m going to focus on the thing I’m working on that I’m not allowed to talk about, wink, wink. And yeah, I’m just writing right now, writing, prepping, shooting. And I’m just going to focus on that.

‘Righteous Gemstones’ season 2 is running Sunday nights on HBO at 10 PM ET