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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 — A near-perfect half-hour of television, every time

What We Do in the Shadows ended its third season this week. I won’t get too deep into the weeds with spoilers, especially not from the finale, at least not here in what amounts to a general interest round-up of a column. But I will gladly discuss it with you if you call me on the phone or accost me on the street this weekend. The whole season was just about perfect, again, for the third straight time. It’s all so fun and devoted to being just as silly as you could ever want, jokes for the sake of jokes, preposterous visual gags, all of it. We discussed it just the other week, but at one point a fitness-obsessed vampire was incapacitated with a hula hoop. It’s a good show.

In fact… yeah, screw it. Let’s do this. Try to name one show that’s better than What We Do in the Shadows right now. I’ve already made the case that it’s the funniest show on television, but let’s just go ahead and zoom out to television writ large. Succession? Great show. Love it dearly. Would very much like to see Matt Berry from Shadows pop up there and do… anything. And seeing Cousin Greg interact with a vampire would be a blast. But no. No, I’m sorry. I’ll give you “as good as,” like a tie, but I can’t give you “better.” Not today. Not after, out of nowhere, Matt Berry said this line of dialogue with his perfect voice.

It’s such a treat, a full-on gift, to be watching a show hit on all cylinders like this. The premise alone is delightful, adapted from the movie of the same name: Four vampires live in present-day Staten Island and attempt to adapt to the modern world while filming a documentary about it. Kind of like if The Office was about undead horny mythical monsters who cussed a lot. None of this does any of it justice. Again, it’s all just so powerfully silly, the goofiest twists you’ve even seen popping out of nowhere for what seems like no reason at all. You’ve all seen at least the screencap of Matt Berry’s character, Laszlo, on the run as Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender, right? This one…

But do you remember why he was on the run? Because that might be even funnier: He was fleeing a rival vampire — played by Mark Hamill! — because he had skipped out on a month’s rent for a beach house in San Diego. Like, think about that. Think about how that was the event that set the whole nutso chain of events in motion. Go ahead and watch all the serious dramas you want. Watch all the comedies with surprising amounts of heart. Do whatever you like with your time. But do not come in here and try to tell me they’re better than this show. We will get in a whole fight. Hula hoops might be involved.

And this is before the shoutlaugh-inducing twists the show dropped in the closing moments of the finale. I know I said I won’t spoil it. Not yet, at least. But two things happened that will turn the entire show on its head going into next season and I am so excited about both of them that I might start vibrating at a fast enough clip that I start humming.

Please watch it as soon as you can, if you haven’t. Talk to me about it on the sidewalk. Maybe not if I look busy. But even then, I mean, if you have a coffee and a donut to spare, I can always make time. Or just shout “UNITED DING-DONG, MORE LIKE” from across the street and let us both go the rest of our days with that little moment bouncing around our heads.

United Ding-dong. Just beautiful.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — What if I start going everywhere with a parasol?

There’s plenty to take away from the first installment of the Dune universe. (Duniverse.) (Sorryyyy.) There were the massive sandworms and the creepy grumblewhisper nuns and the Action Chalamet of it all. There was a rad warrior named Duncan Idaho who was played by Jason Momoa and fought with swords even though we were far enough into the future that it feels like he should have had lasers. At least one laser. But there was also this guy and his parasol.

You don’t see a lot of dudes with parasols these days. I’m not sure if you ever did. That’s kind of a shame. This guy looks like he loves it. It looks like it’s making him so happy, the parasol of it all. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week. Pretty much ever since I saw it in the movie. I might have paused it right smack in the middle to take this screenshot. It’s one advantage that streaming has over the theater experience. Most projectionists frown on people shouting “HEY GO BACK AND FREEZE IT ON THE PARASOL GUY” in the middle of the movie. It’s a shame, really.

All of it got me thinking, though… what if I started carrying a parasol? Like, what if that became my thing? Could I even pull it off? Do I have the right vibe for a parasol? I lean no, if only because I have a reputation for being a goof and people would think I was doing it as a bit. I suppose I could always try it out once and see what the reaction is and then play it off like it was a bit if people aren’t feeling it. That’s one option.

There’s also the complicating factor where I use a wheelchair. I probably couldn’t even hold it while I moved around, because I need to use my good hand for the joystick. Maybe I could attach it to the back and just drive around with the parasol over my head? But that kind of defeats the purpose of carrying a cool little parasol. I might as well just use a golf umbrella then. Really a lot of angles to look at here, with the whole parasol business.

I bet you thought I was kidding when I said I’ve been thinking about it all week. I would never lie to you.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Will Ferrell gets it

There’s a new profile of Will Ferrell over at The Hollywood Reporter. You should read it. It’s good and informative and full of cool little tidbits about his career, like the thing where he thought he’d be finished after Elf. But you can read all about that in the profile. I want to talk about Will Ferrell talking about his approach to comedy.

I want to talk about this.

You won’t see him pursuing straight-up Oscar bait, or using his work to make pointed political statements, even if the winds of comedy have blown in that direction. And while he’s not going to throw shade on projects that set out to say something — “because those are great,” he says, “and more than needed” — he wants to laugh at unabashed silliness again, and he’s hopeful you do, too.

And this…

“There’s just so much going on in the world, and sometimes it’s nice to turn your brain off,” says Ferrell, who’s reminded of one of his heroes, Steve Martin, who has talked about comedy in the 1970s this way. “Coming out of the ’60s, which were so contentious, Steve was like, ‘Everyone’s doing message comedy, and I just want to walk out with an arrow shooting through my head,’ and that’s kind of how I feel  right now.”

… and this, too, where he discusses his split with his longtime production partner Adam McKay.

“Adam was like, ‘I want to do this, and this, and this’; he wanted growth and a sphere of influence, and I was just like, ‘I don’t know, that sounds like a lot that I have to keep track of,’ ” says Ferrell, discussing the breakup publicly for the first time. “To me, the potential of seeing a billboard, and being like: ‘Oh, we’re producing that?’ I don’t know. … At the end of the day, we just have different amounts of bandwidth.”

I dig this. I like that Will Ferrell just wants to make stuff that is cool and funny and silly. I like that he’s not out here trying to jam his square peg into a round hole. I like that he’s looking around at the rest of the scene and being like, “Hmm, actually I’d just like to make weirdo one-off beer commercials and do movies entirely in Spanish.” I like it for a lot of reasons, too, starting with the thing where I’m wired in a similar way, to skew goofy in the face of serious business, and moving on to the thing where there’s room for all kinds of stuff, from sharp-edged satire like Succession to nuts-walloping relentlessness of Jackass.

It’s good. Good for Will Ferrell. I hope he keeps making crazy stuff for decades up to and including another Anchorman movie, maybe with Walton Goggins in it as another rival anchor. I would like that. A little treat for Brian.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Something to consider in all of this… Luzz Bightyear

So here’s what I’ve been able to figure out so far:

• This is the trailer for an upgrade coming Pixar movie titled Lightyear
• Lightyear is a kind of Toy Story prequel about a quote-unquote real astronaut named Buzz Lightyear who the toy in the later movie is based on
• I think I love it

I think I love it for three main reasons, and yes, let’s go right back to the bullet points again for those

• We are far enough down the Existing Intellectual Property path at this point that we might need to start accepting it and just taking the best we can get, and “a prequel based on the fictional real person who inspired the fictional talking doll in a cartoon from 25 years ago” is nothing if it is not needlessly chaotic and weird, which I appreciate
• I hope it inspires people to go ahead and get wild as hell with their own intellectual property instead of just rolling out, like, another version of the other thing but now everyone has smartphones or whatever
• I might actually be willing to watch a feature-length movie where the people involved just try to explain the premise to people

I’m barely joking about this last thing. Look at the director try to explain it.

“‘Set in the world of Toy Story’ is kind of weird. Another way to get at it, it’s a straightforward sci-fi action film about the Buzz Lightyear character,” MacLane, who co-directed Finding Dory and multiple Toy Story shorts for Pixar, tells EW over Zoom. “In the Toy Story universe, it would be like a movie that maybe Andy would have seen, that would have made him want a Buzz Lightyear figure.”

“The movie doesn’t end and then you see Andy eating popcorn,” the filmmaker clarifies. “This is its own thing… This is standalone. It’s the Buzz Lightyear movie. It’s that character but as the space ranger, not as the toy.”

And look at Chris Evans, who voices this real/fake historical version of Buzz, try to explain it in a tweet from last year when it was announced.

https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans/status/133720419764162969

It’s incredible. I should note here that I’m not poking fun about all this. I kid because I respect the struggle. I tried to explain the concept of this movie to someone in person, out loud, after watching the trailer, and I pretty much sputtered out halfway through like a car running out of gas. Try it yourself. Don’t practice or rehearse. DO NOT CHEAT. Just call someone into the room or on the phone and try to explain what is happening in Lightyear. See how that goes.

We desperately need more films like this. I’m thriving on the awkwardness.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — I have terrific news about Harrison Ford’s missing credit card

Terrific news, ladies and gentlemen: Harrison Ford’s credit card has been recovered. Maybe you didn’t even know it was missing. That would be fine considering it’s still unclear if Harrison Ford even knew it was missing. But I’m getting ahead of the story again.

We go to Sicily, where Harrison Ford has been filming the next installment in the Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford drops his credit card. A German tourist picks it up…

The tourist found a credit card with Ford’s name emblazoned on it Thursday, and turned it in to the local police station in the beach town of Mondello. Officers tracked the actor down and returned the card, police said. It wasn’t clear if the actor was aware that the card had been missing.

Italian media published a photo of the smiling actor wearing a T-shirt and what appears to be bathing trunks, holding the card up for the camera alongside two officers and the local commander.

Okay, here’s what I need you to do. Close your eyes. Not now. After this paragraph. Clear out your brain as best you can. Take a broom to the scattered loose thoughts in there and brush them straight out your ear. And then get the best mental image you can conjure up of a German tourist in a Sicilian police station trying to explain — in German, to Italians — why he is handing them a credit card that belongs to the world-famous Hollywood icon Harrison Ford. Imagine being a fly on that wall, or maybe an Italian pickpocket just sitting there in handcuffs on a bench watching it all unfold. Really get the whole vibe of that scene, the multiple layers of confusion happening. Because I’ve been picturing it a lot and, buddy, it is a hoot.

It’s amazing I’ve gotten anything done this week between and the parasol thing.

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 Daniel:

When you recommend a show or write a review I almost always end up watching it. So I’m a bit perplexed why you have yet to write anything about Wu-Tang: An American Saga which I think is the best show on TV right now. One of the many reasons I think this show is so good is that you don’t even need to know anything about the Wu-Tang Clan to enjoy it. I barely knew anything about the group other than the songs and I now find myself completely engrossed in the story and the characters. A couple of episodes ago they did a remake of the final scene from John Woo’s The Killer with Raekwon and Ghostface in the starring roles. If that doesn’t convince you to write a review, nothing will.

They did what now?

Well, this certainly changes my plans for the weekend. I’ll be honest: I hadn’t started watching the show because I assumed it was just like a straightforward biography. But if… if we’re doing this… then…

Yes, I will watch this show. This was a good email. Please never hesitate to reach out if you see a show in which semi-fictional versions of famous rappers recreate violent scenes from John Woo movies. This goes for all of you.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Peoria!

Somebody who ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog has made off with an Elvis Presley bust from a Central Illinois saloon.

Back to the bullet points, for clarity:

• ELVIS HEIST
• I am so proud of whoever slipped the hound dog reference into the first sentence of this story
• I am also livid that they didn’t go with “Suspicious Minds” instead

Moving on.

“To walk off with that took some guts,” said Jimmy Spears, the bar’s owner for 39 years. He said the heist can’t have taken much planning or work since he never bothered to bolt down something that he never thought anyone would want to steal.

Here’s the thing about the song “Suspicious Minds”: It is a perfect karaoke song. You don’t even need a good voice to sing it. You just have to do like a C/C+ Elvis impression and give it a little charisma. If you play your cards right, you can get the rest of the crowd to start singing the backing vocals, the various cascading ooooos and the “with Suspicious Minds” in the chorus that the choir ladies do. Listen to me on this. I have very few legitimately good ideas. This is one of them.

But we’re getting off track.

Spears said nobody has claimed responsibility or sent a ransom note. And he didn’t call the police because he didn’t want to bother officers who might have something better to do. Spears said his niece brought the bust about 15 years ago at a garage sale for $20.

Let me tell you one thing: Right now, I am on the side of Jimmy the Bar Owner. I want him to get his Elvis statue back. He seems like a good dude. But…

But if the thieves had sent a ransom note for a $20 Elvis bust…

I mean…

No jury would convict them. At least not one I’m on. That one gets filed under the writ of Boys Will Be Boys. Smash the gavel. Case closed.

But even though Spears isn’t “some big Elvis fan,” the bust has enough sentimental value that when its nose came off when a customer accidentally knocked it to the floor, he let a regular give Elvis a nose job with a little glue and paint.

Sorry, I have “Suspicious Minds” in my head now. None of the words in this paragraph even registered. Let me try to pull it together. Give me a second.

Now, Jimmy’s wants Elvis back badly enough to post this on the bar’s Facebook page:

“Elvis has left the building. Please bring him back whoever took him. No questions asked.”

WE CAN’T GO ON TOGETHER

WITH SUSPICIOUS MINDS

[points microphone towards disinterested crowd for the backup vocal part]

…

[gets no reaction]

…

Ahhhh, come on. I thought we had a thing going here.

Dammit.

Jamie Lee Curtis is a horror movie legend for her involvement with the Halloween franchise. Since playing Laurie Strode in John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, she’s reprised the roles in multiple films, including 1998’s Halloween H20 and this year’s Halloween Kills. Curtis must be in the mood for horror movie reboots and remakes because she’s gunning for a role in director David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist trilogy.

“Maybe I should be the voice of the devil like Mercedes McCambridge,” she told Entertainment Weekly (McCambridge voiced Pazuzu in 1973’s The Exorcist). “You see, if David gives me a part in the new Exorcist trilogy as the voice of the devil, then it is a full-circle return for me, in a meta way. That would blow people’s minds.”

Curtis hasn’t told Green about wanting to join Ellen Burstyn and Leslie Odom Jr. in the trilogy yet, but “I’ll have to get her to audition for that one. You know, she did the crying baby for the last Halloween movie, so she’s a talented voice actor as well.”

Congrauations to Jamie Lee Curtis for cornering the market on horror movies. The Exorcist would be a nice addition to her portfolio of the Halloween franchise, The Fog, Terror Train, Prom Night, and her scariest movie of all, Freaky Friday. “Swapping bodies with your teenage daughter” is way more terrifying than a knife-wielding maniac.

(Via EW)

After a barrage of bye weeks in Week 7, the NFL has a fuller slate available for Week 8. As such, there are more handicapping opportunities on the board, and that is Christmas-like for observers. In this space, Week 7 was a success with a winning record, and it has been a strong season to this point. There is always more work to do, though, and that means five more selections for Week 8.

Before we get to the offerings, let’s take stock.

• Last Week: 3-2
• 2021 Season: 20-14-1

Come get these winners.

New York Jets (+10.5) over Cincinnati Bengals

Not long ago, the Bengals were favored by 3.5 points in this game. Then, Cincinnati got hot and New York lost its quarterback. As such, the Bengals are now laying more than 10 points on the road. I do understand why, with the Jets potentially imploding on offense, but this is an auto-spot for us.

Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns UNDER 21 points in the first half

This might be a true rock fight, at least early in the game. Pittsburgh has the league’s slowest pace in the first half, and Cleveland isn’t much faster, ranking solidly below the league average in the same stat. The Steelers also have a trustworthy defense, and the Browns are fully capable of slowing Pittsburgh’s uneven offense. We’ll need some punts and field goals.

Indianapolis Colts (-1.5) over Tennessee Titans

This is a classic situation. Everyone is buying Tennessee now after an impressive start. Indianapolis is still flying under the radar. These teams are pretty even in my view, and I’ll take the tiny favorite at home alongside the sharp guys.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints UNDER 50 points

This number is trending down for a reason. Tampa Bay’s offense is definitely scary, but the Bucs are excellent in stopping the run. The threat to this over is probably a big-time performance from Jameis Winston, either in throwing touchdowns or game-changing interceptions. We’ll fade those outcomes.

Minnesota Vikings (-2.5) over Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys are 5-1, coming off a bye, and getting points? I’m sure that is going to flummox many people, and this is a primetime spot for the world to jump on Dallas. Unsurprisingly, we’re going the other way. Minnesota is on extra rest in their own right, and Dak Prescott isn’t 100 percent. It’s certainly a contrarian play, but lay the tiny number on a rare team that is non-public favorite.

Before he ever got the chance to set foot on stage for his Rolling Loud set, Fetty Wap was arrested on federal drug charges Thursday afternoon at Citi Field in New York. TMZ reports that the New Jersey rapper was arrested by FBI agents on unspecified charges. NBC New York revealed that the indictment against the rapper is still under seal but that he was one of around six people charged.

Fetty had been largely out of the spotlight after 2015, when his inescapable singles “Trap Queen” and “My Way” dominated the airwaves. Since then, he’s had several run-ins with the police, including a 2017 arrest for drunk driving and a 2019 one for assault. As NBC notes, Fetty has had a rough run in the past year or so, as his brother was killed in New Jersey last year and his four-year-old daughter died earlier this year. He’d just released his new album The Butterfly Effect last week and performed at Rolling Loud in Miami earlier this year, so it seemed that he was bouncing back.

Rolling Stone notes that Fetty Wap — whose real name is William Junior Maxwell II — will be arraigned later today at a Central Islip federal court. Fetty’s absence was noted by fans at Rolling Loud, but apparently remained unexplained for concert-goers.

Reports surfaced yesterday that Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid broke up following an argument Malik had with Hadid’s mother Yolanda. Now more light has been shed on the situation, as TMZ reports Malik faced four charges of harassment against Gigi and Yolanda and pled no contest to them.

Malik reportedly entered his plea on Wednesday and was fined. He’s on 90 days of probation for each count, for a total of 360 days, and he must complete both an anger management class and a domestic violence program. Additionally, he is also forbidden from contacting Yolanda.

According to court documents, Malik got into an intense argument with Yolanda, calling her a “f*cking Dutch slut” and demanding that she “stay away from [his] f*cking daughter.” He allegedly “shoved [Yolanda] into a dresser, causing mental anguish and physical pain,” but Malik denies the physical contact. Malik reportedly also screamed at Gigi, “Strap on some f*cking balls and defend your partner against your f*cking mother in my house.” Gaga was apparently in Paris during the incident, so Malik would have said this to her over the phone.

There was also a security guard present, and Malik apparently tried to fight him and screamed, “Get the f*ck out of my f*cking house, copper.”

Malik seemingly confirmed the no contest plea in a tweet yesterday, in which he wrote, “As you all know I am a private person and I very much want to create a safe and private space for my daughter to grow up in. A place where private family matters aren’t thrown on the world stage for all to poke and pick apart. In an effort to protect that space for her I agreed to not contest claims arising from an argument I had with a family member of my partner’s who entered our home while my pattern was away several weeks ago. This was and still should be a private matter but it seems for now there is divisiveness and despite my efforts to restore us to a peaceful family environment that will allow for me to co-parent my daughter in a manner in which she deserves, this has been ‘leaked’ to the press. I am hopeful though for healing for all involved with the harsh words shared and more importantly I remain vigilant to protect Khai and give her the privacy she deserves.”

Stephen Colbert is laughing at Mark Zuckerberg—and not for the first time. While we all knew it was coming, on Thursday the Facebook co-founder and CEO officially announced that the company would be rebranding as Meta… and the jokes immediately followed. On Thursday night, Colbert kicked off his opening monologue with his own take on the name change.

While Colbert admitted that he has never had a Facebook page and does not get Facebook, even he was aware of how big the news was that the embattled social media giant was renaming itself Meta. “That’s right, Meta,” Colbert said. “As in your Aunt Gloria saying, ‘I meta guy on Facebook who says the vaccine makes his balls magnetic.’”

“Along with the new name, they have a new logo,” Colbert continued. “And of course, since this is the internet, in less than one minute, somebody drew a penis on it.”

“And, of course, then they put a dick next to it,” he added.

The jokes did not end there. After comparing Facebook to a dystopian universe, Colbert confirmed that the site you use to message with your mom because she thinks it’s her cell phone’s text feature will still be known as Facebook. “The company says the name Facebook is not going away,” Colbert explained. “‘From now on, we’re going to be the metaverse first. Not Facebook first,’” he read from a press statement—but told viewers, “Don’t you worry: The self-esteem of teenage girls will always be last.”

“The announcement came in a video by Facebook’s chief humanoid simulation Mark Zuckerberg, who addressed some of the recent controversy the company is going through.” Zuck did his best to make these references as general as possible, and focus on the future—and how any past mistakes only make them better equipped to learn and build a better place for people to gather on the internet. Zuckerberg also spoke about how the metaverse experience will be much better than the Zoom existence that’s become our new normal; that it will be a place where we can make eye contact and feel more connected to the people in our lives.

“And I enjoy making eye contact, because it is something that we as humans do in order to feel connections on an emotional level,” Colbert joked, doing his best Zuckerberg-as-a-soulless-robot impression. “A level I definitely have.”

You can watch the full clip above.

“Are you ready for this?” – Something that I never thought that I’d hear Geralt of Rivia say, and it’s happening in this Season 2 trailer.

The Witcher‘s Geralt of Rivia shall soon return to grace The Continent with his monster-hunting skills, and this full-on trailer delivers the feeling that this has all been worth the wait. As we saw in the final moments of last season, Ciri and Geralt had found each other (in a paternal way), and she’s clearly now seizing her destiny and is in training mode. The show’s got a lot to live up to, given that it defied expectations during its debut, and Henry Cavill has also revealed that his character will somehow be less grumpy this time around. At least, that will outwardly be the case because Geralt will do less grunting since he’ll be more “verbose and be philosophical and speak more and be intellectual.”

Get ready for that, for sure. Meanwhile, Yennifer’s out on her own, and not doing so well after the Battle of Sodden, as she’s apparently working her way back toward Geralt’s neck of the woods. We also receive the visual confirmation of more Jaskier, who’s been jailed and making new friends and, hopefully, composing more horrible-yet-catchy bangers to torture everyone. Quite possibly, we hear Kim Bodnia’s voice as Vesimir, Geralt’s mentor, and we definitely get to see more of Kristofer Hivju in highly unflattering prosthetics. From the official synopsis:

Convinced Yennefer’s life was lost at the Battle of Sodden, Geralt of Rivia brings Princess Cirilla to the safest place he knows, his childhood home of Kaer Morhen. While the Continent’s kings, elves, humans and demons strive for supremacy outside its walls, he must protect the girl from something far more dangerous: the mysterious power she possesses inside.

The Witcher returns to The Continent on Friday December 17th. Here’s some absolutely stunning key art, and I can’t wait to see Ciri in badass mode.

Tucker Carlson isn’t used to being told “no.” Which partly explains how Patriot Purge, his new three-part documentary series which claims that January 6th was a “false flag” operation, came to be. Needless to say, the fact that the events of that infamous day—which left five dead—are being called into question at the same time the January 6th commission is doing its best to interview witnesses and participants (not all of them willingly) is enraging a lot of people. Chief among them, Liz Cheney, who holds one of the committee’s highest positions.

On Thursday morning, Cheney tweeted about the series, saying it’s this same type of dangerous propaganda that led to January’s insurrection in the first place: “It appears that @FoxNews is giving @TuckerCarlson a platform to spread the same type of lies that provoked violence on January 6. As @FoxNews knows, the election wasn’t stolen and January 6 was not a “false flag” operation.”

While Cheney is far from the first or only person to express her outrage over the Patriot Purge trailer—even Carlson’s Fox News colleague Geraldo Rivera called it “bullshit”—Carlson took Cheney’s tweet as an opportunity to clutch his pearls and play dumb.

Carlson, who’s now referring to Patriot Purge as an “investigative documentary” (yes, you can laugh), told viewers to:

“Keep in mind that Liz Cheney hasn’t even seen the film that she’s so angry about. Just the trailer. A minute and 42 seconds pulled from three full episodes. Liz Cheney’s not waiting for the facts here, she knows for certain that we’ve got weapons of mass destruction and she plans to invade.

According to Liz Cheney, this show is dangerous. Because we dared to report on what actually happened on January 6th, this show is somehow, she says, abetting violence.”

To Carlson, Cheney’s brand of reasoning is “a staple of the purple-haired college activists you see yelling at people in viral videos. ‘Your speech is violence,’ they shout. ‘Our speech… our violence is speech.’” Not even Carlson seems able to keep track of his own arguments. But, as The Hill reports, Carlson then set his diatribe up for the big payoff when he said that he could see why Cheney is so enraged by his trailer:

“Until yesterday she and Nancy Pelosi had a monopoly on how Americans were allowed to understand Jan. 6. Unfortunately for them, that’s not how a free society works. Politicians don’t get to put parameters around your thoughts or conversations. Free people are allowed to ask any question they want. They can follow the facts to their own logical conclusions and that’s exactly what we set out to do months ago when we began reporting out this story.”

Carlson ended his rant, which largely just served as a promotional spot for Patriot Purge, by mentioning that they had invited Cheney onto the show to discuss the docuseries, but that “she emphatically refused to come. It turns out that Liz Cheney is not simply a liar, she is also a coward,” Carlson concluded.

You can watch Carlson’s full segment below, and not watch his docuseries beginning November 1.

(Via The Hill)

Earlier in the week, Meghan McCain put Lindsey Graham on blast after the South Carolina senator debunked a claim in her audiobook that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump “crashed” her father John McCain’s funeral. The former The View co-host called out Graham in a tweet, and it was a notable rebuke given he once considered a very dear friend to the family. In fact, McCain had repeatedly referred to him as “like an uncle” over the years.

While appearing on The Guy Benson Show on Thursday, McCain defended calling out Graham and lamented that their relationship had devolved to this point. However, she also didn’t refute his assertion that Jared and Ivanka’s presence at her father’s funeral was approved by her mother Cindy McCain.

Via Mediaite:

I don’t want to speak negatively of people who at one point in time were close with my dad, but I also will defend myself, and I will defend my work, and I will defend my life, and he doesn’t get to speak for me and like he’s not a spokesperson for Meghan McCain or the McCain family, and you know, I don’t want to go to like too deep into it, because honestly it’s just been extremely emotionally taxing to have this happen.

Meghan also described the situation as “horrible,” but her central beef with Graham seems to be that he did this in public.

“I never ever would have brought something like this public in my life, because I think it’s distasteful and just bizarre and gross, but I will defend myself if I need to,” McCain said while promoting her tell-all audiobook, Bad Republican, which airs all of her grievances with The View in public.

(Via Mediaite)

Next month will bring the premiere of Tiger King 2, for which Netflix shared a trailer a couple days ago. Ahead of that, though, Joe Exotic is looking for help with getting out of prison and has called on Cardi B for assistance, a call that Cardi recently answered.

On October 21, Exotic’s unverified Twitter account shared a photo of a handwritten note that is addressed to Cardi and reads, “When you see the truth in Tiger King 2 I need you to rally everyone together to be my voice of freedom! Be my hero girl.” Cardi finally saw the post yesterday, as she shared it and wrote, “Wait is this the real tiger king?”

John Michael Phillips, Exotic’s lawyer, responded to Cardi’s tweet, writing, “I represent Joe. He heard about your message from prison. I’d love to put you two together on a phone call next week.” He later added, “I can’t even imagine facilitating the call between @iamcardib and @joe_exotic. That collaboration may make the world explode. Here kitty kitty (the WAP remix) is so 2022. Cardi, I can probably get you on a call with Joe next week. He’s grateful for you taking on Carole early.”

Exotic sees an ally in Cardi due to her previous run-ins with Carole Baskin. Baskin shared criticisms about Cardi over the animals used in her “WAP” video, and Cardi responded, “I’m not gonna engage with Carole Baskin on that. Like, that’s just ridiculous, you know? Oh, Lord. Like, girl: you killed your g*ddamn husband.”

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.