GoneTrending

The White Lotus (Sunday, HBO 9:00pm) — Mike White’s new series skewers the ultra-wealthy in what turns out to be a brilliant satire on how obscene wealth rots everything that it touches. It’s like The Love Boat or Fantasy Island had a lovechild with Agatha Christie. This week, its season finale time with Rachel and Shane going through an extremely rough patch (especially as newlyweds, but hey, are you surprised?), and vacation-murder time wearing down for all, until next cast/next season time.

Heels (Sunday, Starz 9:00pm) — Does the world need a series about a small-town wrestling circuit? Well, maybe not, but how about a show about a small-town wrestling circuit that’s written and created by Michael Waldron, creator of Loki and writer of Rick and Morty and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness? Family legacy is front and center in this Georgia setting as brothers (Alexander Ludwig and Stephen Amell) who do the good-guy/bad guy thing, and “heel” refers to the latter role, which is harder to shake off outside the ring than it appears. There ain’t no drama like wrestling drama.

These streaming picks make great appetizers:

CODA (Apple TV+ movie) — This Sundance-awarded film (of four awards, including the Directing Award, the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize) from Vendome Pictures touches down on your streaming devices. The story follows a teenager named Ruby, who happens to be the only member of a deaf family who’s able to hear. She’s not only involved with all of the usual teenage concerns but also interpreting duties for her parents and the family business. When she joins her school’s choir, things get rough after she blossoms and finds herself with a difficult choice: keep meeting all of those family obligations, or strike out on her own venture.

Modern Love: Season 2 (Amazon Prime series) — Who doesn’t want to watch Jon Snow Kit Harington romance Lucy Boynton? It’s the return of the popular anthology series that found inspiration in the famed New York Times column. Relationships and connections shall happen, as well as betrayals and revelations, and the cast is chock full of talent you already know and love, including Tobias Menzies, Minnie Driver, Garrett Hedlund. All rules of love shall be henceforth broken in locales including Dublin and the whole of New York, including that Big Apple. Did I mention? Jon Snow getting randy again is not to be missed.

Beckett (Netflix film) — John David Washington stars as an American tourist, Beckett, who finds himself targeted by authorities following a tragic accident in Greece. Cue the international conspiracy-and-thriller vibes while Beckett desperately tries to clear his name amid political unrest throughout the country. Can he reach the American embassy in time, and will it make sense? Who knows, but this movie’s sure to be less confusing than Washington’s most recent release, Tenet.

Here’s some more regularly scheduled programming:

UFO (Sunday, Showtime 9:00pm) — Timing might not be everything, but it sure means a lot. Earlier this summer, the U.S. government’s so-called comprehensive report on Unidentified Flying Objects revealed, uh, nothing. Enter J.J. Abrams with this four-part docuseries that examines the cultural touchpoints of alien sightings and promises to examine possible motives on those parties who might be “shielding the truth,” and yep, this is coming from Abrams of Cloverfield and Super 8, so enjoy, Fox Mulder.

Wellington Paranormal (Sunday, CW 9:00pm) — What We Do In The Shadows fans rejoice because you’re receiving a spinoff mockumentary series with the same comedy-horror tone from creators and executive producers Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. This week, zombies and terrifying clowns get followed up by trouble near the water.

100 Foot Wave (Sunday, HBO 10:00pm) — This six-part sports-documentary series follows the decade-long journey of Garrett McNamara, the pioneering and iconic surfer who dreamed of conquering (as the title indicates) a 100-foot wave, which did more than push his sport to literally higher heights while also elevating a small fishing village. This week, athletes from around he world arrive for the tournament.

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (Sunday, HBO 11:00pm) — John Oliver, yes!

Here are more streaming picks for the weekend:

Reservation Dogs: (FX on Hulu) — Taika Waititi’s FX on Hulu followup to What We Do in the Shadows brings us a comedy series that’s co-written by Native American filmmaker Sterlin Harjo. Yes, the lead quartet in this show rocks suits that look strikingly similar to the characters of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, yet they’re four Indigenous teens who want to commit crime and simply can’t pull it off. The show was shot in and near Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and these teens hope to make it all the way to California. The cast and crew come from indigenous communities, from where Harjo and Waititi are aiming their storytelling styles as well.

Brand New Cherry Flavor (Netflix limited series) — Every so often (Warrior Nun, hint hint) a pulpy-looking Netflix series looks as though it may not last long due to its niche quality, but it’s still worth some time to peruse. And who knows? This pulpy series could find a devoted fanbase, too. There’s sex, magic, revenge, and felines on hand for an early 1990s filmmaker character, who’s attempting to make it big in Hollywood, but things get very spooky. Halloween arrives early this year here, and since time means nothing anymore, go for it.

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Season 2 (Paramount+ series) — This animated series from Rick and Morty writer (and Solar Opposites creator) Mike McMahan takes things to the year 2380 (after the original Star Trek beginning in 2265), where the U.S.S. Cerritos aren’t the heroes that you’re expecting. These are junior officers who are not pleased at their lack of power while confronting bizarre alien anomalies like enormous bugs. This violent show’s got a PG-13-like feel, so keep that in mind.

The Hype: Season 1 (HBO Max series) — Streetwear professionals finally get a proper reality-competition show that aims to create a collision of streetwear, culture, and business. Cardi B’s judging, along with Wiz Khalifa, A$AP Ferg, Dapper Dan, and Bobby Hundreds. All involved aim to mentor the contestants while imparting their specialized visions toward the visionary contestants. From fashion to music to art to lifestyle and everywhere in between, the creativity here should be off the hook, and maybe some of that coolness will rub off on us.

Ted Lasso: Season 2 (Apple TV+ series) — First thing’s first: Everyone who’s caught a glimpse of this Bill Lawrence co-created and developed series loves it. That’s a notable feat, considering that star Jason Sudeikis first portrayed the title character way back in 2013 for NBC Sports’ promos for Premier League coverage. Fast forward to the fresh hell that was 2020, and the show surfaced as one of the year’s lone bright spots. Ted Lasso is somehow both relentlessly and charmingly cheery, although there’s always the spectre of Led Tasso to consider.

The Suicide Squad (Warner Bros. film on HBO Max) — David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad confined itself to a PG-13 rating, but no one expected James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad to stay with PG-13, and in fact, this R-rated (and quite good) extravaganza is releasing simultaneously on streaming and in theaters. Enjoy the “horribly beautiful” assortment of supervillains as they undertake their latest Task Force X mission, and the cast is an enormous, eclectic, and electric. Not only do we have the returning Margot Robbie (as Harley Quinn), Joel Kinnaman (as Rick Flag), Viola Davis (as Amanda Waller), and Jai Courtney (as Boomerang), but John Cena, Idris Elba, Pete Davidson, and more joined the cast. Also: Sylvester Stallone as King Shark. Sold!

Atlanta‘s return to FX’s illustrious list of comedy programming is a bit closer than some expected in a world that’s been upended by a pandemic. The Donald Glover vehicle has had two strong seasons, and word came Friday that a third has wrapped and should arrive in the early part of 2022.

The Wrap reported Friday that FX head John Landgraf provided an update on Atlanta while speaking at a virtual Television Critics Association press tour. And while an official release date isn’t here, Landgraf confirmed that shooting has finished in Europe and the coming months will detail a lengthy post-production process before it airs in the “first half” of the new year:

“We haven’t locked down the scheduling for Season 3 yet,” Langraf said. “It has finished shooting. It shot primarily in Europe, actually, and it’s in post-production. But it is a lengthy post-production process on that. And part of the reason it’s like this is because they’re actually in production right now on Season 4 in Atlanta. And all of the scripts for Season 4 have been written. I absolutely adore those scripts for both seasons. So to be honest with you, the reason I can’t quite lock it down for you is that it really is driven by Donald Glover and Hiro Murai’s schedule and availability and the length of post, both for Season 3, while they’re in process of producing Season 4. But note that I did listed as one of the things that will be coming back in the first half of 2022. So that is our anticipation and I think we’ll be able to lock down an actual date, certainly for Season 3, maybe for both cycles, relatively soon. I would guess within a couple months.”

While a long post-production period may be disappointing for some, that filming is finished is huge news for a show many have hoped would return in a hurry. Knowing Season 4 is set as well is really encouraging, as hopefully the turnaround for that isn’t nearly as anguished as filming pretty much anything has been over the last year or so as well.

We’ll hold our breath for an official release date, but progress is progress.

[via The Wrap]

It’s kind of wild to look back and realize that Iggy Azalea has had a longer rap career than anyone could have foreseen back when everyone was yelling at her over her “blaccent” (resurrected recently due to her “I Am The Strip Club” video) and making fun of that less-than-legible festival freestyle. But, all things eventually end, and for the last year and a half, the Australian rapper, who had her biggest hit in 2014 with “Fancy,” has been recording End Of An Era, her final album which dropped today. In a new interview with Billboard, Iggy explains why now felt like the right time to issue her swan song.

“I’ve been putting out projects for the last decade, which is a long time to professionally do anything,” she reflects. “Most people move up in their career or job chain slightly, and mine’s been the same for 11 years. I’m getting to a space where I feel that there’s not much new perspective I can bring to what I’m doing… at least not that I’d be comfortable with the world hearing.”

She also has some thoughts about how she’d like her career to be remembered. “I guess I would just like to be remembered as a trailblazer,” she hopes. “I experimented a lot with sounds, so remember me as someone not afraid to try new things and experiment — someone who brought fun and ridiculousness and escapism to the world… All I wanted to do was create a universe for some kid sitting at home and help them imagine themselves in the world of my videos. That’s the legacy I want for myself.”

End Of An Era is out now on Empire. You can listen to it here.

At first glance, The White Lotus and Tuca and Bertie do not seem to have much in common. One is an HBO drama about rich white people vacationing in Hawaii; the other is an animated series about talking birds (guess which is which). But look a little closer and you’ll see the similarities. For instance, The White Lotus and Tuca and Bertie are creators Mike White and Lisa Hannawalt first shows since Enlightened and BoJack Horseman, two of the most acclaimed dark comedies of the past 20 years (technically, Hannawalt didn’t create BoJack, but she was the show’s creative designer and there would be no BoJack without her). Also, both series air their season finales this Sunday (each has already been renewed). But what really connects The White Lotus and Tuca and Bertie is that they understand the same universal truth: teens are terrifying.

As a 30-something, I am scared of teens. I was also scared of teens as a teen, but it’s different now. Whenever I’m at the mall and see a group (pack? troupe? murder?) of teens lingering around the Auntie Anne’s, I will go the long way to the Apple Store. I want to avoid their detection. Teens have an uncanny ability to detect your greatest vulnerability. It could be something as obvious as tripping or as minor as wearing a red shirt when you usually wear a blue shirt, but they will know exactly what to say to destroy you. “Hey Elmo, nice shirt.” Devastating. You can’t recover from that. All you can do is George Michael (the rare non-terrifying teen) your way to get your iPhone fixed.

The teens — the cactus, the plant, the… other plant — on Tuca and Bertie love to loiter. It doesn’t matter if they’re chilling on the fire escape or sitting on the stoop outside the apartment building, they’re always around for a disaffected quip. In a season one episode, Bertie (voiced by Ali Wong) greets her neighbors with an “eek, teens!” After they give her a compliment that sounds like an insult, she wonders out loud, “Uh, the words you’re saying are nice, but the way you say them makes them sound mean, so…” Tuca (Tiffany Haddish) cuts her off to point out, “They’re teenagers, Bertie, everything they say is a lie.” It doesn’t feel like it in the moment, though. As Tuca and Bertie flee the scene, one of the teens wonders, “Are we mean?” It’s a rare moment of self-awareness… that’s quickly interrupted by a “no way” from her friend. The emotional maturity will come later.

The two teens on The White Lotus, Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and Paula (Brittany O’Grady), think they’re emotionally mature, but they’re not. They think a lot of things about themselves actually, in particular Olivia, who criticizes her mother for working on vacation / ruining the world, makes her brother sleep on the beach, and, upon being told by her dad that his dad died from AIDS, wonders if her grandpa was into ass play. The friends, who are introduced by coming up with tragic backstories for their fellow vacationers, think they have it all figured it out — so long as they have their backpack full of drugs. They’re Cher and Dionne from Clueless, if Cher and Dionne were bitchy (I say that with complete affection) zoomers who read Nietzsche and Freud poolside.

I still haven’t recovered from one scene, in particular.

All Rachel (Alexandria Daddario) wants to do is have a nice conversation with two other young women. Instead, they act with she’s-so-cheugy disdain towards the new-bride. “Where’d you go to school?” Olivia asks, 40 percent invested in the conversation. SUNY Potsdam, she answers. Instead of a follow-up question, all Rachel gets is a “hmm.” At this point, she senses their sarcastic detachment, but she’s too far into her life story to stop. There’s talk of student loans, her husband (Jake Lacy) being rich, and Olivia’s CEO mother. Rachel sees them giving side-eye glances to each other, knowing that she’s going to be an inside joke between two friends, but she isn’t ready to bail until she gives an example of something she wrote: “Ten Women Kicking the Corporate World’s Ass.”

She gets shut down with a smile. Brutal.

If her husband wasn’t ruining her honeymoon with his rich-guy fixation on the Pineapple Suite (to say nothing of her mother-in-law dropping by for a visit), this would be the only thing that Rachel would remember from her honeymoon. I know I would play this interaction in my head on repeat, like George Costanza coming up with “jerk store” too late. It brings back uncomfortable memories from high school of having a real moment of vulnerability be greeted with a shrug or indifference. I worked hard to suppress those! Even Paula feels Olivia’s wrath later in the season (“She’s my friend, as long as she has more of everything than I do, but if I have something of my own, she wants it”). No one is safe from the withering (and misguided) superiority of teens, even other teens.

I thought of one more thing that The White Lotus and Tuca and Bertie: they’re two of the best shows on television this year, largely because of the plant teens and Olivia and Paula. Don’t tell them that, though. They don’t need their egos inflated any further.

“No topics is off limits” is the tagline for B.J. Novak’s newest project The Premise and based on the series first trailer, we’d say that’s pretty damn apt. The surreal FX series coming to Hulu is a comedic anthology written by The Office star and script writer Novak that features an impressive cast and a whole lot of head-scratching storylines, including ones centering around “the worst sex tape ever,” social media trolls, and, well, butt plugs.

In addition to boldly going to places no one’s gone before (is that too much after just talking about butt plugs?), the series also states it will use comedy to “to engage with the biggest issues of our unprecedented modern era.” In doing so, The Premise looks to be tackling topics ranging from sex, social media, and the modern obsession with validation to immigration, police misconduct, and Black Lives Matter.

To have these important discussions, Novak has brought on a pretty all-star cast featuring the talents of Ben Platt, Tracee Ellis Ross, Daniel Dae Kim, Lola Kirke, Soko, Kaitlyn Dever, Jon Bernthal, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Ed Asner, George Wallace, Jermaine Fowler, Ayo Edebiri, Eric Lange, and more, believe it or not. In true anthology fashion the cast will be divided up across the show’s first five episodes, all of which have some pretty compelling titles such as “Social Justice Sex Tape,” “Moment of Silence,” “The Ballad of Jesse Wheeler,” “The Commenter,” and, last but not least, “Butt Plug.”

All five of The Premise’s announced episodes feature B.J. Novak’s as a writer or co-writer, with two of them being directed by the star as well. The half-hour anthology comes to exclusively to FX on Hulu on September 16.

There have been good movies with disappointing endings before, but Free Guy may hold the record for the longest a movie has ever seemed on the verge of greatness before turning truly loathsome in the end.

Maybe the second part is less surprising to you than the first. Maybe you’re like me and you’re getting a little sick of Ryan Reynolds’… whole deal. Reynolds occupies a unique niche in the pop culture landscape, a handsome model/actor-type who often feels like he’s being piloted by the Reddit hivemind in some kind of Meet Dave situation. He’s so squeaky clean, and yet he swears. He’s so muscular, and yet he loves girl pop. He’s not funny, exactly, but charmingly game, and willing to do memes. He’s a self-aware handsome guy, get it?? Yes, yes, we get it. Have you considered that maybe he’s just Canadian?

Even admitting that bias going in, Free Guy in many ways seems like the perfect Ryan Reynolds role, almost a bespoke attempt to turn him into the Tom Cruise-level movie star he occasionally seems like. Reynolds plays Guy, a bank teller in Free City, an average American metropolis that seems to suffer from an exorbitant amount of violent crime. Not that Guy is perturbed — he suffers the daily robberies with a smile, exchanging pleasantries with his best friend Buddy (Lil Rel Howery), the bank security guard, his pet goldfish, and the local barista, from whom he orders a coffee with cream and two sugars. “Don’t just have a good day, have a GREAT day!”

His oddly cheery persona, spotless uniform, and slightly stiff manner are eventually explained: as Guy gradually comes to realize, he’s actually an NPC (“non-player character”) living inside a Grand Theft Auto-style video game. It’s only when he steals a pair of sunglasses from a human player that he can see what they see, the game going on all around him. Now what? What does it mean to discover that Elon is right and you really are living inside a simulation?

Maybe the most interesting thing about Free Guy is how quickly this simple plot conceit pushes the narrative towards legitimately profound questions, even as no one involved seems all that interested in asking them. Free Guy, after all, comes from director Shawn Levy — Date Night, Real Steel, The Internship, Night At The Museum — a pure studio man if ever there was one. And the story seems like the product of fairly simple studio math: what if Pleasantville plus Westworld? Or maybe just what if family-friendly Westworld?

Yet it proves impossible to open the Pandora’s box of an artificial-intelligence story without immediately having to question the nature of reality and of consciousness itself. There’s something magical about that, doubly so coming in the form of a Ryan Reynolds videogame movie that desperately wants to be lighthearted. It’s a little like that old video of two chatbots forced to talk to each other who within 60 seconds were asking “Do you believe in God?” and “Would you like to have a body?”

The conceit is that two best friend videogame designers, Millie and Keys (I thought his name was “Keith” for most of the movie, which was much less obnoxious), played by Jodie Comer and Joe Keery, have had their code for a kinder, gentler kind of videogame hijacked by a megalomaniacal games CEO played by Taika Waititi — a comedic force of nature in an Oscar-worthy turn, to say nothing of his magnificent head of hair. “Antoine” has turned their second world into a vulgar first-person shooter. Keys now works for “Soonami Games” as a low-level coder while Comer is persona non-grata, locked in a legal battle with Antoine for her share of the royalties.

Millie is inside Free City, trying to find evidence when she inadvertently turns Guy self-aware. Guy falls for Millie’s avatar, Molotov, and he has to help her uncover the evidence against Antoine before Antoine can zap Guy’s entire world into nothingness at a stroke. (Free Guy vastly underestimates the true sociopathy, vindictiveness, and paranoia of your average tech CEO — Facebook has a “rat-catching team” and the Pinkerton agency has reportedly sent detectives into coffee shops to eavesdrop on potential leakers, for clients like Facebook and Google).

For a while, for almost the whole damn movie, in fact, it seems like Free Guy really is going to succeed at being a lighthearted comedic version of Westworld, or something like the movie Ready Player One wanted to be. It questions the nature of consciousness and gives us a self-aware NPC as protagonist only to turn, in the end, into a corny love story. Free Guy lifts, spiritually, from Richard Curtis, writer of cornball cutesies such as Yesterday and Love Actually in which a man suddenly realizes he’s in love with his lifelong platonic best friend (ugh) and lifts overtly from The Avengers and Star Wars. Some people in my theater actually clapped at the cameo from Captain America’s shield (UGHHHH). Did you know Disney, who owns Marvel and Star Wars, also owns 20th Century Fox, who made Free Guy? Seems like something they’d want to disguise, but instead they shoehorn reminders right into the climax.

Watching Free Guy feel like something truly great for almost a whole movie before turning into the worst kind of soulless, neutered exercise in Remembering Other Things can’t help but make us the audience feel like Guy. We can run right up to the walls of the artifice, and feel like we’re just on the cusp of experiencing something new, but the minute we come to expect anything but disposable commerce we’ll just be bombarded with “nice” imagery to keep us docile and stupid.

‘Free Guy’ is available now only in theaters. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

In recent times, Justin Vernon has been most predominantly busy with Big Red Machine, but now he’s shifting his focus towards Bon Iver, as he took to social media today to tease something related to the project.

On Twitter today, he shared an image of text that reads, “A decade later, a decade of gratitude. Check back Monday. Bon Iver,.” He also captioned the post, “Sincerely grateful.”

That’s all the info Vernon offered on what news is to come on Monday, but it was one decade ago (on June 21, 2011) that he released his self titled album, Bon Iver, Bon Iver, so it would seem that whatever he has planned is related to that. In tweets responding to Vernon’s, fans expressed hope for things like anniversary reissues of the album and shows during which Vernon plays the album’s songs.

It’s certainly an album worth celebrating. After earning acclaim with his 2007 debut album For Emma, Forever Ago, it was Bon Iver, Bon Iver that launched Vernon to mainstream commercial and critical success. The album peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, which remains his highest placement, along with 22, A Million which also topped out in the same spot. It also won Vernon a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album in 2012.

Jon Taffer’s tough style is sort of the point of Bar Rescue, but his comments on the actual food and beverage industry outside of reality television got him into hot water this week. Taffer appeared on Fox News on Thursday night to talk about restaurant workers with Laura Ingraham. And rather than be sympathetic to the plight of millions of people working through a still-ongoing pandemic, Taffer compared low-income workers to dogs who should be starved in order to be motivated to work.

Service industry workers have endured a lot during the pandemic, starting with uncertainty about their jobs amid lockdowns. Hotels and restaurants were the first places to shut down amid coronavirus mitigation efforts, and their slow reopening has not come without safety concerns about and the need for personal protective equipment for those who have returned to work.

A study in May said half of adults not vaccinated were concerned about missing work because of side effects, and with no paid time off for vaccines or schedule flexibility, some are neglecting their own health in order to keep getting paychecks. For some people, however, wages were so low that the benefits they can get from the federal government actually outweigh those coming from jobs offered by employers, hence the staff shortages many employers have complained about for months.

Rather than simply pay more livable wages, however, Taffer is on the side of those who simply want to complain. Mostly about how no one wants to work in these days filled with disease and death.

“We’re incentivizing people to stay home,” Taffer said, as he nonsensically pitched giving unemployment benefits directly to “employers” who would in theory trickle it down to their employees directly. Ingraham said that “hunger” is a motivating factor in life, and Taffer agreed, comparing restaurant workers to military dogs who are kept hungry in order to work harder.

“I have a friend in the military who trains military dogs. They only feed a military dog at night, because a hungry dog is an obedient dog,” Taffer said. “Well, if we are not causing people to be hungry to work then we’re providing them all the meals they need sitting at home.”

Economists can argue over the difference between an actual living wage and what employers are willing to pay workers, sure, but comparing actual humans to dogs is as gross an analogy you can intentionally offer. Which is why the reaction to the clip was not positive for the very wealthy guy who created NFL Sunday Ticket.

Taffer has yet to comment on this thing he very clearly believes, but for some, his ghastly comments certainly add to all that shouting he’s done at bar employees in the name of entertainment over the years.

Vampire roommates Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, and Colin are back in the newest trailer for What We Do in the Shadows season three and they’ve got a lot of problems to tackle. In the upcoming trailer, we see the gang take on werewolves, dating, and escalators while they attempt to decide which one of them should sit in the vampiric council throne as well as what they should do with their familiar Guillermo following last season’s big reveal. In addition to dealing with forced hierarchy and newly-ousted Guillermo, the show’s next season promises a lot of twists, turns, strange encounters, and, of course, laughs. According to the trailer’s description:

In Season 3, the vampires are elevated to a new level of power and will encounter the vampire from which all vampires have descended, a tempting Siren, gargoyles, werewolf kickball, Atlantic City casinos, wellness cults, ex-girlfriends, gyms and supernatural curiosities galore.

Based on Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi’s (Thor: Ragnarok) full-length feature film of the same name, What We Do in the Shadows follows the exploits of four Staten Island vampires and the bloody messes they get themselves into. During its first two seasons, the ongoing FX mockumentary has raked up ten Emmy award nominations, including one for Outstanding Comedy Series.

What We Do in the Shadows returns for its third season on September 2 with the two new episodes: “The Prisoner” and “The Clock of Duplication.” According to the show descriptions, in “The Prisoner” Guillermo’s fate “hangs in the balance” while the vampires reconfigure their ranks while “The Cloak of Duplication” follows Nandor courting a health club employee using a “forbidden artifact.” While the episodes will make their big debut on FX, they will be available for streaming the next day via FX on Hulu.

Don Cheadle’s still not entirely clear on why he was nominated for an Emmy for his very brief appearance in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but he’s here to set the record straight on that awkward-as-heck Kevin Hart exchange that left people wondering whether it was real. The incident in question took place on Hart’s new Peacock show full of celeb interviews and wine, and things appeared to veer towards the rails when Hart exclaimed, “Damn!” in response to Cheadle casually mentioning that he’s 53 years old.

This led to Cheadle appearing to dress down Hart and show him no mercy, all while Hart backpeddled and insisted that the “damn!” came from “a place of love.” Cheadle held firm, and although he kept a straight face, the entire exchange was funny as well as uncomfortable. Well, Cheadle has let everyone know that there are truly no hard feelings here. In response to a tweet about what he was thinking during the awkward exchange, Cheadle used the tears-of-joy emoji and declared, “i think this is my favorite interview ever. ‘damn!’” He also stated that he and Hart “need to do a movie together asap!”

Hey, he’s good, and that should be no real surprise, since Cheadle’s an Oscar winner and has an assortment of other acting awards and nominations under his belt. So, maybe that Emmy nod for a few minutes of Disney+ screentime as James Rhodey/War Machine isn’t too far off base after all. Much respect.