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Megan Thee Stallion is taking one heck of a victory lap in the wake of releasing her new album, Megan. In addition to reupping one of her most high-profile partnerships with a hilarious commercial for Amazon Prime Day, she’s also been celebrating the success of her Hot Girl Summer Tour, which has brought both admirers and increased camaraderie with the current generation of rap girls. She was given a chance to talk about it all — and given an apology for a vulgar joke — on the latest episode of Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay show.

Right at the top of the episode, Sharpe issued his mea culpa for the tasteless joke, which involved a comment on Meg’s attractiveness that came across as very unattractive. During a prior episode in November with fellow former NFL star Chad Johnson, Sharpe noted that Megan was “stacked up like dirty laundry in a dorm room” then, in response to a question about dating her by saying he’d “have her stretched out like a quarter-to-three.”

While he acknowledged that he was out of line, he also assured her it was all said in jest — and as a country girl herself, Meg certainly understood.

Watch the full episode of Club Shay Shay with Megan Thee Stallion above.

OnlyFans is most commonly known for featuring adult content, but that’s not all that’s on there. DJ Khaled and Fat Joe’s joint (and currently inactive) account, for example, isn’t full of NSFW content. Lily Allen has decided to hop on the platform, too, and she’s going all in on content focused on her feet.

Currently, she has posted on her account six times since June 25, sharing a total of five videos and four images so far. For those interested in seeing what Allen is sharing, it’ll cost them $10 per month.

As TMZ notes, the account is legit, as Allen has promoted it on her Instagram Story.

This follows a recent episode of Allen and Miquita Oliver’s Miss Me? podcast, during which Allen explained, “I have a lady that comes and does my nails, and they informed me that I have five stars on WikiFeet, which is quite rare. My feet are rated quite highly on the internet. […] She said that I could make a lot of money from selling foot content on OnlyFans, and I’m like, ‘Not no.’”

Indeed, Allen does have a five-star rating on WikiFeet and comments on her profile include, “Perfect size 6 feet and toe alignment,” “Yeah, up close like that they’re a bit odd but I like them anyway. They have character befitting the owner,” and, “Mesmerising, dazzling, gorgeous, sheer and total utter perfection.”

Donald Glover is one step closer to unifying with his musical alter ego Childish Gambino with the release of “Lithonia,” the first single from the soundtrack of Glover’s upcoming post-apocalypse comedy, Bando Stone & The New World.

After the song’s existence was inadvertently revealed by an overly enthusiastic fan, Gambino officially released it with no further hiccups. The track opens with a somber organ, suggesting something in the vein of his moodier psych-funk tracks from Awaken, My Love! — but then, it becomes a full-on, operatic rock anthem. It looks like Glover’s next musical evolution may end up being closer to Queen than Parliament. No, I’m not retracting that incredible wordplay.

Bando Stone & The New World appears from its trailer to be a bit of a comedic take on monster horror like A Quiet Place, with the titular singer emerging from his self-imposed isolation to discover an abandoned world that is now populated mostly by aggressive creatures. He quickly learns that he has none of the survival skills necessary to last more than a day in this new world; fortunately, he learns this from a competent survivor, who teams up with him despite his uselessness. Fans have already begun trying to decode the meaning of “Lithonia” and how it relates to this character, drawing parallels between “Bando Stone”‘s obviously fabricated moniker and the “Cody LaRae” whose name is repeated throughout the “Lithonia” chorus.

You can listen to the track above.

Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan are everyone’s favorite weird guy/1950s pin-up model girl couple. But long before they bailed each other out of jail (in a music video, at least), the Oscar-nominated The Banshees of Inisherin actor was tweeting the titles of her future number one hits.

According to BuzzFeed, a pair of decade-old tweets from Keoghan that “mention the names” of Carpenter’s songs “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” resurfaced this week. In one tweet, from November 10, 2014, a baby-faced Keoghan wrote, “this time last year I told you I would that I would be an Espresso Addict” (the photo is great). He would become a different kind of “Espresso” addict 10 years later. Even further back, on July 16, 2013, Keoghan asked, “Can someone Please please Please lend me The Sopranos..”

Twitter (or whatever) used to be so innocent.

Now, did Keoghan “predict” the titles of “Espresso” and “Please Please Please”? Of course not. To anyone who thinks he did, Morrissey would like a word. But it’s still a funny coincidence. However, if someone can find a tweet where he muses about emails he can’t send, maybe there’s something here.

Also, did anyone ever lend him a copy of The Sopranos? I hear it’s pretty good.

With just over two weeks until the July 19 release date for EA Sports College Football 25, we continue to get more and more information about the return of the college football video game franchise. We got an early look at the game back in May, with a chance to play the game for a few hours and hear a lot about Dynasty mode, Road to Glory, and more, we didn’t get an actual opportunity to see the full mechanics of things outside of gameplay.

On Tuesday, a new deep dive into Dynasty mode got released, and we got a ton of information about how recruiting and the transfer portal will work, as well as the coaching carousel. Here, we’ll dive into everything about how the carousel works, hiring and firing coaches, how coaching archetypes work, and how it all impacts your program.

Coaching Archetypes

After deciding whether to be a head coach, offensive coordinator, or defensive coordinator to start your career, you can choose which of the three base coaching types you will be: Recruiter (self-explanatory), Motivator (player development and program culture), or Tactician (X’s and O’s). Within each type you can pick a path to either become hyper specialized (i.e., Elite Recruiter) or more balanced (i.e., Talent Developer, who blends Recruiter and Motivator) as a coach. There is no one right path, and the idea was to create pros and cons for each. Getting hyper-specialized will give you bigger boosts in that area, so if you want to run a Mario Cristobal Simulator and become the best recruiter, you’ll dominate the recruiting trail but you’ll lag behind in the world of scheme and talent development. However, you can’t be great at everything in the game, so trying to be balanced comes with its own negatives, as you’ll struggle to do any one thing at an elite level.

The ultimate goal is to become an “elite archetype” of Program Builder or CEO, and you can do that by taking any of the pathways. All told, there are 11 archetypes, from specialization to blends of talents, with each having unique areas of expertise and perks, from in-game boosts to recruiting boosts to better player development. They all form what EA calls a “rock, paper, scissors relationship” to ensure there isn’t one dominant archetype.

You can upgrade your archetype by earning coaching points, which come from achieving different goals in the various areas. The example they provide is to become an Elite Recruiter you have to spend 50 Coach Points in the Recruiter archetype and also sign two top-5 recruiting classes. You can view your progress on the Coach Abilities screen in the Dynasty Hub, seeing what archetypes are available, requirements to unlock them, perks they provide, and your progression in each.

Coordinators and head coaches have the same archetypes and skill trees, which is important to consider when building your staff. Coordinator and head coach skills stack, which means if you are a recruiter and hire other recruiters, you’ll get bigger boosts. However, you also can look to balance your staff by filling in your personal weaknesses by hiring coordinators with strengths in those areas. Again, that creates more balance but limits how significant the boosts you can get in each area will be.

Coaching Contracts

Each contract will come with a set number of years and performance expectations. The four contract expectations are Number of Wins, Win a Conference Championship, Make the Playoff, and Win a National Championship. The expectations are determined by the school’s Team Prestige rating at the time of signing the deal. Your job security will fluctuate based on how you are doing in relation to those goals and the further you get from them, the closer you are to going on the hot seat — and potentially getting fired. You can get fired in the game (unless you turn that off in settings), and your job security is tied to your success on the field. Winning a big game or beating a rival will boost your job security, while a bad loss to an FCS team will drop it considerably.

Once your contract runs up, your school will determine whether to extend you or not based on your performance in meeting those expectations. Extension offers are automatically signed to avoid any accidental skipping through that stage and losing a job you were already in, but an extension doesn’t preclude you from entering the Coaching Carousel and taking a new job.

Coaching Carousel

One thing fans really wanted was an expanded Coaching Carousel, and it certainly appears we are getting it this year. The carousel is now a five-week process that will start on Conference Championship week, as all coaching contracts will be processed and schools determine whether they are going to fire, extend, or let contracts expire. You’ll be able to fire coordinators as the head coach during this week, but you also might get a coordinator poached away during the carousel, requiring you to scramble during the carousel process to land some new assistants. Offers aren’t guaranteed to be accepted, and if you fail to hire a coordinator by the end of the carousel process, you’ll be given one based on the caliber of your program.

The first week of bowl season will bring the first round of job offers on the carousel. This year, the goal was to make the carousel more dynamic and more chaotic. Teams will try poaching coaches in established jobs, which means you might get an offer, but you’ll also need to pay attention to who is being offered jobs by other teams (which you can see in the Carousel page) to determine whether you sign with a school or hold out for a better job to hopefully open. You can see the top candidates for each open job in the All Openings filter on the carousel page, and you can game out what jobs might come open based on who they’re going after. For example, if you see Texas is interested in Tennessee’s head coach, you might turn down another offer to see if the Vols job opens. However, if you wait too long or guess wrong on who may take another job, the top jobs may all be gone and you’ll be left to take a lower level job.

Each school will pick their candidates on five criteria that meet their school “persona.” One is your Coaching Level, which takes into account your abilities, as schools will be looking for the best coach they can get. The second is Scheme, as some schools prefer a certain offense or defense (i.e., service academies want to run the option). The third is Archetype, as some schools will want a Recruiter but others will prefer a Tactician — and elite schools will be hunting for CEO/Program Builders. The fourth is Pipeline, as each coach has a primary recruiting pipeline where they have deep ties, and schools will look to hire coaches who have pipelines that overlap with the school’s pipeline. The final one is Coach Prestige, which matches your prestige grade with the team’s prestige grade, as a big school won’t be hiring a C level coach. Those five criteria will combine to create a “school fit” grade and that will determine who each school targets.

Eminem continues the rollout for his new album The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) today with a new song. “Tobey” features Em’s fellow Detroiters Big Sean and BabyTron — what a look for the latter — and finds the trio trading verses full of their signature punchlines.

Yesterday, Em shared a trailer revealing the release date for the long-awaited album, which will be his first since 2020’s Music To Be Murdered By and his twelfth studio album overall. The controversial MC got the ball rolling with the release of “Houdini,” a comedic single calling back to his Eminem Show single “Without Me,” complete with a return of his Rap Boy persona from that video (he even did his own stunts in the new video).

However, not everybody enjoyed the return of the trollish persona. Megan Thee Stallion fans called out the rapper for making a joke of her injuries in the lyrics to the song, while defenders argued that he’s always made light of serious situations. Whether “the dead of Slim Shady” will mean an end to such juvenile “jokes” remains to be seen.

Listen to Eminem’s new song “Tobey” featuring Big Sean and BabyTron below.

The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) is due 7/12 through Shady Records/Aftermath/Interscope.

Do you hear the faint sound of giggling over the word “banana”? Is your local clothing store out of overalls? That means the minions are back and heading to a theater near you! Hopefully without Gen Z in tow.

Despicable Me 4 hits theaters this weekend, which means it’s time to brush up on your Minion history, or watch the little guys for the first time if you feel so inclined. The animated franchise follows Gru and his minions, the Minions, as he transitions from super bad guy to father of three girls. Luckily, they are all available on streaming.

You don’t need to watch the first Despicable Me films to follow the story, but if you want to understand the context of Gru and Co, you can find Despicable Me, and the two sequels Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3 all streaming on Peacock.

If you want even more Minion fun, they have two spinoffs of their own that acts as a prequel. 2015’s Minions is currently streaming on Netflix and 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru is on Prime. These two take place before the events of Despicable Me.

Once you finish those, you are set to watch Despicable Me 4, which stars Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell.

In the fourth installment, Gru welcomes a new member to the family, Gru Jr., who loves to torture his dad. But the peace is disrupted when Gru’s enemy Maxime Le Mal escapes from prison and vows revenge against Gru, who must take his ever-growing family on the run. You can catch it in theaters on July 3rd.

The Kid Laroi finally released the song his Erewhon smoothie was named after, so that’s obviously the headline of this week in pop. Elsewhere, Omar Apollo continued to showcase his range with his God Said No album, and Tinashe dropped a more-than-worthy follow-up to “Nasty.”

Check out all of that and more in Uproxx’s Best New Pop Music roundup below.

The Kid Laroi — “Girls”

The Kid Laroi has been teasing “Girls” for months on social media. The Australian supernova could have dropped “Girls” at the tail end of August, and it would still leapfrog to the top of the “summer anthem” rankings. This is the full-send Laroi pop boy crossover we’ve been awaiting, punctuated by the early 2000s-coded video starring Alix Earle.

Hailey Knox — “On Nothing”

Hailey Knox is building toward The Best, her EP due out on July 19. The R&B-infused single “On Nothing” follows “What Do You Need” and “Double Tragedy” and keeps in the vein of Knox recognizing her self-worth. “On Nothing” is her perhaps most confident offering yet, underlining the liberation found in hindsight in the incredibly catchy and impeccably produced chorus: “Does she treat you like I did? / Grant your every wish? / Gave you all you want, then why you comin’ back for something? / Shouldn’t have got involved, but I’m glad I did / I went through it all, to know I’m missin’ out on nothing.”

Omar Apollo — “Drifting”

It should be noted: “Pedro” earns honorable mention from Omar Apollo’s freshly released God Said No album because it is epic for “internet daddy” Pedro Pascal to dispense fatherly advice to Apollo in the penultimate track. However, “Drifting” stands out because it stands out sonically from Apollo’s usual slow-burning, silky R&B/ soul-pop (and sometimes jazzy?) pocket. At the very high-probability risk of being too on the nose, “Drifting” exemplifies Apollo’s ability to drift between genres, and the pulsating track helps the listener feel weightless as well. “Past life, oh, past life,” Apollo sings, as the song beautifully interpolates “Edge Of The Ocean” by Ivy. “Have we been here before?” The line is especially poignant because Apollo repurposed an indie-pop song from the turn of the century, and while it does feel like a satisfying taste from a past life, it also feels entirely fresh.

Sophie Feat. BC Kingdom & Kim Petras — “Reason Why”

Last week, the late Sophie’s family announced her forthcoming posthumously self-titled album, which will be the final Sophie album. “Reason Why” featuring BC Kingdom and Kim Petras is the album’s first single, and predictably, it’s a vibe. Of course, listening to a great new Sophie song surfaces an inherent pang of sadness because we have to live in a cruel reality where Sophie can’t create the sort of unique pop only she could. The silver lining? Sophie, due out on September 27, will feature “some of her most cherished collaborators” and enrich an already eternal legacy.

Tinashe — “Getting No Sleep”

Tinashe already left her mark on 2024 with “Nasty,” her biting Billboard Hot 100 charter asking, “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” With “Getting No Sleep,” Tinashe appears to have found a worthy (and “whipped”) candidate. “Not a dog, but it’s in me,” she softly sings with a flitting delivery. “Taking shots like I’m Lindsay / We ain’t getting no sleep, no no.” Tinashe also confirmed an August 16 release date for Quantum Baby, which will delve even further into “exploring who I am as a person and who I am as an artist,” as she said in a statement, according to Pitchfork. “I’ve never been one to be put into a box, so the name Quantum Baby encompasses all the different parts that make up who I am as a creative.”

Alexander 23 — “American Boy”

“Deleting all social media off my phone until I make the best album ever,” Alexander 23 posted on Instagram on Sunday, June 30. So, savor “American Boy,” his latest lovely, melodic, and lyrically driven single. “I’ll be your American boy,” he sings. “Blue jeans and a faded T-shirt, baby / Pick me up and down like a toy / Wear me like a cross when you need some saving.” Since Aftershock, his 2022 debut studio album, Alexander 23 has produced for some of America’s favorite girls — Olivia Rodrigo, Reneé Rapp — so the intrigue is high for his next solo effort.

Lisa — “Rockstar”

“Rockstar” is Lisa’s first solo release since 2021, and she made it count. Lisa doesn’t need to tell anyone that she’s a rockstar. She’s a member of the world-beating Blackpink, and she’ll join White Lotus for Season 3. Range. But that’s precisely the beauty of “Rockstar”: Lisa’s earned the right to spit such braggadocio (“Gold teeth sittin’ on the dash, she a rockstar / Make your favorite singer wanna rap, baby, la, la”). And through sonic osmosis, the electro-pop banger produced by and Sam Homaee (!) and Ryan Tedder (!!) will make listeners feel like Lisa-level rockstars, too.

Cat Burns — “Met Someone”

Emerging UK singer-songwriter Cat Burns is peak singer-songwriter on “Met Someone,” and I mean that as the utmost compliment. Burns’ ability to cram a rom-com’s worth of plot points into three minutes of less is impeccable. With “Met Someone,” Burns rolls out a lovely and all-too-relatable coming-of-age arc. From the outside looking in, strangers may roll their eyes at how love drunk she is, but she’s earned the right to “seem a little smug”: “Had my fair share of bullshit growing up / The constant rejections / Too many to mention / Been the ugly duckling for long enough / Right now, I’m doing just fine / And don’t hate me if I tell you why / ‘Cause I met someone.” Fittingly, Burns’ forthcoming debut album is entitled Early Twenties and will act as “a mirror reflecting the complexities and emotions of this exciting era of adulthood.”

Crash Adams — “Hotel Party”

About ten seconds into watching Crash Adams’ “Hotel Party” visualizer, I wondered, Wait, is this a trailer for another Neighbors movie? Where’s Zac Efron? Crash Adams’ Rafaele Massarelli and Vince Sasso don’t take themselves too seriously, and their admirable attitude bleeds into their enthusiastic pop. “Hotel Party” encourages everyone to shed self-consciousness in favor of fun. “We made this song with the McDonough brothers, along with Ryan Daly,” Crash Adams said in a statement. “As soon as you hear the opening lick, you know that you’re in for an amazing time — crowd surfing, beach balls, people just letting loose! ‘Hotel Party’ is about the ultimate party experience; the neighbors are either going to call the cops or join the party!” Go on. Add it to your Fourth Of July playlist.

Indy Yelich — “East Coast”

Indy Yelich pulled off the ultimate pop dichotomy: Assembling a song equally suitable for anyone wanting to dance and forget or anyone helplessly ruminating over a toxic ex-relationship. In a literal sense, “East Coast” depicts the New Zealanders’ “codependency across two coasts” in her past relationship and her decision to sacrifice “such a strong sense of identity in New York” to pursue her career in California. But more than that, it’s a vivid vignette into the mental gymnastics necessary to arrive at true fulfillment.

This article contains spoilers!

The third season of The Bear hinges on the outcome of a restaurant review. Like so much of the “action” in this latest data-dump of 10 episodes, it’s a seemingly small matter presented with life-or-death urgency. Other narratives this season include: Will my girlfriend take me back? Can I feel happy for my ex as she marries someone else? What if I take this new job? Should I call my Mom?

What’s interesting about the restaurant review subplot is how it unintentionally echoes the current response to The Bear itself. After the first two seasons were showered with accolades (along with all those Emmys), the “I always thought it sucked” contingent of the critical community has pounced on Season Three, essentially sending it back to the kitchen with complaints that it is severely undercooked.

Nothing happens, it’s self-indulgent, it’s all tics and flourishes and no substance — the criticisms of The Bear have come to resemble the Chicago Tribune’s climactic takedown of Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto’s embattled eatery. More than that, Season Three of The Bear has been turned into a referendum on the sins of Prestige TV. And look, I get it. I kind of hate prestige TV now, too! We are in a moment in which hacky TV writers have learned how to construct a facsimile of a critically adored, Emmy-feted and social media-wooing television program, while at the same time putting nothing of actual value inside the televisual meat suit. It’s annoying, and makes me want to go outside.

Also, as a loyal viewer of The Bear, I can enumerate the show’s flaws. Does it sometimes spin its wheels narratively? Yes, chef. Are the many famous guest stars turning up in small roles distracting? Yes, chef. (John Cena is not a Fak brother, John Cena is John Cena.) Does the cycle of emotional breakdowns and heartfelt reconciliations, at times, feel repetitive? Yes, chef.

And yet, for all these flaws, I was pretty much riveted for the roughly five hours I spent watching Season Three. This show’s magic trick is that it can put two people in a room, have them talk for 10 minutes, and make it as exciting and intense as any battle scene from House Of The Dragon. Is The Bear self-indulgent? Sure. But to simply dismiss it as “bad” strikes me as an overreaction to the acclaim this show has garnered rather than a fair accounting of The Bear’s strengths and weaknesses. The fact is that the main creative minds behind this show — creator Christopher Storer and executive producer Josh Senior — are attempting the TV equivalent of changing the menu every single day. They are trying some shit, in other words, and while they don’t always hit the mark, I don’t think they can be credibly accused of doing boring work (unlike many of their peers in the Prestige TV business). Even the episodes that don’t fully cohere have at least one scene that’s as good as anything you’ll see on television.

One of the most fascinating aspects of The Bear for me is the soundtrack, which is carefully selected by Storer and Senior. In the past they have shared with me how they picked the music, and while some viewers might find their choices to be corny or overbearing, you can’t say they don’t put a ton of thought into it.

On The Bear, the soundtrack isn’t the typical sonic window-dressing it is on most shows. The music functions partly as a Greek chorus and partly as a window into the psychology of the characters. It also — and this is even truer after Season Three — acts as a kind of narrative thread for the entire series. The songs are like memories that bring you back to certain moments from previous episodes, while also foreshadowing what lies ahead.

I’ll explain what I mean while reviewing the 10 best needle drops from Season Three of The Bear.

10. R.E.M., “Strange Currencies” (Episode Nine)

An unwritten rule for TV soundtracks is that you don’t repeat songs or draw multiple tracks from the same album. Music supervisors make their money by finding that one song nobody has used yet. Call it The Obviousness Doctrine — going for the more obscure or unique musical option is always viewed as preferable.

The Bear violates this doctrine constantly. Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts V, the Van Morrison live LP It’s Too Late To Stop Now, Tangerine Dream’s score for Michael Mann’s Thief — this show has returned to these albums repeatedly over three seasons. And that plays into the overarching theme of The Bear, which is about how the past controls the present and the ways in which your omnipresent emotional damage never fully escapes the front of your mind. Your memories don’t change, and the songs that stick in your head don’t really change, either.

And so it goes for “Strange Currencies,” a major song from Season Two that is briefly revived as a love theme for Carmy’s estranged love interest, Claire, in the current season. (It’s the sister song to Refused’s “New Noise,” The Bear’s unofficial “anxiety” theme, which pops up again during Natalie’s frantic pre-labor traffic jam in Episode Eight.)

9. Counting Crows, “A Murder Of One” (Episode Nine)

The stock joke about The Bear is to point out how many times a Wilco song turns up. But the better joke about The Bear is that the show uses Counting Crows at least as often. Whereas Season Three is Wilco free, Counting Crows is now for 3-for-3 after this August And Everything After track popped up at the end of Episode 9 (after “Have You Seen Me Lately” in Season One and “Baby, I’m A Star” in Season Two).

8. The Rolling Stones, “Mixed Emotions” (Episode Five)

Another musical motif of The Bear is an unusual preference for somewhat off-brand classic rock songs. In Season One, the show used “In Too Deep” by Genesis (from their mega-selling 1986 album Invisible Touch) with subtly strategic precision to evoke the setting of a neighborhood Midwestern restaurant, where everything feels static and out-of-date. (As Storer explained to me at the time, it’s that feeling of “even though it’s 2022 out there, it’s 1998 in here.”)

The same could be said of “Mixed Emotions,” the hit single from 1989’s Steel Wheels that is surely playing at some random Chicago beef place as we speak. An added layer of resonance comes from the song’s inspiration — the fractured relationship between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that nearly derailed The Stones in the mid-’80s — which echoes Carmy’s strained partnerships with Syd and Richie.

7. Weezer, “Getchoo” (Episode Four)

A criticism of The Bear this season concerns Carmy’s abusive behavior toward his co-workers and the alleged rationalization — he’s a tortured guy who’s been emotionally abused by Jamie Lee Curtis and Joel McHale — the show makes on his behalf. Is it possible this guy is just a toxic jerk? Sure. It might even be probable. But this is beside the point from whether he’s an interesting protagonist (which he is).

I would make a similar case for Pinkerton, in which another problematic genius tries to rationalize his behavior even though he might just be a toxic jerk. For that reason, bringing The Bear and Pinkterton together for the closing credits of Episode Four was especially inspired.

6. Smashing Pumpkins, “Disarm” (Episode 10)

Another violation of The Obviousness Doctrine, and not only because Smashing Pumpkins is yet another Chicago band appearing on an already Chicago-saturated soundtrack. “Disarm” was previously used during one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the late great cop show The Shield, another show I love. I know this should make me dislike this choice. But it does not. I was, shall we say, disarmed by this needle drop.

5. Charles Laughton and Walter Schumann, “Main Title/Dream Little One, Dream” (Episode Five)

Forget The Obviousness Doctrine for a second. Pulling the opening theme from the classic 1955 noir The Night Of The Hunter is a big-time “We Know Film History” flex. But what does it mean? The parent-child dynamic — and how it continues even after the child becomes a parent, as evidenced by Natalie’s “expecting mother” storyline this year — is one of The Bear’s central obsessions. But I’m thinking specifically about the scene at the end of Episode Five, in which Uncle Jimmy confides to Syd that he feels responsible for not stepping in to help his niece and nephews when they were kids. It’s the inverse of Robert Mitchum wannabe child-murdering swindler from The Night Of The Hunter, no matter Jimmy’s own mysterious (and possibly criminal?) history.

4. Cocteau Twins, “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” (Episode Four)

Or: Maybe the powers that be were drawn to that Night Of The Hunter song because the word “dream” is in the title. A certain dreaminess recurs in several songs this season. There’s “(Nice Dream)” — from another “house” artist for The Bear, Radiohead — at the end of Episode Two. There’s all that “dream, dream, dream” talk from “A Murder Of One.” And there’s this track from a definitive dream-pop act, a natural accompaniment for one of Carmy’s romanticized daydreams about Claire. Is it possible that Carmy has invented a version of Claire in his mind that doesn’t match up with reality? Do “pearly-dewdrops’ drops” exist in real life? I’m not so sure.

3. Adrianne Lenker, “No Machine” (Episode Seven)

Another “I’m thinking about Claire” song for Carmy. But since this is an Adrianne Lenker heartbreaker, there’s plenty of misery to go around. It also soundtracks Richie’s misery over his ex’s impending marriage and Syd’s growing emotional separation from Carmy. But what I’m most intrigued by is the relative newness of this song — it came out with the rest of Lenker’s stellar 2024 album Bright Future at the end of March. Was this plugged in last minute? Was there another song originally in this spot? Perhaps a different Lenker tune that casually rips your heart out and shows it to you right before you die?

2. James, “Laid” (Episode 10)

A song about how the thing that gets you off eventually becomes an overriding obsession that ruins your life. And the scene that it soundtracks starts off as a party and ends with Syd crying and hyperventilating in the hallway. It’s the perfect capper for the episode, and for a season where nothing and yet everything happens.

1. Nine Inch Nails, “Together”

In the Season Two finale, Storer and Senior took “Hope We Can Again” from Ghosts V and looped it three consecutive times for most of the episode. For the Season Three premiere, they took a different Ghosts V track and did essentially the same thing for possibly the most formally inventive episode of The Bear yet. “Together” is woven so well into the episode that some media outlets initially misreported that it was an original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It’s not. It’s just an extremely well-executed needle drop.

Kate Beckinsale was once saved from a red-carpet wardrobe malfunction by Keanu Reeves, but context matters, and she wasn’t too afraid to show things off from a high rise window overlooking a London department store. The suggestive fruit stylist and former Pete Davidson flame undertook a mission to make herself feel better about a year ago after having an excruciating week.

This involved the loss of a pet and an undisclosed piece of “horrific news,” which (as she wrote on Instagram) left her inviting a girlfriend over “to show up as hard as possible and spend the evening making prank calls and mooning Harvey Nichols.” Then the Underworld star launched into wordplay: “because sometimes when the bottom falls out of your world the only response after crying till you’re sick is your own bottom.”

“Cheeky” is also a word for this stunt, and although the commenters on Kate’s Instagram aren’t exactly enjoying the antics, she apparently has her own way of coping. Too bad she didn’t provide more details on those “prank calls,” although Kate has been in quite a mischievous mood on social media lately. Here’s something about a “58 second fart,” which nobody probably expected from the star of 1996’s Jane Austen’s Emma, but there you go.

(Via PEOPLE)