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The Cleveland Browns will make their first playoff appearance in 18 years on Sunday night when they take on the rival Steelers in Pittsburgh (who were also their last playoff opponent in 2003). It wasn’t the cleanest landing for the Browns to get into the playoffs, as they lost to the Jets and then narrowly escaped with a two-point win in Pittsburgh a week ago despite the Steelers resting stars like Ben Roethlisberger.

One of the reasons for their problems the last two weeks has been positive COVID-19 tests, which wiped out their entire wide receiver room for the Jets game and then took out star cornerback Denzel Ward for the Steelers game. Now in their third week of COVID-19 issues, the Browns will go into Sunday night without their head coach, Kevin Stefanski, who tested positive and will be unavailable. Special teams coach Mike Priefer will be the acting head coach, with offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt taking over all play-calling responsibilities.

Per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the other positive tests were from a wide receiver and offensive lineman on the player side, and a defensive backs coach and tight ends coach on the coaches side.

It took a bit of time, but Stefanski really got the Browns offense to take off in the latter half of the season — final two weeks as exceptions to that — as he got in a pretty great groove calling plays and working with Baker Mayfield to get the most out of the young QB. Now, Van Pelt will have to assume those responsibilities without the benefit of many practices, as the Browns have shut down their facility for now and won’t have nearly as much on-field time to try and get everyone on the same page for their biggest game in nearly two decades.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm dropped just a week before the 2020 presidential election and, as you probably remember, there was no shortage of headlines related to Sacha Baron Cohen and his team pulling off two very impressive coups involving actress Maria Bakalova, who played Borat’s daughter, Tutar. The infamous Rudy Giuliani scene is, of course, the biggest score, which is why it was saved for the film’s climax. (Phrasing?) But the filmmakers pulled off an equally surprising feat by getting Bakalova into the White House, which should not be an easy thing to do, especially during a pandemic. And, yet, Jason Woliner recently revealed how the team managed to get “Tutar” into the briefing room without even taking a COVID test thanks to the very gullible conservative news outlet OAN. Via The Daily Beast:

OAN was extremely easy to hoodwink. They’re not a real news organization, they’re a propaganda organization. And so we got her into the White House with Chanel Rion, no COVID test required. And she was at a gaggle with Larry Kudlow and she was in the briefing room. And you could actually see—and I don’t think this was in the little clip that we put out—but that day, [Jared] Kushner was doing an interview on the White House lawn with Fox Business and you can just see Tutar, Borat’s daughter, wandering around in the background of the shot. And so it was one of those things we were just like, yeah, let’s send her in and see what we get out of it.

As for catching Giuliani with his hands down his pants, Woliner says that America’s Mayor had several opportunities to realize something wasn’t right during his interview with Tutar, but he never caught on until the moment when Borat burst into the room wearing lingerie. According to Woliner, Cohen kept testing the limits of how far he could go before Giuliani figured something out. As we know, Giuliani never caught wise and made it all the way bedroom, which was comedic gold for the team, so the gags ended up on the cutting room floor.

“There was actually a beat that we shot where we pushed in a room-service tray and Sacha was hiding underneath it,” Woliner said. “We were doing this kind of farcical thing where he’s trying to communicate with her again and we wound up cutting it out of the movie. Again, Rudy didn’t discover anything weird, his radar didn’t go up.”

Little did America know that Giuliani’s embarrassing moment would only be the start of his troubles as he spearheaded Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results with disastrous, and sometimes hilarious results.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Where do you even start to eulogize MF DOOM? Set aside the decades-spanning career and multiple personas, from Zev Love X of KMD to Viktor Vaughn and King Geedorah. How do you even begin to encapsulate his impact? Sure, in the last few years, the Rap Twitter convention has held that he was the vanguard of uber-cerebral, anti-establishment hip-hop that “scares the girls away.” But as with so much social media “wisdom,” that reductive outlook was never the case.

MF DOOM didn’t appeal to only rap nerds — you’d be hard-pressed to find even casual rap fans who hadn’t encountered and subsequently been entranced by his rhymes and his persona. His influence within the culture was so widespread that it didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that even an affluent white lady actress like Sharon Stone would be a fan. His flow was impeccable, respected by rap purists and SoundCloud rebels alike. It’s impossible to gauge how heavy his impact was, simply because everyone knew about him, but everyone who knew about him felt like he was their personal secret.

He was a traditionalist and he pushed the boundaries of how the genre could or should sound, beginning with his time as a member of early ’90s trio KMD. He could be frustrating, as Adult Swim Vice President Jason DeMarco learned more than once. He could be exhilarating. He could be inspirational. He was an example of hip-hop at its most extravagant, but he was surprisingly ordinary. That was the point of the mask; he could break kayfabe at will, yet he could also be forgiven for leaning way too into it by scamming fans into paying to watch imposters perform his songs, like a true supervillain (hey, even Doctor Doom has his Doombots).

So how could I possibly sum all that up in even a 500-page book, let alone an 800-word internet article? I guess I could start with how much MF DOOM meant to me personally, those late-night adventures with the crew in my late teens/early twenties cruising the streets of Los Angeles blasting Madvillainy and Mm..Food at maximum volume. Or going even further back, to those all-day rap forum rabbit hole sessions, tying up my family’s phone line downloading Operation Doomsday on dial-up. Or the thrill of excitement I felt realizing that yes, that was his voice booming over Cartoon Network commercial bumpers and scenes from The Boondocks.

But somehow relating this all seems too mundane to capture DOOM’s import. After all, there are likely hundreds of thousands of hip-hop fans with stories just like it — a supreme irony, as we all felt like the only ones in the world who were in on the secret of the masked rapper’s existence. Biographing him doesn’t seem like enough, either. With a career that encompassed a prime placement in hip-hop’s Golden Era, bridging the genre’s bumpy entry to the online age, and maintaining his air of mystery along with his authenticity while experiencing the heights of his commercial ubiquity with Adult Swim, there’s just too much there to unpack and examine.

He did all that though. He was one of the first rappers to appear on broadcast television, on The Arsenio Hall Show, performing alongside 3rd Bass as he rattled off his ahead-of-their-time rhymes on “The Gas Face.” He is arguably the symbol of the Napster generation of rap, his projects being among the first to trickle outward from college dorms through person-to-person sharing across state lines and high-speed connections to spread his legend. And though their partnership never came to fruition — mostly because of DOOM’s propensity for vanishing for years at a time while dealing with personal issues — he was one of the first rappers to sign with Adult Swim’s music label arm, Williams Street Records, paving the way for future collaborations such with rap luminaries such as Witchdoctor, El-P, and Killer Mike, catalyzing the connection between the latter two to form Run The Jewels.

DOOM influenced heady, introspective rappers like Earl Sweatshirt and Jay Electronica and rap establishment-trolling rabble-rousing South Florida upstarts like Smokepurpp and Wifisfuneral. Playboi Carti, who many underground rap heads regard as a cancer to the genre, paid just as respectful a homage as elder statesman Busta Rhymes. DOOM could work with any of his peers, like Ghostface Killah of Wu-Tang Clan and fellow multiple-personality MC Kool Keith, but that didn’t stop him from granting his blessing to rising young stars like Bishop Nehru, with whom he crafted a pair of projects, one as a rapper and one as a producer.

I’d be remiss not to mention his pioneering production style, which has proliferated on YouTube through adherents to the “lo-fi/beats to study to” aesthetic that permeates playlists from the likes of Chilled Cow and College Music. Hip-hop and animation now go hand-in-hand, from the Vince Staples-starring Lazor Wulf to the music’s subtle nods in shows like Big Mouth. If you think MF DOOM isn’t one of the biggest reasons why… I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. DOOM’s influence, his impact, were as far-reaching as his vocabulary, which included references to volcanoes in Iceland and the chemical name for ecstasy, and yes, he found equally elaborate rhymes for both.

All of that only covers a bare fraction of who DOOM was, how innovative he could be, how true to the art form he was. It doesn’t reveal anything about the man himself, who so staunchly separated the persona from his true identity that collaborator Count Bass D once recounted observing self-declared DOOM superfans discount their hero’s very existence upon encountering him in person sans mask. DOOM was a father who lost a son, a man who lost a brother, an artist whose career ups-and-downs informed an adamant lifetime philosophy of never playing by the rules and constantly upending the mechanisms of commerce, even to the chagrin of his business partners, collaborators, and fans — sorry, gang, but we are never getting that Ghostface/DOOM collab album.

Even the way we found out about DOOM’s death, two months after, on the final day of 2020, like a bookend or a coda to the disastrous year that was, like he’d ensured that the blow would be held back to close that horrendous chapter as resolutely as possible… even that was DOOM being DOOM. To the very end, he was getting the last laugh, upsetting the balance with his theatricality, and ensuring that no one could ignore him, forget him, or dismiss him. He was our hero even though he was, to the very end, a supervillain.

A few months ago, Lil Nas X revealed that his first children’s book, C Is For Country, would be released on January 5, 2021. Well, that’s today and the book is out now. To celebrate, the rapper has shared a few adorable snippets from the book.

Tweeting a few images from the book, Nas wrote, “MY CHILDREN’S BOOK ‘C IS FOR COUNTRY’ IS OUT NOW!!!! GO GET IT PLEASE I REALLY NEED TO PAY MY RENT!” On one page, there are screenshots of social media posts featuring Nas in various outfits, and the text reads, “F is for fringe. And feathers. And fake fur.” An illustrated Nas says in the final panel, “I love that for me!” On another page, Nas is brushing his pony Panini, and the text reads, “P is for Panini. Night night, little pony.”

On one of the final two pages Nas shared, he’s picking his hair and the text reads, “S is for swag. Just ’cause I’m going to bed doesn’t mean I can’t look good!” The other page shows him with his family and says, “T is for thankful. I love my fam!” Meanwhile, the publisher’s website for the book shows a couple more pages. One says, “A is for Adventure. Every day is a brand new start!” The other reads, “B is for boots — whether they’re big or small, short or tall.”

A publisher’s statement describes the book, “Join superstar Lil Nas X — who boasts the longest-running #1 song in history — and Panini the pony on a joyous journey through the alphabet from sunup to sundown. Experience wide-open pastures, farm animals, guitar music, cowboy hats, and all things country in this debut picture book that’s perfect for music lovers learning their ABCs and for anyone who loves Nas’s signature genre-blending style. Featuring bold, bright art from Theodore Taylor III, with plenty of hidden surprises for Nas’s biggest fans, C Is for Country is a celebration of song and the power inside us all.”

Learn more about C Is For Country and buy the book here.

It’s a new year, but stars continue to deliver their late-night performances via pre-recorded video rather than live onstage. That condition looks to continue in 2021 but that may not be the worst thing in the world. Aside from keeping performers and their fans safer, the pre-recorded performances allow some creative staging and camera work that might not otherwise be feasible in a live setting. Burna Boy, who kicks off his 2021 with a performance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, proves this with “Way Too Big.”

Standing on a plinth overlooking his band and backup singers, Burna literalizes his album’s title Twice As Tall, surveying the scene from his raised vantage point and evoking a historical monument. Burna closed out his 2020 with a video for the song, which similarly set him up as a model of success, appearing on a billboard in Lagos. Here, although the staging is stripped-down in comparison, he’s able to take advantage of a larger space than would be allowed on the usual late-night stage to keep the same epic mood.

Watch Burna Boy’s late-night performance of “Way Too Big” above.

Twice As Tall is out now on Atlantic Records. Listen to it here.

Burna Boy is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Monday was the beginning of Alex Trebek’s final week as the host of Jeopardy! The game show (and all-around) legend, who died in November from pancreatic cancer, filmed the final five episodes over the course of two days in October. Trebek also recorded a touching message to those suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You’ll recall that about a month ago, I asked all of you to take a moment to give thanks for all of the blessings that you enjoy in your lives,” Trebek says, referring to this clip from Thanksgiving. “Now, today, a different kind of message: this is the season of giving. I know you want to be generous with your family, your friends, your loved ones. But today, I’d like you to go one step further. I’d like you to open up your hands and open up your hearts to those who are still suffering because of COVID-19. People who are suffering through no fault of their own.” He added, “We’re trying to build a gentler, kinder society and if we all pitch in, just a little bit, we’re gonna get there.” The episode ending with the dedication, “Forever in our hearts, always our inspiration.”

Jeopardy! executive producer Mike Richards told EW that he didn’t know Trebek was going to give the speech. “On that first episode, he walked out, and you’ll see it when it airs, he gives this amazing speech about the holidays and coming together and being strong and taking care of each other. And we didn’t know he was gonna do that; he just walked out and did it,” he said. “And you’ll see in the episode, we all started to clap.”

Trebek’s final episode of Jeopardy! airs this Friday, January 8.

At least no one can ever accuse Donald Trump Jr. of making it boring. From his unhinged Fox News appearances to his bizarre, glassy-eyed rants from inside what looks like a Motel 6, one can always count on Jr. to bring the “wtf” quality to presidential-spawn speeches. On Monday night, he stumped at his Dad’s Georgia rally for GOP Senate-runoff candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler (who are going toe-to-toe with Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock). Control of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance, and Don Jr. did his best (and succeeded) at stirring up the MAGA audience with a speech that rivaled the shouty nature of his partner, Kimberly Guilfoyle.

That’s quite a feat, but this speech stands out most for Don Jr.’s “jokes,” which sound like they could come from the mouth of a certain The Office character. That’d be Michael Scott (played-up to perfection by Steve Carell), known for his offensive remarks that viewers know not to take at face value because Scott’s buffoonery (and the environment that he perpetuates) is part of the joke. The similarities between Michael Scott and Don Jr. are stark with this sexist line from his speech: “Amen is not a gendered term… if I go to a restaurant and ask what’s on the womenu…”

And of course, that’s the part of the speech that Don Jr. proudly chose to showcase on his own Twitter account (it pairs well with his transphobic entries of late).

Granted, this is not the first or the second time that Don Jr. has been compared to The Office boss, and what’s obviously different in this equation is that the audience is laughing along with Don Jr. at this rally. That gave him the opportunity to drop weak metaphors about balls and going home and, well, everything that his dad will have to do on January 20.

The bottom line, though? Don Jr. sounds like a bit of a madman and an awful stand-up comic, but clearly, there’s a market for that with the MAGA crowd.

Following a New York Times profile with DC Films head Walter Hamada that reported studio execs view Zack Snyder‘s director cut of Justice League as a “creative cul-de-sac,” there’s been heavily speculation about whether or not he’ll have chance to make more DC Comics film. (Fans even started the social media campaign: #RestoreTheSnyderVerse.) Recently, longtime Snyder advocate Kevin Smith defended the director by revealing that the ending to the Snyder Cut of Justice League is “very not a cul-de-sac,” and “you can keep going with the story.” But just as that information suggested that the SnyderVerse still has a chance, Snyder confirmed to ComicBook Debate that he has no plans to make more DC Comics films after restoring his original version of Justice League. Via Collider:

“The truth is, and it’s been widely reported, and I have no issue, this is an old movie. This is a years-old movie I’m working on. The DC universe has gone and branched off and done its own thing and that’s fine. As far as what I did and as far as what my vision for what I wanted to do with these characters and the journey I wanted them to go on, it’s well known that I planned on more movies, five movies or something, but I’m busy. I’ve got a lot going on. Is it cool that the fans have so much faith in the trajectory? Yes, it’s amazing, and I couldn’t be happier and I’m excited for them to see Justice League so they can really drink the entire elixir of Justice League. But, would I continue? I have no plan to.”

Snyder did add, however, that he never thought his cut of Justice League would see the light of day, and now, it’s on its way to a heavily-hyped release on HBO Max. So while he plans to pursue his other projects for Netflix, anything is possible. “I didn’t think I’d be here,” Snyder said. “So who knows?”

You can watch the full (40-minute) Zack Snyder interview below:

(Via ComicBook Debate)

John Roderick — a podcast host, member of The Long Winters, and former touring member of Harvey Danger — had one of the year’s first big internet stories when his Twitter thread about making his young daughter open a can of beans went viral. He was quickly dubbed “Bean Dad,” and just as quickly, he was the recipient of a lot of backlash.

To summarize, Roderick’s tweets told the story of his daughter asking him to open a can of beans for her. Instead, he and his daughter sat together as she tried to figure out how to work a can opener and he refused to help. While his story was intended to be lighthearted and silly, a lot of people online interpreted Roderick’s approach to the situation as abusive and not as cute as he thought it was. On top of that, critics resurfaced some old tweets of Roderick’s that featured anti-Semitic, racist, and homophobic language. Once the criticism started pouring in, Roderick deactivated his Twitter account, but now he has returned to the internet with a lengthy apology, which he posted on his website.

Roderick said his story was “poorly told” and was lacking details that would have presented the tale in a more positive light. He continued:

“I framed the story with me as the asshole dad because that’s my comedic persona and my fans and friends know it’s ‘a bit’. What I didn’t understand when posting that story, was that a lot of the language I used reminded people very viscerally of abuse they’d experienced at the hand of a parent. The idea that I would withhold food from her, or force her to solve a puzzle while she cried, or bind her to the task for hours without a break all were images of child abuse that affected many people very deeply. Rereading my story, I can see what I’d done. I was ignorant, insensitive to the message that my ‘pedant dad’ comedic persona was indistinguishable from how abusive dads act, talk and think.”

He also addressed his old tweets, writing, “My language wasn’t appropriate then or now and reflecting on that has been part of my continuing education as an adult who wants to be a good ally. That education is ongoing, and this experience will have a profound effect on the way I conduct myself throughout the rest of my life.”

Check out Roderick’s full apology below or on his website.

“Hi..

I deactivated my Twitter yesterday in a panic. I had to reflect on what I’d done and the hurt I’d caused and my mind was clouded by an unprecedented flow of new information. I want to acknowledge and make amends for the injuries I caused. I have many things to atone for. My parenting story’s insensitivity and the legacy of hurtful language in my past are both profound failures. I want to confront them directly.

My story about my daughter and the can of beans was poorly told. I didn’t share how much laughing we were doing, how we had a bowl of pistachios between us all day as we worked on the problem, or that we’d both had a full breakfast together a few hours before. Her mother was in the room with us all day and alternately laughing at us and telling us to be quiet while she worked on her laptop. We all took turns on the jigsaw puzzle.

I framed the story with me as the asshole dad because that’s my comedic persona and my fans and friends know it’s ‘a bit’.

What I didn’t understand when posting that story, was that a lot of the language I used reminded people very viscerally of abuse they’d experienced at the hand of a parent. The idea that I would withhold food from her, or force her to solve a puzzle while she cried, or bind her to the task for hours without a break all were images of child abuse that affected many people very deeply. Rereading my story, I can see what I’d done.

I was ignorant, insensitive to the message that my ‘pedant dad’ comedic persona was indistinguishable from how abusive dads act, talk and think.

I woke up yesterday to find that I had become #BeanDad. I was a locus for a tremendous outpouring of anger and grief. It took me hours to fully grasp. I reread the story and saw clearly that I’d framed it so poorly, so insensitively. Bean Dad, full of braggadocio and dickhead swagger, was hurting people. I’d conjured an abusive parent that many people recognized from real life.

I am deeply sorry for having precipitated more hurt in the world, for having prolonged or exacerbated it by fighting back and being flippant when confronted, and for taking my Twitter feed offline yesterday instead of facing the music. I wish the parents I modeled didn’t exist; I wish no one had to grow up with a parent who tortured them physically or emotionally. I would never intentionally make light of those experiences and I’ll never underestimate again the pain I can cause with some poorly chosen words and by acting defensively when challenged.

As for the many racist, anti-Semitic, hurtful and slur-filled tweets from my early days on Twitter I can say only this: all of those tweets were intended to be ironic, sarcastic. I thought then that being an ally meant taking the slurs of the oppressors and flipping them to mock racism, sexism, homophobia, and bigotry. I am humiliated by my incredibly insensitive use of the language of sexual assault in casual banter. It was a lazy and damaging ideology, that I continued to believe long past the point I should’ve known better that because I was a hipster intellectual from a diverse community it was ok for me to joke and deploy slurs in that context. It was not. I realized, sometime in the early part of the decade, helped by real-life friends and Twitter friends too, that my status as a straight white male didn’t permit me to ‘repurpose’ those slurs as people from disenfranchised communities might do. They were injurious regardless of my intent, because the words themselves have power and because actual violence is often prefaced by people saying, ‘I’m not racist, but…’

That was wrong, so I stopped.

Yesterday those old tweets resurfaced and hurt a lot of people anew. People who are close to me, people in my community who couldn’t square those words with the person they know me to be. And people who don’t know me, going about their business yesterday, had to see those awful slurs and feel the hurt those words inspire. They had to suffer this asshole #BeanDad casually demeaning them and their friends. I deeply regret having ever used those words. I do not want to spread more hate in the world. I want the opposite.

My language wasn’t appropriate then or now and reflecting on that has been part of my continuing education as an adult who wants to be a good ally. That education is ongoing, and this experience will have a profound effect on the way I conduct myself throughout the rest of my life.

I’m a middle-aged, middle-class straight white male and I try to be cognizant of that and of the responsibility my privileges entail in everything I do. In this case, it was precisely my privilege of not living in an abusive family, of not being a member of a community that routinely experiences real trauma, that caused me to so grossly misjudge the impact of the language I chose.

I have a lot more reflecting to do in the coming days so I’ll be taking a hiatus from my public life to let some of these lessons sink in. I apologize to my partners, my friends, and to all the people affected by my words for the hurt I caused.”

Finale spoilers for The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina will be found below.

Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina came to its planned end with “Part Four” over the holiday weekend. Granted, this finale got buried underneath the pushed-up release of Cobra Kai, which is still so infuriatingly good that Sabrina didn’t have much of a chance to grab eyeballs. She should have been pushed back a week, but at least the Riverdale spinoff received a proper conclusion. It’s also worth noting that some people assumed that the show was “canceled.” Yet for many who watched the Sabrina, it’s obvious that this was an expected ending point for a few reasons: (1) Netflix followed up Part One by announcing that they were fast-tracking (and fast-shooting) a total of four mapped-out seasons; (2) Part Four ended with the death of the title character, and you don’t get much more plotted out for finality than that, my Satan-praising friends.

Yup, and to make things even more final, both Sabrinas (Spellman and Morningstar) left this mortal coil. It was a convoluted chain of events with only colored headbands to tell us which Sabrina was onscreen at any given moment (confusing!). Well, Sabrina Spellman sacrificed her life to save those she loved (and Greendale at large). It was sad, yes, but the finale also contained multiple nods to the mid-1990s Sabrina The Teenage Witch series (starring Melissa Joan Hart). And in a satisfying flourish, the heretofore silent Salem The Cat transformed into a very vocal, smartass kitty.

This happened in the best way: out-of-nowhere and much to Sabrina’s surprise, too.

The cat-voice controversy has been a thing, and a point of contention, since the show launched. People expected Salem Saberhagen to talk. Part of the issue here is that Salem served a different function in this Archieverse show than he did in the 1990s sitcom, where he was a sarcastic warlock trapped in a cat’s body as a punishment for attempting to conquer the world. Whereas in this Netflix show, Salem’s a softer presence and mainly Sabrina’s familiar, who can apparently communicate through telepathy.

Not that this change was a well-received one. Showrunner and comic-book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa previously explained his decision to “dispense with the chatty cat” because he didn’t feel that a smartass feline would “project the horror tone,” of this show, which differed from the sitcom vibe. Still, Aguirre-Sacasa dangled the carrot: “That isn’t to say that Salem won’t talk in the future.” Well, it was cool to finally allow Salem to talk by turning the first of Chilling Adventures‘ two finale episodes into a sitcom.

The set-up was a clever one, even if O.G. Salem voice actor Nick Bakay wasn’t onboard for the ride. Instead, Luke Cook, who plays Lucifer, did double duty, but actresses Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick came back from the 1990s sitcom to act as Sabrina’s aunts in the sitcom-cosmos, and fans finally got their carrot when Salem turned out to be the lead sitcom writer and the Eldritch Terror known as The Endless. Fortunately, Salem isn’t nefarious — unlike the rest of the terrors unleashed by Father Blackwood as part of his hissy fit about the coven leaving the Church of Night — and he helped Sabrina defeat The Void, thereby stopping it from becoming the End Of All Things.

All of this is not a massive deal in the grand scheme of the show’s four seasons. Yet it was a nice way to tie up the series and reward fans for embracing the darker feel of the Netflix show while also gifting them with a little treat. It was great fun to watch Salem snark out for an episode while he and Sabrina worked to shut down The Void before crashing back into her usual cosmos. When showrunners can integrate fan requests while staying true to a show’s spirit, that’s pretty rad. Hats off to Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, too. Navigating social media while running a Netflix series cannot be easy, and it was probably tempting for him to put the blinders on and, you know, simply create art.

Instead, Talking Salem feels like a collaborative experience between the Internet and a creative team. I’m not even a cat person, and I wanted this to happen, simply because we could use some lightness in the midst of all darkness, especially now, you know? A damn talking cat ended up being a love letter to franchise viewers while staying true to the show’s horror tone before Sabrina made a stand to save humanity from oblivion. And we got to see a reality where all kinds of crazy sh*t happened, including a Caliban who’s relieved to only take his shirt off (and willingly be objectified) when he chooses to do so. Back in Greendale, the show gave Sabrina a fitting farewell with her sacrificial act and a funeral to mourn the deaths of both Ms. Spellman and Mrs. Morningstar.

RIP, Sabrinas, and all hail Salem for helping a teenage girl make a final stand against the horrors summoned up by a patriarchal leader who’s mad with power. Father Blackwood got his punishment, Sabrina ended up happy in the afterlife with Nick. We also saw all manner of aesthetically pleasing chaos that we’re used to from the show. Fans got the one thing that they wished for but felt was lacking, and no one is raving on social media about wanting to raise Hell. That adds up to a winning finale.

‘The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina: Part Four’ is now streaming on Netflix.