As break-out country singer Maren Morris is spending the majority of her time at home like the rest of us, the singer elected to revisit some of her back catalog: Morris shared updated versions of “Just For Now” and “Takes Two.”

“Just For Now” was originally recorded during the session for her 2017 album Hero. For the track, Morris worked with her husband Ryan Hurd as well with the late producer Busbee, who the singer often collaborated with before his tragic passing last year. Meanwhile, “Takes Two” was born out of sessions for her sophomore record Girl, which was released last year. Morris co-wrote the track with Sarah Aarons and Greg Kurstin, with whom she also worked on her album’s eponymous hit single.

Alongside the two tracks’ debut, Morris wrote that the time since the release of Girl has been “one of the most transformative periods” of her life:

Morris’ Girl earned the country single a string of accolades. Her Platinum-certified “The Bones” shattered the record for the longest leading No. 1 by a solo female artist on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, currently spending its 14th week in the top slot. The album as a whole had the largest ever debut streaming week for a country album by a woman, with nearly 24 million streams in its first week.

Listen to “Just For Now” and “Takes Two” above.

Girl is out now via Sony. Get it here.

Previously on the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro: Bret Hart lost the United States Championship because he beat up a guy on MadTV, Kimberly Page got thrown from a moving vehicle while wearing a suspicious amount of thick clothing, and a first-person blonde eventually known as Torrie Wilson debuted as a girl at a bar who wants to have sex with you the second she sees you. It doesn’t matter that it’s the middle of the day and you’re the only two people at the bar.

Click here to watch this week’s episode on WWE Network. You can catch up with all the previous episodes of WCW Monday Nitro on the Best and Worst of Nitro tag page. Follow along with the competition here.

Remember, if you want us to keep writing 20-year-old WCW jokes, click the share buttons and spread the column around. If you don’t tell them how much you like these, nobody’s going to read them. It’s almost time for SuperBrawl, where WCW figures out what’s wrong and changes for the better, permanently. Just kidding!

And now, the Best and Worst of WCW Monday Nitro for February 15, 1999.

Worst: Driving Bisch Daisy

This week’s WCW Monday Nitro contains two equally important stories:

• Bret Hart continues his feud with a sketch comedian
• WCW’s President is kidnapped and driven out into field where 10 masked men mercilessly beat him with weapons and leave him for dead

We should probably talk about the second one first, huh?

Over the past several weeks, 90-day WCW President Ric Flair has been doing everything he could think of to emasculate Eric Bischoff and take him down a peg. He’s made him work ring crew, be an arena janitor, sell merchandise, and sit outside the arena in a dunk tank. Bischoff responded by (respectively) helping the nWo win a match with a wrench, helping the nWo win a match with a bucket of bleach, helping the nWo win a match with a plank of wood with a foam finger on the end, and luring WCW into a false sense of security so Hollywood Hogan and one of the Hell’s Angels could stalk Ric Flair’s Adult Son David. Despite literally none of these plans working out the way he’d predicted and every one of them ending with an nWo beat-down, Ric Flair decides it would be a good idea to make Eric Bischoff his chauffeur and blindly trust him to drive him around in the middle of the night without incident.

Flair flies in with some television executives for, and I quote, “a big night in Tampa.” This is the WCW Monday Nitro that’s Too Big For Just One Night®! Bischoff is in a full limo driver uniform, hat and everything, and Dick Flair’s like, “hey man, I know I’ve been punishing you for a straight month, thanks for being a good dude and driving me from the airport to the wrestling show while I casually berate you in front of my friends.” It’s only after they’ve been driving for a few segments that Naitch starts to worry that something might be wrong. If the helicopter circling overhead and shining a spotlight on the limo to film where it’s driving isn’t enough of a red flag, maybe the multiple vehicles that have pulled up and started following along in the darkness are.

The limo parks and is immediately jacked by a group of impossible to identify men in ski masks, including this 7-foot tall thug with luxurious hair and this other one with a bristly blonde mustache. Did somebody new world order a woodland assault?

So, as mentioned, 10-or-so masked men work to send the Nature Boy back to nature and leave him for dead in some meadow in the middle of the night. Incredibly, this isn’t the only time Flair is driven out into the wilderness to be murdered by a heel faction … it’s not even the only time it happens to him this year. By October, the Filthy Animals are out trying to bury him alive in the desert. I don’t want to cast aspersions on a man’s job performance, but if you’ve been attacked by a group of co-workers and abandoned in the wild twice in an eight-month span, you either need to get a new job or start being nicer to people.

Back in the arena, this bewildering man of mystery unmasks to reveal himself as — gasp — Kevin Sullivan. He’s formed a new Dungeon of Doom dedicated to ending Horsemania. [checks notes] Wait, no, sorry, it turns out to be Hollywood Hogan, somehow, and he’s given himself the clever masked nickname Hollyhood. Between “Wood” and “Hollyhood,” Hogan was working overtime trying to “Black Mamba” himself.

Hollyhood magnanimously offers to give Ric Flair his SuperBrawl title shot here tonight. Incredibly, WCW chose to have the announce team not see any of the Flair beating segments, despite them taking up about 20 minutes of the show, so they’re all just like, “wow, I wonder where Ric Flair is?” If the announce team didn’t see what happened, what were they watching? What was going on at the arena for those 20 minutes? You could’ve run 10 Goldberg matches in that time. Flair doesn’t answer Hogan’s challenge, shockingly, so the referee starts a 10-count to count him out … until Rowdy Roddy Piper appears at 8, uses his lingering commissionership to sub himself in for Flair, and also

whoops it’s for the World Heavyweight Championship.

It’s like their meticulous rankings system is MEANINGLESS!

Yes, it ends in disqualification about four minutes in when Piper has Hogan dead to rights in a sleeper, already, and Scott Hall jumps in to shock-stick Piper in the ribs. The Hot Rod, felled by a hot rod. It’s like poetry, they rhyme. Hall puts on Piper’s kilt and gives us a curtsy as if to say, “hey yo, things aren’t going to get better.”

That’s not the end of the story, though. Abandoned in a clearing in the middle of the night with only a helicopter’s lights and several WCW camera men, Flair recovers enough to stumble to a road and get picked up by a passing tow truck. It drives him back to the arena (instead of a hospital), and a barely functional Ric falls out (pictured) to grab an axe handle and stagger back in for revenge. Bobby Heenan helpfully asks if Flair’s drunk. Remember, none of the announcers saw the segment, so to them Flair just missed work, bailed on a match, and then showed up at the end of the night stumbling around with his shirt open and bruises all over his face. The nWo pulling up wearing ski masks and loudly bragging about how they’ve dominated Ric Flair doesn’t clue anybody in, I guess.

In case you were hoping at least THIS part had a happy ending, no, of course it doesn’t. This is WCW Monday Nitro. Much in the same way that Piper sticking up for Flair ended with Piper being shocked and beaten by 10 guys, Flair returning to stick up for HIMSELF ends with Flair and the remaining Horsemen being, uh, shocked and beaten by 10 guys. The show goes off the air with Scott Hall addressing our mystery First Person character, who has apparently taken a break from his week-long Torrie Wilson hotel sex bender to participate in an nWo attack. Hall hands over the taser, adding, “Now you see how it’s done? Don’t mess it up.”

I don’t want to spoil the payoff for you, but it involves another impossible to identify masked man with the ring presence and agility of a newborn fawn.

Wait, What Were The Other Horsemen Doing?

Having technical difficulties. Mongo is gone forever thanks to Hollywood Hogan curing his coronavirus, Arn Anderson got kicked out for beating the boogie fever out of Disco Inferno with a tire iron, and Benoit and Malenko are stuck in a WCW Tag Team Championship tournament that makes almost no sense, is topped by the nWo despite weeks of the nWo insisting the tourney would never happen, and requires them to win two matches on the same night to make it to the finals. I’m sure there’s a structured bracket I’m missing somewhere across WCW’s handful of weekly shows, but it seems like they’re just throwing out random jobber pairings and saying, “SORRY THIS IS ALSO THE TOURNAMENT, GO DO IT.”

To put it another way, they have to defeat the legendary tandem of Mike Enos and Scotty Riggs (tag team name Michael Scott), but only after defeating a Team of Daves, Dave Taylor and Fit Finlay. That one’s good enough to be the Nestle Pretzel Flipz Pretzel Flip Of The Week. You’re nothing in this business until you impress the ’90s candy magnates. We’ll see if they’re able to win the tournament at SuperBrawl*, and whether or not that will qualify to win the Melody Pops Whistle On A Stick Of The Week.

*They’re the Four Horsemen! Of course they won’t win. What are you, new?

Worst: Failure Of The Will

Now that we’ve covered the assassination of WCW’s President, we can talk about The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever — sorry, Edge vs. Randy Orton — pitting Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart against MadTV cast member Will Sasso. You may remember him from such unforgettable characters as crazy Kenny Rogers, crazy Bill Clinton, and future Sting rival Señor Bag of Crap. Will Sasso really loved getting put in the Sharpshooter, huh?

In case you haven’t been following along with the column, Hart was a guest on MadTV because he works for WCW and is therefore never busy wrestling. The conceit of the bit is that Bret put an arm bar on cast member Debra Wilson and “really hurt her,” causing the sketch to go wrong and leading to Hart attacking Sasso with steel (flimsy plastic) chair. A shocking amount of people thought (and still think) that it was real, even though it was just a pro wrestling reboot of what Andy Kaufman did on Fridays 18 years earlier. Sasso showed up in the crowd at Nitro and ended up not only distracting Bret during a match, but full-on helping Roddy Piper win Bret’s United States Championship. So now Bret’s out for REAL LIFE BLOOD, and the only way he can do that is by winning a televised wrestling match against a non-wrestling comedian.

Sasso shows up in a football jersey and gym shorts with “MAD TV” on the butt, and does about as well as you’d expect Curly “Hulk Hogan” Howard to do against BRET GODDAMN HART. Sasso’s entire offensive output is participating in a Greco-Roman knuckle lock that immediately gets him kicked in the stomach. Still, because this is WCW, they couldn’t just have Bret kick the guy’s ass and pin him; no, they had Debra Wilson accompany Sasso to the ring as his manager just to reveal that it’s been a swerve all this time, and Debra Wilson teamed up with Hart to work Sasso because she’s nWo for life. No, seriously. Here she is preventing Bret from hitting him with an actual steel chair so SHE could hit him instead. It feels like you could’ve just thrown hands at him at your own job, but sure, whatever.

Please enjoy Debra Wilson’s Royal Rumble ’99-level chair shots to Will Sasso with her entire boob hanging out, because Bret Hart needed help to defeat pre-Crisis Frank Caliendo.

It’s only then that Hart’s able to lock in the Sharpshooter and make Sasso tap. You know, sometimes I’m happy that WCW’s not around anymore. What a crazy company, am I right? You’d never catch WWE having one of their top stars fight a late night sketch comedian in a football jersey at the expense of one of their biggest shows of the year, and they definitely would never have one of that comedian’s co-workers agree to go to the ring and then bail on him.

On the plus side, Sasso learns his lesson after getting beaten up by Bret Hart and Sting and decides to start throwing other cast members at the wrestler guest-stars instead of fighting all those battles himself.

Worst: Car Pay Diem

Remember when Scott Steiner spent several weeks stalking Kimberly Page only to throw her to her death from a moving car? Here’s Scott’s very real lawyer who is NOT a local independent wrestler to inform us that Steiner will be suing Diamond Dallas Page for ONE MILLION DOLLARS for, “assault and battery resulting in bodily injuries with resulting disability and impairment; mental, physical, and emotional pain and suffering; loss of capacity for the enjoyment of life.” These losses are,”permanent in nature, and that he will suffer these losses in the future.” DDP’s getting pulled in front of a grand jury and is expected to be indicted on felony charges, followed by up to 15 years in prison.

Looking back, it’s a shame that Diamond Dallas Page’s career had to end so soon, and that he had to go to jail because one of his co-workers tried to sexually assault his wife on several occasions over several weeks and then made her tuck and roll against her will in a wrestling arena parking lot. Nitro Girl Spice, accompanied by all Shawn Michaels wants to do 24/7, gets mic time (!!) to say how much all the girls miss Kim, and how they can’t wait until she’s back doing what she loves most: dancing poorly between Norman Smiley matches.

Worst: Lucha Ouch Party

When I tell you this week’s episode had a 20-minute trios match to put over Blitzkrieg, I need you to know will the full love of WCW cruiserweights in my heart that it is big horrible. Blitz is awesome, sure — here he is breaking out a freaking picture-perfect Phoenix Splash in the middle of a 1999 Nitro because WHY NOT — but, as you may have noticed from that GIF, Super Calo’s also out here to balance things out. Here’s Cal doing a double springboard into a hurricanrana and just slipping off and landing on his head. STOP WRESTLING IN SUNGLASSES MY DUDE.

I can’t put all the blame on Calo, though. It’s 20 minutes long, sure, but the first 15 are a weird Lazy Susan of ground-and-pound attacks and super boring commercial break offense, and when things finally start to pick up, nobody can hit their moves. For example, here’s an often reliable Juventud Guerrera going for an almost always reliable Air Juvi and basically hip-tossing himself spine-first into the ring apron. It’s a bad time, which is a shame because you know somebody backstage was like, “tonight we’ve got a Will Sasso match, a Roddy Piper match, and like half an hour of Ric Flair getting Last Housed On The Left, throw a 20-minute lucha libre six-man in there to make up for it, it’ll be fine.”

Worst: A Lifetime Of Missed Opportunities

I’m sure you’re interested in my analysis of Perry Saturn vs. Jerry Flynn with a Scott Dickinson distraction finish, but I’ll put it to you bluntly: On Sunday night, the World Wrestling Federation put on a show featuring Stone Cold Steve Austin beating Vince McMahon bloody and throwing him off the wall of a steel cage, Big Show jumping ship from WCW to debut in what appeared to be an immediate WrestleMania program, and Mankind defending the WWF Championship against The Rock in a Last Man Standing match. World Championship Wrestling’s big response to that in the opening segment of the following Nitro is Perry Saturn wrestling in a dress and losing a match to karate fightin’ JERRY FLYNN due to a referee distraction caused by a different referee. I’ve seen Jackson Pollock paintings with a clearer narrative than whatever WCW was going for at this point.

Next Week:

It’s finally time for SuperBrawl IX, featuring:

• Hollyhood vs. the corpse of Ric Flair, animated by spiteful rage and completely oblivious to the Machiavellian plans of his mannequin son
• Kevin Nash doing Rey Mysterio a huge favor wink wink nudge nudge by taking his mask
• Rowdy Roddy Piper in another title match with another bad ending
• Diamond Dallas Page hoping to avenge the loss of his wife and a million dollars by winning the TV title, which he doesn’t
• the Four Horsemen trying to win the WCW Tag Team Championship twice, which they don’t

It’s the kind of fun and catharsis you’ve come to expect from World Championship Wrestling. See you then!

LeBron James was infamously told to “shut up and dribble” back in 2018 by Fox News personality Laura Ingraham, who objected to James making a foray into politics by critiquing Donald Trump. To this day, it still prompts vitriol, with James even recalling the event in recent social media posts. Now, James’ fellow Ohioan Dave Chappelle decided to offer up a response to Ingraham in his latest comedy special, 8:46.

Discussing the way in which the public outspokenness of Black people in America is digested by the larger public, Chappelle praised James for exceeding “every expectation that they had for him” and called James “one of Ohio’s greatest residents.”

“(Ingraham) told my friend to shut up and dribble,” Chappelle explains. “My friend is the best at something, and (Ingraham) is not the best at anything.”

A main thread of Chappelle’s latest special is the usefulness (or not) of celebrity during the latest series of uprisings around the country, but he seems to generally appreciate James. Chappelle goes on to explain that celebrity is a “treacherous” business, and yet James came out on top, a “family man” who is a role model for all. To that end, he decries Ingraham for challenging the pain James feels and wanted to speak out on.

The main point seems to be to highlight that no matter how impressive James’ character is, and no matter how much he’s accomplished, some will still look down upon him for being a Black athlete. And while Ingraham is not the first to express this sentiment over the years, her comments said the quiet part loud in a way that few will soon forget.

Wednesday morning, at about 5 am, an elderly man saw a woman jump off a pedestrian bridge over the Kenagakawa River in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward. The woman in her 30s plunged about nine feet into the water in an attempt to commit suicide.

“I can’t die!” the woman yelled while struggling in the water. “Don’t die!” the man called back while grabbing his phone to call the paramedics. As the man frantically tried to get help, a group of sumo wrestlers were alerted by the commotion.

The closest building to the bridge where the woman made her jump just happened to be the Sakaigawa Stable, a dormitory and training facility for sumo wrestlers. About twenty very large men rushed to save the drowning woman.

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They jumped in the water, grabbed her and pulled her to safety.

It must have been quite the site to see these gigantic men spring into action. The woman probably couldn’t believe her luck that she had twenty of Japan’s finest athletes come to her rescue.

After they safely brought her to the river bank, the trouble wasn’t over yet.

When the paramedics arrived they put the woman on a stretcher, but they couldn’t get the stretcher up to the street level because the river bed lies six-and-a-half feet below street level.

The group of sumo wrestlers got together and lifted the stretcher to the road so the woman could be put into an ambulance.

The woman was taken to the hospital where doctors said she suffered no serious injuries.

The local police department is considering giving the wrestlers a certificate of commendation for their bravery as well as the man who first noticed the woman jumping.

No word yet on whether they will receive a celebratory banquet. But if they do, they sure make sure the caterer brings enough food for 20 sumo wrestlers. The average sumo wrestler consumers 7,000 calories a day and weighs 300 to 400 pounds.

While the thought of twenty sumo wrestlers running and jumping in the water has an element of humor to it, the story also calls attention to Japan’s suicide problem.

According to the journal Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, Japan’s suicide rate has been unusually high due to “cultural factors … such as a tradition of honorable suicide as well as permissive attitudes towards suicide that remain in modern times.”

The country reached its peak in 2003 of 34,427 suicides after an economic downturn hit businesses hard. This caused the country to get serious about suicide preventing, enacting measures that brought government and private support groups together to address the problem.

Last year was the lowest number of suicides recorded in the country since it began keeping tack in 1978. In 2019, the country recorded 20,169 suicides.

If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 across the United States.

1-800-273-8255

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The Grammy-winning country trio that was known as Lady Antebellum until recently announced Thursday that, in light of the national conversations about racial inequality, they would be swiftly shifting their band’s name. The group said that due to “antebellum” glorifying a Civil War-era South, the band dropped part of their title and rebranded themselves as just Lady A. Now, though, the band is facing backlash from a Black singer who has already been making music under the same moniker for over two decades.

Seattle-based gospel singer Lady A, whose real name is Anita White, opened up to Rolling Stone about her frustration with the country trio’s name change. White said she wished the band would have contacted her prior to adopting the title and the irony of the situation is not lost on her:

“This is my life. Lady A is my brand, I’ve used it for over 20 years, and I’m proud of what I’ve done. This is too much right now. They’re using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn’t have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it. It’s an opportunity for them to pretend they’re not racist or pretend this means something to them. If it did, they would’ve done some research. And I’m not happy about that. You found me on Spotify easily — why couldn’t they?”

White has released several albums under her moniker since she first began singing in the ’80s. While singing isn’t White’s main gig, she’s been gearing up to release another record on her birthday in July, titled Lady A: Live In New Orleans. White said she holds a business trademark for Lady A LLC, but isn’t sure if it is enough to ensure a copyright lawsuit win against the band. “I don’t know if [the new Lady A] are going to give me a cease-and-desist. I don’t know how they’d react,” she said. “But I’m not about to stop using my name. For them to not even reach out is pure privilege. I’m not going to lay down and let this happen to me. But now the burden of proof is on me to prove that my name is in fact mine, and I don’t even know how much I’ll have to spend to keep it.”

Ahead of White’s criticism, the newly-named Lady A had issued an apology about their former band name on social media. “We are deeply sorry for the hurt this has caused,” they wrote, continuing: “Now, blind spots we didn’t even know existed have been revealed.”

Rico Nasty must be a favorite of Insecure‘s Issa Rae, because her music has not only featured prominently on the show, it’s also been featured pretty consistently. This season, not only did Insecure‘s music curators put Rico on the soundtrack, they reached out to get an original song, “Dirty,” which Rico shared today after it premiered a few episodes ago. The single uses a grungy, uptempo beat, over which Rico sings the praises of drink, weed, and sex.

“Dirty” arrives as the anticipation for Rico’s new album has nearly reached a fever pitch. Rico’s buzz was already strong as a result of her XXL Freshmen cover placement last year and her Cardi B co-sign in February of this year, but the coronavirus quarantine caused her to delay her release. She still dropped a pair of innovative videos, “Lightning” and “Popstar,” as she and her fans waited out the social distancing measures in place. Along with her verse on IDK’s “495,” “Dirty” provides a welcome and tantalizing taste of new Rico music as she makes final tweaks on her big debut.

Listen to Rico Nasty’s “Dirty” above. Watch the Insecure season finale Sunday at 7:20pm EST / 10:20pm PST on HBO.

Rico Nasty is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In a surprising bit of news, Sigourney Weaver revealed that she recently received a 50-page treatment for a fifth Alien movie. However, the actress wasn’t exactly thrilled by what she saw, and she seems to be signaling that her days as badass heroine Ellen Ripley are probably over.

In an interview with Empire that looks back at the iconic alien-fighting role, Weaver shares her opinion that it might time to put Ripley to bed. This comes after reading a brand new script from Alien producer Walter Hill, which clearly didn’t light the actress’ world on fire:

Weaver revealed that she received a 50-page treatment from Alien franchise producer Walter Hill around a year and a half ago for a different take on a fifth Ripley film, which came about in the aftermath of Blomkamp’s project falling through – though she’s ultimately not sure the future of Alien rests in the revival of that legendary character. “I don’t know,” she said. “Ridley has gone in a different direction. Maybe Ripley has done her bit. She deserves a rest.”

In Weaver’s defense, she was very much invested in making District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s fifth Alien movie happen. That film would’ve ignored the events of Alien 3 and featured Ripley and Michael Biehn’s Hicks battling the xenomorphs in a heavily populated colony. Unfortunately, Ridley Scott used his clout to delay the film so that the studio could focus on Alien: Covenant, and then Blomkamp’s vision never saw the light of day much to Weaver’s frustration.

Judging by her reaction to the latest script, it sounds like Weaver’s days as Ripley might be officially over. But on a brighter note, Alien fans have been curious to see what would happen to the franchise now that Disney owns it after purchasing Fox, and it sounds like attempts are being made to churn out a new film. Whether or not this means Scott might actually get to make his sequel to Alien: Covenant remains to be seen.

(Via Empire)

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

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Yes, of course, Jackie Daytona, but also…

What We Do in the Shadows ended its excellent second season this week. Our own Josh Kurp enjoyed it so much that it prompted him to float the idea that it could be the funniest show on television. I can’t argue with that. I mean, I guess I could. I can be a real contrarian dork sometimes. But I won’t. The show brought me more legitimate belly laughs than any other scripted comedy in these last few months, especially in the episode where Laszlo, one of the show’s vampires, fled a duel with Mark Hamill and went on the lam as bartender and volleyball aficionado named Jackie Daytona. It’s a very good show.

The strange thing is, knowing myself as well as I do, the character who went on the lam as a bartender named Jackie Daytona isn’t my favorite character on the show. My favorite character on the show, by a lot, and the one I consider to be the show’s secret weapon, is Colin Robinson.

Some background: Colin Robinson, played by Mark Proksch, is a daywalking “energy vampire,” meaning, unlike a standard vampire who feeds on blood at night, he feeds any time of day by draining people (and other vampires) of their life force by boring or depressing the hell out of them. It’s a blast. Sometimes he’ll start talking and you won’t realize what he’s doing right away and then it will suddenly hit you. He argues with people online while giggling. He tells long stories that go nowhere. He inserts himself into petty drama and calmly dumps accelerant on the flames. One time, and I’m about to post the screencaps so you’ll believe me, he summoned the ghost of his dead grandmother just so he could get her with an “updog” joke.

There was just a bonanza of good Colin Robinson moments this season. Most notably, there was the entire episode where he was promoted at his office and realized people had no choice but to listen to him in meetings and in small talk. He became a madman, a borderline supervillain, who harnessed so much power that he spontaneously grew an entire head of hair again. It was a good episode. I won’t spoil the ending if you haven’t seen it. You should see it, too. Again, it’s a good show.

The key to it all is Proksch’s performance. He’s so dry and droll and it works so well, both for his character and for the balance of the show. The other vampires in the house are big and loud and showy. Laszlo is a theatrical sex manic, Nadja loves drama as much as blood, Nandor is a legendary bloodthirsty warrior who is also a needy little boy. Adding a bald man with a monotone voice and a closet filled with beige sweaters is a perfect way to ground that. It’s a genius performance of a genius character on a profoundly dumb-fun show. Kudos to everyone who had a hand in making it happen.

I hope he starts next season as a telemarketer and he grows and grows until he’s 40-feet tall. He is my sweet energy-sucking boy.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Congratulations to the prestigious winners

The 2020 Peabody Award winners for television were announced this week. It’s always cool to see which shows crack the list each year, in part because it’s a different, more prestigious kind of award than the Emmys or Golden Globes, and in part because you get to feel very cool and smart when a show you watch sneaks in there. This year’s list covers a bunch of topics and genres: Chernobyl and When They See Us are in there representing true stories told through drama; Fleabag is in there representing smart comedies and Hot Priests; and Stranger Things is in there representing… demons, I guess? I don’t know. Congrats to the winners. None of this is the point I’m getting to.

The point I’m getting to is that Succession and Watchmen both won, too. That’s cool. Succession and Watchmen are great, for very different reasons. Succession is a show about awful rich white people attempting to ruin each other in a constant battle for status inside their own family. Watchmen is a show about a diverse group of masked heroes attempting to thwart a racist collective that has its tentacles all the way up and through the United States’ government. That is the very simplified version of both shows. They are much more than those respective sentences, in many ways. They even have a little in common when you dig past the “they were both on HBO” surface level. They are both serious examinations of subjects that affect life in America (wealth, race). They both cut through this seriousness with fits of wicked humor. And they both featured memorable farts.

I should explain. Actually… wait. No. Maybe I shouldn’t explain. It will be way funnier if I just post the screencaps and move right along. Let’s do that. Succession first.

Beautiful. Just perfect. A Peabody Award-winning fake fart. I would go so far as to say the caption-writing deserves part of the honor, too, only because “mimics in childish babble” is so tremendously specific.

Speaking of excellent and tremendously specific work in the field of caption-writing, here are a couple of screencaps from the Peabody-winning series Watchmen.

To be clear, this is Jeremy Irons, in character as Adrian Veidt, farting so prodigiously that it required two separate, different captions.

Congratulations to the winners.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — “Oi’m a peaky bloinda, ain’t I

Peaky Blinders is a good show. We’ve been over this many times. One of the best parts of this very good show is Cillian Murphy as the head of the Peaky Blinders criminal organization. He’s all stoic and calm with a bubbling rage hiding in his eyes behind his tiny round spectacles. He’s very cool and very calculated and occasionally he flies way off the handle and ends up covered in someone else’s blood. It’s a blast. But as we learned from a new interview with series creator Steven Knight, it was almost very different.

Jason Statham almost played Tommy Shelby.

I met them both in LA to talk about the role and opted for Jason. One of the reasons was because physically in the room Jason is Jason. Cillian, when you meet him, isn’t Tommy, obviously, but I was stupid enough not to understand that. . . . He sent me a text saying, ‘Remember, I’m an actor,’ which is absolutely the thing, because he can transform himself. If you meet him in the street he is a totally different human being.

I like this story a lot. I like it because it contains a very cool move by Cillian Murphy to land the part, and I like it because it’s a very Tommy Shelby thing to do (to whatever degree Tommy Shelby would send texts if he were alive today instead of the 1920s), and I like that I’m now picturing Jason Statham in Peaky Blinders, just kicking people in the sternum and scowling at them. It’s a totally different show. It might not be a better one. It’s definitely different, though, which I say as someone who loves Jason Statham. Like, picture Tommy Shelby doing this.

Yeah, different show. I kind of want them to make a whole second series, completely parallel to the one on now, shot for shot and line for line, but starring Jason Statham. Please consider this. I don’t ask for very much.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Woody Harrelson rules

Some things we know about Woody Harrelson:

• Has had a long and successful career in Hollywood
• Loves to smoke pot
• Lives in Hawaii most of the year
• Plays poker with Willie Nelson a lot in Hawaii
• Son of an actual hitman
• Seems to have things pretty well figured out

We also learned, this week, that he is almost definitely not a racist. We learned this because a racist who looked kind of like him popped up in a viral video, which caused his name to begin trending on Twitter, which led to dozens of people filling the trending topic with cool stories about how Woody rules and is, again, almost definitely not a racist. Do yourself a favor. Click on this tweet and scroll through the replies. Read a whole bunch of them. So many people have “Woody Harrelson is cool” stories. He’s like if Bill Murray was way, way more chill. It’s fascinating.

It also reminded me of this very fun Woody profile from Esquire a little while back. Bookmark this and come back to it this weekend if you want to read about Woody and a reporter scaling walls and wandering around New York on the hunt for a vegan restaurant (you do), but here’s a taste.

He’s still in his T-shirt and shorts, though he’s added sandals, which appear to be made out of some all-natural, cruelty-free fabric and which shouldn’t work on anybody yet do on him, and a baseball hat with the words drugs and wine stitched above the brim. No one has ever looked less like the son of a gunned-up, mobbed-up, bad-hombre jailbird. Halfway out the door, he smacks his forehead and says, “Wallet, keys!” then trots back inside.

The greatest. I would give anything to hang out at one of those poker games in Hawaii. I bet they’re fun.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Sheeeeeeeesh, Nicole

There’s a nice profile of Reese Witherspoon in the Los Angeles Times this week. It’s about how she rose from struggling and typecast movie actress to dominant television force with multiple big fancy dramas on multiple big fancy premium services, from Big Little Lies on HBO to Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu to The Morning Show on Apple+. The woman is a force, an absolute dynamo, a mover and shaker in a big way, and none of that is what I want to talk about. Look at the opening of the profile. Look at the second paragraph.

Sitting next to Nicole Kidman in makeup on the set of “Big Little Lies,” Reese Witherspoon had questions. Loads of questions. What was it like to work with Stanley Kubrick? How did you do the musical numbers in “Moulin Rouge!”? Witherspoon loves movies. At age 44, she has been working on sets for three decades and enjoys nothing more than digging into film lore.

Kidman, though, had more existential musings she wanted to explore. “Do you ever think about dying, Reese?” Kidman would ask her costar. “Because I think about it all the time.”

It’s fun to picture Nicole Kidman with like jet-black hair and taking a deep drag off a clove cigarette while she says this. Goth Nicole Kidman. It’s also fun to picture her saying that in other situations.

KIDMAN: Do you ever think about dying? I think about it all the time.

CASHIER: Ma’am, this is a Panera Bread.

Just delightful. Play around with it yourself this weekend. You’ve earned it.

READER MAIL

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

Mark:

In your column about Mythic Quest’s quarantine episode, you wrote that after watching it, you found yourself “lying in bed afterward for about 45 minutes, just blown away, staring at my ceiling.” Me too. I can recall two other episodes of television that knocked me for a loop like that: the season 3 finale of Lost (“We have to go back!”) and the train robbery episode of Breaking Bad (Todd shoots the little scorpion boy). Can you recall other episodes of TV shows that left you lying in bed staring at the ceiling?

A few things are true here, most notably that this is a very good question. Also true: I am a bit of a crier. A good happysad show or movie will really get me going. So I am not unfamiliar with this kind of reaction. It’s happened after the final season episode of Halt & Catch Fire when a main character died, it happened after multiple episode of Bojack Horseman, it happened at the end of Fleabag’s second season, and it definitely happened at the end of The Wire’s season about the Baltimore public schools. There are more examples but there’s a thread that runs through them all: they are great shows.

That’s the sign of a great show, isn’t it? That it makes you feel things? Even a mostly silly show like Parks & Rec or The Simpsons would sometimes drop that emotional hammer. It’s even more effective there, in a way, because you don’t see it coming. I think that’s why the Mythic Quest quarantine episode got me. I wasn’t expecting that deep level of feeling and then blammo, the ending was sweet and powerful and the first thing I’ve seen that accurately depicted the fried and confused stress of the quarantine. It was good. I’m thinking about it again. Might stare at the ceiling for a bit.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Sweden!

Swedish prosecutors have named the man who they say killed former Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1986, ending years of mystery.

They said it was Stig Engstrom, a graphic designer known as “Skandia Man” who killed himself in 2000.

It brings me great pleasure to announce that Swedish authorities believe they have solved a 34-year-old assassination cold case that I knew nothing about until this week and then immediately read everything I could find about it.

Palme was shot in the back as he walked home from the cinema with his wife in Stockholm.

He had already dismissed his security team for the day. The assassination took place on Sweden’s busiest road, Sveavagen, and more than a dozen witnesses saw a man fire the shots before fleeing the scene.

Palme’s son Marten told Swedish radio that he believed prosecutors had reached the right conclusion and were right to close the case.

It has to be a real mixed bag for the family. On one hand, there’s some semblance of closure. On the other hand, the suspected perpetrator is gone and there are still a lot of questions. And this emotional quandary is something I might have examined at greater length had I not stumbled across this passage about the suspected killer’s wife from a piece about the case from last year.

His wife, who he divorced the previous year, believes he was too much of a coward to assassinate Palme.

What a great moment this must have been for her. It’s not every day you get to call your ex of 20+ years a coward in print, on the record. Bad situation all around, but I am kind of happy for her.

After it was revealed BIPOC staff aren’t paid for video appearances.

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