Friday Check-In: Ah, 'Youth'!

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This week's Friday Check-In newsletter coming up just as soon as I watch plankton think...

In The Twilight Zone zone

We're now two and a half weeks away from the release of Serling: A Journey Into The Twilight Zone with TV's First Visionary (still available for preorder, still with a free bonus essay if you preorder), the man with the clenched teeth will be moving up into the top spot on Fridays for a bit. A few bits of news:

Though the book won't be published until October 13, there will be a very limited number of signed copies for sale at Hachette's booth (#3445) at New York Comic-Con, starting on the Con's first day, October 8, while supplies last. I'll actually be at the Javits Center that day, and depending on how my moderating schedule goes, I might hang out at the booth for a bit to personalize copies from anyone who wants that. Regardless, if you happen to see a large bearded man in a Knicks t-shirt and a denim jacket wandering around that day, odds are it's me and you can say hi.
As a reminder, if you're in the New Jersey/New York area, I'll be at Words bookstore in Maplewood — with TV Is Good co-host Kathryn VanArendonk — the night of October 14, and I'll be at The Paley Center on October 15. Please come say hi if you're able.
I've been doing lots of podcast interviews to promote the book. Most of those will be dropping closer to publication, if not after. (I'm excited, for instance, to do a Screen Drafts episode on the best Twilight Zone episodes with my old pal Emily St. James and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus.) One of those conversations is already out, for the Forgotten Hollywood podcast with Doug Hess:

Catching up

Another busy, busy fall week. Here's what I've published since last Friday's newsletter:

I recapped Lanterns, as the story finally moved to 2026, with a cameo by Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner

On the latest TV Is Good, I finally got Kathryn to sample Reacher, and then we revisited a classic Taxi episode, "Louie Sees the Light":

For What Else Is Alan Watching? bonus tier subscribers, I brought back my occasional "If they swapped roles" series, which began with the seemingly impossible question of whether Rhea Seehorn would do better as Nora Durst on The Leftovers than Carrie Coon would as Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul:

I recapped yet another Ted Lasso with some strong individual moments that were hamstrung by the season's terrible pacing and reluctance to focus on the women's team:

I recapped a new Slow Horses, which brought back yet another familiar face:

I reviewed Netflix's revival of A Different World, which brought back old favorites like Dwayne and Whitley, while mostly focusing on life as an HBCU student in 2026:

I recapped the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season finale, as my least favorite season of the show improbably ended with what might be my favorite episode of the show:

What's next?

Here's what to expect over the next week or so:

Recaps of the next episodes of Lanterns, Ted Lasso, and Slow Horses;
A new TV Is Good episode, where Kathryn and I do a broader look at fall TV shows we're interested in, followed by a conversation with Lynette Rice about her new book, ER: The Oral History;
A review of Netflix's new adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, starring Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, and Mike Feist;
Thoughts on the return of the Scrubs revival;
Thoughts on War, HBO's new British legal drama starring Dominic and Sienna Miller;
An all-Rod Serling edition of Ask Alan for all subscribers (free or paid), so please send any questions about Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Planet of the Apes, or any of his other work to alan@whatsalanwatching.com.

Odds and/or ends

Not all of my podcast guest appearances are specifically about Serling. I got a chance to visit one of my favorite podcasts, Unspooled, to talk about one of my favorite movies, Almost Famous, with the great Amy Nicholson:

Shortly before I left Rolling Stone last fall, I did a long interview with Vince Gilligan about Pluribus. An abbreviated version of it ran in the magazine way back in November. Though a very complicated and long set of circumstances, you can finally read the full conversation at Totei, a new arts magazine:

The wisdom of the crowd?

The New York Times has been running a series on the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century. It's a crowd-sourced list, rather than one assembled by the Times' critics, with a mix of celebrities and TV professionals involved. The list wrapped up with Breaking Bad in the top spot, followed by The Wire, Mad Men, Succession, and Fleabag.

I worked on a few crowd-sourced lists like this at Rolling Stone, including one on the 100 best shows of all time. It's a complicated process. Where, for instance, do you draw the eligibility line? The Times decided that shows that debuted pre-2000 were ineligible, even if the great majority of their episodes aired after. So no Sopranos or West Wing. When I did a best of the 2010s list for Rolling Stone, my approach was to make late 2000s shows eligible, but only factor in the episodes that aired from 2010 on. (So only the later Mad Men seasons, only Parks and Rec from mid-Season Two on, etc.) The Times asked people to submit unranked ballots — just 10 shows, no particular order — so shows were rewarded based on how many ballots they were on, rather than something like Deadwood (which finished 24th) getting any kind of bonus because it would be high on the ballot of anyone who chose it.

And when I look at the individual ballots for the crowd-sourced projects, it's clear that some people take it very seriously, while others just jot down the names of whatever shows came to mind during the two minutes they spent on the thing. But it's fun to look at some of the Times ballots, including odd choices like Nate Bargatze picking Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, or Sam Levinson predictably putting Entourage and Louie on his. Readers can also make their own, which led to Variety TV critic Alison Herman putting together a list of some of the most cursed "prestige" shows of the century.

I'll save my own thoughts on the best shows of the century for a full post sometime after my schedule eases up post-Serling. That said, anybody whose ballot doesn't have The Leftovers on it is doing it wrong. And the fact that Rectify didn't make the top 100 at all is a reminder that people who work in television are often completely unaware of some of the best things being made for television.

This is not a review: Brothers

Periodically, I'll watch only an episode or two of a show — enough for me to form an opinion, but not enough of a sample for me to feel strong enough in that opinion to write a real review. This is one of those instances.

Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have worked together many times, most famously in True Detective Season One. They're close friends, and they look like they could be siblings — especially when, as we see in the opening credits to their new Apple comedy Brothers — you pair photos of each of them as kids, back when Woody still had a full head of hair.

Is that enough of a foundation for a TV show where the two play fictionalized versions of themselves, and Woody has to grapple with the question of whether they really are half-siblings? Maybe, but the three episodes of Brothers that I watched didn't offer strong evidence in support of that. If it's self-satire, it's gentle at best: McConaughey is prone to monologue like he's in a Lincoln commercial but is otherwise a great dude; Harrelson is perpetually baked and irresponsible, yet his reckless behavior inevitably leads to great things for his loved ones. Other than a funny supporting performance by Lisa Gilroy as the sharp-tongued manager of Matthew's fumbling campaign for Texas governor, there's barely any comedy there. It's a show built entirely on vibes. And, as you may recall from their disastrous stint as Emmy presenters earlier this month, their vibes aren't always as endearing as they think.

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This is a review: Youth

Finally, I'm giving Sharon Horgan's new HBO comedy Youth shorter shrift than I would like, because I enjoyed the hell out of the seven episodes I got to watch. (HBO hasn't given critics the finale yet.) Catastrophe, which Horgan co-created and co-starred in with Rob Delaney, is one of my favorites from the last decade, and I liked what I saw Bad Sisters before falling off for reasons I can't remember now. This one's awfully good.

Horgan plays Alex, a literary agent who has recently passed 50 and is beginning to worry that life is all downhill from here. Her sex life has been largely nonexistent since her divorce, her parents are both ailing and require Alex and her sister to help care for them, her son Ruari (played by Cillian Murphy's son Aran) is constantly getting into trouble, she's messing up at work, and she keeps worrying that she's misreading the signals from Patrick (Rupert Friend), a charming former lover she has listed in her phone as "Ex Pat."

On paper, a lot of this could be bleak and depressing, or at least uncomfortable. And there are definitely squirm-inducing moments on this show, particularly when Alex tries dating a much older man (played by Tim McInnerny) while secretly judging him for his age the entire time. But, like she and Delaney did on Catastrophe, she's consistently able to find the ridiculousness that goes hand in hand with the sadness and the clumsiness. I laughed a lot watching this show, even as I felt huge sympathy for Alex, and even for Ruari as he descends into the manosphere.

Perhaps I'll write more around the end of the season, but this is the stuff.

That's it for today! What did everybody else think?