Today's Friday Check-In newsletter coming up just as soon as you inject me with shark DNA...
Catching up
Here's what I've written since last Friday's newsletter:
- I recapped my favorite episode of Widow's Bay so far, another Patricia spotlight where she came face to face with the Boogeyman:
Alan Sepinwall
- Wednesday was the 30th anniversary of the first article published in my career as a professional journalist. I revisited those early Star-Ledger days for What Else Is Alan Watching? bonus tier subscribers:
Alan Sepinwall
- I reviewed the new season of The Vampire Lestat, the AMC drama formerly known as Interview with the Vampire, in which Sam Reid's undead title character decides to become a rock star. I liked it a lot:
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Podcast corner
A busy week for the TV Is Good podcast. On Monday, Kathryn and I dropped our third episode, where she tried to explain the premise and merits of Love Island USA to me, and then we looked back at the classic Lost romance episode "The Constant."
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We also debuted our first Patreon episode, a deep dive into one of the most beloved TV episodes ever, "The Suitcase" from Mad Men. And, because I'm a knucklehead who can't keep track of dates on the calendar, we put an unused segment about the Hacks finale onto the Patreon as a bonus-bonus.
We're still figuring out what we want the Patreon to be, so we invited all subscribers to make suggestions of what they'd like to see/hear us talk about. You can also feel free to drop those suggestions in the comments here, in the Discord, via email, etc.
What's next?
Coming up next week:
- I liked the Lestat episodes I've seen enough that I'm going to try to recap the season and see if there's enough interest in it. Look for my take on the premiere on Sunday night.
- Lestat will also be the subject of the first segment of the next podcast episode, and we're pairing it with a look at the creative high point of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Season Two two-parter "Surprise" and "Innocence."
- You'll get my recap of the penultimate Widow's Bay on Wednesday morning.
- Though we're not quite at the six-month mark of 2026, I've seen enough TV that I'll be putting together my list of the best shows of the year so far.
These are not reviews: Cape Fear and Not Suitable for Work
From time to time, I will sample enough of a new show to form an opinion, but not enough of it to feel comfortable writing a full review. So take these small sample size reactions for exactly what they are.
- On the one hand, Apple's new Cape Fear series has an incredible cast. Javier Bardem follows in the footsteps of Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro as terrifying ex-con Max Cady, and is as creepy and spellbinding as you would expect from the man who once played Anton Chigurh. Amy Adams is a great pick to play a gender-flipped version of Max's lawyer (played in films by Gregory Peck and Nick Nolte), and the rest of the ensemble includes Patrick Wilson, CCH Pounder, Jamie Hector, and a bunch of other actors I like. And the two episodes I watched were soaked with dread and twists and all the other things you might want from the story. But I got to the end of the second hour with no real interest in watching eight more. It's a better-executed version of 10-Hour Movie than most, but it's still not a story that lends itself to elongation. The Mitchum movie is 106 minutes, and the De Niro one slightly over two hours. And The Simpsons was able to tell a version of the whole thing in under a half hour (though I would watch 10 hours of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes), while Ben Stiller did it in about 3 minutes.
- I run hot and cold on Mindy Kaling's shows, often even within the shows. There would be stretches of The Mindy Project, for instance, that I found as funny as anything on TV at the time, and others where I just watched everything blankly. Her new Hulu show, Not Suitable for Work, ran more cold than hot for me in the two episodes I watched. (The first of which is 46 minutes long, which is not ideal for a straightforward attempt at a Gen Z Friends.) Avantika Vandanapu is funny, and Ella Hunt is charming, but the writing never felt sharp or specific enough. Comedies take more time to find themselves than dramas, so maybe I'll check back in later.
Dispatches from ATX
I spent last weekend eating lots of tacos and BBQ — by which I mean I spent last weekend in the TV fan paradise that was the 15th annual ATX TV Festival. Referred to by the organizers as "TV Camp for Grown Ups," it's four days of conversations, screenings, and parties, where the most diehard of television fans get to hear from and interact with the people responsible or some of their favorite shows.
I participated in three panels. The first was a screening of another one of the best TV episodes ever made: "Three Men and Adena" from Homicide: Life on the Street, an episode-length interrogation and a great showcase for Kyle Secor, the late Andre Braugher, and the late Moses Gunn. Secor, Homicide showrunner Tom Fontana, and David Simon (whose non-fiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets inspired the series in general and that episode in particular) joined me on stage after for a great conversation. Secor spoke eloquently about what it was like to act with both of his co-stars for the hour. Fontana recalled how much NBC didn't want him to make the episode at all, and how much pressure they gave him to solve the case. (When he won an Emmy for this script, he says those same executives all told him what a great idea it had been.) Most amusing of all, Fontana explained that at one point, Alec Baldwin was going to play a very different version of the character Gunn played. NBC was pressuring him to cast a movie star, Baldwin's brother Daniel was a member of the cast, and he agreed to do it — until, that is, he saw an episode that featured a derisive reference to Baldwin and Kim Basinger's The Getaway remake, and profanely backed out.
Alan Sepinwall
Among the reasons I was disappointed I couldn't make it to last year's ATX was that Damon Lindelof hosted a screening of a Twilight Zone episode. As you may have heard, I wrote a biography of Rod Serling, and Lindelof is one of the many creators influenced by Serling's work who spoke with me for that book. But the ATX organizers were kind enough to let me host a screening of my own, of "Walking Distance," probably the most autobiographical thing Serling ever wrote. Afterwards, I talked about the show, Serling, and the book with Dan Fienberg.
The third was a discussion with Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, creators of the FX comedy Adults (a much funnier Gen Z hangout comedy than Not Suitable For Work). We talked about lots of aspects of the series, including one of my pet obsessions: characters who are always referred to by their full name. (Or, as Shaw put it, "firstie-lasties.")
The big event was a 15-year reunion with most of the original cast of Friday Night Lights, a show that's had a close relationship with the festival since it began, since it filmed all five seasons right in the greater Austin area.
It was a big panel, with 11 actors and four producers. Those can be incredibly unwieldy, and unfortunately in this case, three of the actors — Gaius Charles, Aimee Teegarden, and Louanne "Grandma Saracen" Stephens — didn't get to talk at all until the very last question of the night. (When it was Charles' turn, the theater erupted into a prolonged applause, as if the crowd wanted to make clear that they loved him and wished he had been part of the conversation much earlier and more often.)
Still, there were highlights. Adrianne Palicki quipped at one point, "Remember when Landry killed a guy?" Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton's chemistry was as flawless and funny as ever, and at one point they did a brilliant improvised bit where they talked over one another while trying to tell the story of one of their earliest conversations. And Jesse Plemons and Stephanie Hunt staged a Crucifictorious reunion, and opened the panel with their rendition of "Devil Town."
Many ATX panels eventually wind up on their YouTube channel (though Kathryn and I are still waiting for them to post our absurd conversation about bottle episodes from 2024). Presumably, you'll all get to see Connie and Kyle in action soon, and maybe watch some of the panels I was in. It's tons of fun, and I can't wait to go back next year, where maybe I can do something about The Wire's 25th anniversary (and the book I wrote about that).
That's it for today! What does everybody else think?
