Today's Friday check-in coming up just as soon as they name a micro-park after me...
The bonuses are due on Pre-Order Street
As you may have heard, Serling: A Journey Into the Twilight Zone with TV's First Visionary is coming out on October 13. As you may have also heard, pre-orders are hugely important in the publishing game right now. I'm happy whenever anyone has the means and interest to buy something I've written. But it's especially helpful if you can order it ahead of time, from whatever source you prefer. Since I'm asking you to help me, the least I can do in return is to provide a bonus for anybody.
The book is structured so that each chapter is framed by a piece of Serling's own writing that speaks to that particular phase of his life. In many cases, a Twilight Zone script performs this function. But they're not necessarily the most famous episodes — just the ones that seemed particularly representative of what he was dealing with at that moment. So while my actual favorite Twilight Zone episode is discussed in the book, it's not at the same length as some other ones. Going on more about it would have gotten in the way of the story I was trying to tell about Serling himself.
Which meant that if I wanted to write more about that one, I would have to do it in some other format – say, in a standalone essay about it, which can be immediately downloaded and read by anyone who pre-orders the book and submits a proof of purchase.
In case the photo at the top of the newsletter, or the subtitle for this section of it, didn't already give it away, my favorite is Season One's "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." It's not exactly an out of left field pick — it's generally held up as one of the show's three greatest episodes, along with "Time Enough at Last" and "Eye of the Beholder" — but many consensus choices deserve that status, and "Monsters" sure does. To find out more, click the link, submit your receipt, and enjoy.
Submit proof of pre-order purchase for Serling, and get my bonus essay on the best episode of The Twilight Zone.
Catching up
Here's what I've written since last Friday's newsletter:
- I recapped this season's jaw-dropping penultimate episode of The Vampire Lestat, a show that's doing a lot of next-level things this year:
Alan Sepinwall
- On a new TV Is Good podcast, Kathryn and I talked about Netflix's Little House on the Prairie revival and its surprising resonance with Deadwood:
Alan Sepinwall
- With the Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed finale dropping this week (more on that below), I published the interview I did at the ATX TV Festival with Tatiana Maslany. It is such a pleasure to hear her talk about her craft:
Alan Sepinwall
- I reviewed Lucky, the new Apple con artist drama, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Timothy Olyphant, and Annette Bening:
Alan Sepinwall
- I reviewed Will Ferrell's extremely disappointing new Netflix golf comedy The Hawk:
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What's next?
Coming up over the next week:
- My recap of The Vampire Lestat season finale;
- An all-Anya Taylor-Joy episode of TV Is Good, where we pair a conversation about Lucky with a look back at her star-making role in The Queen's Gambit;
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is back, and I'll be recapping the new season;
- A review of the latest, and seemingly oddest, Big Bang Theory spinoff: the HBO Max sci-fi comedy Stuart Fails to Save the Universe;
- For bonus tier subscribers, I'll be doing another piece about the weirdness of being a TV critic, with a look at some of the odder bits of TV-related swag I've received over the years.
The dumbest bounty hunters I've ever seen
As I mention in The Hawk review, that show's finale includes the closing theme to Midnight Run, aka my all-time favorite movie. As coincidence would have it, Monday is the 38th anniversary of its release. For those who haven't heard me yammer on about it in the past, it's a buddy action comedy, starring Robert De Niro as a bitter ex-cop who now works as a bounty hunter, and Charles Grodin as a superhumanly annoying white collar criminal De Niro has to escort from New York to Los Angeles for a big payday. There is nothing unfamiliar about it, but the level of execution is spectacular. Every performance is perfect, the chemistry between De Niro and Grodin is better than perfect, it's hilarious when it wants to be, thrilling when it wants to be, even tragic when it wants to be. I'm half-tempted to stop writing this paragraph so I can rewatch it again.
It's not currently on a streaming service, but is available for rental, and more than worth that cost if you're looking for some weekend viewing that will give you joy.
Odds and/or ends
- Hulu's King of the Hill revival is back on July 20. I may write something at greater length later this summer, after I've seen more than this season's first two episodes. But this remains on the short list of revivals that have put real thought into what the passage of time means for its characters and the world around them. In particular, the stuff about Bobby as a young adult, trying for a more serious relationship with Connie after all these years, is extremely satisfying.
- Sam Neill, who passed away this week, did a fair amount of TV work in his long and impressive career, including a 1998 Merlin miniseries which got him an Emmy nomination, a voice role as the gentlemen thief in the incredible Simpsons episode "Homer the Vigilante," and most recently as the difficult patriarch of the 2024 Peacock miniseries Apples Never Fall. Mostly, though, he was known for his work in film — often as an ace supporting actor in things like The Hunt for Red October, and occasionally as the lead of things like Jurassic Park. He auditioned to play James Bond in the Eighties but lost the role to Timothy Dalton, and was relieved to have not gotten it. He was a guy who loved acting but didn't care about stardom and the pressures that came with that. Never gave a bad performance, even in movies that didn't deserve him, like John Carpenter's Memoirs of an Invisible Man. He was also by all accounts an utterly lovely man who enjoyed life as best as he could, and made the people around him happy to know him. Most of us can't be as talented or successful as him, but we can aspire to the level of kindness he showed that led to testimonials like this from fellow New Zealander Melanie Lynskey:
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed season finale recaplet: 'Queens'
Alan Sepinwall
Finally, let's do some spoilers for Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed.
The thing that continually impressed me about the show — besides the chance to watch Maslany do her thing — was how Paula kept making the most astoundingly wrong choice time after time after time, yet it always made sense from a character standpoint. She's a hot mess, and her emotions very often overwhelm her common sense. When she's abducted from her daughter's birthday party at midseason, for instance, and shoots and seemingly kills a man, she should of course immediately call the cops. But she's in complete shock, and paranoid about all that's happened to her so far, so she just goes back to the party and tries to act like nothing's wrong. Stupid, stupid decision, but it feels natural, rather than the plot steering her around.
And for a while in the finale, it seems as if all of Paula's bad instincts have led her to a good place. She's able to get the blackmailers off her back, and they make Dennis the (literal) fall guy for all the things for which Paula has been accused. Even though Karl and Mallory have all these financial resources, and even though Mallory goes behind Karl's back to give their lawyer dirt on Paula, Paula gives a passionate and convincing speech in family court, and the judge refuses to change the custody agreement. The other soccer moms welcome Paula back into their group with open arms, and she and Steve resume their flirtation. Everything's coming up Paula!
Now, some of this is better executed than others. The revelation that Dennis wasn't actually dead, quickly followed by him being shoved off a rooftop, was pretty silly. And even though Paula is cleared of all charges, it feels like there might still be some wariness from the other moms, who were all basically introduced to Paula a few weeks ago. But Maslany is fantastic in the courtroom scene. Her flirty chemistry with Raymond Lee remains very strong. And I really enjoyed how Jake Johnson played Karl as completely unprepared for the verdict to go that way. (Though the only part of the season that really let Johnson do his thing was when Karl was stumbling his way through an interview with the detectives.)
Had this been planned as a miniseries, it would have felt very satisfying. But it's designed as an ongoing, and the last few minutes are devoted to setting up a potential second season. Geri, bitter that Rudy is both getting back with his ex and planning to leave the magazine, decides to go forward with writing the Paula story, which will surely blow up a whole lot of aspects of our heroine's life. And the season concludes with Paula being sent surveillance video of what really happened in Portland: Paula and Caleb were secretly involved, and Paula deliberately ran him over. "We own you," the voice on the other end tells her. "You're gonna do us a favor."
Is this a third, completely unrelated group of blackmailers? Has the main group just figured out a new way to mess with her? Is this a Breaking Bad machine gun in the trunk situation, where the writers don't know yet and will figure it out later? While these cliffhangers didn't leave me feeling like I absolutely need to see what happens next, as soon as possible, the season as a whole, and Maslany in particular, were so much fun that I'll definitely return if Apple orders more.
That's it for today! What does everybody else think?
