Today's free What's Alan Watching? newsletter — which I'm now calling the Friday Check-In — coming up just as soon as I reveal my secret identity to the world...
Watch this space!
What's Alan Watching? is my main home, and one whose existence your support makes possible. But I also take on other projects when it makes sense. Those include books — have I mentioned that my Rod Serling biography is available to pre-order? — and occasional freelance stories for other outlets. To those, a big new one — which I'm doing in collaboration with a very good, very smart friend — is coming next week. I can't say more about it until Monday, but there will be a free post with all the details on it then. I think you're all going to really like it.
Catching up
Here's what I published since last Friday's newsletter:
- I reviewed Netflix's excellent, chilling Lord of the Flies adaptation, where Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne once again demonstrates a knack for telling stories about young boys being driven mad in environments they're not ready to face alone:
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- In the first of a three-part series on when movies become TV shows, and vice versa, I looked at why the better television adaptations of movies worked creatively:
Alan Sepinwall
- To everyone's surprise, FX and Hulu released a bonus The Bear episode/special/something, starring and written by Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bacharach. I had a lot of thoughts on it:
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- Due to popular demand — and my own delight at seeing people so enthusiastic for a new show based on an original idea, not IP — I started recapping Widow's Bay a couple of episodes in, looking at Mayor Tom's misadventures in dating:
Alan Sepinwall
What's next?
In addition to the exciting thing I teased at the top of the newsletter, here are some of the stories coming over the next week or so:
- Thoughts on the Rooster season finale;
- Part 2 of the TV/movie series, with a look at the better examples of movies adapted from TV series, with new actors playing familiar roles;
- A recap of Widow's Bay's fourth episode;
- Another Ask Alan video mailbag for What Else Is Alan Watching? bonus tier subscribers, so get those questions in.
Odds and/or ends
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- Filed under "Good things can still happen," NBC has ordered a second season of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins. As I wrote back in February, I think there are some limitations to making Tracy Morgan the narrative and emotional center of a show, even if you flank him with more versatile actors like Daniel Radcliffe and Erika Alexander. Ultimately, though, the sheer volume and quality of the jokes (FDNY Chicago!) outweigh those reservations. It's so damn funny, and I'm glad there will be more of it.
- The day after the aforementioned Very Special episode of The Bear dropped, FX announced two things: Season Five will debut on June 25, and it will be the show's final season. The end of Season Four made clear there wasn't much story left, on top of White, Edebiri, and Moss-Bacharach having such busy outside careers. So the last part is more confirmation than announcement. Also, much to my frustration, Hulu is sticking to the binge release for these final eight episodes, when, even after two bumpier seasons, this is still a show where people would want to spend a week just talking about one episode before getting to the next. So recaps will be out for this one, but I'll once again figure out a way to write at least a couple of stories about the season.
- RIP, Ted Turner. One of the most influential TV executives of all time, even if some of his inventions have been twisted and perverted in other hands. CNN has become largely unrecognizable from the version he helped launch, and TBS and TNT have mostly become ghost towns full of reruns created elsewhere. But TCM remains one of the best brands in the TV business.
Daredevil: Born Again season finale recaplet: 'The Southern Cross'
Alan Sepinwall
Finally, let's talk spoilers for the end of Daredevil: Born Again Season Two.
I expressed most of my frustrations with the season back in March: the new characters were mostly duds (Michael Gandolfini did some excellent work at the end of Blake's arc, but Matthew Lillard was almost entirely wasted), the tone was glum even by the standards of the Netflix show(*), I'm frustrated that they wrote Swordsman out five seconds after finally remembering to give Tony Dalton fun stuff to play, there wasn't enough of Jessica Jones, etc. The fights were better, and Bullseye was much more interesting as a narrative wildcard than when he was just trying to kill Matt all the time, but so much of this dragged.
(*) Just as I can't imagine how anyone looked at the Netflix seasons and thought, "The first thing we should do is kill off Foggy and write out Karen," I'm baffled that someone at Marvel looked at how good Charlie Cox was in a lighter mode on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and said, "Yeah, that's enough of that smiling."
A lot of the blame can be laid at the Frankenstein creative process of these two seasons. But some, frankly, is that everyone involved seems terrified of making a version of this show where Fisk isn't the big bad. Vincent D'Onofrio is wonderful, don't get me wrong. He was as much a part of why the Netflix version worked as the stuntwork or the chemistry between Cox, Woll, and Henson. But even with Fisk in a new position as fascist mayor of New York, Born Again very quickly reached the point of diminishing returns with the guy — especially because these two seasons were treated as one long serialized story. At times, it was almost like Fisk was the protagonist, and all Matt was doing was reacting to him.
The finale in theory offers a reset. Matt ends the season going to prison for all the crimes he committed as a costumed vigilante, while Fisk has to exile himself to a tropical paradise to avoid punishment for his own crimes. This is basically the setup for the start of Ed Brubaker's terrific run on the Daredevil comic in the late 2000s. It puts Season Three in a position where it can drop basically any leftover element from the fired showrunners (Heather Glenn never worked, for instance), and to put Fisk in the deep background, if not give D'Onforio a break altogether. And maybe if both Jessica and Luke are around more regularly, there's a chance to do The Defenders right this time.
But even factoring in the behind-the-scenes turmoil, at a certain point you have to accept a show for what it is, strengths and weaknesses both. I love Daredevil as a character, and still have fond memories of the Netflix run, however imperfect it was. But my enthusiasm for Born Again Season Three feels pretty tepid, I'm afraid.
What does everybody else think?
