Today's What's Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I explain what a samovar is...
What's next?
Coming up over the next week or so for paid subscribers:
- My recap of the second episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms;
- My recap of the third season premiere of Shrinking (more on that in a minute);
- My recap of the fourth episode of The Pitt Season Two;
- Thoughts on the fourth episode of Starfleet Academy;
- Spoiler thoughts on the Disney+ binge release of Wonder Man; and
- My previously-promised review of BritBox's Riot Women, though that might have to wait until the start of February.
Catching up
Here's what I've published since last Friday's newsletter:
- I recapped the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premiere, and praised the simplicity of the latest Game of Thrones prequel:
Alan Sepinwall
- For What Else is Alan Watching? bonus tier subscribers, I did another "If they swapped roles," this time picking five matchups each featuring at least one actor from ER (but not always involving their ER character):
Alan Sepinwall
- I reviewed FX's The Beauty, perhaps the ultimate expression of Ryan Murphy as maximalist showrunner, for good and for ill:
Alan Sepinwall
- I recapped this week's Noah Wyle-scripted The Pitt, where several early Season Two stories were resolved, even as new patients keep arriving:
Alan Sepinwall
- I reviewed Marvel's Wonder Man, the final artifact of Marvel's more-is-more approach to movies and TV, and an idiosyncratic gem that I enjoyed — and not just because Wonder Man is for some reason my favorite Marvel character:
Alan Sepinwall
How do you do, fellow space kids?
Alan Sepinwall
Apple TV announced a March 27 premiere date for For All Mankind Season Five, along with a teaser video and several first-look images, like the one above of Joel Kinnaman in super-heavy old age makeup, since Ed Baldwin will be in his 90s when the new season takes place. Season Four extinguished most of my leftover goodwill from the first two seasons. And the fact that the show simply can't quit Ed is ridiculous at this point. (And made doubly so because one of the new characters will be played by Mireille Enos. Find someone who loves you like the FAM producers love the stars of The Killing, I guess.) But I'll at least watch the first few screeners to see if they've improbably recaptured some of that Season Two magic. But the picture needed to be shared now, I felt.
Spoiler space
Alan Sepinwall
As I've been working on my book about The Wire, I've been pleasantly surprised to revisit what I wrote about the first three seasons. I expected to have to make more changes to them than I have so far, and instead I frequently find myself thanking Past Alan for making my current life a little easier by saying things well the first time.
I wrote all of those after the series had ended, and after I had recapped Seasons Four and Five as they were airing on HBO. (The original version of What's Alan Watching? launched almost in the middle of the two-year gap after Season Three.) The recaps from the final seasons are much rougher, the fourth one in particular. Season Four was, as far as I can recall, the first time TV critics were given a full season of an ongoing series before it premiered. It was a Hail Mary on the part of David Simon and HBO PR, for a show whose fifth season was far from guaranteed. Reviews at the starts of previous seasons had often been mixed, because they were being written based on 4 or 5 episodes at the most. And as we all eventually understood, you can't fully appreciate a season of The Wire until it's over. So with the fate of the final season in the balance, the goal was to let us see it all at once, so we would collectively flood the zone with praise.
It worked. The reviews were unanimously stellar, and HBO gave Simon and company one last renewal. But for me as a less seasoned recapper, seeing the season in advance proved a challenge I don't think I was entirely up for at the time. My recaps of those episodes — particularly at the start of that season — were not only colored by things I knew were coming way down the line, but openly hinted at them. One commenter, a longtime reader of my work in The Star-Ledger, said they felt I was, well, spoiling the experience, and that they would skip my coverage of that season.
It was a completely fair complaint. In the shows I've recapped in the 20 years since then, I've tried very hard to be mindful that what I know is usually much more than what that week's viewer knows, and to lean into that and avoid giving away what's coming. With some shows, that's easier than others. The more that a season leans on mystery, surprise, or even general forward plot momentum, the trickier this task can be. I can't pretend to speculate about answers I've already gotten. And because most readers know how much I've seen, I can't even let my vaguer analysis reveal too much. (Someone last night, for instance, asked about the way I was writing about Dr. Al-Hashimi on The Pitt, since I've seen where her arc goes.)
But even comedies or other more relaxed narrative shows have me seeing them from a different perspective than the week to week viewers who are reading this stuff. And more often than not, the shows I find interesting enough to recap are the ones I find interesting enough to review prior to their seasons' debut. Which means I can't just parcel out the episodes one week at a time.
But when Shrinking returns next week, I'm going to try an experiment. At this writing, I haven't seen any of Season Three yet. I'm going to watch the premiere, recap it, then wait a week before doing the same with the second episode, and then the third, etc. I'm not going to write a review, and instead go straight to the recaps. Shrinking isn't a show with a lot of shocking twists, so it's not the most rigorous test of this concept. But I still want to see if it feels different — both to me as the writer and to you as the reader — when I'm in the same boat as you as I do this. And maybe if I enjoy it, I might try it again with another show — ideally a returning one where I already know I'm interested enough to do weekly coverage.
Or maybe I'll be the kid who unsuccessfully tries to put away the sleeve of Pringles without eating the whole thing, and I'll get to the end of the fourth episode and find myself bingeing the rest. But I've gotta try, right?
What does everybody else think?
