No thanks, 'FAM'

Listen to the newsletter 3 27 2026

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Today's What's Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I'm a trained surgical rapper...

What's next?

Among the things coming up over the next week or so around here:

I promised an Ask Alan video mailbag for this week, but a few things got in the way. So there's still time to send me questions before I record one next week.
I'll be recapping the penultimate Shrinking episode of Season Three.
I'll be recapping next week's The Pitt.
Inspired by some our recent discussion of both Terriers specifically and great one-season shows in general, I'll be looking back at some of the worst TV series titles ever, many of them attached to excellent shows.

Catching up

Here's what I've published since last week's newsletter:

I reviewed Season Two of Daredevil: Born Again, which has some notable improvements over the Frankenstein monster of a first season, but remains saddled with a bunch of tedious supporting characters and subplots:

I recapped the latest episode of Shrinking, where Jimmy's resentment of his father impacts his relationship with Sofi:

I recapped the latest episode of The Pitt, where Robby and Dana found themselves at odds during the last official hour of their shift:

Scrubs check-in: 'My V.I.P.'

I haven't written about the Scrubs revival since its premiere week, in part because my take on the later episodes has been roughly the same: J.D., Elliot, and Turk remain dialed-in, many of the new supporting players (Park, Sibby, the gossipy nurses) are working, but the interns are struggling to evolve past their one character trait. "My V.I.P." was one of the stronger episodes on that front, while also being the best showcase so far for Joel Kim Booster as Dr. Park. At this point, it feels like four of the five interns have come a bit more into focus, with Dashana as the only one I would struggle to describe to someone who isn't watching the show. In particular, the subplot where Tosh figured out that Blake is wildly overcompensating for his days as an unpopular husky kid did a lot for both characters. (Though it's also the second story in close succession where Tosh realizes that a buff guy has body image problems.)

In hindsight, I wonder if the show wouldn't have been better off with only three main interns, like it had at the start of the original run. They would still be narratively subordinate to our main trio, but there would be more room to establish who each of them are. And in time the show could begin adding other recurring young docs like Lonnie, Cabbage, and Keith Dudemeister. Bill Lawrence told me that the show ultimately won't work if viewers don't invest in the new doctors. We're already two-thirds of the way through this very short season, and while I like all the new performers, it doesn't feel like that part of the revival is living up to Lawrence's hopes.

In the (nerd) news

On the nerd franchise front, this week brought one bit of very pleasantly surprising news, and one bit of predictably disappointing news.

First, Disney+ has ordered a second season of Wonder Man. I loved the show, but it was the last vestige of a programming philosophy Marvel has abandoned. And my understanding is that the streaming numbers for the show — built around an incredibly obscure character, with no real superheroics to speak of — were quite low. When Disney ran an ad for the show during the Oscars, my eyebrows raised a little, though I wrote it off as an attempt to recoup some of the investment by promoting an inside Hollywood show to an audience that might enjoy it more than the MCU fanboys might have. Somehow, though, Simon and Trevor will have more adventures. I am gobsmacked, and delighted.

On the other hand, news that the already completed second season of Starfleet Academy will be that show's last felt unfortunately inevitable. We already know that Strange New Worlds only has another two seasons (one of them abbreviated), and that Paramount at the moment has no new series in the pipeline. With the new management, plus the turmoil of Paramount's planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, it feels like priorities are changing, and the next time we see a new Star Trek project, it will be on the big screen.

Starfleet Academy was also an attempt to bring a new generation of viewers into the franchise by blending YA storytelling with starships and holograms and whatnot. I know a lot of older Trekkies who enjoyed the show — I was one of them, even if it had the usual first season hiccups — but I wouldn't be surprised if the target demo just wasn't interested in jumping onto a 60-year-old piece of IP, even with a show built around attractive young characters hooking up.

Oh, well. At this point, I just hope Paramount lets the creative team shoot an additional scene or two to bring the series to a proper close.

Mars alacks

Once upon a time, I loved Apple's astronaut drama For All Mankind so much that I named its second season the best TV show of 2021. The next two seasons were much choppier, with Season Three mostly being saved by a good finale, and Season Four torpedoed by a terrible one.

When promotional photos for the fifth season began circulating with an image of Joel Kinnaman drowning in old age makeup as an octogenarian Ed Baldwin, I feared I was nearing a moment where I finally hit the eject button, despite my love of the earlier seasons, and of astronaut drama in general. Ed would be the last main character from the first season to still be around in a significant role, when he would have been one of the last people from that early stretch I would have picked to stick around this long. And the show's repeatedly struggled to develop next generation characters as compelling as the original group.

Unfortunately, my fears proved to be correct. I got to the end of the fifth season premiere, which is now streaming, and realized I didn't care about a single story or character anymore. There are some excellent actors in the cast, Kinnaman included. (He even gets to reunite with his The Killing co-star Mireille Enos, who plays a cop on the Mars colony.) But everything feels like contrived plot mechanics, and most of it is now being driven by characters who range from frustratingly enigmatic (Edi Gathegi's Dev) to frustratingly bland (Toby Kebbell's Miles) to simply frustrating (Ed). I watched the second episode just to be sure my interest had completely dissipated. It had. Apple already announced a renewal for a sixth and final season, but I'm tapping out now.

So long, FAM. We'll always have Gordo and Tracy's sprint across the lunar surface: