This week’s early holiday week What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I believe that turkeys can fly…
A few weeks ago, Fox sent out screener links for this fall’s two Simpsons anthology episodes: the traditional “Treehouse of Horror,” and “Treehouse of Horror Presents: Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes,” based on the stories of Ray Bradbury. (It debuted on Sunday night.) A critic pal messaged me later that day, suggesting I might not want to wait to watch the latter episode. Intrigued, I fired it up, and for a while I just assumed my friend thought I’d be amused by the Fahrenheit 451 parody segment, set in a dystopian future where everyone is forced to watch complicated prestige TV drama, while standalone shows and silly things like America’s Funniest Home Videos have been outlawed. And as someone who has grown weary of serialization for its own sake, and TV that’s embarrassed to be TV, I definitely was amused. But that’s not why my friend wanted me to watch, ASAP. Rather, it was for this line from Bernice Hibbert:
So, yeah. That happened.
As someone who has long argued — notably in book form — for The Simpsons as the greatest TV show of all time, I cannot overstate how surreal it was to watch this.
Since Sunday night, people have asked me how it feels to be part of Simpsons canon. But as a “Treehouse”-adjacent episode, this one was, as Tina Belcher would put it, non-canonical. And besides, I am not Alan Sepinwall III, though it sounds like his birth a few generations from now is inevitable, according to Simpsons producer Brian Kelley:
I should probably just hand in my retirement papers. Nowhere to go from here but down, right?
- Because of the short week and various long-range assignments, I only had time to write one new review, of Netflix’s The Madness, a conspiracy thriller starring Colman Domingo, and that one is embargoed until tomorrow at 3 a.m. Eastern. (Look for it here.) I didn’t get to watch any of HBO’s Get Millie Black, created by novelist Marlon James, but Dan Fienberg liked it a lot. I did watch two of the three screeners available of spy drama The Agency, which begins streaming on Friday on Paramount+ With Whatever It Is We Call Showtime Now. Adapted from the popular French series Le Bureau des Legendes by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, it’s got an impressive cast, including Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Richard Gere, among others. Despite all the assembled talent, those first two hours played like a middling, at times bafflingly plotted, example of this kind of grim drama about the psychological peril of working as a deep cover operative. (It’s not too far off at times from the stuff the Simpsons were being made to watch in that Fahrenheit 451 parody.) Perhaps I’ll check back in later in its season, though, just for that cast and to see what the Butterworths can do with it. But after watching a lot of Slow Horses — whose opening credits The Agency shamelessly attempts to recreate — I couldn’t help watching this and thinking, “Needs more farting.”
- The newsletter is early this week because I assume many of you — at least the ones in America — will be otherwise occupied over the long holiday weekend. And if you happen to be thinking of buying some books on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc., let me remind you that there are links for all of my books (the ones that are still in print, anyway) over at AlanSepinwall.com. And whether you’re buying my book or someone else’s, I would strongly encourage you to support your nearest independent bookstore, whether ordering through Bookshop (here’s the Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill preorder link, and here’s one for Welcome to The O.C.), or contacting them directly. (You can search for your nearest store at IndieBound.) Indie bookstores make the vast majority of their income for each year from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve, and they are by and large wonderful places whose existences we should encourage if we can.
- Another absolute banger of a What We Do in the Shadows this week, with Guillermo’s favorite TV show, P.I. Undercover: New York filming outside the residence, and Nandor somehow getting a job as a production assistant. Every line reading out of Kayvan Novak’s mouth has been a joy for six seasons, but for some reason, hearing Nandor say, “But first, I must go to crafty to fetch Taffy for scripty” made me especially giddy.
- Meanwhile, this week’s Shrinking offered a great spotlight for Brett Goldstein, as we flashed back to the days immediately before and after the drunk driving accident where Louis killed Tia. (Meredith Hagner, who stole scenes as the femme fatale in Bill Lawrence’s Bad Monkey, was used well here in a very different mode as Louis’ girlfriend.) Between those scenes, Paul sharing the final drink of his life with Jimmy, and Derek confronting Mac, this was more on the dramatic end of the series’ range, while still feeling unmistakably Shrinking. The Derek/Mac scene, for instance, was yet another instance of two characters on this show who should obviously despise each other, yet find themselves getting along shockingly well.
Finally, let’s talk a bit more about A Man in the Inside, which you know I adored if you read last week’s review of the latest team-up between Mike Schur and Ted Danson, streaming now on Netflix. We’ll be talking spoilers, even though the very idea seems a bit besides the point for a show whose mystery was just a MacGuffin to force Danson’s Charles to get back out into the world, and to confront his grief about the loss of his wife.
But it’s there we should start, because the genius of the mystery and its solution is that it becomes very much about Charles’ wife. He lost her when she died, but he’d been losing her long before that, as the dementia gradually but inexorably took away the woman he knew so well and had built his life around. Being in a retirement home makes him reckon with the guilt he feels about not placing her in a memory unit like the one they have at Pacific View. And the “theft” being committed by Gladys due to her own creeping dementia required Charles to use all the tools he learned from his own tragedy. Julie hires Charles because he seems sharper and better with technology than the other senior citizens she auditioned, but he turns out to be the perfect man for the job. The conclusion of the mystery is much less about resolving the plot than in providing Charles with emotional closure.
But the unmasking of Charles as a detective’s mole also meant the end of his time at Pacific View, and a threat to all the friendship’s he’d made there — with Calbert most of all. Stephen McKinley Henderson was so wonderful at conveying Calbert’s loneliness and resentment at being uprooted by the son who barely even saw him. And when he finally lets his guard down with Charles, he of course feels betrayed when he thinks that the friendship wasn’t real. Fortunately, they’re able to heal the rift and remain buddies, albeit no longer neighbors. But as we saw on their incredible day of seeing the sights in San Francisco, both men still have no problem getting out and about.
What a lovely show. I hope to see more. Even if it means saying goodbye to the majority of the supporting cast, there are still plenty of actors of a certain age who would jump at a good role if it were offered. And, again, I would have to think Charles would stop by Pacific View at some point to bounce ideas off of Calbert, or Virginia. Maybe even Didi? (How great was Stephanie Beatriz in such an un-Rosa Diaz role?) However it works, more please.
That’s it for this week! Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate! And let’s say goodbye with one of the great TV moments commemorating the holiday, involving the aforementioned Ted Danson and friends:
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