South Side brought Always Sunny-level energy to everything it did. Truly going to miss it. There have been a lot of shows set in Chicago but few actually have felt genuine. (I loved Good Fight/Wife, but c’mon, Long Island City cannot stand in for Chi Town, and don’t get me started on the weird claustrophobic “Chicago”…

Never got our Gene Parmesan spinoff. 

This show will be something to behold whenever it burns off the plot it has to cater to from the games. I wish the creators felt free to break out of the bounds of the game beyond backstory flourishes. 

If there’s no Robert Wuhl, I walk. 

Iannucci has had a lot of trouble connecting outside the world of politics — I think maybe Alan Partridge works so well because Coogan’s character is super lived-in (a really specific performance).

I think any artist who did a sober-minded profit/loss analysis of the Halftime Show would find that the paltry money generated by streaming bumps or extra album sales aren’t worth any extra outlays beyond what a sponsor covers. As many have discovered, social media followers and .0000008 cents (or whatever) per stream…

In the same way Adam McKay keeps running from comedy, Iannucci clearly wants to be more than the “politics guy.” But neither has consistently thrived outside their wheelhouse. What makes Death of Stalin, The Thick of It and Veep so effective was the chasm between the gravity of the characters’ roles in society and…

Along with Hacks, this was one of the only shows that successfully made something interesting out of the clash of old-school and contemporary comedy mores. (I refuse to use the “w” word.) Plus, Johnny Knoxville was a sweet presence on the show. 

TL;DR: I demand to see Penn’s butt.

Anti white racism is serious! It’s the reason we only have 81 percent of CEO chairs and have only had all of the presidencies except two terms. That’s a major issue that should be brought up every time transphobia is mentioned because in the end it’s ALL ABOUT US. 

I had to look up the gasoline thing since Last Man on Earth (easily my favorite post-apocalyptic show by leaps and bounds) posited a world in which most gasoline was corrupted within about 2 years.

Calling Yellowstone “Succession but outside” is solid.

I wish there was a way to track streaming screener view data to assess whether Oscar voters (most of whom are white men) are even watching Black-led films. I say this as a Tar-loving white dude.

I think even Apatow would agree that Undeclared was no Freaks and Geeks. Undeclared had some really funny moments but it was quite a bit more conventional. Having Charlie Hunnam filling the James Franco void was one of the key problems. He just operated at a different frequency than all of the more adept comedy people…

Cultural impact of certain high school films was due more to home video/DVD and endless cable replays than to any box office success. Box office for Superbad was great, but that movie has also replayed endlessly on cable. I think Easy A also benefited from that over the years. This also accounts for the deep impact…

Forgot about HDD. Great college movie. 

House Bunny and Everybody Wants Some (film) and Sex Lives of College Girls (TV/streaming) are probably my favorite takes on college post 2000.

I said what I said! 

10 miles west of Boston

In 2022 WBD launched Elvis, Super Pets, Fantastic Beasts, The Batman, Don’t Worry Darling, Black Adam and other films in theaters. Several of those would, if canceled, have offered larger tax write offs than Batgirl. But the studio (rightly in some cases, oh so wrongly in others) believed the theatrical releases were…