It’s often surprising to see how short-sighted some people in the early stages of an industry were. Books and documentaries about the early days of the motion picture industry always mention how the early moviemakers did not want to put actors names in the credits on the theory that if people knew who they were, they…

Who gives up on a show after 5 minutes? I have watched some pretty terrible shows and I at least finish the first episode or two before making a decision. Hell, one of my favorite comedies, Parks and Recreation, I hated the first season so much because it was poorly written and had very little direction

It’s cute, and I like it.

Have you read about Bing Crosby’s achievements in this regard? I was recently fascinated by Bing Crosby’s unanticipated effects on the recording industry:

A lot of stories about the early days of TV show that without some lucky breaks, there would be very few classic shows that we could still see. There is the story about Terry Jones getting the call from a friend at the BBC saying “Hey, they are going to erase and reuse the tapes for the first two Monty Python series,…

The takeaway from this entire conversation thread should be ‘humor is inherently subjective and one person’s choice for best current comic is going to fall flat with another person’.

they chose to shoot on film for practical reasons, so they could produce the show in California at a time when nearly all primetime network television was being broadcast live out of studios in New York. That one business decision paid lasting dividends, allowing for lucrative syndication deals for the I Love Lucy…

Tom Hanks slid into his 5-timer’s jacket courtesy of Conan’s first on-screen appearance as 5-timer jacket valet.

Elliot Gould is  getting up there, I will enjoy seeing Elliot Gould pop up wherever while I can. 

I’m puzzled by the reaction to this episode because I thought it was one of the strongest eps I remember in a long, long time. Like I can only remember feeling like an episode was this good front to back maybe 2 or 3 times in the last decade. I would’ve given it the incredibly rare “A” as compared to other episodes of…

Yeah but that kind of casual cruelty to anyone with the faintest whiff of being an outsider was everywhere in kid and teen entertainment in the 80s so it’s hardly out of nowhere. 

1) The COVID discussion sketch had a little too much of the semi-contrarian ‘everything we did in response to COVID was cringe and wrong, but it’s not woke to say it’ vibe that I’m seeing a lot lately on the Substack left and Trumpy right

I thought the first one was, with Tom Hanks, and all the celebrity reveals were surprises. The group photo with this kills that instantly. Tom Hanks: “Wow! Mr. Martin!” Steve Martin: “Please. Call me Mr. STEVE Martin” still makes me laugh.

Blue River isn’t a real dog food. Blue Buffalo is the actual product they’re skewering. That original sketch with Cecily from 2014 was the one that convinced me she would be a real star, the way she so believably dove down the well to seemingly real madness about dog food. I’ve been consistently disappointed that SNL…

An excellent final review. Thanks for all of them. This is depressing.

Perkins.



(Yeah, I’m not the guy who used to do this, but figured you deserved one for the road. Catch you on the flipside.)

“Look- I’m a grown, drunk man and I want a churro to eat on the choo-choo ride home. That had me in stitches. Long live Dismukes.

As a person with Ukrainian origins, who lives just a few hundred kilometers away from the border with Ukraine (and whose hometown is just ~50km away from it), I thought the cold open was overall tasteful. While I agree that SNL’s format may not be well-suited for more serious moments (I still remember Kate’s…

“They are avengers, not enforcers. They don’t patrol the streets looking for petty crimes, even during the peak of Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policies. We don’t see them stop and frisk random people of color.”

I was a big OG fan since I was in high school. This was bad on MANY levels. Writing was bad. New characters didn’t work. ZERO humor. And what was going on with the lighting and filming? It looked completely different, and not in a good way.