TV
HBO Max Removes Over 200 Classic Sesame Street Episodes
In an apparent bid to save money on residuals, Warner Bros. Discovery has been removing content from HBO Max. The process began earlier this month with the unceremonious removal of dozens of HBO Max original series and movies such as Vinyl and Camping, and An American Pickle; earlier this week, another 36 titles disappeared from the platform. Now, in an especially egregious affront to parents of young children, WBD has removed over 200 classic Sesame Street episodes from HBO Max’s library, without warning. HBO Max became the exclusive home of Sesame Street in 2019; in addition to producing new episodes, the streamer hosts the show’s 50-plus-year library. But as Tough Pigs points out, as of Friday morning, HBO Max’s Sesame Street archive is suddenly barren. Of the 250 episodes from the firs...
House of the Dragon Review: A Beautifully-Made History Lesson From an Ugly Fictional World
The Pitch: Perhaps you are a carbon-based life form with an Internet connection and/or cable TV subscription, and thus are aware of the existence of a little show called Game of Thrones, which for a few years there was pretty dang popular. Well, here’s some more of it! Specifically, here is House of the Dragon, HBO’s prequel/spinoff that does not involve Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, but does hope to capture the imagination of an ever-fickle viewing public. To that end, we return to King’s Landing 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen (House of the Dragon is very specific on this point), where Daenerys’ ancestors still hold the very familiar-looking Iron Throne. Though we begin with the line of succession in flux, as a ruler without heirs has to make a choice...
New Mexico’s Breaking Bad Statues Draw Ire of Republicans Already Fuzzy on Fact vs. Fiction
Prominent conservatives have spent more than a year trying to convince themselves that Trump won the 2020 election, so it’s no surprise that the fictional, morally-gray world of Breaking Bad presents an intellectual obstacle course. After Albuquerque, New Mexico erected statues of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, Republican politicians, regional talk radio hosts, and now Fox News have tried to frame this mildly amusing tourist trap as a capital-T Threat to America. The statues were commissioned by Sony Pictures Television without the aid of taxpayer money and unveiled at the end of July. Democrat mayor Tim Keller touted the $400 million in production fees and tourism dollars that Breaking Bad had already invested in the Albuquerque community. “While the stories might be ficti...
Jenna Ortega Is Your Principal’s Worst Nightmare in New Wednesday Teaser: Watch
One look at Jenna Ortega in pigtail braids, and Wednesday might be your new favorite day of the week. The most misanthropic member of the Addams Family is the central character in the upcoming Netflix series Wednesday, and it’s time to follow her to school in today’s new teaser trailer. Not that this is much of a surprise, but Wednesday (Ortega) has had a hard time making friends at her run-of-the-mill public high school. But that won’t stop her from going to great lengths to defend her family: “The only person who gets to torture my brother is me,” she tells a crew of churlish swim team boys mid-practice, before pouring a bunch of bloodthirsty piranhas into their pool. It’s not long before Wednesday is inevitably expelled (again), so, her parents Morticia and Gomez (Catherine Zeta-Jo...
The Bear: How Episode 7’s Stunning 18-Minute Single Take Was Made
Over the past few years, single continuous takes have become a commonplace device in film and TV, an objectively impressive if somewhat overused gimmick that allows storytellers an opportunity to flex their ambitions and maximize the high-wire tension of an emotionally significant scene. “One-ers” can sometimes carry an effect of showboating the longer their runtime, but when executed with near-perfect precision, like in FX’s thrillingly chaotic cooking drama The Bear, the result can be a remarkable thing to watch, to see so many moving parts come together seamlessly. Created by Christopher Storer, The Bear is the perfect show to apply such a technique. The series focuses on the volatile and brilliant chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) as he struggles to run his brother’s Ch...
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Is as Funny, Charming, and Occasionally Awkward as Its Heroine: Review
The Pitch: What if there was a lady… who was also a Hulk? And also a lawyer? Yeah, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law pretty much tells you exactly what the show is from the start. Quite literally, in fact: The newest Marvel series to come down the Disney+ pipeline features newly minted meta-human Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) speaking directly to the audience about how her life recently got upended by an accidental exposure to her cousin Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo)’s blood. Because Jen and Bruce are related, Jen’s able to survive the sudden infusion of gamma particles into her system, and she also manages to get a handle on being a Hulk with a working human brain relatively quickly. But while she’s learning control over her new persona (with the advantages and disadvantages that accompany it)...
Daniel LaRusso Shuts Down the Dojo in Cobra Kai Season 5 Trailer: Watch
Netflix has released the thrilling trailer for Season 5 of Cobra Kai, offering an extended look at Daniel LaRusso’s crusade to bring down the eponymous dojo following its unexpected win at the All Valley Tournament. There’s a lot going on in the clip, with LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) left to come up with a plan of his own while former rival-turned-ally Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) does some soul-searching. As Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) moves to expand Cobra Kai beyond the Valley while John Kreese rots in prison, LaRusso is set on doing whatever it takes to expose Silver for what he really is. “This is what we’re up against,” LaRusso tells another rival-turned-friend Chozen Toguchi (Yuji Okumoto) about Silver. “This is how everyone sees him, as some kind of philanthropist out to...
Ben Savage Is Running for West Hollywood City Council
Boy Meets World star Ben Savage has put in a bid for West Hollywood City Council, Gawker reports. A West Hollywood City Clerk confirmed that he filed and qualified as a candidate in the election, which occurs this November. On his campaign website, Savage bemoans “political divisiveness and loss of a sense of community” occurring in West Hollywood and lists public safety, struggling businesses, inflation, and the cost of housing among the challenges he hopes to tackle. Noting a rising cost of living in the city has caused longtime renters to be forced out of their homes, Savage promises “supportive and deed-restricted housing” and says he will “explore every single avenue to bring down the cost of new housing.” He also points to community safety as another priority, opining that law e...
Ben Savage Is Running for West Hollywood City Council
Boy Meets World star Ben Savage has put in a bid for West Hollywood City Council, Gawker reports. A West Hollywood City Clerk confirmed that he filed and qualified as a candidate in the election, which occurs this November. On his campaign website, Savage bemoans “political divisiveness and loss of a sense of community” occurring in West Hollywood and lists public safety, struggling businesses, inflation, and the cost of housing among the challenges he hopes to tackle. Noting a rising cost of living in the city has caused longtime renters to be forced out of their homes, Savage promises “supportive and deed-restricted housing” and says he will “explore every single avenue to bring down the cost of new housing.” He also points to community safety as another priority, opining that law e...
Better Call Saul: 7 Big Questions About the Series Finale, Answered
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the series finale of Better Call Saul, “Saul Gone.”] There’s so much to be asked, when one of television’s great achievements comes to an end. So the morning after the Better Call Saul series finale aired, co-creator Peter Gould and stars Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn very generously spoke with reporters via Zoom for a press conference that explored so many aspects of the final episode, “Saul Gone.” Below, Gould, Odenkirk, and Seehorn answer maybe not all, but at least a few of the biggest questions from the end of the season, from the choice to continue filming in black and white, what was cut from the finale, and when the idea to have Jimmy end up in prison first came up (and why that nearly caused problems with another Breaking Bad...
The Undeclared War Is a Prescient But Ponderous Cyberthriller: Review
The Pitch: It’s 2024, and a post-Brexit Great Britain faces a general election beset on all sides with misinformation, anti-government grievance, and stark division on all sides. What’s more, a foreign cyberattack hits the country’s Internet access, hitting everything except social media. Luckily, it hits the same day 21-year-old student Saara Parvan (newcomer Hannah Khalique-Brown) starts her work placement stint at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK’s first defense against cyberterrorism. She quickly figures out how to disable it, and even finds a second exploit that would have further crippled England’s infrastructure. It’s a hollow victory, though, as the young Muslim woman struggles to fit into the “tediously male, stale, and pale” organization even after her im...
Better Call Saul Series Finale Review: This Is How They Get You
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the series finale of Better Call Saul, “Saul Gone.”] Sometimes you hit play on an episode of television and see the runtime and groan to yourself, “This did not need to be longer than an hour.” But with the Better Call Saul series finale, coming in at a cool 70-plus minutes (per AMC+, anyway), every extra second of goodbye was quite welcome. After Gene Takovic (Bob Odenkirk)’s unsuccessful attempt to flee the law, as summoned by that nice old lady Marion (Carol Burnett), the identity of Gene is shed forever (following one last diligent phone call to Krista at Cinnabon). Instead, Saul Goodman suits up (eventually literally), using his formidable weaseling abilities to weasel out of “life plus 190 years” for the many, many crimes he com...
