You ever have something taken away from you in an instant and you realize you never appreciated it enough? That’s what I’m going through right now with a god damn sandwich. Fridays are always handled as a day I treat myself for lunch. It’s something to look forward to. Enough of the ham and cheese sandwiches my fiance makes me Monday-Thursday (yes I still eat lunch like a six year old). We look forward to Fridays and the kale caesar chicken cutlet from Liberty Kitchen. It’s the little things that get you through the week. Some people have their friends and family or a fun event. I have the kale caesar chicken cutlet. I mean look at this thing! Have you ever seen something so beautiful?
But now that is all ruined because everyone with a phone won’t stop making TikToks about it. My beloved sandwich is all over the Internet like Jay Cutler’s mugshot right now. People are coming from all over the country to enjoy it. This is what it must feel like when your favorite band reaches superstardom. You don’t want to share them with anyone else. You were here first when nobody was. You knew the greatness before anyone else did. You remember when they were selling like 20 kale caesars a day and now they’re selling 2,000 in a weekend and they’re running out of bread and closing early. It’s madness. There are no signs of slowing down.
You know how hard it is to get people to agree this much on one thing in an election year?
And don’t get me wrong, I love that a small business is getting its due. But I’ve been going to this place since it was a little rinky-dink shop underneath the El that had nowhere to sit. Now it’s in a place quadruple the size and they have a full-on kitchen operation.
I think what I’m most mad at is myself. I never understood that I had the holy grail of sandwiches in my possession all this time. It’s gotta be like when the cheesesteak first became popular in Philadelphia. Could you imagine living in South Philly back then and going to Pat’s every Friday with no line? Then one day a guy tells another guy who tells another guy that there’s this great meat and cheese sandwich place right around the corner you should check out. Now there’s a line around the block, they’re ornery because they’re swamped, and they institute rules to make ordering quicker. That’s what I feel like what might happen to my beloved sandwich shop. I’m over here calculating time like I’m Isaac fucking Newton trying to determine the best time to head over there and miss the lunch rush. It’s crazy. So crazy they’ve got us ordering like it’s the 1800s now:
If you’re out there reading this and you have a spot that hasn’t been discovered yet, hold your sandwich tight. Because you never know when it’s going to end up on some TikToker’s page and you’re now fighting people tooth and nail for some grub.
VANCOUVER -- Jett Luchanko and Matvei Michkov were about an inch away from winning the game for the Philadelphia Flyers, and simultaneously turning Friday into the easiest night a sports columnist can have.
The NHL debut of Luchanko and Michkov was the story of the night for the Flyers: the potential superstar and the shiny new toy, both here long ahead of schedule. And now, with less than ten minutes remaining in a tie game, there was Luchanko on the doorstep, pouncing on a Michkov-created rebound and poised to pop it into a wide-open net.
Kevin Lankinen, unfortunately, cared little for the importance of The Narrative.
It’s poetic, really; Kevin Costner staged a multi-million dollar, self-funded epic meant specifically to engender a huge theatrical event, only for it to get unceremoniously dumped on Max two months later. Maybe the arc of history really does bend toward streaming.Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 will trot on over to Max on August 23, after making the box office equivalent of a bad harvest during its brief theatrical run. The film, which follows the lives of several characters during and after the Civil War, brought in only $11 million in its opening weekend, according to Variety, which makes up just a teeny fraction of its approximately $100 million budget. It’s currently sitting at a measly $34 million international haul (via Box Office Mojo).Maybe it was the unwieldy title, which will now somehow have to fit in one of those tiny boxes on the platform’s homepage, or it could have been the fact that Costner, by his own admission, only makes movies for 50% of the population. Either way, both are bad signs for the success of Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 2, the second installment in Costner’s planned four-part, 11-hour film. After the failure of Chapter 1, Chapter 2 was bumped from its original release date of today (August 16) because hardly anyone would have gone to see it, er, to “give audiences a greater opportunity to discover the first installment of Horizon over the coming weeks, including on PVOD and Max,” as a New Line Cinema spokesperson recently told Variety. That does make sense. Movies aren’t TV and shouldn’t function like it. There’s a reason, in Costner’s own words, that a major back-to-back release like this has “never been done,” and probably won’t be attempted again.That’s not to say that Chapter 2 (or Chapter(s) 3 and 4, which have yet to be filmed) will never land in theaters. Audiences just need some time to re-acclimate to Costner the way many of them probably discovered him in the first place; on their couch, in front of a much smaller screen.
It's a lot like The Wire, but it's also like seven seasons and only on Peacock and there's commercials so I'm recommending it but totally understand nobody will watch it
With TV Club 10, we point you toward the 10 episodes that best represent a TV series, classic or modern. They might not be the 10 best episodes, but they’re the 10 episodes that’ll help you understand what the show’s all about.
One of the greatest mysteries of the streaming era was why NBC’s Homicide: Life On The Street wasn’t a part of it. When the show’s breakout star Andre Braugher passed suddenly in 2023, almost every story about his death noted the tragedy of being unable to see his work, a performance with an impact that still ripples through the industry. Braugher anchored a drama that didn’t just directly spawn other influential shows like Oz and The Wire, but also took an ensemble approach to hot-button issues in a manner that never spoke down to viewers like so much TV of the ’90s. How great was Homicide? Anyone old enough to watch it when it originally ran can vividly recount details of its best mysteries and traits of its most fascinating characters. The blend of procedural storytelling and character-driven ensemble work made it anything but disposable, a program that was impossible to forget. And now we can all revisit it on Peacock.
Homicide: Life On The Street started as a nonfiction book by future The Wire creator David Simon, which he sent to the Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson in the hope of adapting it into a film. The Rain Man director saw more potential in episodic storytelling, pulling some cases directly from real life in the first couple of seasons. Eschewing the typical copaganda of the day, Homicide dealt directly with controversial topics and the impact of violence on the people who investigate it. Filmed almost entirely on location in Baltimore with handheld 16-millimeter cameras, Homicide didn’t look or sound like anything else on TV, and that’s probably why it faced the threat of cancellation for its entire seven-season run.
The ensemble of Homicide would change radically over those seasons, with only four regulars surviving the all of them: new guy Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), Lieutenant Al “Gee” Giardello (Yaphet Kotto), and Detectives Meldrick Lewis (Clark Johnson) and John Munch (Richard Belzer). They were joined in the first season by an incredible crew of performers, including Melissa Leo as Kay Howard, Daniel Baldwin as Beau Felton, Jon Polito as Steve Crosetti, and Ned Beatty as Stanley Bolander. The entire ensemble rocked, but the instant breakout was Andre Braugher, whose Frank Pembleton made it onto the Mount Rushmore of fictional TV cops before the end of the first season. Braugher’s performance is alternately subtle and explosive, one that shifts seamlessly from nuanced internal monologues to intense interrogations in "The Box."
Over the years, other notable performers would clock in to the BPD, including Michelle Forbes, Reed Diamond, and even Giancarlo Esposito, and the show would become well-known for guest performances, a common practice in network cop shows that the writers of Homicide usually found a way to elevate above stunt casting. And with more than 100 episodes and even a movie to close it out, where does one even start? It’s incredibly difficult to narrow a show this memorable down to 10 episodes, but these offer a great sampler pack of what Homicide did better than anyone at the time—and arguably ever since.
It's worth noting that NBC often aired episodes out of production order—sometimes creating truly weird continuity errors, especially in the second season—but Peacock has restored the intended order, so those are the episode numbers reflected below.
“Three Men And Adena” (season 1, episode 6)
The series premiere of Homicide ended with Pembleton and his new partner Bayliss responding to the case that would really shape the entire series: the vicious murder of Adena Watson, an 11-year-old girl. It would particularly haunt Bayliss through the run of the Homicide, and this is the episode that defined the first season and the ambition of the program as a whole. Almost a bottle episode, the majority of “Three Men And Adena” depicts an interrogation conducted by Bayliss and Pembleton of a man named Risley Tucker (Moses Gunn), their No.1 suspect. With only 12 hours to go before they have to release Tucker, Bayliss and Pembleton keep turning up the heat on their suspect, resorting to some techniques that could politely be called questionable.
A winner of the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (for Tom Fontana)—a prize that helped get the low-rated show a renewal—“Three Men And Adena” is arguably the definitive Homicide episode. Braugher, Secor, and Gunn are all completely present in their heated interactions, giving viewers the feeling that they’re eavesdropping more than watching a manufactured mystery. And the fact that they don’t get their man would haunt the rest of the series.
“Black And Blue” (season 2, episode 2)
Photo: NBCUniversal
The first season of Homicide was such a disappointment to NBC that they only gave the show a four-episode sophomore run, which aired in its entirety in January 1994. Each installment is really good, especially this masterpiece, which producer/writer James Yoshimura said is his favorite episode of the show. It picks up the case of the previous hour, “See No Evil”: the homicide of Charle Courtland Cox, a dealer who Pembleton suspects was killed by Baltimore police officers when a raid went wrong. Braugher breathtakingly balances issues of police corruption and racial dynamics in Baltimore in his performance, which culminates in one of the show’s greatest scenes, the interrogation that shouldn’t really be an interrogation.
When a woman reveals that her grandson Lane (Isaiah Washington) witnessed the shooting, Gee insists that he is confronted more as a suspect, clearly trying to sweep away a case that could look bad for the BPD. Pembleton plays along, leaning into Lane’s interrogation so hard that he gets what is obviously a false confession. Gee ultimately does what’s right, but confronting how easily a talented detective like Pembleton could use his skill for evil this early in the show was daring. You didn’t see the guys on Hill Street Blues do that kind of thing. There’s also a fun subplot in here in which Beatty gets to shine even if the age gap between him and a new love interest played by Juliana Margulies would be the talk of social media today.
“Bop Gun” (season 2, episode 4)
While it now sits in the fourth spot, this was actually the first episode aired in the second season, an attempt by NBC to woo viewers with a major guest star, a buddy of Levinson's from Good Morning, Vietnam: Robin Williams. The legendary performer plays a tourist who watches his wife get shot to death in front of him and their two kids when they stumble into the wrong neighborhood. Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, it also features one of the first turns by his son Jake as one of the traumatized children.
Rather than just underlining the melodrama of this kind of unimaginable trauma, “Bop Gun” unpacks how easy it can be for police officers to dehumanize their victims. Williams is emotionally raw, an open well of grief, but the officers around the BPD are just going about solving another case. It’s a reminder that victims aren’t just names in black or red on a board. They’re people with families that will never be the same. And this is also a reminder of how much we lost when we lost Robin Williams, a truly gifted human being.
“Crosetti” (season 3, episode 4)
The story goes that NBC insisted on pushing aside Jon Polito, who so memorably portrayed the Lincoln-obsessed Steve Crosetti in the first two seasons, but that Fontana wanted to find a way to bring him back until the actor openly criticized the Powers That Be, leading to Crosetti’s off-screen death. While losing Polito was a blow to the series in terms of quality, the decision to off his character led to one of the best hours of TV in the '90s, an episode that addresses the epidemic of suicide in law enforcement and also allows its characters to reflect on grief in a manner that doesn’t feel like traditional TV melodrama.
The key to this episode’s brilliance is in how it recognizes how pain is personal. While Bolander channels his into an investigation of what is an obvious suicide, Lewis convinces himself it’s a homicide. Meanwhile, Gee fights his superiors to get Crosetti the honored by the city, and Pembleton struggles with faith to such a degree that he won’t attend the church service. It’s a different series of emotional chords that play in harmony, rising to a note in the final scene that’s one of the most memorable of the series: Pembleton doing what he thinks is right for the occasion. It’s all he can do.
“End Game” (season 3, episode 15)
Guest stars became a prominent part of the Homicide brand. And it makes sense. Back then, it was common for shows like Law & Order and ER to bring out familiar faces during sweeps season, and Homicide was a show struggling to make an impact in the ratings. Some of the best episodes of Homicide are defined by their special guests, including memorable chapters with David Morse, Charles Durning, J.K. Simmons, Dean Winters, and others.
In this case, it’s the amazing Steve Buscemi as Gordon Pratt, a racist POS who tries to go head-to-head with Pembleton and loses badly. “End Game” is actually the culmination of a sharp three-episode arc (another big trend in the '90s) that starts with a stunning ambush in “The City That Bleeds.” While serving a warrant on a suspected pedophile, gunfire erupts on Bolander, Howard, Felton, and Munch, who is the only one of the four who ends up uninjured. As three detectives cling to life and Russert tries to figure out how this could have happened, Pembleton eventually fingers the shooter, a walking time bomb played by Buscemi. The way Braugher breaks down his suspect’s manufactured superiority makes for one of the most riveting interrogations on the show.
“Fire: Part 2” (season 4, episodes 2)
Homicide underwent a major overhaul to start the 1995 season with the departures of Daniel Baldwin and Ned Beatty, which required some new blood in the BPD. So why not start with a two-part season premiere? “Fire” introduces arguably the best performer on the show who wasn’t there from the beginning in Reed Diamond as the morally questionable arson investigator Mike Kellerman, who is dragged into an unforgettable case with the Homicide division when it appears fires are being used to cover up murders. The resolution of the investigation in this case is one of the show’s most dispiriting, one that’s so evil it leaves even Pembleton shaken.
And then Braugher reminds everyone what he can do with a great script. It turns out that impending fatherhood has shifted Pembleton’s view of the cruel world. He knows more about actual malevolence than most people, seeing it every day on his job. What would that do to a father? How could you let your kid out of the house when you know what people are capable of doing to one another? Almost directly to camera, Braugher gives one of TV’s great monologues, asking, “How am I gonna protect my baby, Tim?” It’s an impossible question without a reasonable answer.
“A Doll’s Eyes” (season 4, episode 4)
The fourth season featured some of the most unexpected guest stars on Homicide, including Chris Rock, Lily Tomlin, Jeffrey Donovan, and even Jay Leno. The best of the year, and maybe the entire show, was Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden in this moving hour. Harden plays Joan Garbarek, wife to Paul (Gary Basaraba) and mother to Patrick (Stephen Francis Quinn). The trio are out at the mall on an ordinary day when shots ring out, one of them hitting the 10-year-old boy. As he clings to life, Pembleton and Bayliss try to find the random shooter as Patrick’s parents have to face the unfathomable.
Basaraba is also very good here, especially in early scenes in which he questions why Homicide is even there if doctors are trying to keep his son alive, but it slowly becomes Harden’s episode as Joan is forced to decide what to do regarding Patrick’s life support. They could possibly keep him on it for years, but they could also use his organs to save other lives. If you don’t cry during the scene in which Harden says goodbye to her baby boy, there’s something wrong with you.
“Blood Ties, Part 3” (season 6, episode 3)
Once again, NBC pulled out the big guns to try and drum up ratings for one of its most struggling shows, giving Homicide a three-part season premiere with a famous face at its center: James Earl Jones. The prospect of watching Vader himself go toe-to-toe with Braugher in the box is thrilling enough, but add in a young Jeffrey Wright and you have some must-see TV. It’s also an episode that once again deals with race and power in a manner that most network television in the '90s was afraid to confront. The plotting here is a bit more inconsistent than some of the show’s best episodes, but it’s a showcase for three phenomenal Black actors—four, really, given how good Kotto is in this trifecta too—at a time when that wasn’t exactly common on network TV.
The three-parter opens with the death of a housekeeper for a prominent Black family in Baltimore, led by Jones. Gee and Pembleton’s defensiveness regarding an investigation into such a beloved figure impacts how they approach the case, even as evidence starts to point to the patriarch or his son, played by Wright. The Jones/Wright material over these three episodes sometimes feels incongruent with the developing investigation into the Mahoney shooting that ended the fifth season, and a case involving a Yankees fan being shot at Camden Yards in the middle episode is kinda silly, but it’s on this list because of its closing scenes in this final episode of the arc, which display some truly powerhouse acting.
“The Subway” (season 6, episode 4)
Arguably the most famous episode of Homicide: Life On The Street, this is the one that has cemented itself in the brain stem of anyone who has to ride the subway on a regular basis. Terrifying and tragic in equal measure, it’s almost a two-man show between Braugher and Vincent D’Onofrio as a guy who either trips or is pushed into an oncoming train, pinning him between the vehicle and the platform. Turning his legs around “like a rubber band,” the poor soul is basically being kept alive by his predicament. In other words, as soon as they move the train, he’s done.
What unfolds is a terrifying study in something that’s both unimaginable but also easy to comprehend for subway riders. As Bayliss tries to figure out exactly what happened and if there’s a homicide here to investigate at all, a man comes to terms with his final minutes on Earth. D’Onofrio is spectacular, ping-ponging through anger, denial, and pain as Braugher brilliantly cedes most of the big emotional beats to him. Pembleton is often remembered for being larger than life in loud interrogation scenes, but this is one of Braugher’s subtlest episodes. This was the only season for which Homicide won an acting Emmy for Braugher, and “The Subway” makes it easy to see why he was finally too undeniable to snub again.
“Lines Of Fire” (season 7, episode 20)
There were a lot of cool directors over the run of Homicide, including Levinson, Mark Pellington, Mary Harron, and Alan Taylor, but one of its best was a future Oscar winner: Kathryn Bigelow. She took the directorial reins on the standout episode of what could be called the lost season of Homicide. By this point, most of the original cast, including Braugher, had left the show, and the producers were desperately trying to fill roles with new faces, most notably Giancarlo Esposito as Gee’s son. In this one, Esposito goes against a fantastic Ron Eldard as a man who has taken his two children hostage and turned on the gas. Taking place almost entirely in the stairwell outside the hostage situation, it’s a tense hour of television, pumped up by its lead performances and Bigelow’s undeniable skill with pacing.
The rails had pretty much come off what Homicide used to be, and one could argue that it’s just not the same show without Braugher (who would return for the closure of Homicide: The Movie, along with almost everyone else), but the truth is that this hour of TV would be one of the best of 2024 if it aired today. It’s evidence of how far ahead of its time Homicide was when it came to storytelling, character, and world-building, packing more into even a past-its-prime episode than a lot of modern shows do into an entire season.
There are things in this world that should never be mixed. Ammonia and bleach. Liquor and beer. Fish and cheese.
It’s time to add one more pairing to that list, gang, as the WORST social event of the Philadelphia calendar is taking place during one of the most insufferable years we all have to slog through in this grand country of ours.
Yes, folks, Philadelphia’s Diner en Blanc is BACK…and this time it’s being held during an ELECTION YEAR. May god have mercy on all our souls.
I’ve been warning all of you about the dangers of Diner en Blanc for the past four years, and nobody seems to understand what we’re facing here. The mass pretentiousness from this one event could plunge the city into alarming territory. A horde of pompous, clammy blowhards dressed all in white toasting each other for their “fine taste” as they stuff pommes frites down their gullets, gridlocking this wonderful city of regular joes who just want to get home from work and huff glue in peace.
It’s a powder keg of arrogance threatening to go off at any moment, to cover this city in a thick ash of overly simplistic platitudes about politics, life, and the best beanies to cover up middle-aged bald spots.
Ahh but nobody ever listens, do they? I’ve been writing this columnsince2019 and Diner en Blanc isn’t going anywhere. I’m like Apollo Creed landing haymaker after haymaker, only for Diner en Blanc to just not STAY DOWN, getting up time and time again, urging me on to keep swinging because it’s not going to make a difference.
The dampest event in Philadelphia isn’t going anywhere.
Thousands tonight will flock to a “historic” Philadelphia back alley where Ben Franklin once drunkenly fist fought Thomas Paine over a prostitute to enjoy a bottle of warm Spumante champagne and a handful of nuts they bought in the “ethnic” aisle at Wegmans. They’ll talk politics amidst the thick, pungent aroma of un-ironic handlebar mustache wax while eating store-bought onion jam and goat cheese rugelach that’s been marinating in leaking dumpster juice for the last two hours.
Close your eyes; you can picture it, can’t you? A guy named Atticus with mutton chop sideburns passing off as his own an anecdote he heard on Tik Tok about Joe Biden to a girl named Willow, who titters at the story despite not knowing Biden has long dropped out of the race, unaware that she currently has a tape worm burrowing into her large intestines after eating rancid ceviche she bought from a Market Street bodega.
What mirth!
A quick reminder for the uninitiated –
Diner en Blanc is a “high class” social event invented by the French in 1988 as a way to make smoking in public socially acceptable for at least one night. You know the rest at this point…everyone dresses in white, lugs their own food and drink to an unnamed location in the city to ensure they’re covered in a thin sheen of grime before everything begins, and then desperately try to convince themselves that they’re NOT falling for yet another cult when someone passes them a cup of “kool-aid” at the end of the dinner with the promise of moving on to the next realm.
And what does the event benefit? Why, nothing of course! I’ve been told that there’s SOME charitable functionality of Diner en Blanc, but lord knows I’ve never seen it. Is the charitable portion of Diner en Blanc HERE in the room with us? There’s no mention of charity or anything it supports outside of funneling the money back to France to keep them flush in berets and Jerry Lewis film festivals.
Good news, though! I hear for this year’s event the French founders are sending over a few boxes of chocolate nut logs left over from the Seine River for all to enjoy. How generous!
For years the event also specifically included the following on its website to deny ANYONE hoping to dedicate the event to something worthwhile. You want to raise some money to help repair our shoddy roads or do something for the kids? Get the FUCK out of here with that bullshit and go back to enjoying your tepid ACME-bought bruschetta on Ritz crackers:
This year it’s nowhere to be found on any of the websites…yet, there still isn’t any mention of charity or anything that Diner en Blanc contributes to the city other than a marked increase in body odor.
I wonder why it was taken down? Surely not because someone has been harping on this particular embarrassing aspect for YEARS and they were hoping to avoid the bad press in 2024?
Good luck with that.
But hey, back to the event, right? Because this year is different, friends. This year’s event is taking place just months before a pivotal election that will set the course of this nation for the next four years. There are going to be IMPORTANT political discussions and topics to bandy about as gentlemen ride Penny Farthings in fanciful patterns to the delight of all involved.
A veritable Parisian salon, if you will, for the enlightened to realize they’ve wasted $67 a ticket to sweat through their finest white Croft & Barrow polo shirts and talk politics with swampy asses.
I can hear the discussions now:
“Oh my, did you hear what Donald Trump recently said? What a brute! You know, if I were speaking with him, I’d say, ‘Hey Donald, you’re fired!'”
“Yes, but Kamala’s not much better, mind you! I’m not sure I can trust her, and those power suits! 1989 called, sweetie, and they want their wardrobe back!”
“How delightful…did I tell you I’ve been getting into coffee enemas recently? Instagram says they’re very beneficial My anus feels 15 years younger!”
::Accidentally eats toenail clippings a homeless gentleman has been throwing onto their charcuterie board all night::
“These corn chips are just delish!”
Look, do you really want to experience Diner en Blanc for yourself? Put on a white t-shirt, turn off the air conditioning, log onto that Facebook account you haven’t visited in ages, and read through your aunt’s posts while intermittently dropping $5 bills into a paper shredder for the next several hours.
It will be the exact same experience, I assure you. You’ll hear about all the latest political half truths floating around the internet, how pasteurized milk is actually an invention by BIG GOVERNMENT to keep us all docile and sick, and how the earth is really flat so the ELITE can profit off our hard work.
WHY IS THIS STILL A THING?! WHY? The only consolation I can take from any of this is the knowledge that at least one couple in attendance will completely break down into a drag-out public fight when they realize how much money they’ve spent to engage in such a colossal waste of time.
If just one couple in attendance at Diner en Blanc can get divorced as a direct result of attending the event than it will all be worth it. Brings a smile to my face thinking about it.
But again, and I’m just throwing this out there like I did for the last three years, the solution to all of this is Diner en Heights at my house. $10 gets you a red solo cup with keg access and at least two slices of pizza from Ralph’s on Station Avenue. Judging from the popularity of the idea last time, we’ll move it out from the backyard to the street. Don’t worry about the neighbors, they’ll be as piss-drunk as the rest of the us.
See everyone there. If you wear white you will not be admitted.
If yesterday's revelation that someone involved in the messaging of the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz presidential campaign was way into dril tweets had you thinking it was going to be the most obscure intrusion of nerd-ery likely to occur during the 2024 election, that's only because you hadn't prepared yourself for today. I.e., the day the New York Times revealed that Walz, back before he was a governor, was apparently so obsessed with the Sega Dreamcast video game console that his wife once had to take it away from him.In case the previous sentence made no sense to you, you have to understand the unique position that the Dreamcast holds in gaming culture: Released in 1999, when it soldiered along grimly for a year before Sony's PlayStation 2 arrived to start putting it out of its misery, the Dreamcast was one of gaming's great non-success stories, ultimately driving Sega completely out of the hardware business. This is despite having a small but potent library of cult games, of the kind that people who actually bought the damn thing will never stop telling you were great. Walz being obsessed with the console ("He regaled players with stories they found unusually relatable, like the time his wife had seized his Dreamcast, the Sega video game console, because he had been playing to excess", The Times writes of the man's high school football coaching career) is kind of like if Obama released one of his yearly round-ups of the year's best books, and there were a ton of the sort of semi-obscure manga titles your one manga friend is always telling you "You gotta read" on there.All of which has led many people on the internet to ask: Which Dreamcast games had their hooks in Walz? (It can't be Madden, despite the football associations; EA Sports ditched the console before it was even released, infamously contributing to its downfall.) Was the almost stereotypically Midwestern Walz catching lunkers in Sega Bass Fishing? Grooving out on the space-based dance moves of Space Channel 5? Issuing voice commands to Seaman, the video game where you had to keep a terrifying fish-human hybrid alive through regular feeding and good mic technique? (Potentially good training for fostering and nurturing American democracy, a horrifying hybrid monster all its own.) Getting constituents to the Pizza Hut as quickly as possible in Crazy Taxi? And, look: We probably know it was something boring like football also-ran NFL 2K2, but we can dare to dream: Does Tim Walz know the high score strats in Ikaruga? If you sing Sonic Adventure 2's "Escape From The City" at him, will he visibly wince? Will he get our Shenmue "Sailors?" jokes? We understand (dimly) that there's an election going on, but we really need someone to ask him about this.
George Harrison and Ravi Shankar’s legendary Concert For Bangladesh is now streaming for the first time ever. Described as “the first major music benefit of its kind,” Harrison and Shankar put on two sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in August 1971 to help raise awareness around the Bangladesh Liberation War and raise funds with UNICEF for refugees of the conflict. They were joined on stage by a group of heavy-hitter freinds and artists, including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, and Billy Preston. According to a press release, the triple album box set and concert film have generated “millions of dollars” for UNICEF over the years, but on Friday the album became available to stream for the first time ever (on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and elsewhere). The streaming version of the album also features an additional bonus track, the original studio version of Harrison’s benefit track “Bangla Desh,” released as a single in July 1971. All net proceeds from streaming the album continue to be donated to the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF, which supports UNICEF programs in Bangladesh as well as “anywhere children are in need.” Concert For Bangladesh is still seen not only as a seminal moment in music but as the blueprint for the other great altruistic and collaborative events that came afterward, such as Live Aid. “The musicians were great,” Harrison later said of the experience. “I mean they completely put down their own egos to play together and to do something because the whole vibe of that concert was that it was something bigger than the lot of us.” You can check out the full tracklist for the album below. Introduction by George Harrison & Ravi—George Harrison & Ravi Shankar Bangla Dhun—Ravi Shankar & Ali Akbar Khan & Ali Rakha & Kamala Chakravarti Wah-Wah—George Harrison My Sweet Lord—George Harrison Awaiting On You All—George Harrison That’s The Way God Planned It—Billy Preston It Don’t Come Easy—Ringo Starr Beware Of Darkness—George Harrison & Leaon Russell Band Introduction—George Harrison While My Guitar Gently Weeps—George Harrison Jumpin’ Jack Flash / Young Blood—Leon Russell Here Comes The Sun—George Harrison A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall—Bob Dylan It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry—Bob Dylan Blowin’ In The Wind—Bob Dylan Mr. Tambourine Man—Bob Dylan Just Like A Woman—Bob Dylan Something—George Harrison Bangla Desh—George Harrison Love Minus Zero / No Limit—Bob Dylan Bangla Desh (Studio Version)—George Harrison
I absolutely hate this. I need a week between this insane stress
It’s been noted, on more than one occasion, that FX and Hulu don’t afford their critical darling The Bear the same level of prestige that many of its fellow so-called “prestige show” colleagues get on a regular basis—at least, not when it comes to its release schedule. For what’s soon to be three seasons and counting,…
The image alone made me scared to read this article
Hey, Chicagoans—we say this with all the love in our heart, but... are you okay? Do you need to talk to someone? Do you know that there are better ways to let off steam than by taking shots of bug-infused gasoline? There are so many other options! You don’t have to do this to yourselves, Chicago! There’s only a month…
Forthright Entertainment and Soma Games released a couple of small video games this week based on Redwall, the beloved children’s fantasy series written by the late Brian Jacques. They are, effectively, the first time the franchise has been touched in over a decade, when Jacques’ final book in the series—2011’s The…
After two years behind the ‘Jeopardy!’ lectern, Bialik announced she would no longer host the quiz show. New reports uncover what went wrong and what may be in store.
It was the middle of August 2021, and a swift union seemed to make sense. A week and a half earlier, Mike Richards, the executive producer of Jeopardy!, had been named the successor to longtime host Alex Trebek. Then, amid a storm of bad press and having filmed just five episodes as host, Richards abruptly stepped down. Production screeched to a halt with the season premiere mere weeks away. Already, a full day of taping had been canceled at the last minute, with more tapings the following week likely to meet the same fate. Sony needed episodes in the can and, just as important, something to quiet the worst press cycle in Jeopardy!’s history.
The answer appeared obvious: Mayim Bialik. The actor, after all, had just been announced as Richards’s backup—the host of occasional prime-time specials on ABC and yet-to-be-announced spinoffs, while Richards would take the more prominent role as the host of the daily syndicated edition. So when Bialik, waiting in the hospital while her boyfriend was having hip replacement surgery, told her agent to reach out to Sony, the studio was only too eager to put a deal together to get Bialik to host the daily show as soon as possible.
“From the hospital waiting room, I said to my agent, ‘Please ask how we can help,’” Bialik recalled to Glamour later. “That’s literally what I said. I don’t want to seem opportunistic, but I’m part of this family now.”
Almost two and a half years later, her role in that family has changed. On December 15, Bialik wrote in a statement that she had been informed by Sony that she would “no longer be hosting the syndicated version of Jeopardy!” Jeopardy! confirmed to The Ringer that Bialik is under contract until the end of the season with a one-year option remaining. With several months of taping remaining this season, Bialik was informed that her option would not be picked up.
The development has ushered in a series of reports looking into Sony’s concerns about Bialik and her performance as a host. According to a source close to production, Bialik was ultimately outshined in the role by Ken Jennings, the storied Jeopardy! contestant who was initially brought in to cohost only as a stopgap measure, filling in while Bialik was busy filming the Fox sitcom Call Me Kat, and who will now host the entirety of the syndicated show. But the reason for the change likely goes beyond that. So where did it all go wrong? And what does it mean for Jeopardy! moving forward?
When Bialik was named a host of Jeopardy!, the selection fit a certain obvious logic. The actor was widely known for her roles on the sitcoms Blossom and The Big Bang Theory, and she had drawn praise for a two-week stint guest hosting the quiz show after Trebek’s 2020 death. She also holds a PhD in neuroscience, brainy laurels that fit well with Jeopardy!’s brand. After Richards stepped down, first as host and then as executive producer, on the heels of reporting by The Ringer and other outlets that sparked concerns about his past and the integrity of the host search, she seemed like a natural choice to fill the void and bring stability.
Yet in some ways, Bialik made for an uneasy cultural fit. In his nearly 40 years on the job, Trebek crafted an image as more than just staid and reliable; publicly, he was also stringently apolitical. He spoke of voting for both Democrats and Republicans and generally avoided sharing his opinion on anything spicier than his preferred tipple (chardonnay). In recent years, Jeopardy! leadership has doubleddown on that reputation, presenting the show as a safe harbor of impartiality in turbulent modern times where facts alone are what matter.
Bialik’s ascent at the show, then, represented a departure from those norms. Long an avid user of social media, Bialik has written and spoken extensively about her life and beliefs. After her hiring, a slew of controversies resurfaced, among them her promotion of a dubious brain health supplement called Neuriva, her 2017 New York Times op-ed about the #MeToo movement that manyinterpreted as victim blaming and for which Bialik later apologized, and her advocacy for a range of controversial parenting techniques, including delaying or withholding some vaccinations for children. Bialik has said that she is not anti-vaccine while also stating in 2020 that “we give way too many vaccines.”
Bialik has not shied away from weighing in on contentious subjects, telling Bill Maher recently about her distaste for cancel culture. At times, she has invoked Jeopardy! along the way. In October, she filmed an Instagram Reel with the Israeli actor Noa Tishby in which Bialik, who has written at length about her Jewish faith and Israel, riffed on her game-show duties while discussing the crisis in Gaza. “The free world is in jeopardy, but this time it’s not a game,” she said, before reading Tishby a series of Jeopardy!-style prompts. In a video published the day before Bialik announced her departure from the syndicated show, Bialik and Tishby again deployed a game-show format to make statements about the Israel-Hamas war. “You might be an antisemite if you think that the solution to what is going on in the Middle East is that the Jews should just go back to where they came from,” Bialik said. “The Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel,” Tishby added as Bialik nodded beside her, “so there’s nowhere to go back to.” A Sony official said that while the studio was aware of the videos, they had no impact on the decision not to retain Bialik on the syndicated show.
Then there’s the matter of her absence from the entirety of the current season of Jeopardy!, which began airing in September. In May, Bialik announced that she would cease hosting Jeopardy! in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America, which was on strike. “There’s a lot of complexity to this, but my general statement is always that I come from a union family,” she said later. “While it’s not for me to personally judge anyone else’s decision, for me, I am a union supporter—pretty much all unions and what they fight for.”
Sources close to the show say this stand was not exactly what it seemed. Jeopardy! and other game shows are guided by a distinct set of union provisions known as the Network Television Code, meaning that while Jeopardy!’s writers are members of the WGA and thus were part of the strike—many were prominent figures on picket lines in Los Angeles and New York—the rest of the staff and crew were not. SAG-AFTRA—which began its own strike in July and of which Bialik and Jennings are both members—explicitly advises non-striking members to continue to work per the terms of their contracts; to do otherwise can weaken the union’s negotiating power because it indicates that members might not follow the letter of the contract.
There was also a semi-recent precedent at Jeopardy!: During the 2007-08 writers strike, Trebek hosted throughout the work stoppage. Both then and during this year’s strike, the quiz show used only clues written before the writers decamped. (The Network Television Code is governed by its own contract, which runs through June 2024.)
Bialik’s move, however, left many decrying Jennings as a scab and criticizing Jeopardy! for taping at all. The actor Wil Wheaton, a friend of Bialik’s who she said was the first to predict she would get the Jeopardy! job, slammed Jennings in a widely discussed Facebook post in which he wrote, “Your privilege may protect you right now, but we will *never* forget.”
On December 18, Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that Bialik’s decision to step back from hosting during the writers strike left Jeopardy! executive producer Michael Davies and Sony executive vice president of game shows Suzanne Prete “furious.” The WGA strike concluded in September, with SAG-AFTRA following in November, and Bialik still did not return to the show.
Issues persisted around Bialik’s performance in the studio, too. Part of that may have stemmed from her personal disconnect from Jeopardy!, about which she was up-front. She has written in the past about not watching any television and said that she learned of the opportunity to guest host only when her son saw buzz about the host search online. She seemed mystified by the level of scrutiny that the show, and, by extension, the host, received: “Like, who knew that people were so passionate about who hosts Jeopardy!?” she said shortly after taking on the series.
Her apparent unfamiliarity with the show’s rhythms and lore rankled some longtime fans. Complaints at times verged on petty: Viewers griped that she referred to the show’s first round as “single Jeopardy!,” a phrase Trebek himself used occasionally, and piled on about her propensity to laugh during exchanges with contestants—a charge that smacked of misogyny to some. Other viewers, however, pointed to more fundamental issues. Throughout her time as host, Bialik was criticized for noticeable pauses after contestants delivered responses, with Bialik sometimes going silent for a conspicuous beat before issuing a verdict. Less charitable observers took this as an indication of a lack of familiarity with the show’s material such that she needed to wait for offstage judges to decide if an unexpected answer was correct. Tellingly, it was Jennings and not Bialik who was tapped to host last year’s Tournament of Champions and this spring’s Masters contest—high-stakes competitions with more difficult material where mistakes by the host could have much more serious, and costly, consequences for players.
Bialik said that she suspected she would be reduced to tears if she were a contestant. “People ask if I know all that stuff, and I’m like, ‘No. No,’” she said. “Answering things like that under pressure with a timer is not gonna happen for me. It’s hard!”
The self-effacement presented a stark divergence from both Trebek, who perfected the art of always seeming to know more than the contestants, and Jennings, who won a record 74 games as a contestant in 2004.
Criticism of Bialik, often via comparison to Jennings, reached such a fever pitch that the moderators of the fan-run Jeopardy! subreddit stepped in to ban most anti-Bialik rhetoric. “Nitpicking even the smallest little mannerisms, as has frequently and ongoingly been the case with Mayim—it drags the community down and is not welcome,” a moderator wrote. Plenty of complaints still got through, however: After Call Me Kat, which was reportedly the primary obstacle to the actor’s ability to host more episodes of Jeopardy!, was canceled this May, one user wrote, “I’ve never been so upset about a show that I’ve never watched being canceled.” The comment attracted nearly 700 upvotes, making it one of the subreddit’s top three comments of 2023, according to the forum’s official year in review.
Other incidents widened the chasm between Bialik and Jeopardy!’s vocal online community of superfans. Last year, she said on multipleoccasions that fans had criticized her for reusing an outfit on the show. Not only was there no clear evidence that she had taken a social media walloping over the jacket in question—recent posts featuring the jacket on both her and Jeopardy!’s Instagram accounts did not appear to have any comments criticizing the repetition—but some fans wondered if she was lashing out at Lilly Nelson, a viewer who has attracted a loyal following and seemingly the blessing of Jeopardy!, which ran a feature on her online, for her rigorous cataloging of contestant and host garb alike.
Still, Bialik had plenty of fans, and ratings—sky-high, with Jeopardy! generally leading all shows in syndication—fluctuated little between the two hosts’ time at the lectern. This month, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch declared Bialik his favorite Jeopardy! host ever. (“w apologies to Alex T,” he wrote.) The staff was also fond of her, with reports of her surprise delivery of cupcakes for the crew early in her hosting tenure leaked immediately to the Daily Mail.
Jennings’s surpassing of Bialik to become the full-time host of the syndicated edition represents a stunning reversal of fates for the pair. At the outset of Jennings’s time hosting Jeopardy!, detractors criticized him for a lack of showbiz polish. Bialik’s decades of experience on camera, meanwhile, gave her an advantage in even small matters: her comfort with a teleprompter, for example, which Jennings spurned as an homage to the prompter-resistant Trebek, a decision that left him vulnerable to needing to re-tape segments.
Bialik spent her first months on the syndicated show on a mediatour in which she made clear that she wanted the full-time job for good: “I’d give up my first child to host Jeopardy! forever,” she professed in Newsweek. Jennings struck a different note in his interviews at the time. “You’re not going to see me in the papers talking about how important it is that I ended up hosting,” he told USA Today. To CNN, he said he was “not particularly ambitious” enough to want the permanent gig.
That dynamic seemed to be reflected internally early on, when it was clear that Bialik’s reworked deal with Sony afforded her a superior position within the show. Throughout the 2021-22 season, Bialik was introduced in her episodes as “the host of Jeopardy!,” while Jennings was welcomed with the phrase “now hosting Jeopardy!”—seeming to emphasize that he was lower in the host pecking order. Davies, who came aboard as executive producer in the wake of Richards’s exit, eventually confirmed that the difference was because of Bialik’s contract, which stipulated that she was, in Davies’s phrasing, “the host of Jeopardy!,” while Jennings was merely a guest host. By the next season, however, both Bialik and Jennings had signed new deals with Sony that left them both billed simply as “host.”
With Bialik sidelined for the bulk of this year, Jennings had a third season of hosting reps to himself. Jennings has been widelypraised for improving his onstage performance, and he has developed a persona that has traces of Trebek’s signature sarcasm as well as a bubbly eagerness to share additional factoids that you might expect from a trivia champion. That growth was noted within Sony, too: Many Jeopardy! staff members came to believe that Jennings had become the technically superior host, according to a source close to production, who says that Jennings’s improvement was the key factor that spelled the end for Bialik.
TMZ reported on December 20 that the extended period with a single host further helped convince Sony executives that the dual-host model was inferior. Critically, Jennings also filled in on Celebrity Jeopardy! in prime time—an assignment that would otherwise have gone to Bialik—and thrived, producing ratings on par with or exceeding those obtained by Bialik last year.
Jennings has had his own rocky moments, most notably when a series of his tweets including ableist comments reemerged in late 2020; he apologized for the “unartful and insensitive” messages. But he has by and large avoided controversy during his time as host. He is helped by the perception that he is Trebek’s natural heir, by dint of both his own history as a contestant and his ties to Trebek, who prepped Jennings over the phone to fill in for him shortly before his death; Trebek’s wife left a pair of his cuff links for the newbie host when Jennings arrived to tape his first episodes.
TMZ further reported that while Sony executives would like to maintain a relationship with Bialik, “Mayim made it clear it was all or nothing. As a result, we’re told Sony brass declined.” Even the public announcements of Bialik’s exit point to a rift: Jeopardy! did not publish its own statement until an hour after Bialik posted hers, and it wrote that “Mayim Bialik has announced that she will no longer be hosting the syndicated version of Jeopardy!,” suggesting that the actor may have acted unilaterally in making a final decision.
No matter how the rest of this unfolds, there is a certain irony to the way that the hire brought in to steady the ship made her own dramatic splash at Jeopardy! In the three years since Trebek’s death, the quiz show has at times felt doomed to cycle through recurring controversies. But this time, Jeopardy! finally looks to be in a position to get what it’s been palpably chasing all this time: just the right level of nerdy steadiness. As Jennings put it this week in reference to Trebek’s tenure, “I look forward to 37 more years of doing it, when I’ll be a very, very old man.”
If you like nipple-pierced Jon Hamm in a hot tub overlooking the mountains with Working Man blaring over it, then this show is for you!
It’s been almost three years since Fargo was last on TV, its fourth season representing something of a nadir for Noah Hawley’s scattered take on the Coen brothers’ classic. At its best, Fargo has been a fascinating and worthy addition to the name, borrowing mostly just “vibes” from the film, rather than a bunch of…
"Fact one: Bluey, the Australian animated TV show for preschoolers about a playful family of dogs, is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. (Yes, this is a fact, not an opinion.) Its seven-minute episodes are funnier, more layered, more substantial, and sometimes even more moving than most hourlong adult dramas. There’s one called “Flat Pack” that deals with Darwinian evolution, human progress, religion and the afterlife, marital relationships, the sweet pain of letting go, and assembling Ikea furniture — and it does all that in a way that’s sweet, hilarious, and accessible to people who haven’t learned how to talk yet. In seven minutes. That’s how good it is." PREACH!!!
This is one of the best books I've ever read, slightly optimistic for the movie
Some great books simply aren’t suited to adaptation, though that’s never stopped Hollywood from trying. Judging the book by its cover, and its massive popularity, the appeal of bringing something like Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See to the screen is obvious. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, set in France…
Hearing TO's voice just reminded me of that Superbowl run and how incredible he was. That is all.
These 49ers radio guys from the Morning Roast just can’t stop taking L after L after L over and over and over again like clockwork. You’d think they’d stop mentioning Philly, but they can’t! They’re literally obsessed with Eagles fans ever since we curb-stomped their team in the NFC Championship game and a couple fans might’ve been mean to them.
They’re literally doing T.O. a solid by plugging his wine FOR FREE and it still backfired. Look at Joe Shasky’s face after he said Philly:
L after L after L after L! They’re a giant walking Floyd Mayweather gif:
I’m almost starting to feel bad how much I can’t stop winning. These two are on a historic run for the ages and I am loving every second of it!
Even when they almost have a chance to gloat in our faces like last night during the Phillies game the universe interjects and says not today my friends:
Long read but really interesting. Including this little nugget, "In June 2016, Rush piloted OceanGate’s shallow-diving sub, the Cyclops 1, to the site of the Andrea Doria hulking 700-foot ocean liner and epic entanglement hazard that had sunk in 1956 off Nantucket, in a patch of the Atlantic known for its murky fog and seething currents."
To many in the tight-knit deep-sea exploration community, OceanGate’s submersible dives were reckless and often dangerous, writes best-selling author Susan Casey.
Photo: NBCUniversal
