Alan Sepinwall

post a famous bathroom scene

A thing about rewatching The Wire is you can see why the actors whose careers took off after it succeeded, but you can also see a couple of dozen GREAT performances from people who got zero bump from it. Some of them are local Baltimore actors, but a lot of it is just the dumb nature of the biz.

YouTube video by SabuCat Some Like it Hot Unsold TV Pilot (1961) Starring Vic Damone, Dick Patterson, and Tina Louise

Thanks to this, I learned there was a Some Like It Hot TV pilot that begins with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon getting plastic surgery to explain why new actors are playing them, and then for... reasons, the guys with new faces still have to dress as women. I'm shocked it didn't go to series!

This in turn is a good reminder that I'm way behind on Shoresy.

New phone who dis

Leave aside the thing @moryan.bsky.social and I are trying to talk you into offline. If you love Shoresy, you will love Letterkenny. Maybe even more(*).

(*) I watched Letterkenny first, and prefer it. But this could be a BB/BCS situation, where people who watch the spinoff first like it more.

A five-timer! I thought Meredith and Klugman shared the record at four.

But have you watched Letterkenny, Brian? Have. You. Watched. Letterkenny?

Tobias Funke, holding a copy of his book "The Man Inside Me."

That Netflix development executive:

You::Mitch Casino series
GRRM::The Winds of Winter

a man in a red shirt is sitting in a black ford explorer Alt: Avon Barksdale wags a finger at the cops

Me when you tell me to write one book when I'm currently writing two:

You say "bullied," I say "helped."

IIRC, @tvmojoe.bsky.social was either very excited for that one, or simply wrote about it a bunch due to its position as that year's "we ordered this to series and then changed our mind" Fox pilot.

I received no such swag, alas. Sounds cool.

TV Shows That Don't Exist, Part 2 These shows were produced but never aired

New on the What Else Is Alan Watching? bonus tier: a sequel to the TV Shows That Don't Exist column, this time looking at high-profile series that made episodes but never aired:

The outfit's not even the worst part of that pilot!

One of the loudest responses I ever heard in a theater is when Woods gives the thumbs down.

TV Shows That Don't Exist, Part 2 These shows were produced but never aired

New on the What Else Is Alan Watching? bonus tier: a sequel to the TV Shows That Don't Exist column, this time looking at high-profile series that made episodes but never aired:

But the episodes debut even earlier the day before in Cupertino!

A message says, "Hi, Carol. We'll be seeing you a little bit earlier than normal this week. Looking forward to Wednesday."

Due to the holiday, this week's Apple shows, Pluribus included, will drop two days earlier than usual.

("Wednesday" technically means "9 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday." I have no idea why Apple sticks to this fiction regarding when episodes are released.)

Did 'A Man on the Inside' recreate the magic of its great first season? Ted Danson's back, but second seasons of mystery shows are hard

Thoughts on the return of A Man on the Inside, and the challenges of later seasons of serialized mystery shows:

He's decreasingly deadpan as the film series goes on, and is outright mugging his entire way through other films of the era like Repossessed.

That's the one.

The movie definitely has its moments! Williams and O'Toole are an interesting pairing. But it's one of the last remnants of the pre-Good Morning Vietnam era where you can feel confusion from both Williams and his director about how much he should be let off the leash.

I screened it for the family in advance of the Neeson movie, and a LOT of it is rooted in its cultural moment. I was pausing roughly every 2-3 minutes to explain jokes to them.

Now that Moranis has unretired, we can finally get that spinoff film about the Barrys we've all ben waiting for!

YouTube video by BONGO HiFi Jimmy Cliff The Lion Awakes

My first exposure to Jimmy Cliff was in Club Paradise, an odd but amusing comedy where he plays straight man to Robin Williams, while Williams in turn plays straight man to Peter O’Toole and half the cast of SCTV. youtu.be/rnsB1rONIhQ?...

Did 'A Man on the Inside' recreate the magic of its great first season? Ted Danson's back, but second seasons of mystery shows are hard

Thoughts on the return of A Man on the Inside, and the challenges of later seasons of serialized mystery shows: