Alan Sepinwall

The Lowdown recap, Episode 4: 'Short on Cowboys' In which Lee gets to know the widow Washberg

At What's Alan Watching?, my take on this week's The Lowdown, where Tulsa native Jeanne Tripplehorn moved to the forefront, and the show played with another detective story trope:

Sports were a mistake.

And then the third one(*) can't even be bothered to stick with that naming convention!

(*) Obviously Breaking Training misses the point of the original by leaning into sentimentality, letting the Bears win, etc. But at least it knows what it wants to be. Japan is just all over the map.

This aggression against Bad News Bears In Breaking Training will not stand, man!

Also, apparently Paul Hogan always wanted Crocodile Dundee to be an action movie franchise, and was annoyed that they had to introduce the character in a romcom context. CDII is his purest vision!

Hey, it's from An Golden Era!

What's Alan Watching? Television reviews, recaps, and more from Rolling Stone chief TV critic Alan Sepinwall

It's come to my attention that the original What's Alan Watching? site debuted 20 years ago today. Why not celebrate that anniversary by subscribing to its current iteration, aka the place where I'm writing all my reviews and recaps right now?

Crush says, "Woah, dude. Mr. Turtle is my father."

They should have retired it after Crush did it to Marlin while they were riding the EAC:

This, btw, was the first post on the original blogspot site:

What's Alan Watching? Television reviews, recaps, and more from Rolling Stone chief TV critic Alan Sepinwall

It's come to my attention that the original What's Alan Watching? site debuted 20 years ago today. Why not celebrate that anniversary by subscribing to its current iteration, aka the place where I'm writing all my reviews and recaps right now?

2.5 hours?

Rarely have I been more excited by a Final Jeopardy answer while at the same time being this disappointed in the contestants.

If you take a long enough drive, eventually you’re going to hear every Sirius station find a reason to play the Taylor Swift song about Travis Kelce’s dong.

Might be going to spam? But if not, yes, I appreciate you resubscribing!

What the &%*# did I do?!?! New book news, plus the 'Platonic' finale, 'Chad Powers,' 'Slow Horses,' 'Peacemaker,' 'Platonic,' and more

ICYMI, Friday's free What's Alan Watching? newsletter, with links to everything I reviewed and recapped last week, plus news about my next-next book (after the Rod Serling one), about a show set in Baltimore that you might have heard of before:

Penn is great, but him winning definitely fits the "voters believe that 'the most acting' = 'the best acting'" narrative. What Benicio does is at least as hard, if not harder, but you don't notice the effort nearly as much.

Sports were a mistake.

Just a spectacular example of Angry Dan in action.

Ted Lasso playing darts

When Jaxson Dart is playing well:

AI at its peak

Peacemaker recap, Season 2, Episode 7: 'Like a Keith in the Night' Can the 11th Street Kids make it home alive?

My take on this week’s surprising Peacemaker: alansepinwall.ghost.io/peacemaker-r...

Yes. It clearly left an impression on me.

It will all be in one book

What the &%*# did I do?!?! New book news, plus the 'Platonic' finale, 'Chad Powers,' 'Slow Horses,' 'Peacemaker,' 'Platonic,' and more

In today's free What's Alan Watching? newsletter, thoughts on Platonic s2, The Lowdown, Peacemaker, and Slow Horses. Plus, news about my next-next book, an episode-by-episode look at The Wire. Read! Subscribe! Share! Name a tennis ball!

So if we’re going back to your old Springsteen comp, this is Taylor circa Human Touch and Lucky Town?

Taylor Swift in drag as "The Man"

Does the video for The Man count?

Yeah, I thought of that even as I was hitting the Reply button. There are some fight sequences on Peacemaker that clearly required more preparation than even the best comparable stuff on Arrow, and that costs money, too. But it's definitely budget superheroing overall.

Peacemaker's pretty much just in one suburban neighborhood. I know the CW shows didn't have huge budgets, but I wonder if this is being made for even less per episode.

I'm kind of afraid to?

(Also, the season's biggest weakness was that Jenna was a non-character. Or, at least, not funny/specific enough to justify such a crucial place in the narrative.)

I think the show as a whole could do with about 30% fewer sequences of one or both of them panicking and screaming over their latest mishap. But on the whole, really good season/finale. And a spectacular use of Mr. Rose Byrne.