A 'Penguin' walks into a bar...

Plus, James Earl Jones, 'Three Women,' 'How to Die Alone,' and more

This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I’m played by Burgess Meredith…

You forgot your umbrella!

The Penguin doesn’t debut until next week, but it’s high-profile enough that we decided to chase the review embargo for once in an increasingly rare while. My thoughts are already live over at Rolling Stone. A spin-off of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, it again puts Colin Farrell under a metric ton of prosthetics so that he can play a character who is substantially heavier and uglier than the star of TV’s Sugar. I mostly liked Reeves’ movie, but didn’t see the point of Farrell’s makeup stunt then, nor do I see it now. The character is too one-note, and all of the latex takes away too many of things he does so well as an actor. Cristin Milioti is a lot of fun as Penguin’s chief rival, but it’s mostly watered-down Mob drama stuff, with Batman barely even alluded to for most of the eight hours.

How to make a good show for yourself

I also reviewed a couple of shows that debuted today, starting with How to Die Alone, Hulu’s latest part of its Onyx Collective sub-brand. It’s created by and stars Natasha Rothwell, from Insecure and the first season of The White Lotus (as well as the upcoming third season), who plays a woman who works at JFK Airport and lives such a solitary life that she’s her own emergency contact. It’s very much the kind of showcase you might expect an actor/writer hyphenate to make for herself: at various points, Rothwell gets to be ridiculous, tragic, and even musical. Fortunately, she’s good at all those things.

Three Women, three years late

Also out today, much later than planned, is the premiere of Lisa Taddeo’s adaptation of her 2019 non-fiction bestseller Three Women, which I reviewed here. Showtime bought the rights to the book, and the miniseries was filmed back in 2021, but, like Ripley, the new “Paramount+ with Showtime” management didn’t find it on-brand enough, and let it be shopped elsewhere. So now it’s a Starz original, starring Shailene Woodley as a fictionalized Taddeo, traveling the country to talk to women about their complicated sex lives. On the one hand, the show is kind of a mess, struggling to connect and equally service its four main characters, and feeling bloated at 10 hours. On the other, Betty Gilpin is great as one of the women, an Indiana woman whose husband no longer wants to so much as kiss, or even touch her. If you’ve been watching GLOW, Mrs. Davis, or some of Gilpin’s other recent work, this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Still, it’s knockout work from her, and there’s enough interesting stuff in the other plots that you might find it worth wading through the whole thing.

People will come, Ray

James Earl Jones died earlier this week, and I wrote a tribute to his iconic career, while also lamenting that said career was never quite what it should have been, nor what you’d expect from an actor who was as famous, acclaimed, and reliable as Jones.

In that article, I link to my favorite Jones obscurity, one of a series of early ‘90s ads he did for the Bell Telephone yellow pages. I’m including it here, too, though, because the meal that Jones makes out of it — particularly the introduction of Bubba himself — is something everyone should make sure to enjoy.

Odds and/or ends

• As this newsletter publishes, I’m on my way to beautiful Binghamton, NY for SerlingFest, a celebration of Rod Serling in the 100th anniversary year of his birth, which will include screenings of rare episodes, panel discussions, and a dedication of a Serling statue in the local park that inspired one of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes of them all, “Walking Distance.” As I’m still so early in the book research process, I’m looking forward to sitting back and listening to everybody else. Conveniently, my binge of the original Twilight Zone ended this week, albeit with a whimper. The fifth season is pretty rough, outside of rare bright spots like William Shatner in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Many episodes feature variations on twists from past seasons, and in some cases combine multiple familiar twists. The last episode to air, “The Bewitchin’ Pool,” is so threadbare, it repeats an entire scene at one point just to fill out the running time, and all of the dialogue in the outdoor scenes was awkwardly dubbed in later, with voice acting legend June Foray sounding very much like Rocket J. Squirrel as the outdoor voice of a little girl, while the younger actress’ own voice can be heard in indoor scenes. You often hear about everyone working on a show being burnt out by the time they get to the final season, but rarely is that as palpable in the finished product as in that episode. But now I get to dive more deeply into all of Serling’s Fifties teleplays, his feature films, and Night Gallery. Very excited to keep going.

• It’s been a while since I’ve written an Emmy predictions column, in part because recent years have featured utter, boring dominance within each genre category. I’m expecting The Bear to win almost every comedy award on Sunday (even though, to quote Rainier Wolfcastle, it’s not a comedy), and for Shōgun to mostly have its way on the drama side (though The Crown may snag an acting award or two). The limited series categories seem a bit more open, and you could see some combo of Baby Reindeer, True Detective: Night Country, and Ripley picking up trophies. Imagine, though, if Fargo has a big night for its resurgent fifth season, and FX-produced shows have their way throughout the telecast. For FX boss John Landgraf, the man who coined the term “Peak TV,” that would be the top of the mountain, wouldn’t it?

• Finally, I’m on Rolling Stone magazine assignment next week. There will be a couple of columns, including one on the Emmy results, but I don’t expect to be able to review Agatha All Along or some of the week’s other notable premieres. The next newsletter may also be late, and/or short, as a result of this.

That’s it for this week! What did everybody else think?