18 Comments
Sep 27Liked by Alan Sepinwall

Heh, the voiceover person shouting Maaaaattt-loooock! ❤️

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Absolutely thrilled that the new season of Colin From Accounts is finally on Paramount+. Just a delightful and moving show through and through.

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I signed up for the Paramount Plus one year for sixty bucks deal to watch some football games, so I figured I'd get my money's worth and give Matlock a try. First episode was not bad at all. Kathy Bates is great, of course, and the rest of the cast is pretty good.

It's been a while since I had a lawyer show in my regular rotation, so I'll give it a few more episodes and see how it shakes out.

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The Matlock twist sounds like something that would make a good limited series, but will get tired and/or too convoluted if it goes on too long.

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Don't forget the 40th anniversary of Miami Vice! They had a big celebration 2 weeks ago in Miami. https://miamiviceevents.com/

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And there is SVU who will make 50 and still be on air. I miss shows like The Good Wife or even early Grey's Anatomy. There is nothing like that on TV anymore. Everything it's too serious, too long or just not very good. Matlock, like Elsbeth, did not impress me.

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“As it becomes harder and harder for series to pull in mass audiences, I wonder if we’ll have similar celebrations for the best shows we’re watching now.”

I asked Dan a similar question (it was about revisiting streaming-made shows) last year on his THR podcast and he replied that while distance is needed, a lot of these shows have too small of an episode count to stand out in the long term.

Unless the show had an it a significant outsized influence on pop culture (Succession, Stranger Things) in the moment, I think these Peak-TV era shows will just have niche celebrations (like Halt and Catch Fire did). It’s similar to what you wrote last month about needing longer seasons to built that relationship.

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I'm confident that IP will continue to have monetary value in the future and as long as that's true, there will be someone willing to exploit that IP. There's more Halt and Catch Fire-level successes now than ever so its hard to say what will stick down the road, but if Netflix still exists they're going to exploit a Stranger Things reunion whether people really care or not (as just an example).

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Just watched Pachinko S02E06....my god, this show can be utterly devastating in its honesty. After all these years of seemingly endless antiheroes. Sunja (in both eras) is such a welcome heroine.

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"But it was an entertaining conversation/argument, and the discussion of the number three pick includes Dan expressing the worst TV opinion I have ever heard him give. Truly shocking stuff." True on all counts! First I've known about this podcast, and I really enjoyed it.

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Any chance your White House visit could you tempt you into a West Wing rewatch? Would love to hear your thoughts on the show and its legacy 25 years on. We managed to interview Richard Schiff for our BBC Weekend radio show and he gave some great anecdotes about how the show's been received since it first aired!

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who's the guy standing behind Bartlett and Biden?

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author

Do you mean Richard Schiff, or the man with the curly hair in goatee? The latter is Tommy Schlamme, the show's chief director, and a longtime Sorkin collaborator.

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And Mr. Christine Lahti!

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author

She was at the White House, too! Chatting with Mayor Pete and such.

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The West Wing? Was that the show where the president of the United States hid a debilitating condition from the public?

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Yes, because Aaron Sorkin wanted to write a subplot about the president watching daytime soap operas and didn't think through the implications of it.

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