I'm gonna get the papers (get the papers)
'Severance' takes a field trip, plus 'Clean Slate,' a Star-Ledger farewell, 'Better Call Saul,' and more
This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as marshmallows are for team players only…
200 ink-stained wretches walk into a bar…
This week, The Star-Ledger died. So a lot of us who worked there gathered for a wake.
Sunday was the final day of New Jersey’s biggest newspaper — and the first employer of my career — as a print publication. A version of the Ledger will continue on NJ.com, and most people consume their news online these days. But for Ledger alums like me, it still feels like something massive has been lost.
The paper at least went out with a nice tribute section, including this essay by my former editor Rosemary Parrillo about the long and illustrious history of the Ledger features department, which included our coverage of The Sopranos and other great TV. And the event inspired a pretty massive reunion of former staffers (plus a few who still write for the website) at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, a stone’s throw away from the old Ledger newsroom. I left the paper in 2010, and many of the folks in the room left before that, so it was a chance to reconnect with colleagues I hadn’t seen in at least 15 years. In some cases, they were people I hadn’t even really thought about in that span, yet the great memories of our time together came flooding back. It was a bittersweet get-together, but also a really lovely one, and I spent a lot of time just thanking people for being so great to work with back in the day — especially the ones who knew me as a clueless 22-year-old intern in need of a whole lot of daily hand-holding. I also collected a lot of phone numbers to avoid falling out of touch again.
It’s neither profound nor original to suggest the emotional benefits of periodically reaching out to old friends and/or co-workers to remind them that you found your relationship with them meaningful. But it felt really good. So the next time you’re just doomscrolling, maybe consider taking a quick break to send a message to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while?
Better Call Saul odds and/or ends
Various leftover bits of business from pub week for Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill: The Complete Critical Companion, which is still available wherever books are sold:
In my previous plugs, I realize I’ve neglected to mention that there is also an audiobook version, read by veteran narrator Brian P. Craig, which you can buy on Audible, Libro, and Audiobooks.com, among other places. Apologies for not mentioning this much, much sooner.
Here’s an interview I did with Emmy Magazine about the book and the show.
Thank you to everyone who came to this week’s two events, at The Strand and at Words. You all made them so much fun. The Strand’s events manager said he let the audience Q&A section go twice as long as planned, simply because he was enjoying the questions. If you’ve been to any kind of event like this, you know how bad and uncomfortable that section can be, so it’s a testament to what smart crowds came to these things.
There’s still one event to go on this local promotional mini-blitz: Wednesday at 4 p.m., I’ll be at The Paley Center to talk with museum curator Jason Lynch. We’ll show some clips, share some memories, sell some books, etc. If you’re in the area and couldn’t make the other two events, I’d love to see you there.
Working at the car wash
A surprisingly light stretch of premieres for early February meant only one traditional review from me this week: Clean Slate, new Prime sitcom starring Laverne Cox and George Wallace that was one of the last shows that legendary producer Norman Lear worked on. If you can somehow consider a show with a trans heroine outside of this particular moment in history, then the show — with Wallace and Cox as father and daughter reconciling in her Alabama hometown after a long estrangement — starts out rough, then gradually settles down and becomes quite likable by the end of its first season. (Aka, the growth chart you see from most competent first-year comedies.) But it feels very hard to divorce the show from the moment, so I wrote about that, too.
Take me out to the ORTBO?
Finally, this week’s Severance — which I recapped here — knocked my socks off. Just a great departure from the show’s norm, in a literal and metaphorical sense, packed with weird imagery, with Eagan family lore whose primary function was to remind you how full of it the Eagan family is, and a major plot turn that happened at the exact right moment in the season.
That’s it for this week! What did everybody else think?
The reason I now subscribe to your Substack, and have followed your writing for years, is because of the reviews you used to write in the print edition of the Star Ledger when I was a teenager. Growing up in Morris County we received the paper every day, and I remember many afternoons sitting at the kitchen table after school to look for what you had written. Even though I wasn’t any more interested in TV than the average teen, I remember thinking your writing was so smart and that it made the points I would’ve made about the shows I’d watched. You were the first newspaper journalist whose writing stood out and resonated, and I’m so grateful you’re still writing here, if not at the Ledger. RIP, Star Ledger, Long Live Sepinwall!
Your last point about how a reintegrated Mark would agree to ORTBO is one I hadn’t thought of and a good one… also hadn’t considered that the Glasgow block seems incongruous with what we think we know about the Severance mechanics. Maybe the brains default state is actually as an Innie? Which is even more horrifying.
Just like a highlight of the previous week for me was Milchick and Natalie’s wordless eye locking - I think the same of Irving’s steely stare back at Milchick at the end.
The reminders of Lumon / corporate fallibility in this show are both often funny, but also lightens the story - it reinforces the sense that despite all the cards stacked against the heroes, they are dealing with an ultimately inferior opponent.