It's all in the 'Squid Game'

The South Korean sensation returns, plus great new shows of 2024, a 'Doctor Who' Christmas special, and the 'Shrinking' finale

This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I have another look besides "shut the fuck up"...

Delay of Squid Game

The final notable TV premiere of 2024 features the belated return of one of the biggest hits of the decade so far: Squid Game, whose second season I reviewed for Rolling Stone. The review is spoiler-free, though it’s a hard season to spoil, since — unfortunately true to form for most big film and TV hits these days — the story has been split up into two parts, to be concluded next year with Season Three. Parts of it still work very well, including Lee Jung-jae reprising his Emmy-winning role as Player 456, but it’s bloated while also not taking advantage of the extra time to fulfill some of the promises of the end of Season One. Even if creator Hwang Dong-hyuk hadn’t bluntly said he’s doing it for the money because he didn’t get paid enough for the first season, it would sure feel that way.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!

This year’s final superlatives list is something of a polished-up Honorable Mentions. I picked 10 new shows that didn’t make any of the other lists — aka Top 10 shows overall, 10 best episodes, 10 best performances — and wrote about why I liked them. It’s a pretty wide range, both in terms of type and in terms of how close any of them came to making another list. Baby Reindeer, for instance, could have easily cracked the Top 10, while I was half-tempted to give Adam Brody and Kristen Bell a combined spot on the performances list, because their chemistry is so much of what made Nobody Wants This work.

Alan’s corner, you’re all invited

Been doing some podcast guest appearances this month — each time with Mike Schur somehow. I once again competed in the Poscast holiday draft, this year with the particularly amorphous theme of “holiday cheer.” After feeling like my blatant trolling attempts were growing a bit stale last draft, I tried playing a bit closer to the spirit of the rules this time. It’s up to you to decide whether a law-abiding Alan is an entertaining Alan in this context.

Meanwhile, I popped up at the tail end of the latest episode of the very entertaining The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast. Most of the time, the show features Seth, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone going through the origins of each SNL Digital Short, in order. This time out, Andy and the other guys took a break, and Seth instead invited Schur and Jake Tapper to decide which of the Shorts discussed so far should be in a Criterion Collection of Digital Shorts. I’m there for quality control. Sort of.

Doctor Who Christmas special recaplet: “Joy to the World”

Contemporary Doctor Who has an uneven track record with its Christmas specials. Some are indelible, like “The Runaway Bride” introducing the Tenth Doctor and us to the force of nature that was Donna Noble. Some barely leave any impression at all; when our recent binge hit Matt Smith’s “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe,” I couldn’t even remember if I had seen it before, and only later found my old HitFix recap of it. Steven Moffat wrote that one, but he was also responsible for 2010’s “A Christmas Carol,” which is one of the single best episodes of the whole modern series. So I was curious which way the Moffat-penned “Joy to the World” would lean.

I found it to be neither an instant classic nor an obvious misfire. It doesn’t do nearly enough with its most obvious selling point, in the teaming up of Ncuti Gatwa with Derry Girls and Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan. But on the flip side, Gatwa has some fun early business with Joel Fry as an overwhelmed Time Hotel employee, and then there’s a lovely interlude where the Doctor has to spend a year living and working in the Sandringham Hotel until his timeline can catch up to his future self. Having to travel through time “the long way” is a favorite device of Moffat’s — a very smart writer who nonetheless has a half-dozen Doctor Who ideas that he just keeps mixing and matching — but this was a touching and sweet presentation of it, with the Doctor and hotel manager Anita bringing out unexpected sides of one another. The sequence was almost too good, as it felt disappointing when the year was up and the Doctor finally got to catch up with Joy, deal with the birth of the star, etc.

Still, some Doctor Who is better than none. I’m writing this newsletter ahead of the holiday, and for all I know, the trailer that comes after the special will give a specific premiere date for the next season. But by all accounts, it’s going to be mid-late spring. On the one hand, this binge with my family should keep me occupied with Doctor Who content for much of that gap. On the other, most of what remains is the Peter Capaldi era, which I ran hot and cold on, and the Jodie Whittaker era, where a great Doctor was let down by an underwhelming showrunner.

Shrinking finale recaplet: “The Last Thanksgiving”

Finally, let’s talk Shrinking season finale spoilers, starting with the most obvious one of all:

I am a sucker.

The Season One finale left me deeply concerned that the Shrinking writers were determined to roll back all of the progress that Jimmy, Paul, and the show itself had made over the course of that year. While I still don’t love the Grace cliffhanger, it fortunately didn’t harm Season Two, which dealt with the consequences without making Jimmy revert back to his coked-out former self. So I probably should have known better when it seemed for a while that “The Last Thanksgiving” was going to climax with Louis — abandoned by all his friends on Thanksgiving, and still crippled with guilt and self-loathing from the drunk driving accident — committing suicide via public transit.

Reader, I did not know better.

I’ll spare you the usual mix of courtroom stenography and free association musings that constitute my notes on episodes of TV I care about, but suffice it to say there was a lot of all-caps ranting when Louis began texting Alice, not realizing that her phone had been placed in a basket so everyone at Gaby’s could enjoy a device-free holiday meal. Among those thoughts: “"IF HE KILLS HIMSELF, SO HELP ME…” It’s a credit to Brett Goldstein the performer, and to Bill Lawrence serving as both writer and director this time out, that the idea seemed plausible, even if it would have felt too bleak even for this show, and even if it would have likely done irreparable harm to Jimmy and Alice’s relationship. And because the scene was presented so well, I was overcome with relief when Jimmy turned up on the train platform to forgive Louis and give the guy a reason to keep going. Manipulative? Maybe. Effectively done? Absolutely. And I’m curious whether Louis will now become part of the gang(*), or just appear occasionally, depending on what other acting jobs Goldstein has. Jimmy saves Louis, and plays Louis’ old game of inventing backstories for the other people at the station, but it doesn’t feel likely that they would become actual friends. And that’s before we even get to Liz and Gaby, both of whom seem like they’d have a much tougher time letting go of their anger about losing Tia than, say, Brian did.

(*) Where Cougar Town’s friend group eventually dubbed itself “the Cul-de-Sac Crew,” this bunch has no official nickname yet. Suggestions? Should it tie in some way to Jimmy being neighbors with Liz and Derek, possibly incorporating their balconies? Should it be Paul-centric? Gabby-centric? Therapy-centric?

Still, the big tearjerker of the finale wasn’t the subway scene, but Paul’s speech earlier in the evening, where the gruff, intensely private and proud old man finally opens up to everyone about how rapidly he’s declining, and how bad he expects things to get with the Parkinson’s. If your room didn’t get at least a little dusty during that Harrison Ford monologue — which included sentiments like, “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to have, to work with you, hang out with you, laugh with you” and “We can get through anything if we have people to lean on. I’m leaning on you” — then you are made of stone, friend.

I liked Shrinking a lot in its first season. I loved this second one. Can’t wait to see Season Three sometime next year. And speaking of which…

Happy New Year, everyone! See you in January!