Say hello, it's Independence Day

Memorable Fourth of July episodes, some big news for the newsletter, 'The Bear' will be back, and more

This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I'm dressed like Steamboat Willie...

Where’s What’s Alan Watching? moving?

First up, some big newsletter news: starting next week, we’ll be moving from Substack to Ghost, another publishing platform that a number of my peers have been using. The Ghost team is currently in the process of shifting over the entire archives from the last few years of newsletter, as well as my subscriber list, so by the time next Friday rolls around, you should get the newsletter in your inbox like normal, without having to do anything. There will also be a dedicated site like the one on Substack, though it’s still under construction.

(The only real downside to the migration is that the comments won’t move with the newsletters. You can make new comments, but the old ones will be remaining here.)

I’m doing this for a few reasons, including my discomfort with the stance Substack has taken on platforming hate speech. Also, their business model is less creator-friendly than Ghost’s, and one of the things I’ll be doing later this summer is introducing a new paid tier. Any of you who don’t want to pay will continue to get a free Friday newsletter, which will include links to all my Rolling Stone content, plus discussion of other happenings in the week in TV. The mini-recaps I do periodically for shows like The Pitt, Poker Face, and, returning later this month, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, will be moving to the paid tier, likely at a greater length than I’ve been doing here. There will also be a dedicated Discord for paid subscribers, a second weekly newsletter covering other subjects, and additional content still TBD. (If you have things you’d love to see me doing on a regular or semi-regular basis, now is a good time to make requests.)

I don’t make this decision lightly. Rolling Stone already has a paywall, and of course I’m out here all the time shamelessly asking you to buy my books. But the media landscape continues to shift drastically, and I’ve had to adjust with it. Again, if you just want the free Friday content, you’ll continue to get it, without having to do anything extra. (And I may offer much shorter versions of the recaps in the free version; I’m still figuring this all out.) If you want more, if you want a greater sense of community among your fellow TV nerds, and/or if you just want to support me in a different way, you are welcome to do so. As always, I appreciate that you’re reading me, however you do it.

I’ll have many more details about this in the coming weeks. I wanted to make the move of platforms first, and be sure that goes smoothly, before doing this other big thing.

Go Fourth

We’re a day early this week because tomorrow is a national holiday here in the States. Independence Day is also the subject of my one story for Rolling Stone this week, where I picked my 10 favorite episodes set on July 4th.

As I explain in the list’s introduction, there are far fewer of these than there are Christmas or Halloween episodes, because many TV executives are oddly rigid about having episodes take place in the same rough calendar period when they’re released. When I first talked about the idea with my editors, I thought I could probably come up with five good ones, and even then, it might involve some finessing. But then as I looked into it, I realized I had at least 10 — including one of my favorite television episodes ever — and that didn’t even include options like the recent Duster episode set on that date, or last season’s Diplomat episode where the fireworks triggered Stuart’s PTSD about the bombing. Some of the ones I chose are intensely about the holiday and its complicated meaning — particularly complicated at this fraught moment in American history — while others just happen to take place on the day but are largely about other things.

Daaaaaaa Bear news!

For those of you who didn’t rush to binge The Bear Season Four last weekend, a reminder that I published three different stories on it: a review of the season as a whole, with no real spoilers; a look at my two favorite episodes of the season (Syd getting her hair done, and the wedding), and how they show that The Bear can be as great when it’s going small as when it’s going big (including the biggest table in human history); and then a look at the finale and what it might mean for the series’ future. If you’ve finished, consider this week’s comments a spoiler-friendly zone, or you can join the discussion I set up last weekend.

Regarding that future, FX announced on Tuesday that there will, in fact, be a fifth season. Pointedly, the press release does not refer to it as a “fifth and final season,” nor does it say who among the cast will be back. So, we’ll still have to wait and see who’s actually returning, whether we’re now in the endgame, or if we’re in a Dexter situation where the series is too successful to end, despite abundant creative reasons to do so. The fact that the release says to expect the fifth season in 2026, even though Jeremy Allen White and several of the other actors are now insanely busy, suggests we may be reaching some kind of rubber meets the road situation. Or maybe the comp is to another Showtime series, that also happened to feature Jeremy Allen White: Shameless, which just kept chugging along for years after Emmy Rossum left.

Odds and/or ends

• Because we’re a day early, because the newest Poker Face just dropped, and because it’s part one of a two-part season finale, I’m going to save all of my thoughts until next week. One thing I’ll say now is that I interviewed Rian Johnson about the season, for a story running next week, and among the things we discussed was how happy he was to give Justin Theroux a more substantial role than his brief cameo in The Last Jedi. It’s a fun role for him, that hearkens back to his days as an international assassin on The Leftovers.

• Meanwhile, I don’t believe the Duster finale drops until tonight, so I’ll also hold off on Season One commentary until next week. How have people who’ve been watching felt so far?

• Finally, thanks for the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia question suggestions! The panel was a lot of fun, and I’ll post the video here whenever Paley puts it on YouTube. I’ve now seen most of the new season, and there’s so much good stuff in there. No spoilers, but after you’ve seen the season premiere — the Sunny half of the crossover with Abbott Elementary — you’ll understand why Quinta Brunson spent so much time suggesting that the younger Abbott fans should really, really not watch the Sunny episode. In the meantime, I give you this photo from the panel that somehow makes Danny DeVito look much bigger than me:

See you in the next platform, Jack!