In which I wittingly set myself up for disappointment by remaining excited for the ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel series.

Despite my anger at the rushed nature of the end of Game of Thrones (and — again, I can not stress this enough — my anger was not about individual plot points,  but rather that the points needed to be earned and they were not), I remain excited about the upcoming prequel series. Petra Halbur at the Game of Thrones fan site Watchers on the Wall made this wonderful video about the prequel series (which we know very little about), and historical revisionism, unreliable narrators, sexism, racism, and the sadness that is inherent to any prequel series. While she has some skepticism about the project, in the end, she remains hopeful, and I just could not agree more strongly with everything she says here. It’s worth your ten minutes if you are at all interested in the prequel:

The one with Pat the Cop: Apparently, when Friends was merely a pilot, NBC demanded that the show add a middle-aged character to bring in older viewers, so the writers begrudgingly crammed a character named Pat the Cop into the script and even cast him, but hated it so much that they begged the network to let them drop him. Thank God. Also, Jeanne Garafalo was almost Monica, and Danielle Steele saved Jennifer Anniston’s role. All true.

George Stephanopoulos, David Muir, Linsey Davis, and Jorge Ramos will be your moderators for the next Democratic debate here in Houston.

Sesame Street and its amazing musical legacy after 50 years.

SHUT UP, SEAN SPICER.

SHUT UP KARAMO BROWN.

Here’s Karamo Brown calling Sean Spicer “a good guy; a really sweet guy” cause what’s morality, really? pic.twitter.com/WQVgfVVkFc

— Ξvan Ross Katz (@evanrosskatz) August 21, 2019

MTV has a new series, Ghosted: Love Gone Missing (see casting below), in which people who have been ghosted hunt down the ghoster and confront them about why they abandoned them. Which sounds juicy. It also sounds fraught with the potential of allowing stalkers to hunt down their victims, and a lot of people are uncool with the entire concept.

As a private investigator, I regularly refuse men wanting me to locate women who’ve ghosted them. That is a woman’s right to so, and usually done for their own safety. https://t.co/WO1S4HzNsS

— Mr. Nick Charles 🍸 (@MrNickCharles) August 22, 2019

Lance Reddick and Paul Giamatti were classmates at Yale, and now you know that worthless fact.

In Development

• Shining Vale, a horror-comedy from Sharon Horgan, has been ordered at Starz. Yes to this.
• Red Rose, a horror-drama from writers of The Haunting of Hill House, has been ordered by BBC Three. Yes to this, too.
• The Chris Watts Story has been greenlit at Lifetime.
• Bad Girls is being turned into an anthology series.

Casting News

• Bethenny Frankel is leaving The Real Housewives of New York City again.
• Christian Slater, YaYa Gosselin, Akira Akbar, Pedro Pascal and Priyanka Chopra will star in Robert Rodriguez’s Netflix film, We Can Be Heroes.
• Hugh Laurie is going to star in Roadkill, a political miniseries on BBC One.
• Sofia Wylie will star in the Disney Channel hip-hop series Shook from the Duplass Brothers. (None of that sentence makes any sense to me, btw. What are the Duplass Brothers doing making 1. a hip-hop series that will air on 2. The Disney Channel?)
• Rachel Lindsey will host the dating series Ghosted: Love Gone Missing on MTV.
• Cedric Yarborough is joining the cast of Carol’s Second Act on CBS.
• Laura Bell Bundy is joining Perfect Harmony on NBC.
• Yasha Jackson and Garrett Wareing will recur on Manifest.
• Chad Rook is joining The 100 on The CW.
• Bianca Santos will recur on Legacies on The CW.
• Karen Pittman will recur on Yellowstone on Paramount.

Mark Your Calendars

• American Factory will debut on Netflix today. It’s the first Netflix production from the Obamas. COME BACK, OBAMAS.

• Abstract: The Art of Design will did debut on Netflix on February 10 … 2017.

• Big Mouth is returning to Netflix on October 4.

shook.

10/04/19 pic.twitter.com/zPedL99XVK

— Big Mouth (@bigmouth) August 21, 2019

• Investigation Discovery is going to air a marathon of all-new true-crime documentaries over Labor Day weekend.
• A Little Late With Lily Singh: The Primetime Special will air on NBC on September 18.
• Middle School Moguls will premiere on Nickelodeon on September 8.
• The Day I Picked My Parents will debut on September 8 on A&E.
• Ink Master: Grudge Match premieres on October 1 on Paramount Network.
• Bombshell is a movie, not a TV series, but it’s relevant to this blog’s interests:

WATCH THIS

Baskets: I love this show and am sad to see it go, but I assume they are leaving on their own terms. Anyway, Martha removes her cast in the series finale.  9 p.m., FX

Brides, Grooms, and Emergency Rooms: I mean, this is just a title that sells itself. 9 p.m., TLC

Freaks: “ONE OF US. ONE OF US.” 7 p.m., TCM

Late Night:

• Conan: Fred Armisen
• Lights Out with David Spade: Arturo Castro

THUR

7:00

7:30

8:00

8:30

9:00

9:30

ABC

Holey Moley (new)

Holey Moley (new)

Reef Break (new)

CBS

The Big Bang Theory (repeat)

Young Sheldon (repeat)

Big Brother (new)

FBI (repeat)

CW

The Outpost (new)

Two Sentence Horror Stories (new)

Two Sentence Horror Stories (repeat)

News/Local

FOX	Preseason Football: Jaguars at Dolphins (live)

NBC

The Wall (repeat)

Hollywood Game Night (new)

Law & Order: SVU (repeat)