HI, IT IS WEDNESDAY AND THERE ARE ONLY 2 1 1/2 DAYS LEFT OF THIS SHIT YEAR. I mean, let’s be honest, 2021 isn’t going to be much better, at least not immediately, but at least 2020 will be in our rearview.
It’s still Christmas kinda, right?
Political Crap
Joe Biden will be sworn in as President of the United States in three weeks from today. As I type that, my eyes literally well up with tears. It’s been so hard, these past four years, so fucking impossibly hard and exhausting and we only have three more weeks, 21 more days, to get through before someone competent takes the reins.
Not that the fuckers are going to make it easy. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has announced that he will be the necessary Senator to object to the electoral college count on January 6, forcing both chambers of Congress to vote on whether or not to challenge the results. This is, of course, all an exercise in bullshittery: the House is never going to vote to challenge Biden’s win and it is unlikely that the Senate has the votes either. But even if both chambers did decide to challenge the results — which, again, they will not — the votes will go back to the States where the governors will just recertify Biden’s win. It’s stupid. It’s really fucking stupid.
The only upshot of any of this is that Hawley’s protest puts McConnell in a position he does not want to be in: forcing Republican senators to either vote with President Lunatic or vote with reality. This will have consequences in 2022.
What Hawley will have accomplished is put a big target on back of Senate Rs, similar to 2010-14 era.
Lots of Rs up in '22 (Blunt, Portman, Grassley, Hoeven, Thune, Young, Lankford) now could face MAGA primary challenges unless they vote w/ Trump, against their own beliefs.
— Paul Kane (@pkcapitol) December 30, 2020
If you want to read a piece to stoke your anxiety that things could go batty on January 6, which is disguised as a piece assuring you that everything will be fine, I suggest this one.
Also, keep your eye on Vice President Hellmann’s: he’s in a hilariously terrible position. The nutjobs on the Right are agitating that he pick and choose which votes to count, but he’s not dumb, he knows that’s not what his role in all of this is, and chances are he’s not going to spoil his own political future by creating a crisis and attempting a coup that he knows has no chance at being successful.
Pence’s constitutional role is to “open” the certificates. That’s it. Not to certify not even technically to count. He has no way even to purport to change the count. It’d be like saying the Oscar presenters get to decide who wins Best Picture.
— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) December 29, 2020
Ultimately, I think these efforts to overthrow an election will go nowhere, and in one week, President Dickless will have run out of options. Boy, Twitter is going to be something else on January 7. Stock up on popcorn now.
Going Viral
Over 3,700 Americans died of COVID-19 yesterday, and there were 200,000 new cases. Yesterday. One day. We’ve surpassed 20 million cases, and 350,000 Americans dead. Please do not go out on New Year’s Eve, please.
Oh, and the vaccine rollout is being fucked by the feds (SURPRISE SURPRISE). They told us we’d have 100 million vaccinated by the end of the year, and now that we are a day away from 2021, that number is actually fewer than 20 million, so.
Los Angeles is getting slammed. There has been an over 600% increase in cases in one month, and hospitals are literally having to treat people in the gift shops, and warn patients that they might just have to let them die. This is horrific.
Because things are so terrible in California, production shutdowns are being extended. NCIS; NCIS: Los Angeles; Seal Team; Why Women Kill; and Diary of a Future President have all announced they will not be resuming production until mid-January. And SAG-AFTRA has warned its members that productions will be shut down through mid-January if not later.
And in completely expected news: the very contagious U.K. mutation has been detected here in Colorado, in a man who had not been to the U.K.
Dawn Wells, Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island, among many other roles, died of COVID.
Luke Letlow, a Congressman-elect from Louisiana, has died from COVID-19. He was only 41 years old and leaves behind a wife and two very small children. Mr. Letlow frequently campaigned maskless and failed to socially distance.
And I do not mean to make fun of or otherwise belittle a man’s death. It’s tragic and horrific and unnecessary. But I point out that he was careless about mask-wearing because this is the kind of bullshit his Republican colleagues are STILL SAYING WHILE NEARLY 4,000 AMERICANS A DAY ARE DYING:
60 million Americans are subject to a stay at home order or curfew.
11 million are right here in Ohio.
What would the Founders say?
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) December 29, 2020
Fortunately, historians had an answer for him:
There was a massive smallpox epidemic during the American Revolution.
George Washington quarantined the infected, refused to let people from hot spots travel to his army, and even sent a thousand soldiers to Boston to prevent the spread there. https://t.co/WueBNEnnj6
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) December 29, 2020
ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit has tested positive for COVID-19 and will call the Sugar Bowl from home.
After being banned for life on Jetblue for not wearing a mask, Lil’ Pump has moved on to Delta. So, apparently, don’t fly Delta?
All Other TV News
A couple of good Bridgerton bits: 1. Here’s where you’ve seen the cast before; and 2. creator Chris Van Dusen doesn’t confirm there will be a second season (there will be), but if there is, he knows what he wants to do with it and future seasons. Apparently, there are eight books in the series, each one focusing on a particular Bridgerton sibling, and he’d love to do all eight seasons. (For it.) Also, he speaks on the Lady Whistledown reveal and how the actor suggested a clever way to leave easter eggs as to their identity.
Mike Schur recently appeared on Rob Lowe’s podcast where he talked about his first post-9/11 joke on SNL‘s “Weekend Update,” and how he gave up the opportunity to premiere Parks and Recreation in the plumb post-Super Bowl time slot so as to keep Amy Poehler as the star of the series. It all worked out in the end!
Hope you weren’t counting on Adam Levine returning to The Voice.
Excluding football, ABC was the highest-rated network in 2020, for the first time in 20 years. But when you add football, NBC and Fox surpass it.
Wonder Woman: 1984 was not Pedro Pascal’s first Wonder Woman project. Back in 2011, he had a role in David E. Kelly’s ill-fated NBC Wonder Woman pilot starring Adrienne Palicki and featuring a hilariously — and famously — bad Wonder Woman costume.
The closing song on The Sopranos was very nearly Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” instead of “Don’t Stop Believin’.” But when the crew all recoiled at the suggestion of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” David Chase knew he had to use it.
Wait, Chris Harrison has moved to Texas? I mean, he’s from here originally, so it’s not that surprising.
Casting News
- Joe and Jill Biden and Big Freedia will all appear on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2021 on ABC tomorrow night.
- Candice Bergen will guest star on The Conners as Ben’s mother.
- Meghan McCain will return to The View on Monday after taking maternity leave back in September.
Mark Your Calendars
- The fifth episode of Your Honor will be available to stream tomorrow, a few days ahead of its linear premiere on Showtime on Sunday.
- Superman & Lois will debut on The CW on February 23.
- SanPa: Sins of the Savior is streaming now on Netflix.
- Street Outlaws: Mega Cash Days will debut on Discovery on January 11.
R.I.P.
William Link, Co-creator of Murder She Wrote; Mannix and Columbo among many others
Marcus D’Amico, Actor in the original Tales of the City
Howard Rubenstein, Legendary PR strategist
Joe Clark, The high school principal Lean on Me was based on
Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quinones, Breakdancer and star of Breakin’
Hatem Ali, Syrian filmmaker and TV director
WATCH THIS
Equinox: In this Danish drama, a bus full of students goes missing and twenty years later, one of the victim’s sisters discovers the unsettling truth about what happened. Premiere. Netflix
The Heroes on the Front Line: A celebration of the front line workers who have given everything to keep us safe in this dreadful year. 7 p.m., The CW
Psycho: “A boy’s best friend is his mother …” You know, I recently watched Crazy, Not Insane, a very interesting HBO documentary on the criminal psychologist, Dr. Dorothy Otnow, who explored shy some people become killers, and her theories on childhood trauma and dissociative identity disorder (and her fight to have the condition taken seriously) and I have to say, Norman Bates is a textbook case. (You can watch Crazy, Not Insane on HBO Max, and on HBO on Monday night.) 9:15 p.m., TCM
| WEDS. | 7:00 | 7:30 | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 |
| ABC | The Goldbergs (repeat) |
American Housewife (repeat) |
The Conners (repeat) |
The Conners (repeat) |
The Conners (repeat) |
The Conners (repeat) |
| CBS | Young Sheldon (repeat) |
Mom (repeat) |
SEAL Team (repeat) |
S.W.A.T. (repeat) |
| CW | Heroes on the Front Line (new) |
Dogs of the Year (new) |
Local |
| FOX | The Masked Dancer (repeat) |
9-1-1 (new) |
News/Local |
| NBC | Chicago Med (repeat) |
Chicago Fire (repeat) |
Chicago P.D. (repeat) |
In re: “Bridgerton”, have you seen this?
https://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/the-questions-of-male-consent-that-puncture-both-fantasy-worlds-of-bridgerton-and-wonder-woman-1984-.php
Saw it on Twitter the other day, and haven’t seen anyone else refer to it. More about “Wonder Woman”, really, but calls out “Bridgerton” as well.