‘Stranger Things’ are afoot … are you listening?

by Therese Odell, posted in Uncategorized

It’s Thursday!

All Other TV News

One of The Office‘s longest-running mysteries has been answered. 

Filming the Friends‘ opening credits wasn’t as fun as it looked.

A former cast member of Dexter claims that aside from Dexter, obviously, none of the other original characters will be returning.

Will The Walking Dead kill off Negan? SHOULD The Walking Dead kill off Negan?

I’ve heard of all sorts of businesses asking creatives to work for “exposure” instead of actual pay plenty of times, but this might be the first time I’ve heard of a TV show doing it.

Paramount+ will be releasing an original film every month, and 1,000 new movies will be added to the streamer next month. 

The Handmaid’s Tale‘s fourth season premiere is Hulu’s most-watched original, bringing in over a million viewers, 10 times the number that watched the season three finale when it debuted. I guess people did some binging during quarantine.

Netflix is not afraid of throwing its viewers into complicated universes, and this writer is down for it.

ATX has added several more shows to their lineup, including Degrassi: The Next Generation and Walker.

Will Comic-Con survive? 🤷🏻‍♀️

The Last Thing He Told Me, Reese Witherspoon’s upcoming Apple TV+ series, starring Julia Roberts, was inspired by the Enron trial and Linda Lay.

Former Dirtbag-in-Chief tried to get around his Twitter ban but Twitter isn’t as stupid as he thinks it is.

Racial Justice

The HFPA has released details for their diversity plan which includes adding more Black members and putting more restrictions on the kinds of gifts their members can receive. And NBC is like, “Cool. Maybe we won’t cancel the Golden Globes, after all.”

Sex & the City is planning to address one of the critiques against it, and will be adding three women of color as series regulars when it returns on HBO Max.

The View‘s Sunny Hostin has launched a production company that will be “highlighting important social justice issues and meaningful, inclusive stories.”

Morgan Wallen will not be invited to the Billboard Music Awards even though he’s been nominated for six of them, thanks to his little racist outburst.

Athletes are forbidden to wear Black Lives Matter items at the Summer Games in Tokyo.

Hey, remember last week when CNN contributor Rick Santorum claimed that “we” created America from a “blank slate” before going on to say, “We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but, candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture”? Yeah, so he went on Chris Cuomo’s show to do a big “OOPS,” and Don Lemon WAS NOT HAVING IT.

This hand-in-hand with how the Right has now decided that “critical race theory,” which is an academic movement that is largely confined to post-graduate circles, is somehow a grave danger to America’s schoolchildren and must be banned. Of course, “critical race theory,” is just another way of saying, “teaching our kids about the darker side of our American history, things like slavery, Jim Crow, and how we massacred the Native Americans.” They literally want to teach our kids about the “good” of slavery, and that the three-fifths compromise was to help “end” slavery, all while they sneer at the idea that systemic racism is even possible.

I’ll let Marc Lamont Hill take this one:

“They ban things that aren’t even an issue. There is no public school teacher in America who is attempting to put critical race theory in schools. Critical race theory isn’t even taught in high schools. It’s not even really taught in college. It is taught in law school and it has increasingly been taught in graduate school.”

Hill directed his closing comments at Jones as a Black Republican—”You want to ban a theory that nobody is trying to bring in in the first place? That is a smoke signal to white America and really to white racists”—but that critique of the entire effort to ban critical race theory from schools holds true for all the white Republicans making a big stink about it as well. They are all trying to ban something that is not seriously being taught in the schools, because using a term that sounds a little jargon-y and advanced is a lot more palatable to the (white) general public than saying “we just want to ban schools from talking about the existence of racism or teaching about the contributions of anyone but white people.” Which is actually what’s going on here, to the extent that there’s a real effort to influence school curriculum.

Going Viral

We had 701 deaths from COVID yesterday, and 46,603 new cases. Still a lot! But it’s continuing to get better.

The Biden Administration is proposing to waive patent rights to the vaccine so as to speed the vaccine to developing countries. Pharma companies are not happy about this for obvious reasons, but they’re hiding those behind the claims that it will actually slow production down as more and more companies compete for supplies to make the vaccines. Alright.

Meanwhile, Pfizer is planning on donating the vaccine to all athletes in the Tokyo Olympics.

Sesame Street‘s campaign against vaccine hesitancy has me all choked up because I am a sentimental monster:

While his colleagues return to the studio and their couches, telling their audiences they have all been vaccinated, Tucker Carlson is out here telling people that the vaccine is actually killing people — it is not. He’s a dangerous fucking lunatic who needs to be removed from the air.

Reminder: Tucker’s entire shtick is just theater.

DO NOT SELL OR BUY FAKE VACCINATION CARDS.

BRAVA!

As we begin to move back into the real world, The Daily Show has some helpful tips on how to behave in restaurants:

Renewals

  • The Conners has been renewed for a fourth season on ABC.
  • Sanditon has been renewed for a third season on PBS.

Cancellations

In Development

Casting News

Mark Your Calendars

  • Stranger Things returns on Netflix sometime this year. Still no release date, but I’m thinking July 4th weekend again. We’ll see!
  • Rugrats returns on Paramount+ on May 27.
  • Castlevania returns for the final season on Netflix on May 13.
  • Awake will premiere on Netflix on June 9.
  • Reunion Road Trip will debut on E! on June 10.
  • A Discovery of Witches will begin airing on AMC on June 27.
  • Alone will return on History on June 3.

R.I.P.

Frank McRae, An NFL player-turned-actor. He appeared in Licence to Kill and in the Last Action Hero

WATCH THIS

girls5eva: A 90s girl group reunites to try to recapture the magic in this new Tina Fey/Robert Carlock series. Premiere. Peacock

Mythic Quest: Season two premiere. Apple TV+

Shrill: Annie’s life is finally falling into place in the third and final season.  Hulu

That Damn Michael Che: Michael Che is getting his own series exploring various day-to-day experiences like falling in love and being racially profiled. He gets a little help from former and current SNL cast members. Series premiere. HBO Max

Legendary: The voguing competition series is back, finally. Season premiere. HBO Max

And Tomorrow the Entire World: A law student joins an anti-fascist group in Germany as right-wing tensions rise in her country in this festival-winning film. Netflix

The Drowning: A mother who lost her son some eight years earlier catches sight of a young man she is convinced is her child in this dark limited series. Premiere. Acorn & Sundance TV

Late Night:

  • Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: Jessica Alba, Marc Maron, Sech
  • Late Night with Seth Meyers: Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni, Ziwe, Foo Fighters, Mario Duplantier
  • The Late Late Show with James Corden: Alec Benjamin
  • Jimmy Kimmel Live: Julianna Margulies, Daniel Dae Kim, Amythyst Kiah
  • The Daily Show: The Daily Social Distancing Show
  • Conan: W. Kamau Bell
  • Watch What Happens Live: Bravo Blasts from the Past, featuring Jacqueline Laurita, Gretchen Rossi, Jill Zarin, Phaedra Parks, Adriana de Moura, Taylor Armstrong
  • A Little Late with Lily Singh: Whitney Cummings
THUR 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30
ABC Station 19
(new)		 Grey’s Anatomy
(new)		 Rebel
(new)
CBS Young Sheldon
(new)		 United States of Al
(new)		 Mom
(new)		 B Positive
(new)		 Clarice
(new)
CW Walker
(new)		 Legacies
(new)		 News/Local
FOX Name That Tune
(repeat)		 Last Man Standing
(new)		 Let’s Be Real
(new)		 News/Local
NBC Manifest
(new)		 Manifest
(new)		 Law & Order Special Victims Unit
(new)

One thought on “‘Stranger Things’ are afoot … are you listening?”

  1. I don’t know that I’ve gotten more excited reading a dumb idea than I did reading “a Slip ‘N Slide competition series hosted by Bobby Moynihan and Ron Funches, is coming to NBC.”

    Also – Awake looks great and I’m a little surprised it hasn’t been done before?

    Reply

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