‘Watchmen’ creator Alan Moore just called superhero fans a bunch of infantile fascists, and I’m here for it.

by Therese Odell, posted in watch this

Man is cat.

Here’s A BUNCH OF TV News

Dan Harmon has some positive casting news about the Community movie: 1. he believes Donald Glover will come back (but it’s nothing official, so remain calm) and 2. it sounds like Chevy Chase will definitely NOT be returning: “I don’t even know if it’s legal for him to come back. That may be out of my hands. There may something I sign for with an insurance company.”

The season premiere episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart, in which he takes on transphobia and the war on gender care, is available for free online for anyone with an Apple account to watch. If you have only five or six minutes, though, you should check out his interview with the Attorney General of Arkansas on this issue. It’s Stewart at his finest:

This is a nice piece on how Ryan Condal has managed to create something both new and familiar with House of the Dragon. I think the description of the series as more of a Greek tragedy than a Homeric epic, like Game of Thrones was, is on point. And I think this is the key difference for the people who are enjoying the show versus those who are not: what I’ve been hearing from the folks that aren’t too into House of the Dragon is that it feels too “small” compared to Game of Thrones, and that’s fair! Because it is! But for those of us who like a good familial soap opera, this series is hitting a sweet spot.

Bumble is making the dating app seen in Ted Lasso, Bantr, happen in real life through the end of the year. In theory, it’s fun: it allows “two users connect via chat without seeing the other person’s photos. … The Bantr Live experience will let two users, randomly paired together, DM for three minutes. At that point, each person will be asked if they would like to continue the conversation. If both Bumblers choose to match, their chat will live in their Date Mode queue and their profiles will then be available to view.” However, in practice, I see this as a way for anonymous men to be shockingly disgusting with women for three minutes at a time.

Apparently, Scooby-Doo is not going to be in Mchrindy Kaling’s upcoming Velma series. The creative team claims that it was to distinguish Velma as an adult series, instead of a kids’ cartoon, but it sounds like the real reason is the studio wouldn’t give them the rights to Scooby himself.

People are liking Interview With the Vampire, enough to sign up for AMC+ in record numbers.  (It’s really good, to be fair.)

And Fire Country has become the fall’s biggest new show, with 5.74 million viewers. Fire Country is CBS’ Friday night lead-in to Blue Bloods so what this says to me is that network TV is skewing older and older every season.

Ryan Murphy is having quite a week at Netflix: he has the top movie with Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, and the top series with Dahmer – Monster. And this week The Watcher will debut, so stay tuned.

This is actually an interesting perspective: former Fox News host Chris Wallace traces the polarization in our country and in the news that we consume back to his father’s show, 60 Minutes, as being the first time that the networks realized they could make money with the news.

Alan Moore, the brilliant creator of Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, has some choice things to say about our society’s obsession with superheroes:

“Hundreds of thousands of adults [are] lining up to see characters and situations that had been created to entertain the 12-year-old boys – and it was always boys – of 50 years ago. I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare. I think that this was a misunderstanding born of what happened in the 1980s – to which I must put my hand up to a considerable share of the blame, though it was not intentional – when things like Watchmen were first appearing. There were an awful lot of headlines saying ‘Comics Have Grown Up’. I tend to think that, no, comics hadn’t grown up. There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to. But the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they’d ever been. It wasn’t comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way.”

“I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see Batman movies. Because that kind of infantilisation – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism.” He points out that when Trump was elected in 2016, and “when we ourselves took a bit of a strange detour in our politics”, many of the biggest films were superhero movies.

I have to say I tend to agree with Moore on this point, and would add that superhero narratives also often depend on a very binary black-and-white view of good and evil and that they inherently rely on a savior narrative: they look for someone to save us. Both of these are gateways to fascism. And that was what was genius about Damon Lindelof’s The Watchmen show: he understood, better than a lot of Watchmen fans, that this is exactly Moore’s point in his original Watchmen comic series. It’s a pity that Moore will never watch it. 

And now that I’ve just railed against superhero stories, here is a first look at two new The Boys characters, Sister Sage and Firecracker! (To be fair, The Boys is all about making the points Moore and I just did — it’s a satire of both superhero franchises and how our entire culture and politics converge towards these fascist impulses. It’s the genius of the series and it is what sails directly over the heads of Homelander fans, who are exactly the type of guys who lean into fascism.)

Megan Thee Stallion seems to be doing some sort of collaboration with Stranger Things, I guess.

Jeremy Clarkson has been forced to close his farm restaurant after it disrupted the locals by creating traffic jams.

Get well soon, Brentt Leakes.

Renewals

In Development

Casting News

Mark Your Calendar

  • Wolf Pack will debut on Paramount+ in January.
  • Wednesday will premiere on Netflix on November 23.
  • Teen Wolf: The Movie will debut on Paramount+ on January 26.
  • Doctor Who returns on BBC America on October 23.

  • Star Trek: Picard will return on Paramount+ on February 16.
  • Star Trek: Prodigy returns on Paramount+ on October 27.
  • Star Trek: Discovery will return on Paramount+ soon.
  • The Peripheral will debut on Prime Video on October 21.
  • The Wheel of Time will return on Prime Video on November 19.
  • The Mysterious Benedict Society returns on Disney+ on October 26.
  • Doom Patrol returns on HBO Max on December 8.
  • Titans returns on HBO Max on November 3.
  • Selena Gomez: My Mind And Me will premiere on Apple TV+ on November 4.
  • Earthstorm will debut on Netflix on October 27.
  • Year One: A Political Odyssey will premiere on HBO on October 19.
  • An Amish Sin will debut on Lifetime on October 29.
  • Wendell and Wild will debut on Netflix on October 28.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants Presents The Tidal Zone will debut on Nickelodeon on November 25.
  • The Dragon Prince will return on Netflix on November 3.
  • Transformers: EarthSpark will premiere on Paramount+ on November 11.

R.I.P.

Nikki Finke, Entertainment journalist and founder of Deadline

Lee Cohen, William Morris agent

WATCH THIS

Avenue 5: This dark little comedy about an interplanetary cruise ship adrift in space that certainly isn’t a satire of our current political mess finally returns after a long COVID-induced hiatus. Season premiere. 9 p.m., HBO

All American: Jordan still grapples with the news he received about his hand in the season premiere.  7 p.m., The CW

All American: Homecoming: Damon needs to make a decision. Season premiere. 8 p.m., The CW

Kevin Can Fuck Himself: Alison’s new life isn’t what she expected in the series finale. 8 p.m., AMC

Late Night:

  • Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: Rachel Maddow, Noah Centineo, Fabien Frankel, Remi Wolf
  • Late Night with Seth Meyers: Vice President Kamala Harris, Geena Davis
  • The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Paul Mercurio
  • The Late Late Show with James Corden: Marlon Wayans, Marc Maron, Amos Lee
  • Jimmy Kimmel Live: Magic Johnson, Fortune Feimster, Wet Leg
  • The Daily Show: TBA
  • Watch What Happens Live: Brittini Burton, Courtney Veale

MON. 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30
ABC Bachelor in Paradise
(new)		 The Good Doctor
(new)
CBS The Neighborhood
(new)		 Bob ♥ Abishola
(new)		 NCIS
(new)		 NCIS: Hawai’i
(new)
CW All American
(new)		 All American: Homecoming
(new)		 Local
FOX 9-1-1
(new)		 The Cleaning Lady
(new)		 News/Local
NBC The Voice
(new)		 Quantum Leap
(new)

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