The below is spoiler free.
Welcome back, TV Club! Between my duties as a judge in this year’s Emerald Cup and a few other projects, I’ve left you to lean on TV, I Say for all my latest TV recommendations and opinions. As some of you may know from Twitter, I’m judging cannabis cartridges for one of the best weed competitions out there and I take it very seriously. I did not know it would be so much work getting so high. There are spreadsheets! Meetings! I have to smoke 69 separate cartridges! It’s also just a lot of fun, so forgive me for making April an extended 4/20 (also, subscribe to the Patreon if you want to hear about the process and want to talk TV with spoilers!)
But, I’m back now with an important TV take: If good network TV shows are going to thrive, we need to support all good network TV shows; or Abbott Elementary cannot carry us alone. Last week, Abbott Elementary aired an incredible finale. Do we need to worry about renewal? No! We can rest easy! It feels good, doesn’t it? We enjoyed a great season and now we rewatch, free of worry. I remember days like this when I was a child and shows got multi-season renewals and 22 episode seasons. That’s just another way Abbott has saved the broadcast TV landscape.
And that paragraph might make it seem like Abbott has done this alone, but that’s far from the truth. If you’ve been following me long enough, you know I’ve been tracking network’s upward swing from The Big Leap (we are still fighting for justice)! Remember Pivoting? Those were great shows we lost and soon, we might lose more as spring finale season arrives.
What shows am I worried about? Well, not The Goldbergs. YES, I’M STILL WATCHING! But, we’re able to walk away from that show with 10 seasons and a retirement party (I even had Wendi McLendon-Covey on the pod!).
No, I’m worried about American Auto, Not Dead Yet, Home Economics, GRAND CREW! These are the renewals keeping me awake at night. I have been begging people to watch these shows for weeks now. I see your tweets and messages saying you’re doing it! You’re telling relatives! Word is getting out there! But until we see those Deadline headlines, nothing is certain.
It doesn’t matter how much star power a show has, it’s not safe (RIP to Dear Edward, a show that starred Connie Britton but only I watched it.) I didn’t think we’d lose Avenue 5 and I didn’t even know the second season was happening. We also just found out Human Resources and Big Mouth will be gone soon too. A lot of platforms feel like they’re pivoting to something else entirely. Freeform has cancelled Grown-ish and burned off the newest season of Single Drunk Female like they don’t want us to remember it happened.
NBC wants us to forget that Grand Crew is the second coming of Happy Endings by moving it to Friday nights, but we won’t forget! They want us to forget American Auto is one of the best ensembles on tv right now by not even giving it promotion on SNL! It’s been WEEKS since we’ve heard anything about Home Economics. I even love Not Dead Yet, which hasn’t had its finale yet, but I need more people talking about it!
With the upcoming strike, these networks will look for any reason to bury well-written shows so they can replace them with some reality show where people have to figure out if they’re dating an AI chatbot or a real human (this is my idea, I trademark it).
Anyway, I’m begging you: please go watch TV. You want me to talk about Mrs. Davis? All the cool kids are talking about that! I’m talking about TV (and Mrs. Davis on the pod next week, actually)
Whose TV Do We Say This Week?
John Owen Lowe! From Unstable on Netflix!
I tweeted through my love of Unstable while I was watching, so I really loved sitting down with co-creator and star, John Owen Lowe! Baby, this is classic TV! All I wanted were more episodes! It feels like it would fit right in with all those network shows I named, but baby, this is a Netflix budget!
He talks about the show, his dad and how he almost kept Chris Traeger away from us.
What else?
If you’re in New York City, I’m recording my debut album at Union Hall! Get tickets!
It’s gonna be a real funny time and we’re gonna sell it out so come on out.
I watch everything you tell me to watch/feel smug when I am watching a show that you mention because that means I have excellent taste. I NEED American Auto & Grand Crew to get renewed. You are fighting the good fight and walking the true path...
I started watching Grown-ish with my then high school aged daughter. I had memories of 'A Different World' and we enjoyed watching a show together. Once she went to college I saved the episodes for us to watch together when she came home. But once the original group graduated, we were done, sorry Junior!