EPISODE 809 HELLO TO ENDINGS
Also: HUGE News about George R. R. Martin’s Winds of Winter!!!
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi and Welcome back to Pop Culture Spirit Wow. I’m your host, Abe Vigoda.
Actually no I’m not, but having said so, I immediately wish I was. Which is pretty much the essence of Abe Vigoda.
THE WOWND UP
Last night was the Academy Awards, and Everything Everywhere All at Once won most of the things!, which is pretty much the best result we all could have hoped for, honestly it’s about time that a genre movie about a family fighting to save the multiverse by saving itself won Oscars; I just wish someone had used one of those wins to make a crack about Marvel.
(Really though, how great is it that a genre movie and big genre stars Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis received so much love? More of this, Oscars!)
Also last night, Jimmy Kimmel hosted, which I should have a witty comment about, except to be honest I spent the night with a friend at a tiki bar in Brooklyn whose name is a pun on Abe Vigoda. Truly, I just couldn’t be bothered to think about the Oscars this year, I don’t know why, the whole thing just did not interest me. Maybe it’s the difference between living in Los Angeles and New York, the drama and fancasting of it all just never reached me out here. Or maybe last year’s events just put me off the whole thing. Like, I really don’t need to ever hear about any of that ever again.
Also last night, one of my favorite sad boi TV shows ended. But we’ll get there.
It didn’t win Best Picture, but it did win best Adapted Screenplay, and I am thrilled, it’s amazing.
THE LIST IS LIFE
By any chance, do you keep a list somewhere of the TV shows you’ve got to watch, like a nerd homework list?
I’ve got one on my computer. Here’s a taste of what’s on it right now:
Deep Space Nine
The Flash
Shrinking
That Irish Show*
Doom Patrol
Little America
Dead End Paranormal Park
The Bear
New Billy Crudup Show on Apple
Gentleman Jack
Banner of Heaven
Ryan Reynolds Soccer show on Hulu**
Abbott Elementary
Dopesick
Tommy & Pam
Foundation
Trying ***
Frost
The Great
Reservation Dogs
Kevin Can !#!% Himself
Invincible
Sex Education
Atlanta
Wednesday
The Drop Out
Sex Education
Hill House
* I have no idea what this refers to.
** Oh wait, yes I do, it’s the show about the girls in Ireland in the 1980s.
*** Derry Girls. It’s called Derry Girls. (Also, is Trying the real name of this show?)
As you might note, some of these shows are pretty old (like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which I’ve been (very) slowly rewatching since the pandemic). And some I’ve already started, like Atlanta or Flash. I keep them on the list to remind me to go back to them.
Until recently, the top of the list—for a very long time—was Schitt’s Creek. Speaking of which:
I AM THIS MANY EPISODES INTO SCHITT’S CREEK
*sigh*
I may start it all over.
Random Aside: Schitt’s Creek fans—Schitters?—Did you know Eugene Levy has a reality show on Apple where he travels to exotic locations and is somewhat uncomfortable there? It’s actually pretty wonderful.
The top of my list has long been occupied by two other shows: Happy Valley and Endeavour. I actually spend an embarrassing amount of time each year googling “When is Happy Valley/Endeavour coming back?”
(In my defense, Happy Valley took something like a 7 year break before completing its third and final season this winter.)
And yesterday I just happened to discover that Endeavour’s final season has just come out in the UK. In fact it ended last night. (The picture above is the main cast somewhere near the end of production.)
*sigh*
I’ve written plenty about Endeavour, its predecessor Inspector Morse and sequel Lewis here already. They were my go-to pandemic anti-anxiety meds. Every night I would watch one 90-minute episode of that show, and everything would feel much better.
Which is ironic, because Morse and Endeavour are actually super sad shows about a guy desperate for companionship who always ends up alone. Maybe I liked them so much during the pandemic because I was on some level in a similar place, but honestly I think it was more that “bittersweet” is a color you don’t often see represented on TV in the States. Like, maybe in an episode here or there, a season or series ending moment. But as a consistent through line? No. We just don’t do that here.
(To be clear, it’s also a lot easier to paint in butterscotch—which is absolutely the candy flavour version of bittersweet—when you’re only doing 3 or 4 episodes a year.)
One theory that I’ve sort of stumbled onto in my life is that every feeling is meant to be savored, even the hard ones, in fact it’s only by letting ourselves feel them that we’re able to move through the hard experiences that generated some of them in the first place. There’s this wonderful little book of spiritual reflections called In the Shelter by Pádraig Ó Tuama, who might be slightly Irish. And the constant refrain in it is welcome. “Hello to what we do not know,” “Hello to time,” “Hello to the storm.” That’s what I’m talking about.
Hello, saying goodbye to a friend who got me through hard times.
An Oscar moment that I just adore.
IMPORTANT GEORGE R. R. MARTIN WINDS OF WINTER NEWS UPDATE
Me constantly Googling about Endeavour and Happy Valley—which stepping back is really me Googling “When Can I Be Sad Watching TV again?” over and over—puts me in mind of a cottage industry that I’ve discovered and would like a piece of: posting news updates about George R. R. Martin’s unfinished Game of Thrones books.
The world—well, the tiny piece of it that is Thrones fandom—has waited 12 years for Winds of Winter. And supposedly Martin has been working on it all this time, but I feel like there are hot dog finger sized air quotes around the word working, because he’s done a lot of other things in the same period.
And somehow the lack of any resolution or timeline has created not only frustration but the sense that it actually could be any day now, in fact it seems very Martin to just suddenly release the damn thing.
So from time to time I check, and every single time I get very excited because the most recent posts on this are always always always at most a couple weeks old. And they’ve almost always got a title that absolutely sounds like there’s something important here. Like check this out from some website that no one has ever heard of, which I’m not going to link to because it’s just nonsense.
The *UPDATE* is that they have nothing to share.
Some other site which is actually a blog had this headline:
That actually sounds like an update, but then you look on the video clip that is their source material, and it’s from an interview Martin gave last October.
Why do these randos do this? Because it makes money. Every click on their links is one more set of eyeballs on their site, and therefore one more reason advertisers should pay to use them. It’s all insane, of course; there’s nothing here to see. But you only find that out once you’ve arrived, and by that time, Ka-Ching.
Am I saying this is going to become a George R. R. Martin Winds of Winter Watch newsletter with accompanying podcast?
Well, no.
OMG OMG OMG WINDS OF WINTER IS FINALLY COMING!
In a recent interview George R. R. Martin confirms the book is getting closer to being finished! And he teases an INSANE plot twist.
Not the whole thing, anyway.
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
A 2023 Oscar moment one that I wish I could have been home to see my parents reacting to:
Even if you’ve seen Everything Everywhere All At Once (God why is that name so satisfying to say?), that performance is 100% weird.
But still, if David Byrne howling with hot dog fingers is the message you needed to get today, here it is.
See you next week.