Kromm

The apparently motiveless murder is a Hitchcock thing, even though I agree that it's not a MacGuffin. See the exhibit named "Strangers on a Train". The reason for things in that movie is only one of many ways to do an apparently motiveless murder, but I think it reinforces the idea that in Mystery fiction at least (unlike either reality or books that are Thrillers) there's always a motive somewhere. You just have to find it.

More supernatural. I guess Season 1 doing that was no fluke.

I know Wheel has it's fans, but to me this equates to reaching the bottom of the barrel with reaching for nighttime game show adaptions to provide COVID-era content.

Q is usually a lot more direct. He taunts people as part of his tests rather than setting up a mystery.

The production of the show got shut down in March and was down until August. So they had plenty of time to come up with that joke.

I'm a bit skeptical on Mack having layers. The show talks up the potential of him having them, but pulls back on that. I mean what's his contribution in the end?

Okay, this is both somehow very surprising and not at all surprising all at once: John Mulaney joins Seth Meyers’ ‘Late Night’ as staff writer Then again, the show has paid for John Lutz and Michelle Wolf in he past. Employing actually successful comedians seems to be Seth's thing.

It's a rare thing to have a region specific special, but even more unique is that it's on literally every broadcast channel in New York. It's basically a telethon to raise money for the Robin Hood organization. An organization which does exactly what the name implies. It's streaming, available presumably nationwide, a few places: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/heroes-of-new-york-a-robin-hood-special-to-air-tuesday-night-at-7-p-m/2753880/ https://abc7ny.com/robin-hood-foundation-heroes-of-new-york-charity-covid-19-relief/8388738/ The expected array of New York centric celebs are appearing. All the New York talk show people, sports people, singers, New York-centric actors, etc. Mariah Carey just was on. I was pleasantly surprised how good her voice was in this. I've been skeptical of her delivery for years now.

Somehow it's not a shock. For those wondering... Elliot Page Will Continue to Star in ‘Umbrella Academy,’ Netflix Changes Credits on His Past Films

Half those singers probably had to be told who he even was. Since all of them have to be coached on the final song, I'm sure they had to be prepped on the song too, since even the ones who had heard of it certainly didn't stand a chance of knowing more than the chorus. I will say that given that this show had the same rules as the last episode that seemed to be the Pilot episode, and had pre-pandemic celeb seating, maybe the show underwent a purposeful rework once they were forced into pandemic mode. Perhaps that included less lame singing guests. Rick is still a decent guitar player at least. Even if that's the only song he probably plays 90% of the time.

So Jamie Foxx couldn't be bothered to show up for a ZOOM session?

I'm hoping he at least uses a different name now. An intern in his 40s would be pretty sad.

Would a show in 1984 really have a valid claim of trying to dismantle gender roles anyway? I mean the basic notion of a man being the housekeeper was cribbed from Mr. Mom (from just the year before, and a big hit, so rest assured it was the influence), but both were presented as comedies. It's more like they were joking about and around the idea of dismantling gender roles than actually doing so. I mean even the title of "Mr. Mom" seems barbaric in retrospect, probably even more than "Who's The Boss". They're practically saying "Dad is funny because he's trying to be Mom".

If the idea is to have a neutral party call her out on her bullshit, the problem is that her in-universe bullshit is very different from what's disliked about her outside of it. In universe her bullshit is being headstrong, rebellious and yet always eventually right. Out universe her bullshit dovetails with that only in the "always right" part, since the other issues are mainly with how people around her react to her. If there'd been a character around her that served as a true sounding board for her all along perhaps this problem wouldn't exist. On deeper reflection, while I still think it's a bit unfair to give the Kirks of the show a pass and come down so hard on the Burnhams, it does occur to me that McCoy was Kirk's sounding board. Not that he ever actually changed Kirk's mind, but at least it projected to the viewing audience as Kirk having someone around questioning his wisdom. But at this late date I'm not sure there's enough to grab onto, as I said, because calling her out for being rebellious is hardly what most viewers want to hear. They want her to either just go away at this point, or somehow workably in show not be lauded, not be right, and yet also somehow not be so invalidated as a character that we instead tail off into some "woe-is-me what did I do" mode, something I think we all know will bother the viewing audience just as much if they have to sit through it.

I don't disagree with your analysis of the actor, but I do think they didn't place much of a priority on Mack being charming because they clearly knew from Day 1 that unlike Zack he wasn't the main protagonist. And in fact was meant to be a target of mockery by both the show itself AND the actual main protagonist (Daisy). She's the one who breaks the fourth wall to talk to us, after all, not Mack. Does the character even stand a chance of having the appeal of Zack, even if he WAS more charming, without that? But if he was allowed to do that, it would betray the clear intentional premise of this new version. That the old guys and their spawn kind of suck. That they're unrelatable and unsympathetic. So it's kind of both. He sucked because he's not charming, but he also sucks because he was meant to suck.