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‘Harley Quinn’ Renewed for Season 4 at HBO Max ↗

If you heard an enormous sigh of relief coming from somewhere in the general vicinity of Southern California today, that would be me when I saw the headline of this article.

I wrote in a footnote in this post that I was concerned that HBO Max, which is currently suffering from some kind of burn-it-all-to-the-ground madness, would kill the hilarious and subversive animated show Harley Quinn. For my money, it’s one of the best Batman-related things ever made. The shake-up happening in the DC area of HBO has been concerning from the start. The thinking there seems to be “screw righting the ship; just sink the damn thing and build a new one!” Had Harley Quinn been canceled it would have been a huge stain on the burgeoning reputation of Warner Bros. Discovery.

And this is all in the name of juicing up their stock prices. Since the chaos started, new CEO David Zaslav has been puffing out his chest and shouting, “Look how good at business I am!” This behavior has been appalling to see play out in real-time.

Well, fear no more for Harley Quinn (at least until it comes time to decide on renewing for a fifth season):

Harlivy shippers rejoice — everybody’s favorite supervillain couple is coming back to fight another day. “Harley Quinn” has been renewed for Season 4 at HBO Max.

In addition to the renewal, the streamer also announced that Sarah Peters, who has written for the show since Season 1 and serves as a consulting producer, has been promoted to executive producer and will take over duties as showrunner from creators Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker.

Good news all around for a show that deserves every accolade it receives. It’ll be a while before anybody knows whether the new ten year plan for DC will pay off, creatively and financially, but at least they’re not ruining every worthwhile property they currently have. Keep your fingers crossed that I haven’t spoken too soon.

I was surprised in the best way to read that there’s also a spinoff show in the works, and it looks delightful:

In addition to the main show, the “Harley Quinn” team is currently in development on a spinoff series titled “Noonan’s,” which follows Poison Ivy’s ex Kite Man (Matt Oberg) as he acquires the titular dive bar frequented by various Gotham City villains. Halpern and Schumacker told Variety that the series will also feature the voice of Cathy Ang, who guested in Season 3 of “Harley Quinn,” as Kite Man’s new girlfriend Golden Glider. The series also plans to feature the voice of James Adomian as recurring villain Bane.

Sold. I’m there on day one.

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If I were to ascend to the Iron Throne, my first act as king and great ruler of Westeros would be to file down the sharp points and edges of that damned uncomfortable looking thing.

Who wants to cut their butt open anytime they take a seat?

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Neil Gaiman Says He Sabotaged Jon Peters’ ‘Sandman’ Movie by Leaking ‘Really Stupid’ Script ↗

I’ve been enjoying The Sandman (save for one specific moment in the show). It’s been a delight to see this grand story finally take shape.

I’m also delighted to see how forceful and occasionally sneaky Neil Gaiman has been in trying to protect the work for which he’s perhaps best known. I’m sure producers have been sniffing around those graphic novels for a long time. At any moment in the past, we could have had a Sandman movie or show that was despicable.

Gaiman declined several movie offers for “The Sandman” throughout the last three decades, but the author recently revealed that he went as far as to sabotage an idea from “Wild Wild West” and “A Star Is Born” producer Jon Peters by leaking the script to the press.

“It was the worst script that I’ve ever read by anybody,” Gaiman said in an interview with Rolling Stone.

What a delightfully duplicitous thing to do. I would expect no less from him.

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I can’t complain when Spectrum increases my internet download speed by 100 Mbps for free, but man, they’ll do anything to avoid installing gigabit fiber in my area.

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Texas School District Removes Bible and Anne Frank Adaptation in Back-to-School Sweep ↗

From Amanda Holpuch:

One day before students returned to classrooms in North Texas, a school district ordered principals and librarians to remove books including the Bible and a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl” from libraries and classrooms.

Forty-one books were challenged by this backward school district last year with a new policy requiring that they be pulled from bookshelves until they can be reviewed. More than thirty-five thousand students may now have free access to important books taken from them.

Additional books challenged by the district include The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe.

These challenges are becoming more frequent, but no less disturbing and sad. Another public banning happened earlier this year, when Maus and others were removed from the shelves of a Tennessee school district. I wrote about it then in a post called The ban of Maus and other essential books. I shudder to think of the momentum that these misguided bans are building.

A notable quote from a speaker during a school board meeting on August 8, included in a CNN article on this story:

“We are very pleased that our new unwoke school board has made these changes. This is just the beginning, I hope.”

For too many people, being “woke” is the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. It’s the boogeyman. A living death. Unwokeness is a quality to strive for and wear like a badge of honor. In other words, compassion, equality, and fact-based learning should be rejected at all costs. Hatred, racism, misogyny, and bigotry are the only admirable qualities (but nobody who bans books would ever put it that truthfully).

How pathetic. Ignorance should be rejected at all costs instead.

Please consider purchasing, reading, and freely sharing these banned books with everyone you know. Especially younger people. They need to read the words that are kept from them. They’re all smarter than they’re given credit for; they can decide for themselves who they want to be and what they want to believe.

As an aside, I feel lucky to have attended school in Southern California when I did. Book bans have long been a blight on this country, but they weren’t so frequent and blatantly hateful when I was younger. I continue to hope that these bans don’t become more prevalent in my area of the state.

I also find it delightful that the Bible was flagged as an inappropriate book. It makes me think of The Satanic Temple and their continued fight against all things religiously hypocritical. Was the inclusion of the Bible their doing?

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I woke up to a rude and unwanted surprise this morning which made me immediately think of a previous post where I was dealing with the exact same rude and unwanted surprise. I’d like a year (or lifetime) of no terrible surprises, please.

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It’s always a good day when you can wake up early in the morning, have blood drawn, and not pass out in front of a group of concerned phlebotomists.

I’ve only done that once (clammy skin, woozy brain, head banging on the edge of the table), but that’s enough for one lifetime.

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Getting a bag of actually salty Skinny Pop popcorn is like winning the lottery: There’s a one in three hundred million shot it’ll happen and it’s remarkably surprising when it does.

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It made me sad to see what happened to Gregory the gargoyle in the second episode of The Sandman. A very sweet, loving, and playful as a puppy creature sacrifices its own life, much to the great sorrow of its caretakers, Cain and Abel, to provide Dream with some power to find his stolen tools, i.e., his punch of sand, his helmet, and his ruby.

I have yet to finish the graphic novels, but as far as I can tell, Gregory doesn’t ever die in the original books. He’s allowed to continue living with Cain and Abel, along with a new gargoyle named Goldie (but actually secretly Irving). Perhaps he might in a later issue, but there’s nothing to suggest this.1

Seeing this tragic scene play out in the show was distressing. Not enough for me to stop watching it, mind you; give me as much Neil Gaiman as you can, please. But in the short time Gregory is on-screen, he became a quick favorite. He’s just so dang lovable! It’s clear he brought much joy to those around him.

His sacrifice is graceful and noble, but it didn’t need to happen. That moment would still have worked had Dream taken back any other thing he gave to Cain and Abel, as happens in the book. Instead, the show knowingly hurt both its characters and, I’m betting, large swaths of its audience. It was an effective manipulation. Moments before the terrible death, Gregory was seen joyfully bouncing about and playing with a ball in front of a large, handmade gargoyle house. The show’s creators wanted the audience to see dog-like qualities. What are dogs if not playful, loyal, and easily loved? Who wouldn’t despair seeing something dog-like disappear forever?

Since watching that episode, this sad moment has stuck with me. The cruelty felt immense and unnecessary, made real only to hurt.

I’ll admit that this whole thing is silly at its core: Gregory, or any living gargoyle, is not real. I’m being deeply affected by a made-up creature in a made-up television show. Gregory can never die if he never actually existed. But I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I can’t forget or ignore this sort of pain so easily, no matter how fabricated it might be. This sort of cruelty is not something I want to witness because I know how I respond to it.

I should have checked in on the valuable site Does the Dog Die before watching this show. I was foolish not to; this heartache could have been prevented. I also encourage anybody who may feel like I do about this subject matter to also regularly visit the site. They’re doing good and helpful work.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue enjoying The Sandman (it has truly been excellent), but I’m sure I’ll be on edge from now on.

  1. If you know more than I do currently, then perhaps he is gone and I’m looking like quite the fool. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough. ↩︎

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HBO Max, Discovery+ to Merge Into Single Streaming Platform Starting in Summer 2023 ↗

Looks like my fears about HBO Max becoming more like Discovery+ were completely warranted. Since the merger was approved earlier this year, it was always going to end up this way. But it’s one thing to talk about it and another thing to see it happening.

Further evidence from Variety that things are going to get weird: ‘Fixer Upper’ and Other Magnolia Network Shows Coming to HBO Max in September. There’s a fair chance that we’ll soon have to scroll on past enormous banner images of such illustrious shows as 90 Day Fiancé, Alaskan Killer Bigfoot, I Love a Mama’s Boy, World’s Most Evil Killers, and My Five Wives to get to The Sopranos and Game of Thrones.

I enjoy stuff like Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives as much as the next person, but I don’t think it should share space with The Wire. Conversely, I’d bet that people who love what’s currently on offer at Discovery+ don’t want to see the sort of stuff that’s on HBO Max mixed together.

More concerning is the recent spate of original programming that’s recently been canceled or removed from HBO Max. These include:

And they’ve also announced that kids’ content will be cut, which is a damn shame. For anyone of a certain age, i.e., my age, the WB cartoon shows from the ‘90s were revolutionary.

I’m sure I’m missing some, but that’s already a hefty list. With the way things have been going lately, I’m sure it’ll grow longer.1

A little over a year ago, I said that AT&T (the former owner of Warner Bros.) CEO, John Stankey, was one of the worst things to happen to the studio and HBO. It turns out that I was too early in that assessment: Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is hard at work destroying what made HBO the powerhouse source of original storytelling it used to be. If former HBO CEO Richard Plepler was dead, he’d be rolling in his grave. Right now, he’s probably just shaking his head in frustration.

I’m hoping that my concerns will end up being unfounded. Perhaps some good can come out of this messiness. Deadline did also report that Zaslav said about HBO and HBO Max:

We’re going to spend dramatically more this year and next year than we spent last year [and] the year before.

Who knows what that’ll actually mean in the long term. I hope it won’t include abandoning all scripted television, as Screen Rant reports. However, given the figurative bloodbath that’s been occurring, I’m not going to hold my breath.

If you’re looking for a new place to enjoy excellent storytelling, I continue to heartily recommend just about everything on Apple TV+. Give Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, Severance, and See a try. They’re clearly building a brand focused on longevity and, most importantly, quality. It reminds me of what the old HBO used to be.

  1. My greatest concern now is that the wonderful Harley Quinn will be among the next to go. ↩︎

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Letterboxd Diaries—July 2022

Total movies watched: 26.

Favorite movie of the month: Klaus.

Worst movie of the month: Miami Vice.

Be sure to follow me on Letterboxd! 🎥

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Going out to Los Angeles may not be my favorite activity, but it’s nice when the trip is for a family birthday celebration.

And when the place we’re eating at is next to a fancy ice cream shop. 🍦🤤

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First power outage of the summer season and it’s not even the hottest day of the last few months. Surely, things aren’t being overloaded.

How does that make any sense?

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‘For All Mankind’ Renewed for Season 4 at Apple ↗

“For All Mankind” has been renewed for Season 4 at Apple.

The announcement was made Friday as part of the show’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con. Production on the new season is scheduled to begin in August.

Apple has spent a lot of time and money pushing shows like The Morning Show, Severance, and Ted Lasso on their streaming service. For good reason, no doubt—they’re spectacular (especially the last two). However, For All Mankind, for my money, is their sleeper hit.1

It may not ever develop the same sort of fervent fanbase or be an “of the moment” experience that Ted Lasso has enjoyed. For All Mankind is not a feel-good, inspirational comedy. It’s dramatic sci-fi, which may turn people away. But what it lacks in laughs, it equals in quality and storytelling.

I’m looking forward to traveling the cosmos with this show for another season.

  1. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention See in the same breath. Stuff like Game of Thrones and The Witcher wish they could be as consistently unique and good. ↩︎

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One Billion: Letterboxd Hits Major Movie Milestone ↗

One of the two social networks I actually care about1 just hit a major milestone. A billion films were watched and logged in a little over a decade. That’s an average of 100,000,000 films a year. 273,973 films a day. 11,416 films every hour.

Impressive as hell. Here’s to a billion more!

  1. The other obviously being Micro.blog. ↩︎

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Netflix Admits Some Shows Won’t Make It To Ad Tier, In Talks With Studios Over Licensing Deals ↗

By Peter White for Deadline:

Netflix plans to launch its advertising tier in early 2023, but not all of the shows that are currently streaming on the service will make the cut.

Obviously, they’ll still be offering all of their original content, as confirmed by the article, but this is a peculiar licensing issue. Either these studios don’t want their shows played with ads or there needs to be a new deal struck anytime the status quo changes. I’m betting on the second one. Rarely are things simple when media companies are involved.

Or there’s some mystery third reason. Your guess is as good as mine there; I’m no industry insider.

I’m certain this ad-supported tier will actually be a boon for Netflix—their pricing is exceptionally high and this new tier should be far more affordable. It’ll be great for people who can stand ads playing during their shows and movies.

I’m not one of those people.

Limiting the number of available shows probably isn’t going to make someone interested in this new tier think twice about signing up. It’s not going to convince me to downgrade, though. Fewer content options and unskippable ads? That sounds like a nightmare. No thank you, sir!

On top of all this, Netflix has been losing subscribers (albeit at a slower rate than predicted), so I’ll be curious to see how this new shake-up shakes out.

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I can’t recall the last time I binged a show as quickly as I did The Bear.

I don’t know what it was about that barely surviving, dysfunctional as hell restaurant and its cooks, but I was invested. And what a moving final episode of the season!

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I would happily trade my tinnitus for hearing the world as if everything was recorded for an independent French film from the 1960s.

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In the unending war against visual wire clutter on my desk, I’ve just lobbed a volley of under-desk clamp-on cord organizers.

It is unknown what the wires will do in response to this advancement.

I remain steadfast and committed to being victorious in this regard.

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On one hand, becoming Dr. Manhattan sounds like it would be a great and terrible burden.

On the other hand, think of all the quiet rest I could enjoy! Just me hanging out in the happy face crater on Mars without a care or stitch of clothing in the universe.