“On the cusp of a potential strike, writers explain why no one is having much fun making television anymore.”
television
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Making of Tom Wambsgans
“Before the final season of ‘Succession,’ Matthew Macfadyen and others explain the creation and expansion of the show’s most unlikely power player.”
Posted inFeature
How Wednesday Addams Birthed a Generation of Cynics
Emily Alford | Longreads | November 23, 2022 | 8 minutes (2,132 words) Midway through 1991’s The Addams Family, young Wednesday Addams attempts to supplement her family’s lost fortunes by selling poison lemonade for a nickel. Not everyone’s a willing customer. “I only like all-natural foods and beverages, organically grown with no preservatives,” a perky […]
Posted inNonfiction
‘We Deserve So Much More Than Police, Prisons, and Jails’: Scalawag Takes On Emmy-Winning Television
We recommend these incisive essays on Abbott Elementary, The White Lotus, and The Dropout in Scalawag’s series on pop culture and justice.
Posted inNonfiction
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, our editors recommend notable features and essays by Katie Barnes, Rachel Handler, Alex Hawkins, Lila Shapiro, and Raksha Vasudevan.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Nathan Fielder Is Out of His Mind (and Inside Yours)
On the axis of cringe comedy, Nathan Fielder’s work on TV series Nathan For You ranks somewhere between Sasha Baron Cohen and Covering Your Eyes and Ears to Escape the Vicarious Embarrassment. But Lila Shapiro’s profile, coming just ahead of Fielder’s return to television, attempts to peel back the layers of artifice between man and world. […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Every Language Everywhere All at Once
As our choices for films and television shows made around the world increase in the streaming era, so do the challenges of translation. Rafael Motamayor explores the art — and complicated process — of translating foreign content for international viewers. We are far removed from the days of flagrant cultural erasure through dubbing — Pokémon […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
How ‘Sex and the City’ Sent Me Down a Fake Baseball Rabbit Hole
“Lots of shows and movies include snippets of fake sports broadcasts as background noise. Yet this one had sounded conspicuously real. Instead of simply rattling off a score, the broadcast had included just the right level of specificity, all the textured banality of a random at bat. There seemed to be a whole booth involved […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
On “Succession,” Jeremy Strong Doesn’t Get the Joke
When I told Strong that I, too, thought of the show as a dark comedy, he looked at me with incomprehension and asked, “In the sense that, like, Chekhov is comedy?” No, I said, in the sense that it’s funny. “That’s exactly why we cast Jeremy in that role,” McKay told me. “Because he’s not […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Mr. Miyagi Taught Me About Anti-Asian Racism in America
In The Karate Kid franchise, writes Beth Nguyen, “Mr. Miyagi is the perpetual foreigner who exists to serve the whiteness that surrounds him.”