FrontBackS2S: March/April
A new series I'd like to try out: A pop culture sampling, looking forward and back in time. You'll see how it goes below.
Today is April 1st, which means I'm invoicing past work and looking ahead at what's new to pitch. This also feels like a nice time to bookmark some of what I've been watching, reading, listening to, and what lies ahead. This exercise particularly revolves around a three-piece of shows: Better Call Saul, The Leftovers and Fargo all premiering within nine days of each other. Style, substance, story, just three programs that I have completely given myself to. Their timing this month a dream.
And March has set this up well. Big Little Lies and Crashing have buoyed Sunday and HBO as a focal viewing point. Legion is an MC Escher painting, equally parts dazzling and dizzying.
Elsewhere, Drake released a 22 track "playlist." Logan ripped my head all the way off. Beauty & The Beast has people on nostalgic overdose. It's just a great time to consume pop culture right now, and if you catch me at all in the next 12 weeks, I'll have the above three shows very heavily on the mind. Now, onto some pieces from the past month.
- How Big Little Lies' 6 year old DJ captures the streaming generation: The Ringer
"She was raised on playlists, not full albums. She very well may know nothing about these artists at all, but this does not make Chloe love these single songs any less.
- Drake's tour of the world brings him back: Vulture
"Public admiration of Adele and Taylor Swift seemed to spell Drake’s intentions out even clearer, and the music leaned into those artists’ surgical craftsmanship, as well as their poor batting average with deep cuts. You lose yourself when you tailor your writing to the perceived interests of an audience instead of luring them in with your own truth, and it’s never long before you start to lose them too."
- For all of Legion's flash, the void within: Uproxx
"When Legion was operating at peak weirdness — through much of that time-bending first episode, or the dreamy fourth chapter, or the utterly gonzo “Bolero” sequence last week — its form was so dazzling that its function, and the thin man at the center of it, didn’t much matter. When it went slightly more straightforward, like in the mental hospital interlude of “Chapter 6,” or the relatively conventional battle of good vs. evil in this climactic episode, then the hollowness of David, and of much of the story, becomes more of an issue."