This week:
- Unhinged TV is so back.
- Being respectful about Robert Redford.
- Surprising James Corden update.
- The Emmy moment I’ll never forget.
- A timely visit to recent history.
The Golden Age of Bonkers
It is the best time of year for TV fans: hootin’ and hollerin’ season.
Sure, fall TV season heralds the arrival of new prestige dramas and the return of the medium’s best shows. Snooze. It’s also when the most preposterously silly, beautifully bonkers series come back to delight and distract us. You could say their erstwhile craziness is a public service.
This week, just when we need them the most, the Holy Trinity of TV Lunacy premiered new seasons, and, having seen them, I’m just so grateful: The Morning Show, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and Dancing With the Stars.
The Morning Show is Apple TV+’s Law & Order by way of a Mexican soap opera, ripping plot points from real-world new events and using them as the backdrop for its characters to act a damn fool in front of—the canvas on which to go full Pollock with their derangement.
If you haven’t seen the Jennifer Aniston/Reese Witherspoon series, about the sordid lives of the people who make a morning news program, then the journey is a jarring one. It’s like when you ride a roller coaster and it pulls out of the loading zone at a breakneck speed and you’re like, “Surely, this whole ride can’t be this herky-jerky and unsettling…” But then it is.
If you are familiar with the program, however, you crave its unexpectedly appealing mix of uncomfortable sincerity and circus-clown takes on recent history. (This is a show that had a billionaire take a morning show host to outer space before the idea was but a glimmer in Elon Musk and Gayle King’s eyes.)
In just one episode, this week’s Season 4 premiere, one broadcaster impulsively creates an international incident when she helps a source defect to the U.S.; a journalist who infiltrated the Jan. 6 insurrection and withheld evidence from the FBI gets her job as an anchor back and immediately starts whistleblowing again; the Paris Olympics are treated with the kind of historical gravity we typically reserved for world wars and humanitarian crises; and Marion Cotillard arrives. (Important!)
That just scratches the surface of a season that is also tackling AI, workplace sex scandals, and manosphere podcast bros, oh my! It’s 2025 Dorothy’s trifecta of hell—and my personal pleasure to get to see unfold each week.
The word “joy” barely does justice to the experience of watching The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
It is high time for people to stop scoffing at reality TV, generally speaking, but especially the Real Housewives—and this franchise, specifically.
This many years into the reality TV boom, production companies, editors, and especially the casts have perfected the genre. RHOSLC is high art. It is—and I don’t mean this as some kind of cheeky hyperbole to rankle and provoke TV fans—the best comedy series on television.
Whether it is depicting the blood-thirsty fighting of the cast, their emotional and vulnerable moments, or their mundane daily lives; making expert use of the women’s lacerating wit; or knowing when to employ a Greek chorus-esque commentary from a confessional: the show is a more successful and humorous evolution of The Office’s documentary comedy format than most of the copycat series that have followed.
And then there’s the other major reality TV series that returned this week: Season 493 of Dancing With the Stars. Yes, folks, preposterously, Dancing With the Stars has become cool again.
The show is still an assemblage of the greatest “who?”s of today mixed in with a smattering of “oh, I remember them”s from the past. But there is something about this season’s cast that is especially appealing.
In this week’s premiere, Hilaria Baldwin cha-cha-cha’d to a Jennifer Lopez hit. (You know, in honor of her Hispanic culture.) There were multiple Mormon Wives, of Secret Lives fame, trading their undergarments for barely-there beaded competition gowns.
The lady from The Parent Trap (love!) and the lady from Boy Meets World (also love!) grapevined their way into our nostalgia-loving hearts, while Steve Irwin’s son and Zac Efron’s brother held a “which of these randomly now-famous reality stars is hunkier” battle royale.
(Traitors alum Dylan Efron inexplicably dancing to “Milkshake” and beginning his routine by twerking wins the Kevin Fallon vote in a landslide.)
Television doesn’t always need to reflect your life. Sometimes, it should be absolutely ludicrous.
It is important to keep our eyebrow muscles strong by raising them in confusion and our neck’s nimble from whiplash reactions to wild plot points. It is self-care. These shows—these wonderfully outrageous shows—are necessary varieties to our pop culture diets, essential to our well-being.
They Don’t Make Them Like Robert Redford Anymore
Robert Redford was one-of-a-kind.
He was an actor whose charisma was blinding, but who was also capable of devastating with subtle, even silent performance. He was a director who understood the human condition with a painful, profound poignancy. He understood the power of cinema, and used his celebrity to elevate small, independent works. He was the rare blonde man to not be categorically evil.
And, my god, was he an absolute smoke show.
Is the fact that Robert Redford was a once-in-a-lifetime total babe as significant as his contributions to the arts? After spending the week clocking each and every photo that was posted following the news of his death at age 89, I have to say, unequivocally: yes.
men will never look this cool again btw pic.twitter.com/lPevRLzpDX
— the one they call paris (@allisonargented) September 16, 2025
they simply do not make them like this anymore pic.twitter.com/3fTyR9KkcJ
— Zara Rahim (@ZaraRahim) September 16, 2025
Unfortunately no one will ever look cooler than Robert Redford playing ping-pong with Paul Newman pic.twitter.com/oFvPWBWLfO
— Bonnie Stiernberg (@aahrealbonsters) September 16, 2025
An Absolute Showstopper
At some point in his run as host of The Late Late Show, James Corden’s relationship to the public morphed from jolly clown to insufferable menace.
Even as someone who covers pop culture, I can’t pinpoint how or why that happened, other than to have definitely observed a society divided between “love those Carpool Karaokes!” and “this man must be jailed.” It never totally made sense to me, but it was a palpable division.
So you might call Corden’s turn in the Broadway play Art a comeback. At the very least, it’s a reminder that the star—who, remember, has a Tony Award for one of the funniest performances ever to hit the stage in One Man, Two Guvnors—is one of the most talented comedic actors we have.
He is a tour de force in Art, arguing opposite Bobby Cannavale and Neil Patrick Harris about the nature of their friendship and, well, the nature of art. There is a banger of a monologue that he delivers that I predict, with full knowledge of it being wildly premature, will win him a second Tony. He’s that good.
My Gay Lil’ Heart Is Bursting
I have never in my life screamed in reaction to an awards win the way that I did when Jeff Hiller won the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Emmy for his work in Somebody Somewhere.
It’s a gorgeous, hilarious, soul-shattering, and soul-healing performance, the kind that you root for garnering attention, but presume will have to settle for “it’s an honor just to be nominated” distinction because the series is so small and under-the-radar compared to the other contenders.
Not only did my heart burst because Hiller won, but the photo that went viral of the moment after his name was called fills me with intense, emotional joy every time I see it: the other gay nominees in Hiller’s category—Colman Domingo, Michael Urie, and Bowen Yang—on their feet in a state of euphoria over their friend getting the recognition he deserves.
How gay guys react to losing an Emmy to Jeff Hiller pic.twitter.com/TPhhin20Ud
— n҉o҉p҉e҉🍉 (@fl00rhairs) September 15, 2025
A Good Time to Visit the Archives
For some reason, I felt like it would be a good time to surface this video of Jimmy Kimmel speaking about the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on his show Jimmy Kimmel Live!
More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed
How High Potential pulled off the miracle of being a broadcast TV hit. Read more.
The crass stunt that almost ruined this year’s Emmy Awards. Read more.
The glorious rise of the Real Housewife with the “high body count” hair. Read more.
What to watch this week:
Black Rabbit: Jude Law and Jason Bateman team up for your new Netflix obsession. (Now on Netflix)
Him: An utterly completely ridiculous movie. (Complimentary.) (Now in theaters)
The Lowdown: Ethan Hawke can do no wrong. (Tues. on FX)
What to skip this week:
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey: Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie deliver an overdose of sappiness. (Now in theaters)
Gen V: What happened to this show that used to be so cool? (Now on Prime Video)
The post The Fall of Absolutely Insane TV Shows Is Upon Us appeared first on The Daily Beast.
