by Julian Spivey
The second season of HBO’s apocalyptic drama video game adaptation “The Last of Us,” which wrapped its season on Sunday, May 25, proved to be quite controversial among the show’s fan base.

​Often TV/film viewers will find controversy when the show/film they are watching doesn’t stick closely enough to the source material, but in a rare instance, “The Last of Us” seems to be controversial because it hues rather closely to its source material, which in the case of the second season was 2020’s “The Last of Us Part II” video game.

There will be spoilers ahead for those who haven’t seen the second season of “The Last of Us.” 
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I never played “The Last of Us” or “The Last of Us Part II.” I’m not much of a gamer, personally. But I found myself entranced by this darkly dramatic series in its first season, thanks to its storyline and terrific performances by Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey and a mesmerizing supporting cast of guest actors and actresses.
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So, when the second episode of season two came to an end, I was in for a shock that those who played “The Last of Us Part II” knew that the death of Joel, whose perspective the majority of the first season had followed, was coming at some point.

Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the latter of whom also co-created the games, had me hooked, as did this world they had built, so I wasn’t about to give up on the series due to the death of a popular and amazing character, as some immediately did. I had to see their vision through to the end. This was sticking to the source material, and I respected that.

Much of the remainder of season two sees Ramsey’s Ellie, the orphan Joel had taken under his wing who is immune to the fungal infection that transforms its hosts into zombie-like creature, and her best friend, and love interest, Dina (the wonderful Isabela Merced), go on a revenge quest to find the person who murdered Joel.

Many watching season two seemed to find these episodes disjointed at best, but I was intrigued enough by the Ellie character, her relationship with Dina, and other side storylines like those involving former FEDRA sergeant turned WLF leader Isaac (the incredible Jeffrey Wright) that I remained interested in and entertained the rest of the season.

Sunday’s finale, “Convergence,” seemed like another controversial moment for the series, as it wasn’t a wrap on the season, like the show had done in season one. Season one was the story of the first “The Last of Us” video game in its entirety. Seasons two and an upcoming season three are being produced in split perspectives, similar to how I believe “The Last of Us Part II” video game was created (though, again, I haven’t played it, so I could be wrong about that). The majority of season two has us watching Ellie’s version of revenge. Season three will shift us to the perspective of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and have us follow her as the main character until the moment that ended season two, a showdown between her and Ellie, which effectively ended season two with a giant cliffhanger of a gunshot being fired from Abby and the screen going dark.

Cliffhangers will always be a matter of controversy. People typically don’t want to wait a year, especially in the streaming universe, though with a show like “The Last of Us,” it might be even longer before they have a resolution. It feels like “The Last of Us” is going to make viewers wait even longer, with season three likely following Abby for a large swath of time before we get to what happened between her and Ellie.

I don’t mind cliffhangers, as long as there is a payoff in the end, and I’ve seen nothing from Mazin, Druckmann, and the fine cast and crew of the show to lead me to believe I have anything to worry about. I’m invested. I find the different perspective aspect of “The Last of Us” to be unique and interesting, and the writing and performances in the show haven’t led me astray yet.

 
Jimmy Kimmel canceled a taping of his nightly ABC talk show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” on Monday, May 19, and social media was abuzz with rumors that the veteran late-night comedian did so to retaliate against one of his scheduled guests that evening.
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The truth, which was fairly easy to find if one wanted facts, was that Kimmel was about to become a grandfather for the first time, as his daughter Katherine (33), one of his two adult children from his first marriage to Gina Maddy Kimmel, had given birth to a baby on Monday.

However, if you were perusing Threads and likely other social media sites (I shitcanned X late last year) on Monday and Tuesday you would’ve been under the impression that Kimmel’s show was canceled on Monday because he didn’t want to either interview CNN newsman Jake Tapper, one of the night’s scheduled guests, who’s book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, And His Disastrous Choice to Run Again co-written with Alex Thompson, was to be released the next day.  

This incorrect assumption was prevalent on social media and even ran the next day on the so-called entertainment website showbiz411.com (and it’s still up!), with numerous people congratulating Kimmel for sticking it to Tapper and not allowing him to promote his book on the show, when they should have been congratulating him on becoming a grandfather. Tapper’s book is controversial in some circles, and he’s been a target of online hatred since the book was recently revealed.

If Kimmel didn’t want Tapper to promote his book on his show, wouldn’t it have been easier to cancel Tapper’s guest spot than cancel an entire taping that included “The Studio” star Seth Rogen instead? Or do we just no longer use our brains?

On Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Kimmel officially revealed the reasoning for the cancellation to be the birth of his granddaughter. He said: “Katie and her husband, Will, had a baby girl right at the time we shoot our show last night. So, I decided to be there instead of here.”

I hate how easily fake news is proliferated and shared on social media. It has been an online epidemic for a long time, but it seems to be seeping into parts of life where it has no business being, and people don’t seem to care that they're sharing disinformation. They want to believe what they’re sharing, and they don’t take the time to fact-check it.

I expect as much from a particular group of people, and I’ll just come out and say it … conservatives. They have a history of believing what they want to believe online, falling for disinformation and willfully sharing said information.

But that’s not what happened with this fake Kimmel/Tapper story. Most of the people I saw sharing the news thanked Kimmel for standing against Tapper. They wanted to believe he canceled his show to symbolically rebuke Tapper or stand up for the legacy of President Biden.

The conservative party has fallen so far down the well of disinformation that I fear many will never climb back out. I don’t want to see the rest of us fall with them. While the liberal version of disinformation may not be as racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. as the conservative version, it’s still wrong and could lead to a slippery slope.

Let’s get our facts straight.

by Julian Spivey
The milestone 50th season of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” concluded on Saturday, May 17, with an episode hosted by five-timer club member Scarlett Johansson, marking her seventh appearance as host.

It was the worst season finale of the show I can remember in my 20-plus years of watching it live, which made it a fitting way to end the 50th season.

There was a great deal of anticipation and excitement leading into this season – the expectation that we would likely see more legendary cast members returning to host or appear in cameos than usual. And, while we did see some returning legends – mostly Dana Carvey and Mike Myers (though somehow never together) – this was mostly relegated to the 50th anniversary special, which unfortunately paled in comparison to the show’s 40th anniversary special.

The finale on Saturday was dishearteningly bad. It felt like the writers were ready to call it a season early and wound up giving the absolute worst ideas and sketches. 
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Here are the highlights and lowlights from the episode:

Best
‘SNL’ seems more obsessed with President Donald Trump than any other president who has come before him. Maybe it’s because James Austin Johnson’s impression is probably the most accurate Presidential impression in the show’s history? Perhaps it’s just that President Trump truly is that omnipresent? While I’d like the show to not open almost every episode with JAJ’s Trump, there continue to be highlights from these cold openings, even when the entire sketch isn’t hilarious. The part I enjoyed most about this cold opening was JAJ breaking the fourth wall by taking his Trump into the audience, sitting next to them and joking about things like the attractiveness of the show’s audience: “Sevens or more sit on the floor, six and below to the bleachers you go.” 

Worst
Where to start with this episode?

Let’s go with the final sketch of the season – the ridiculous Victorian Ladies at Lunch sketch, which sees Johansson, Chloe Fineman, Heidi Gardner and Sarah Sherman eating the strangest of things, like jellied eel and picked cow’s feet. The joke is that these posh women eat the most disgusting of things, in the most disgusting of ways, and afterward discuss what the foods did to their digestive systems. The cast seemed to be enjoying it at least.

Worst
Johansson and Kenan Thompson played intimacy coordinators on the set of a lesbian romance. The biggest joke of the sketch was Thompson’s character not understanding how lesbians can have sex. It felt like a middle-schooler wrote it.

Worst
Johansson and Bowen Yang played a couple of “Entertainment Weekly”-type TV hosts interviewing the cast of a popular TV show filled with young adults, with the one joke being about how Marcello Hernandez’s character is so cute, while throwing gotcha journalism-type questions to the female cast members, played by Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, Jane Wickline, etc.

Worst
In a sequel to last season’s “Bowen is Straight” film with Sydney Sweeney, we got “Bowen’s Still Straight,” where Johansson falls for Bowen Yang, despite being married to the show’s Weekend Update co-anchor, Colin Jost. Again, it’s one recycled joke – what if Yang were portraying gay on television, while being this super masculine heterosexual behind the scenes? It’s worth one chuckle, and that’s it.

by Julian Spivey
There have been dozens of great recurring characters in the 50-season history of “Saturday Night Live.” But there have also been characters we loathe. The kind of characters we despise so much that we roll our eyes or even groan when they appear on our screens.

​Some characters probably should make this list, like Dana Carvey’s horrific racial stereotype Ching Chang, which appeared six times from 1986-1990 and then again in 2000 (how the hell did that happen?!). But I’ve never seen it for myself, so I can’t really speak to the horrors of it, though I certainly can imagine.

Here are my choices for the five worst recurring ‘SNL’ characters: 
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5. Joey Mack
Jimmy Fallon likely has two or three characters that could appear on this list, but the one I always hated the most was his morning radio show DJ Joey Mack of Z105, which appeared five times from 2002-2004, including three times over five months in 2004. Truthfully, Joey Mack may have been an accurate portrayal of radio morning show DJs and their hijinks, but that doesn’t make it any more palatable. It was a bit for Fallon to act wacky and use different voices, including some of his better impressions, but it was never actually funny, and the thing I remember most, more than 20 years later, are what seemed like never-ending fart jokes. 

4. Richard Laymer
I have quoted this character within the last few weeks, so more than 30 years after leaving ‘SNL,’ Rob Schneider’s most memorable character still holds some pop culture cache. And I must admit there may be some slight bias here because I loathe the human Schneider has become (maybe he was always this way?). But Richard Laymer, who you probably wouldn’t even remember by that name, but more as “The Richmeister,” was a one-note, annoying character that somehow found its way onto the show 12 times in less than three years in the early ‘90s. I’m thankful the show doesn’t overdo recurring characters anymore. I’d be shocked if you remember anything besides “makin’ copies” from this character. 

3. Jonathan Cavanaugh-san
I liked Taran Killam on ‘SNL,’ but he had some recurring bits that made me cringe each time they came on. I still have nightmares about Mokiki, which may have been on this list had it been a recurring bit. There’s a specific kind of person, usually white male, whom I’d rank very high had I a “most annoying persons” list, who is fascinated by Japanese culture to the point of cultural appropriation. I don’t know if Killam was one of those people or was just so good at mimicking or even mocking them that it was too believable. His Jonathan Cavanaugh-san, co-host of the J-Pop America Fun Time Now! show with Vanessa Bayer’s Rebecca Stern-Marcowitz-san, was that exact character. The bit only appeared four times, but I hated it every single second. If there was ever a recurring bit completely not for me as an ‘SNL’ viewer, it was J-Pop America Fun Time Now!

2. Dooneese
Probably my most controversial ‘SNL’ opinion is that I didn’t like Kristen Wiig. I found most of her recurring characters to be derivative of each other, too annoying, and constantly shoved down our throats. But none of her characters come close to being as horribly unfunny as Dooneese, the ugly duckling of a sister who performs on “The Lawrence Welk Show,” which appeared 10 times on the show, most recently in February’s 50th anniversary special. Dooneese is a sight gag – she has tiny hands and a gigantic forehead – and the male singers in these sketches are always horrified by her. It’s the same joke every single time. 

1. Pat
Pat is a character who would never make it to air in 2025. The show even remarked about how insensitive the character was in a bit on the 50th anniversary special in February. It’s a shame that it’s probably the only real thing Julia Sweeney is remembered for, not just on ‘SNL,’ but in her career. Pat was androgynous, and the entire joke of the character and every sketch was that nobody knew exactly what Pat was – male or female. That’s it. And for some reason, it was one of the most popular and most-used characters on the show during the early-90s, appearing a whopping 14 times from 1990-1994, and even spawning off a critical and commercial bomb of a feature film crudely titled “It’s Pat” in 1994. It’s not even just the crudeness around Pat’s gender that makes this the worst ‘SNL’ character, but the fact that Sweeney played Pat as such a whiny, grating personality.  

by Julian Spivey
​The penultimate episode of the milestone 50th season of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” proved to be a standout moment for first-time host Walton Goggins, fresh off recent seasons of HBO’s “The White Lotus” and “The Righteous Gemstones.” The nearly perfect episode showcased Goggins’ willingness to do anything and was one of the best overall episodes of the season.

Here are the best and worst moments from the episode…

by Julian Spivey
Quinta Brunson, star of ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” made her sophomore hosting appearance on “Saturday Night Live” on Saturday, May 3. She made her ‘SNL’ debut just two seasons ago.

​Brunson hosting ‘SNL’ is sort of a throwback to when the show had actual TV stars hosting it—the show has shied away from TV stars, especially those on network shows, hosting over the last couple of decades.

Here are the best and worst moments of Saturday’s episode. 
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Best
I realize this sketch is probably highly offensive to addicts who attend addicts anonymous meetings. Still, I couldn’t help but find Kenan Thompson playing a cocaine addict, new to town, trying to find out the best places to score cocaine at such a meeting to be hilarious. It’s the kind of sketch that wouldn’t have been out of place in the first few years of the show – the only difference being some of those cast members were unfortunately addicts. It’s one of those one-note sketches that probably only works in the hands of the cheery Thompson. 

Worst
One of the biggest stories online this week was, “Could 100 men defeat a gorilla in a fight?” – you know, because we’re a country not struggling to survive. It was prime ground for ‘SNL’ to mock and they did so with a sketch that should’ve worked for me: Two Bitches vs. a Gorilla, in which Brunson and Ego Nwodim played said bitches. The sketch shows the two women who have entered a gorilla enclosure in a zoo, insulting the gorilla. Despite my admiration for these two performers and the good idea, it didn’t work. 

Best
The fact that the Jerry “Jackrabbit” Tulane sketch that ended the episode worked so much for me might prove that the show’s comedy has aged out of my demographic, even though I’m still younger than some of the show’s cast members. In the sketch, Brunson played Jerry “Jackrabbit” Tulane, a brash, fast-talking, wise-cracking boxer in the mold of Muhammad Ali – there’s only one problem, Tulane is WAY smaller than his opponent Bo Shannon (Devon Walker). Despite Tulane’s confidence and never give up attitude he keeps getting the ever-loving crap beat out of him. It’s an old-school sketch idea and performance by Brunson, but I enjoyed it. 

Best
Michael Longfellow’s Weekend Update bit about refusing to get a Real ID was funny, but I want to focus on one specific line from the segment. I like when the show focuses on the “inside stuff,” and this following bit from Longfellow got me:

Longfellow: I’m not going to the DMV on my day off. You’re out of your mind. I work way too hard, like 12 hours a week.

Colin Jost: You’re at ‘SNL’ and you only work 12 hours a week?

Longfellow: When you love your job, it never feels like work. No, I’m just not in that much stuff this season.

​It’s funny because it’s true. Longfellow’s dry wit makes him a good showcase for face-to-camera Weekend Update bits, but his style doesn’t really suit him well for sketch comedy. As a result, he might not be around the show much longer, but I enjoyed the funny because of its honest approach.

Four Seasons (Netflix) – Thursday, May 1
Tina Fey’s latest foray into television is “Four Seasons,” an eight-episode limited series based on Alan Alda’s 1981 film that saw three middle-class married couples who vacationed with each other through the different seasons of the year. Despite being well reviewed, I didn’t care too much for the film, even though I’m an Alda stan. But I’m willing to give Fey the benefit of the doubt, especially with a supporting cast that includes Steve Carell, Will Forte, and Colman Domingo. The entire limited series drops on Netflix on Thursday, May 1. 

A Double Dose of Conan O’Brien: 2025 Mark Twain Prize (Netflix) – Sunday, May 4 & Conan O’Brien Must Go (Max) – Thursday, May 8
May will be a big month for fans of the supremely hilarious Conan O’Brien. In late March, O’Brien was honored with the 2025 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. That evening, which featured some of O’Brien’s biggest friends and fans in comedy paying homage to Irish funny man, was recorded and will debut on Netflix on Sunday, May 4. O’Brien’s humorous travel series, “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” which debuted last year, returns for its second season on Max on Thursday, May 8. Unfortunately, that season only includes three episodes, with O’Brien visiting and making a mockery of himself in New Zealand (May 8), Spain (May 15) and Austria (May 22).

Poker Face: Season 2 (Peacock) – Thursday, May 8
When it debuted on Peacock in early 2023, “Poker Face,” which sees the wonderful Natasha Lyonne getting her best Columbo on with a new mystery each episode, was one of the year’s best shows. After a more than two-year wait, the show, which was created by Rian Johnson, the genius behind the “Knives Out” films, returns on Thursday, May 8, with 12 new episodes, debuting once a week through mid-July. Between Lyonne’s quirky performance, Johnson’s steady hand as a leader (though it appears he didn’t write any of the season two episodes), and the show's excellent guest of the week aspect, it should continue as one of TV’s best outings. Season two guest stars include Cynthia Erivo, Carol Kane, John Mulaney, and Kumail Nanjiani.  

Sirens (Netflix) – Thursday, May 22
Before writing this piece, I only knew about Netflix’s limited series “Sirens” was that it featured Julianne Moore as a lead and could draw some Emmy love when nominations are announced this summer. That was enough to pique my interest. Looking further into it, it’s a black comedy about an explosive weekend at a lavish beach estate and is described as an “incisive, sexy, and darkly funny exploration of women, power, and class,” which immediately draws comparisons to HBO’s “The White Lotus.” The limited series, created by Molly Smith Metzler based on her own 2011 play “Elemeno Pea,” features a supporting cast of Meghann Fahy, Kevin Bacon, Milly Alcock and Glenn Howerton. The series drops on Netflix on Thursday, May 22.   

Adults (FX) – Wednesday, May 28
One of the breaths of fresh air TV comedies of 2024 was FX’s “English Teacher,” created and starring Brian Jordan Alvarez (though some of that fresh air turned sour by reports of his past behavior). FX is probably hoping for some of the hype from that series, without the controversy, of course, with its latest comedy, “Adults.” The show, created by Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, is about a group of friends doing their best to survive young adulthood with its many challenges and stars a cast of potential up-and-coming actors, none of whom I’ve ever heard of. The show premieres on FX on Wednesday, May 28, and episodes will be streaming on Hulu the next day.

​Mountainhead (HBO/Max) – Saturday, May 31
Fans of the much-lauded and award-winning HBO series “Succession” have been waiting with bated breath to see what creator Jesse Armstrong’s next project will be. That project, an original HBO movie called “Mountainhead,” premieres on HBO and Max on Saturday, May 31, which happens to be the final day of Emmy Award eligibility. Being an Armstrong project, it will likely be the instant front-runner for Outstanding TV Movie. “Mountainhead” is a satirical comedy about a group of friends who meet up amid an ongoing financial crisis. That group of friends is portrayed by the incredible cast of Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef.