Issue 24 — Apple bumped you to $15 to watch the Silo finale

Apple raised the price of Apple TV to $14.99 this week. Fifteen bucks. For a service whose entire brand identity is being the boutique streamer with about eleven shows and a lot of tasteful gray lighting. You're paying Netflix money for a farmer's market. Meanwhile the Silo season 3 finale aired the exact same day the price bump kicked in, and I refuse to believe that was a coincidence. Some product manager in Cupertino looked at the calendar and said "let's jack the rent the week Rebecca Ferguson makes them cry." Beautiful, evil business.

The other funny thing this week: Netflix ordered a Manifest spinoff called Arrivals: A New Manifest Mystery. They announced it on August 28. 8/28. Get it? Do you get it? Jeff Rake is back, exactly five years to the minute after Netflix rescued Manifest from NBC's clearance bin, because a spreadsheet somewhere decided there are still moms in Ohio who need to know what the plane meant. Nothing means anything. Everything is a puzzle box. Please subscribe.

Silo, season 3 finale (Apple TV+)

Graham Yost stuck the landing. The finale kills off someone big — Decider has the spoiler if you insist — and Rebecca Ferguson does the thing where her jaw tightens and you start feeling guilty for owning a house above ground. Silo has quietly become the most confident sci-fi show on any streamer, and it did it while everyone was busy watching Fallout. Three seasons in and it still hasn't gotten dumb. That's the whole compliment.

✅ WORTH IT

Reacher, season 4 (Prime Video)

Alan Ritchson continues to walk into rooms and make them structurally unsound. Season 4 of Reacher leans harder into the Lee Child pulp: international cartels, betrayed operatives, a large man who does not own a phone. It's the only show on television that understands its assignment. A guy the size of a Toyota Tundra shows up somewhere. Six people insult him. Six people immediately regret it. Roll credits. There is a reason this is the most-watched thing on Prime again. Sometimes what people want is a walking Ford F-150 with a moral code.

✅ WORTH IT

Ted Lasso, season 4 (Apple TV+)

They brought it back. Season 3 ended on a graceful bow — everyone got their arc, Ted flew home to his kid, credits rolled — and then some executive at Apple stared at churn numbers and said grab the shovel. Sudeikis is doing the accent. Roy Kent is growling. It feels like getting a Christmas card from someone you already had a nice goodbye with, so now the goodbye means slightly less. Fine.

🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Lioness, season 3 (Paramount+)

Taylor Sheridan keeps every working actor in Hollywood employed while writing exclusively about people who whisper into earpieces in the back of Land Rovers. Zoe Saldaña does the tight-jaw stare. Somebody says "we are cleared hot." This is the show for people who wanted Zero Dark Thirty but with more scenes of Zoe being disappointed in a Marine. Rules if you're into it. Skip if you're allergic to Sheridan's whole thing.

🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Death of the Pastor's Wife (Netflix)

Netflix's newest Sunday-night true crime doc about Mica Miller, whose life ended under circumstances the algorithm has decided are content. Toxic marriage, mysterious death, pastor-husband in the frame. If you've seen one of these you've seen forty, but the ingredients are all here: church, cover-up, a family that wants an answer nobody wants to give them. Watchable while you fold laundry and lightly reevaluate everyone you've ever trusted.

🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Facing El Chapo (Netflix)

Mexican thriller from Chava Cartas about two cops trying to survive one shift after crossing the wrong cartel boss. 91 minutes. TMDb reviewers, who are usually the harshest people alive, are giving it 8.8. Lean, mean, in Spanish, no cape in sight. Watch it before Netflix's homepage buries it under something worse.

✅ WORTH IT

Also dropped

Yellow Mirror, a Simpsons Treehouse-of-Horror-flavored short on Disney+. If you need 27 minutes of Homer discovering reality is a defective lamp, be my guest. 🐍 SLOP

The Last Sunrise on Prime — Eva Longoria helps her sick daughter fall in love in Mallorca. If your mom's coming over. 🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Pick of the Week

Reacher, season 4. Silo's finale is better craft, but Silo requires you to have watched Silo. Reacher requires a couch. Start it Friday night, don't get up until Monday. That's the deal.

Closer

Amazon might buy Doctor Who. Xbox is trying to hand Netflix the rights to Halo and Warcraft. The New York Post just signed a first-look TV deal to mine its own tabloid archives. In five years all television will be Rupert Murdoch clippings adapted by a Microsoft game studio and beamed into your face by a Bezos satellite. Apple will charge you eighteen dollars a month not to watch it. See you next week.