Issue 26: FX Made a Show Called The Drop

FX made a show called The Drop

FX made a show called The Drop. It premiered Monday. It's a Snowfall spinoff about the '90s rap industry, it's sitting at 5.9 on TMDb, and now every time somebody Googles this newsletter they're going to bump into Malcolm Spellman's tribute to A&R men getting shot at. Fine. Welcome to the family. We'll co-exist. But if the algorithm starts serving people The Drop: A Snowfall Saga when they search for me, we have a problem, and by we I mean the guy at Hulu who thought that title was something a person would type into a search bar on purpose.

Meanwhile Netflix canceled Ransom Canyon after two seasons. If you watched Ransom Canyon, condolences. If you didn't, that's the correct answer.

What actually dropped

Reacher, season four (Prime Video). Alan Ritchson continues to be six-foot-three of grievance and cardio, this time in a season that just aired its Sampson-vote episode and is still doing 8.1 with 3,270 votes. For a show that is basically a man punching a small town into compliance, that's remarkable consistency. If you liked the first three, you'll like this. If you didn't, congratulations on your sophisticated taste; please continue watching Slow Horses like an adult.

✅ WORTH IT

Lanterns (HBO Max). Damon Lindelof and Tom King's Green Lantern show is somehow real, somehow good, and somehow sitting at 8.28. Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan, Aaron Pierre as John Stewart, a murder in the American heartland, and the DC universe finally letting somebody make something that isn't a two-hour trailer for the next thing. If Warner Bros Discovery — sorry, Max, sorry, HBO Max, sorry, whatever David Zaslav renamed it this quarter — doesn't cancel it out of pure institutional cowardice, we could actually get more.

✅ WORTH IT

Ted Lasso, season four (Apple TV+). They said it was over. They said we'd all cried enough at Roy Kent's redemption arc. Then Apple did the math on how much a season of Ted Lasso costs versus another prestige drama about a sad detective, and here we are, back in Richmond, back with Beard, being told once again that kindness is a management strategy. It'll make you feel things. The things will be a little cheaper this time.

🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Last Seen (Apple TV+). Patrick Brammall plays an emergency dispatcher who takes a call from a teenager who might be his missing daughter. That's the whole engine. Prestige-y Apple mystery in the mold of everything Apple makes now: beautifully lit people staring at phones with real weight. Early ratings are strong, seven votes deep. I trust the seven.

✅ WORTH IT

The Drop: A Snowfall Saga (Hulu). Malcolm Spellman's West Coast rap origin story is what happens when FX asks what if Snowfall, but the record contracts. Gail Bean is good. The soundtrack will slap. The show is at 5.9 for a reason, and the reason is you already know how this ends because you watched Snowfall.

🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

The Grand Tour (Prime Video). Prime Video has decided the way to continue The Grand Tour, a show whose entire premise was three specific middle-aged British men insulting each other in expensive cars, is to replace those three men with Tom Holland's brother, a guy named James Engelsman, and a YouTube trainspotter named Francis Bourgeois. This is like rebooting Seinfeld with three influencers. TMDb has it at 9.0 with nine votes, which means nine people related to the cast have already rated it.

☠️ WAR CRIME

DANG! (Netflix). Animated comedy about siblings whose messy New York lives are interrupted by their overachieving older sister. Stephanie Hsu voices someone. You'll watch two episodes and forget it by Thursday.

🐍 SLOP

Untold: Mr. T (Netflix). 48-minute doc about Laurence Tureaud before the gold chains. Terry Crews shows up. You already know if you're watching this.

✅ WORTH IT

Also: Tyler Perry made Why Did I Get Married Again (Netflix). The couples are back. The answer to the title is money.

🐍 SLOP

Pick of the Week

Lanterns. A DC show that's actually good is the sort of thing that happens once a decade and gets canceled after two seasons because Zaslav needed the tax write-down. Watch it now so we can be smug later.

The closer

A consortium of 23 international media groups warned Toronto this week that global streamers are killing local content. They're right. They're also 15 years late — Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube already ate the shelf. Somewhere in a Warner lawyer's office an ex-Matlock writer is suing CBS for harassment, CBS is calling it fabrications and outright lies, and the 2026-27 TV season kicks off like nothing happened. See you next week.