Issue 41 — Bravo invented the vertical microdrama and Norm Macdonald saved the week

Bravo renewed five shows this week and the one that broke me is Charmed by a Southern Monster — a scripted vertical microdrama starring Craig Conover from Southern Charm, dropping on Peacock in November. Vertical. Microdrama. We've now invented a television format for people who refuse to turn their phone sideways, and the first script we handed to it stars a reality guy playing a monster who's charming. The Bravo development meeting was eighteen seconds long and ended with somebody saying ship it and getting promoted.

Meanwhile Nvidia just extended their Series B into Higgsfield, per Variety, so the AI can crank these out faster than Craig can memorize his lines. The future of entertainment is a 47-second vertical about a hot guy who might be the devil, generated by a GPU farm in Texas, watched by a woman folding sheets. End of a civilization.

Phony (Hulu)

Hulu dropped Phony, with Connie Britton as a mom and Sam Nivola (yes, the White Lotus kid) as her son Sonny, who wakes from a car accident convinced his mother has been replaced by an impostor. Mystery-comedy-drama from Nick Paley. The premise is Capgras delusion served as a half-hour, which could be great or could be the kind of show that confuses ambiguous with nothing happening. Two episodes in, the lean is yes. Britton is a national treasure and Nivola is one of maybe four actors under 25 who can play "something's wrong with me" without smirking.

✅ WORTH IT

Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald (Netflix)

Judd Apatow made a Norm doc. Two hours and seven minutes of archive, with Sandler and Letterman and Carrey and Jane Fonda talking about the specific shape of a comedian whose entire bit was pretending he didn't know what he was doing while running the sharpest set in the room. Netflix is dumping four Apatow-adjacent comedy docs in October and this is the one. If you've never heard the moth joke or the OJ run, you have a weekend. If you have — watch it again. Norm Macdonald is the funniest man who ever lived and I'll fight on this.

🏆 DROP EVERYTHING

Masterplan (Prime Video)

Stanley Tucci recruits two young strangers to help him steal the Mona Lisa and then tells them, mid-heist, that they're his long-lost kids. A lot of exposition to drop over an earpiece. Thomas Vincent directs, 110 minutes, Simona Tabasco from White Lotus 2 as one of the suddenly-related children. It's silly and it's the kind of Prime movie you put on instead of unloading the dishwasher. Tucci could read a tire warranty aloud and I'd watch. Masterplan on Prime.

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Grey's Anatomy — Season 23 (Netflix)

Season twenty-three. Of Grey's Anatomy. Meredith is still there. Bailey is still there. The hospital has been hit by a bomb, a shooter, a plane crash, a sinkhole, lightning, and the parking lot has remained operational the whole time. Shonda built a perpetual motion machine out of patient monologues and I respect the engineering. If you've been in since 2005 you're watching. If you haven't, do not start — you cannot catch up and your family will not see you for a year.

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The Simpsons — Treehouse of Horror (Disney+)

Treehouse of Horror aired last weekend as "The Revengening." The Simpsons is 38 seasons old, older than most people reading this, and the Halloween episode is still the one event that reminds you the show can be weird and good when it wants to be. It won't change your life. It'll remind you of being eight for 22 minutes.

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Money Trap (Netflix)

A Turkish crime comedy about a scammer and a mythical map, from Yılmaz Erdoğan. 4.3 on TMDb across six votes, which is the score that shows up when people are actively mad at a thing. Netflix is cash-flooding the global content strategy and some of it hits and some of it is this.

🐍 SLOP

The rest, in brief

Love in Disguise (Prime Video) — K-drama where a chaebol heir is accused of murder and a woman goes undercover as his male secretary. Fine if you're on the K-drama drip. On Prime. 🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Where the Mask Ends (Netflix) — Chinese palace drama. Street urchin impersonates a noblewoman, marries a comatose warlord, uncovers royal heritage. Six votes, 8.1, which means the diaspora found it. 🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

NCIS, SVU, Law & Order, Fallon, Seth Meyers and Watch What Happens Live all dumped new episodes. If you need me to tell you whether to watch Mariska Hargitay solve a case this week, I can't help you.

Pick of the Week

Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald on Netflix. The rare celebrity doc where the subject is better than the format can hold. Watch it, go find the Dirty Johnny bit on YouTube, come back, watch it again. Apatow finally picked a subject nobody can embarrass him on.

The closer

Bravo ordered a vertical microdrama. Peacock will stream 47-second scripted bits about a Southern Charm guy being hot and ominous. Nvidia is pouring real money into AI video. The Glee reboot was announced. We are not making art. We are feeding a machine that eats pixels and gives back dopamine, and the machine is us. Watch the Norm doc. He saw this coming and he laughed.