Let us talk TV. Let us start with the Bear the bear the bear the bear. Season 2 got nominated for some ridiculous amount of Emmys. The most Emmys for a TV comedy ever. Let’s put aside that the show is a comedy in the same way that I am a sharp shooting 25 year old multimillionaire with a shoe deal from Nike. Let’s—
Welcome back to BASKETBALLWEATHER, everyone, the world’s most serious NBA basketball newsletter and podcast. You’ll find Ep. 3 of the podcast below.
In it
and I do some talking.Do NBA players have “the right” to phone in their performances over the course of an 82 game season? We go deep on that question and many other oh so fascinating topics, such as whether or not the NBA is a league for entertainment or competition, primarily. I learn some things that I wish I could unlearn. You’re not going to want to miss it.
<Wrong Bear>
Let’s just assume for a second that FX’s The Bear is a comedy. Is it a comedy that deserves more award nominations than any comedy that has come before it? More than Seinfeld? Curb? Atlanta? 30 Rock? Dave? Veep? Any random episode of Succession?
But let’s not get stuck on nomenclature. We’re better than that.
The point here is not to nitpick on the way the Emmy-body decides what is comedy and what is drama, though I suspect there’s something insidious going on there that Elon will either tweet about soon or synthesize into the next Tesla SUV — turned upside down with wheels on its back?
No — the point of this, whatever this is, is not even to address the merit of The Bear’s second season: It’s to use the absurd amount of Emmys that show was nominated for to make a point about how meh the TV landscape is, in 2024, and by virtue of that the Los Angeles Lakers, who have basically became a TV show unto themselves, albeit a rather meh one.
Aka not entertaining, unless you consider the Bronny James show interesting, and then, well, I don’t know what to say to you other than you must love, really-really-really love the Lakers.
The 80s had the Showtime Lakers, the 90s had Vlade Divac, the aughts Kobe, and we got these guys, the Meh Lakers.
It’s pretty appropriate if you think about it. The team is now run by the daughter of its dead owner. Someone who doesn’t just have her own legacy to think about, but also Lebron’s.
If the city of Los Angeles is willing to accept this basketball product from the Lakers, then the remakes we get fed like candy from our Wall Street overlords begin to make more sense. I’m not going to list the remakes, there’s a lot of places to look if you want to learn.
And The Bear is a fine show that deserves Emmy love, but convince me that it deserves 23 Emmy nominations-Emmy-love because it’s that good, and I’ll kindly ask you to put down your comic book.
I’m not the only one saying this. Obviously. Everyone who I talk to says the exact same thing, all of the time. I’m thinking of some of the most cynical people I know right now who happen to be high-powered Development people in Hollywood.
And they’re not wrong to be. What I mean is, the people making the soup know that the reason a show gets that many nominations, twenty-three of them, is because there’s no competition.
Maybe we’re living through a pretty meh time right now? That’s hard to admit for an eternal optimist like me, but—
Not exactly radical, I know. Some Emmy years are just like that I guess. And some lifetimes. Or years or dogs.
I just hope the Lakers can get their shit together by the time my son graduates high school.
By get their shit together I mean something that I know is impossible. The reason being, that just like the audiences who rush to see the crap that’s the majority of the TV landscape right now, there will always be delusionoids who rush to watch the Lakers no matter what is on the team, 3 old chickens and some ice cream cones, who get so wet with the purple and gold, like omg there’s Bad Bunny in the front row—
People, we know, will watch anything that gets put in front of them, the Lakers are just how we know.
Then again, if the New York Knicks could figure out a way to QUIT star-chasing and build a championship level team from the bottom, then maybe there’s still hope for the Lakers, and by extension the rest of us? Maybe even someone like yick-lord JD Vance has a chance to turn a corner?
Earlier I read that world class mensch Tucker Carlson advised Trump to go with Vance, and not Marco Rubio, by example, because, oh nevermind—
Season 2 of the Bear.
Go watch it. It’s got heart and lots of tight shots of knives, and borderline kinky “yes chef, yes chef” dialogue, and it plays on your heartstrings like a fine Foie gras.
Pretty irresistible stuff.
And, uhh, thanks for checking out this edition of BASKETBALLWEATHER.
Here’s a link to Ep. 3 of the podcast. We talk about “phoning it in to work,” employment ethics, the 82 game season, American exceptionalism, and more, all through the lens of hoops. Hope you dig it. Till next time!