Arriving late to a crowded party called Yellowstone

Plus: Black Adam, more dragons, and George Saunders. [View this email online]( [Pop Culture Happy Hour]( by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when The Crown [stated the obvious](. It was the week when Taylor Swift [kept folks up late](. And it was the week when the complicated Netflix-theaters relationship [stayed complicated](. Let's get to it. Opening Argument: Arriving late to a crowded party called Yellowstone This is not, let me be clear, a review of Yellowstone, which I am only about half a season into watching. (The fifth season premieres in mid-November.) I have a ways to go yet. Yellowstone, which was created by Taylor Sheridan and John Linson, is an interesting show from a "TV business" perspective. It debuted in 2018 on the Paramount Network -- not Paramount+ the streaming service, but Paramount Network the cable channel, which is one of those outfits that came into existence as a rebrand of another outfit that already had a presence on cable systems (in this case Spike TV). In fact, Yellowstone doesn't stream on Paramount+, although its prequel series 1883 does, and its prequel series 1923 will. (1923, amusingly, [was originally called 1932](. I really feel like they're trolling us.) Instead, it streams on Peacock. What I'm saying is that the TV business is currently a bit wacky and chaotic, and Yellowstone has a presence that, while successful, is also wacky and chaotic. Which is funny, because in a lot of ways, it's a very traditional show. It's a Western about the Dutton family, a fabulously rich family of ranchers in a pitched battle over "their" land with developers, a nearby reservation, various politicians, and whomever else shows up to challenge the patriarch, John (Kevin Costner). In addition to being a Western, it's a soap, constructed very much like shows like Dynasty or Dallas or Falcon Crest, admittedly with a lot more violence. Paramount Network Yellowstone has built over time to the point where it's very popular on cable in the dwindling world of things people actually watch on television when they're on. There's been a fair amount of [head-scratching over why it doesn't get more critical or awards recognition]( given that popularity, although obviously quality and popularity were things that could be separate well before this show took off. Furthermore, it premiered on a little-watched cable network and got very middling reviews; it wasn't immediately apparent that it was going to be a big hit -- but as it turns out, it was one. Comparisons to Succession are common and make some sense, since both shows are about rich people who do whatever they want. But it might be more accurate to compare it to things like the Dick Wolf universe on NBC (which includes the Law & Order and Chicago [Whatever] franchises), or NCIS on CBS -- what's popular and what drives a lot of analysis and critical discussion are always different things. Starting this show now, as a person who isn't much into Westerns, has made me observe it with a very particular eye. When you watch a new show, you're always wondering about its future; it's quite different to know it has a successful future and watch the early parts of it looking for what made it resonate with the people who have made it a hit. (People tend to classify it as conservative when they ponder this question; I don't notice much in the way of politics of any kind. It seems thus far to be driven by basic melodramatic conventions -- which is not a bad thing. That's what soaps do!) And because it doesn't get as much critical chatter as other shows I've started very late (like Ozark, which I watched just before its final season), I don't know a lot about the direction of it. I didn't know it started off with a big event that eliminated a couple of people who seemed like they were going to be major characters -- if it were as buzzy as Ozark, I'd probably have known they weren't going to be after all. So in terms of arriving late, maybe not having seen too much hype is a blessing. Just remember: Paramount Network, but not Paramount+ for streaming. Peacock for streaming. But Paramount+ for the spin-offs. And to think I got all the way through this without a single "it's the wild West out there" joke. --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- Listen to the Podcast Sponsor-Free Support your favorite pop culture junkies AND listen without sponsor interruptions with a subscription to [Pop Culture Happy Hour+]( Learn more and sign up at [plus.npr.org/happy](. [Learn More]( We Recommend Ethan Hawke and Ewan McGregor are both quite good in Raymond & Ray, a movie streaming on Apple TV+ that casts them as brothers dealing with the death of their dad. If you watched the HBO Max documentary series The Last Movie Stars about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward -- and [I hope you did]( -- you'll be interested to know that some of the same biographical material that was used for the series is also the basis for a [posthumous memoir about Newman](. The marvelous writer Alice Wong [wrote a piece]( about life with a feeding tube, and I commend it -- and all of her work -- to you most highly. It doesn't take a lot of reaching to recommend a story collection from George Saunders, but I greatly enjoyed Liberation Day: Stories, which is beautifully written but also pleasantly and unsettlingly odd in a whole bunch of ways. What We Did This Week Photographer/Source We couldn't be more delighted [to be sharing]( some favorite spooky songs from our Alt.Latino friends Felix Contreras and Anamaria Sayre. We also [re-upped our episode]( on BTS deep cuts, which are suitable for any season. Stephen and Walter Chaw [talked about the alleged franchise-ender]( Halloween Ends. Glen, Ayesha Rascoe, Nikki Birch and J.C. Howard tackled House of the Dragon. And of course, Glen is [here with the recap]( of Episode 9 for those of you who are more reading-inclined. [Glen and I talked to Ronald Young, Jr.]( about Black Adam, big ideas, the charms of Dwayne Johnson, and more. And Glen [wrote a full review](. I [wrote about the second season]( of HBO's The Vow, which makes some very strange decisions about what to include and what to omit. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: - What's making Ronald Young, Jr. happy: [Atlanta]( - What's making Glen Weldon happy: [The Lair of the White Worm]( - What's making Linda Holmes happy: Watching [The Great British Baking Show on the Roku Channel]( and [Project Runway on Tubi]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. [Find a Station]( --------------------------------------------------------------- [Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+](. 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