Comment on Palm Springs Reviews: ‘Fig Tree’

It sounds like fun to have the visionary puppeteer behind a beloved kids’ TV show for a father, but, well, you know what they say about the cobbler’s children. Vincent Anderson, one of the odd Netflix crime drama Eric’s two protagonists, is the creator of Good Day Sunshine, a Sesame Street-esque series that urges tots to “be good, be kind, be brave, be different.” The first sign he has a dark side is that he’s played by Benedict Cumberbatch, interpreter of such tortured geniuses as Vincent van Gogh and Alan Turing.

With the Emmys eligibility deadline looming on the 31st, May tends to be a big month for TV. But 2024 has borne the brunt of 2023’s Hollywood strikes, so the number of prestige projects sliding in before the cutoff has been conspicuously low. Sure, this month’s highlights include Benedict Cumberbatch as a Jim Henson wannabe on the verge of a nervous breakdown and an action thriller whose hero is an icon of Black radical politics.

Warning: This post contains light spoilers for In a Violent Nature. When a group of vacationing teens steals a locket from a mysterious burial site, they awaken an undead killer who embarks on a brutal rampage to take back what’s his. That may sound like a pretty classic premise for a slasher.

Yes, an Eminem music video is trending in the year 2024. On May 30, the 51-year-old rapper released “Houdini,” the first single from his upcoming The Death of Slim Shady, teasing in a promotional video with the magician David Blaine that he would “make [his] career disappear.” “Houdini” is now the No.

In the wake of the success of The Mandalorian, Disney+ has produced many—arguably too many—Star Wars television series in hopes that the expanded universe content would draw die-hard fans of Jedis and droids to the streaming service. The results have been mixed. Baby Yoda justifiably drew hordes of fans and plenty of coos when he used the Force to summon blue macarons in The Mandalorian.

It’s getting increasingly difficult to discover new treasures in the cacophonous world of podcasting. There are a lot of shows—many of them not good. It seems every week a new celebrity announces a podcast in which they ask other celebrities out-of-touch questions or revisit their own network sitcom heyday. And studios continue to scrounge for the most morally dubious true-crime topics they can find. So forgive me if I find myself returning to some of the masters this year.