Type Click Mailbag: Sad Shows And Statham Ideas

Hello and welcome back to the Type Click Mailbag. As always, here’s the rundown of how this works:

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Okay, email time. 

From Jason:

Did you ever write anything about the ending of DTF St. Louis? I started watching it, like you, because I loved Patriot so much that I will watch anything Steven Conrad makes for the rest of time, but I don’t think I expected it to be that … sad. I still think I liked it as a whole piece (“liked” might be the wrong word), but I watched the finale, and it left me in shambles. It was so sad I didn’t even cry; I just stared at the screen when the credits started and said, “Jesus Christ, that was sad.”

Curious what you thought of it. 

Same, brother. Same.

It‘s always a little weird to be in a position like this, too. Like, do I think DTF St. Louis was a good show, with sharp writing and great performances and something very specific to say about a lot of things we don’t talk about? I do. Do I think it’s cool to have something like it that is truly unique in a television landscape where a lot of what bubbles up is stuff that’s existed before in a few dozen better iterations? Absolutely. Would I actually recommend it to someone and have them go in blind, knowing how it wraps up? Hmm.

The broad strokes, in short…

The show is mainly focused on three characters — Floyd (David Harbour), Clark (Jason Bateman), and Carol (Linda Cardellini) — who get themselves twisted into a kind of love pretzel as the season progresses. There’s a dead body and a bumbling detective and a mystery revealed through flashbacks. Again, sounds like something you’ve seen 100 times. I promise you, it is not. There are wild twists and delightful turns of phrase — Linda Cardellini’s character drops a “No way, Jose” maybe a half-dozen times, to the degree it’s found its way into my own vernacular — and rap songs and terrible displays of baseball umpiring and… look, no one would ever accuse Steven Conrad of not being original. This is your periodic reminder to go watch Patriot.

But the rub here is that what looks at first like maybe a quirky murder mystery where Peter Sarsgaard shows up on roller skates at one point slowly reveals itself to be a laser-precise examination of middle age and loneliness and how desperately running from both of those things in search of something — anything — can go sideways on you in a flash. That sentence was a mess. In my defense, it’s all been swimming around in my head since I watched the screener for the finale right before bed a few weeks ago, even after I deduced it was headed somewhere real, real sad. (STUPID BRIAN.) There are no happy endings here.

Which, like, good! I guess! The way things played out, there shouldn’t have been a happy ending. Or, at least, it would have felt forced and weasely if it took a hard left toward the light at the end. There’s something to be said about a piece of art that sticks with you and makes you feel things, wherever on the range of emotions those things land. Would I have watched it and stuck it through had I known going in that this sucker was gonna get heavy like a waterlogged sofa? Maybe not. Can I appreciate that it was impressive and possibly special and the kind of examination of the human condition that we should be striving to make to help offset the 700 spinoffs of shows about Men Who Do Ranch Things? Absolutely. Should I stop leaning on this format where I ask myself questions to make my point? Eventually.

So, yes, Jason. I’m with you. Very good and also devastating. I’m glad Taskmaster came back right as this one ended, just to have a silly broom sweep through my brain and clean some things up. And I’m also glad it gave me the image at the top of this page, the one of Jason Bateman moping on a swingset, because it reminded me of Sad Pablo Escobar from Narcos…

… which remains, to this day, against the intentions of the people who made the show, one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life.

From Sara Kate:

As often happens, I was thinking about Jason Statham last night. A friend is working his way through his films and finally got to SPY, which as you know is a revelation. What should Hollywood DO with this man? My ideas are:

• shot for shot remake of The African Queen, with Amy Adams
• a comedy where he's a ghost
• Kolchak: The Night Stalker reboot
• The Love Boat, with your captain Jason Statham (a suggestion from Bsky that I wish I had thought of first; it's actually perfect)

What would you do with Jason Statham?

What a delight to receive a Statham-related email from the author of my favorite bird blog!

My answer here, which I had not considered until about an hour ago and might be thinking about for the rest of my life, is that I would like to see Statham go against type and play a detective who never uses violence to solve a crime. A guy who, instead of always being retired and getting forced into one last job, has been in the same position for years. A guy who is willing to play a little dumb if it means luring a murderer into his trap. A guy who dresses shabbily, maybe in a crumpled trenchcoat. I think you see where I’m heading here. I think we all do. But let’s go ahead and say it anyway…

LET

JASON

STATHAM

PLAY

COLUMBO

I am kidding a little bit, of course, but I am also very serious. He’s got great timing! It would be interesting! No one else is playing Columbo! I swear to god. Think about it. Tell me you would watch Statham as Columbo. Don’t lie to me!

DON’T LIE.

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— I do not watch The Pitt. We’ve discussed this. But I did enjoy Kathryn VanArendonk’s report from the set of the finale

— thank you to Bradford Pearson for reminding the world about an all-timer blog: "I Played ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ on a Bar Jukebox Until I Got Kicked Out"

— Amanda Mull wrote a banger about QVC going bankrupt

— Vince Mancini researched the turtle crypto death hoax

— it remains hilarious and cool to me that The Onion took over Infowars and, yes, I watched CEO Ben Collins explain the whole thing to Pablo Torre 

— Colson Whitehead wrote a great blog about AI (and also some books, one of which — Crook Manifesto, follow-up to Harlem Shuffle — I’m reading right now and enjoying a lot)

— Top Gun 3 coming

— Richard Kind is a sweet man 

— I read so many blogs about the SantaCon fraud 

— as a longtime believer that October is an overrated bogus month for dweebs, this infuriated me

— this TikTok video (language, fyi) reminded me once again what a joy it is to scroll through the r/treelaw subreddit

— I would like to personally thank the New York Mets for stinking so prodigiously that it has taken the focus off of how bad my beloved Phillies also stink

— I love this woman so much and I respect her quest to defeat her bubble pop game, distractions be damned

— “I’m a 39-year-old real-estate agent who just played in the Masters. It’s mentally exhausting”

— “The 82-Year-Old Jump Rope Queen of Beverly Hills”

— "The world’s oldest octopus fossil isn’t an octopus after all, scientists say"

— bear suit insurance fraud

— this is the cutest goddamn thing I have ever seen

Okay, that's it for this week. Please share and subscribe and mope on a swing if it helps.