You wanted the best? You got the best! The hottest special-ops band in the land: Lioness! That’s right, folks: The world is a sunspot on one of Taylor Sheridan’s ranch-tanned, rippling biceps, and we’re just living in it. Hey, cool with me. The future was uncertain for this little Sheridan side project that could’ve been at the close after its first season. But with an apparently sizable audience on Paramount+ and the will to make it happen on the part of Sheridan, the exceptionally stacked cast, and everyone else involved, old Father Duty’s callin’ again for Joe (Zoe Saldaña) and the Lioness crew.
The last we saw of our ragtag CIA operatives, they’d successfully assassinated an Iranian-backed terrorist leader. Their lioness, Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), ended the mission alive but in spiritual tatters — unswayed by Joe’s reassurances that the operation saved lives. “All we did was change oil prices,” Cruz had said on her emotional way out of the Lioness program. As the search for her replacement kicks off in season two, the specter looming over the proceedings is how right she was.
As for the big question: Who’s the new lioness? We’ll get acquainted with her in the second episode of our two-episode premiere night. Our first episode is all about setting off the bloody inciting incident, reorienting us in the world and rules of the show, and some imperial dudes-rock, Sicario-style action for your trouble.
The cold open rips — and rips hard. A U.S. congresswoman is kidnapped by a cartel, and her family is murdered in their sleep. Joe is enjoying an impromptu breakfast at Waffle House with the family when she gets the news from the TV. Meanwhile, everyone’s favorite CIA fuckboy, Kyle (Thad Luckinbill), is swinging his dick around the crime scene, getting a lay of the land. At HQ in D.C., the usual suspects at the levers of power are gathering to plot the next moves. They’re back, folks. They’re all back: Byron Westfield (Michael Kelly), Mason (Jennifer Ehle) and Hollar (Bruce McGill), and Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman) — all riveting stars and standout character actors contributing their signature rhythms and verbal notes to the simmering espionage plan-making patter, all while Morgan Freeman as Secretary of State Mullins holds down the fort with some well-placed, occasionally F-bomb-accented mic-drop moments.
Joe arrives late to the meeting, just in time to get the crux of the debrief and her call to action. Conveniently, and somehow undetected even as she’s ripped from her house in the middle of the night, Congresswoman Hernandez (Czarina Mireles) kept a tracker on her, so they know she’s being held at a house in Ojinaga, just across the border. They want an extraction that’s messy enough to make a scene, but sending an official strike team across the southern border is against treaty protocols with Mexico. In a classic manifestation of what I like to call a “Dum Clancy” plot device, they justify the action by speculating that there has to be another major world power behind this abduction, and right now they figure it’s China. They are trying to move the global political board in a big way so they can invade Taiwan or something. Regardless, the threat of a geopolitical status quo knocking loose is established per the espionage genre’s wont. In the meantime, this gang of U.S. intelligence ghouls is aiming for a loud but successful extraction, followed by an “increased CIA presence in Mexico” — seek justice against this cartel and liquidate the potentially bigger threat behind it.
And they want a lioness on the ground. Joe’s unsurprisingly put out by the task of training a new lioness in weeks when months are required. They can eliminate the Los Tigres cartel leader, but intelligence-gathering isn’t part of their purview after that. Here’s where Freeman gets his first big shot of the season: “All right, after you kill the guy, could you be so kind as to grab his fucking phones and computers and anything else that might have some fucking intelligence?” C’mon, girl — even when we’re heisting some intel, we do it the cowboy way. You should know that. Kaitlyn chimes in: They can handle the job.
So the stage is set. Suit up, everyone; it’s time for the extraction — an extended, multipart, vaguely sepia-toned car chase–shoot-out in Mexico. Some serious “cowboy shit” organized by, of course, fucking Kyle. If hangin’ with the inglorious bastards of the Lioness crew was as core to your enjoyment of season one as it was mine, the delay in getting back with the team in full will prove a letdown here. But, hey — instead, we get the man, the myth, the legend in front of the camera. That’s right: Just when you thought Sheridan had stunted enough by writing the whole show himself (as he claims to have done with all 17,000 of his shows currently running) and directing the first two episodes of the season, our guy casts himself — in all his chiseled, hunky-leathery glory — as the titular “old soldier” Cody.
Joe knows Cody from way back, just as she knows all the guys from way back; such a guy’s gal, our Joe. Anyway, she’s not too sure about long-in-the-tooth Cody running point on this extraction, even in the company of his two wingmen, Tracer and Dean (what, are we about to play Overwatch here with these names?), which one can only take as extra assurances that Cody’s gonna badass the shit out of this mission. Indulgent as hell on Sheridan’s part, and seeing how I didn’t think we’d get another season of this madness to begin with, I’m 100 percent here for it. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that.
Once they’ve retrieved the missing congresswoman from an enemy vehicle and gotten her safely back on U.S. territory (via car-jump into an open river and one final Apocalypse Now “Ride of the Valkyries”–style blast of defensive gunfire from an air-support helicopter), Joe promises to personally carry out some extrajudicial retribution on Los Tigres. “Justice is a different agency,” she says. “My agency doesn’t do courtrooms.” A Clint-fucking-Eastwood badass line if I’ve ever heard one. And Saldaña delivers it with that familiar wired, short-fused muscularity, telling us Joe is ready to go all the way with this one.
Having sufficiently reamed Kyle for getting her team involved in some hyper-risky “cowboy shit” again (not sure what else she expected from this “ol’ spy Barbie,” as Cody calls him, seeing how his entire track record as an agent is setting up all-American carnage like this no matter where he gets called in, wound up, and set off), Joe steps away to call her sexy house husband Dr. Neal (Dave Annable) and two daughters. The turmoil that followed her family in her professional absence seems to have largely (and a little too conveniently) subsided since season one. So have her most pressing feelings of disconnect and occasional trauma-induced disinterest in family life, it seems. This bodes well for any of us who felt Joe’s family stuff was overwrought and at least partially unnecessary, getting us ready for a less melodramatic push-and-pull between the innocence of family and the looming corruption of the mission as the new season progresses.
As for the new lioness, hang on to your butts ’cause she’s comin’ in hot in the next episode!
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details from the premiere of Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage on CBS.
The Young Sheldon spinoff Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage finally made its much-anticipated debut Thursday night and, naturally, we have questions about how Georgie (Montana Johnson) and Mandy (Emily Osment) are beginning their new lives in Texas.
Here, co-creator Steve Holland breaks down the premiere episode, titled “The 6:10 to Lubbock,” and among other things explains why he and the other EPs decided to have the stars perform a little ballroom in the title sequence.
DEADLINE: What was important for you to establish in this episode?
STEVE HOLLAND: It was important for us to re-establish the premise of the show and the situation by which Georgie and Mandy got together, and their living situation. It was a chance to spend time with these characters and hopefully remember why we love them.
DEADLINE: So basically, did this pick up days after the Young Sheldon finale?
HOLLAND: I would say probably a month or two after the finale. Obviously, George’s death is still lingers, but we didn’t want it to pick up right in the heavy aftermath of their grief.
DEADLINE: Why the tango in the title sequence?
HOLLAND: We wanted something that would be interesting and unique to the show. These days a lot of shows don’t even do title sequences, but we felt, especially in the Big Bang world, the title sequences have always been such a identifiable piece. When we were talking about the themes of the show, Steven Molaro, my co-creator, pitched the idea of the tango and it seemed surprising in a great way. It also seemed to really encapsulate the push-pull of this relationship. This relationship has a lot of love and passion, but they also have a lot of struggles and fights and the tango just seemed to really sum all that up. It’s also the last thing you expect to see when you’re watching this sitcom.
DEADLINE: How long did you know that you wanted to somehow address the concept of a live audience?
HOLLAND: That was pretty early on when we were breaking the story. I’m not sure if it’s ever happened before where a show has gone from single camera to a multi-camera spinoff. We knew there was going to be a moment where it was going to feel a little different to viewers. So we thought, why not just own it? Why pretend that we don’t know that this is a different thing and how it’s a slightly different format? Maybe there’s some fun in just coming out of the gate and saying, we know that this is a different kind of show and we’re excited about it.
DEADLINE: Why did you have them watching Frasier?
HOLLAND: For two reasons. It felt very identifiable for audiences. We felt like they would recognize it and get exactly what that is. It’s also a beloved multi-cam show, and that was important to us. It also sets the time on the show. It starts off in 1994. You immediately realize this is a bit of a period piece.
DEADLINE: As a reminder, how old are Georgie and Mandy now?
HOLLAND: Georgie is 19 and Mandy is 31.
DEADLINE: Seeing Mary and Meemaw was so cool. Is this a promise of what’s to come?
HOLLAND: Yeah. I mean we knew even when we were first talking about this show that it still took place in Medford and this was still his family. We love these actors and wanted to find ways to include them. So it always felt like they were going to be a part of the show. We’re in this lucky position on a first-season show. We have this A-list roster of superstars waiting on the bench to come in when we need them. And incredibly fun to put them in front of an audience.
(L-R) Montana Jordan as Georgie and Will Sasso as Jim
Troy Harvey / 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
DEADLINE: There wasn’t the obligatory “awwww” when Georgie got a hug from Will Sasso’s Jim McAllister. Did you edit out the studio audience during that moment?
HOLLAND: We’re trying to be conscious of tone. Sometimes audiences come to these shows and they’re very amped up, so sometimes those big laughs at home can seem jarring. We’re trying to tamper them down. But especially things like the awwws … they have never been a thing that we love. It feels like sometimes the audiences are doing it because they think they’re supposed to. They take you out of what is a very sweet moment. We didn’t edit them out, but we did do another pass and asked the audience not [to make a sound].
DEADLINE: How did you shake the set?
HOLLAND: It was incredible. They actually built it on these hydraulic gimbals. There were different degrees of shaking that they could turn up and down. Then it was finding the right level because sometimes the walls and the furniture didn’t always shake. It was amazing because [Jordan and Osment] really enjoyed having Zoe Perry and Annie Potts back, and Montana had never done multi-cam before this. So this was his first foray into that and he was just great. He came so prepared and so ready to do it. I don’t think he dropped a line in the whole pilot shoot.
DEADLINE: At one point we hear Georgie say that “genius runs in my family.” Are you possibly teasing that their baby is going to be a prodigy?
HOLLAND: That was more of a nod to Sheldon than teasing the future of the baby. Hopefully we’re on the air long enough to find out what happens to this baby in 10 years.
Early in the first season of Shrinking, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the show’s premise. It’s one thing to follow a therapist with unconventional methods, but Jimmy’s way of doing things was clearly unethical, and the show knew it. How sustainable could that be as a plot engine for a comedy like this one? By the halfway point of the season, though, the show had moved away a bit from that central hook, transforming (like so many of Bill Lawrence’s other shows) into a more low-concept hangout sitcom about a group of characters. Then, we got that literal cliffhanger of a final scene: Grace, one of Jimmy’s biggest success stories, pushed her husband off a cliff.
It was a reminder that therapists often have quite a lot of power when it comes to their patients, and wielding that power irresponsibly can have serious consequences. But it was also a return to a story line that the show had mostly moved past. As much as I enjoyed how the season ended, I wondered what tack the next season would take.
This premiere suggests that Jimmy quitting his usual offbeat techniques could be difficult; Jimmying his patients has become something like an addiction, filling the void left by all the liquor and drugs he once used to cope with his wife Tia’s death. Season one also suggested this idea early on as we saw Jimmy come back to life after a year of grief, reinvesting his energy into his work life while working hard to make up for lost time with his daughter. But I do hope that if the season sticks with this conflict (rather than dropping the quirky therapy and reverting back to a more general therapist-led hangout sitcom), we’ll learn more about why exactly Jimmy relies on this so much.
Still, I like that this episode continues to acknowledge the harmful effects of that type of therapy. Grace is the most obvious example: As a result of Jimmy’s overly explicit advice, she’s in jail, facing a potential life sentence for the attempted murder of her husband. (He did survive, but he might never walk again.) Jimmy tries to justify this to Paul as “pattern interruption,” a familiar term in normal therapy that means exactly what it sounds like. But there’s really no way to see this as a win; Grace even points out that she’d rather have a shitty husband than spend her life in prison.
Perhaps the bigger problem is that Jimmy just cares too much about his patients, letting them live in his head rent-free while he’s off the clock. The dream version of Paul draws an insightful contrast between their respective relationships with their patients: Jimmy would come undone if one of his patients didn’t turn out okay, while Paul can separate himself.
During Jimmy’s real-life talk with Paul about this subject, his mentor reassures him that he didn’t necessarily fuck up, though he should probably stick to conventional therapy for a while. But his efforts are short-lived, especially when Alice inadvertently gets him to promise to keep committing therapist malpractice. She’s worried about the possibility of him regressing, especially because his assurance that he’s “good” doesn’t sound any different from the lies he told her when he decidedly wasn’t good. Still, though, I have to wonder why Jimmying is so, well, therapeutic to him. There must have been years prior to Tia’s death where he was more comfortable with traditional therapy. Why can’t he find his way back there now?
Regardless, it’s clear that Jimmy is as fragile as Alice and Paul say, based on his explosive reaction to the (conveniently timed) appearance of the drunk driver responsible for Tia’s death in the final scene. (That’s Ted Lasso co-star and Shrinking co-creator Brett Goldstein, startlingly clean-shaven.) That fragility is affecting his relationships with his family and friends, including Paul, who was forced to assuage Jimmy’s earlier fears about messing up with his patients. But it’s also affecting his patients themselves, including Sean, who’s too afraid of disappointing Jimmy to be open about any personal failure.
Sean is in a pretty good place overall, especially now that his and Liz’s food truck is up and running. But he’s still uncomfortable with reminders of his past. When an old army friend comes to town, he’s tempted to flake, even after Jimmy gets in the ring to challenge him to a fight in his latest Jimmying relapse. (It goes about as well as you’d expect.) Sean is more inspired by Jimmy’s confidence in him than his goofy antics, so he decides to go through with the hang at first — but in the end, he pulls out at the last second, walking right past the door of the spot.
Sean’s continual lack of friends outside his therapist’s circle perfectly proves Paul’s point about their confusing dual relationship, especially with his lie about how it went with the army buddy. So for his next appointment, Sean goes to Paul instead of Jimmy. Their little hello feels a bit bittersweet, but it’s for the best. Besides, they do literally live together, so it’s not like these two are out of each other’s lives. At most, he’ll probably see Jimmy 50 minutes less per week from now on.
Jimmy is dealing with a lot right now, so turning his casual sexual arrangement with Gaby into a real relationship isn’t front of mind. Maybe one day Jimmy will be ready to get serious, but today is not that day, and Gaby is aware of that. It’s an “uneven dynamic,” she points out to Liz, and the longer she keeps sleeping with him despite that, the more likely her feelings will get hurt. And yet like Jimmy, Gaby needs this release now, stressed as she is with moving, teaching a class, mediating an ongoing fight between her mom and sister, and dealing with her regular patients. She tries to quit Jimmy, but she just can’t — as a “pathological caretaker,” she’s still holding out hope he’ll give her a real shot eventually.
Liz takes it upon herself to interfere, as usual, leading to some classic Gaby-and-Liz fighting. This one doesn’t get too intense, though. Liz enlists her husband and Brian to unpack all of Gaby’s stuff while she’s away, and all is forgiven. (Gaby’s probably going to rearrange all that after they’re gone, though, right?)
The light C-plot of the episode belongs to Paul, who is starting to reluctantly come to terms with the fact that he is deeply in love with his doctor girlfriend, Julie. They’re not just “roomies with bennies”; they have regular morning dance sessions in their living room, and they even watch sports together. Paul is a stubborn guy who often struggles to be open about his emotions, so at first he goes the opposite way, suggesting they see too much of each other. But a night away from Julie is enough to remind him how much he likes spending time with her, so he marches over to her place and does the mature thing by telling her he loves her. (She says it back, of course.)
So much of Shrinking is about that need for communication and connection, about having an open and honest heart. So when Jimmy pulls back out his old recurring lie at the end of the episode — telling Alice that his day was great — there’s real cause for concern. Sometimes, you think everything’s fine until the past comes roaring back.
• Liz and Derek’s son, Connor, is still pretty into Alice, and for some reason, he seems incapable of talking to her despite their history (they lost their virginities to each other).
• Gotta love Harrison Ford’s grin when Jimmy says Paul pushed him off a cliff in his dream.
• Not a ton for Brian to do yet, but he’s taking on Grace’s case pro bono, so that should help keep him involved.
• Gaby’s student Keisha seems like a fun new character.
• Not really a fan of teeth humor, so I was more amused by Jimmy’s initial effort to hide what happened (the leaking blood was pretty good) than the actual visuals of his fucked-up teeth.
• “I don’t need to numb myself by snorting molly off of some stripper named Ecstasy … I might have been snorting ecstasy off a stripper named Molly.”
• “After Mom died, one day you were my dad, and the next I was getting a ride to school from a sex worker.” “She was also a Lyft driver. She did both.”
SPOILER ALERT! This story contains details from the two-part premiere of NCIS: Origins on CBS.
The origin story of Leroy Jethro Gibbs has finally begun: CBS kicked off its much-anticipated prequel Monday from veteran NCIS writers-producers Gina Lucita Monreal and David J. North, as well as CBS Studios. And as promised, Mark Harmon returned to both narrate and to appear fireside as he journals about his life.
Here, Monreal and North breakdown the two-part premiere that follows a young Gibbs (Bridge of Spies‘ Austin Stowell) as he starts his career as a newly minted special agent at the fledgling NIS Camp Pendleton office.
DEADLINE How much does the average viewer of NCIS know about Leroy Gibbs?
GINA LUCITA MONREAL I think it varies, but our hardcore fans know a lot. We’re trying to strike a balance between those hardcore fans and hopefully new fans who know nothing. That’s the line we’re walking.
DEADLINE Do they know he failed his psych evaluation?
DAVID J. NORTH No, we just made that up. We’re making this shit up.
DEADLINE That’s what a writer should do. Did they meet his dad?
NORTH They did meet his dad on the OG show. His dad was played by the wonderful Ralph Waite, who passed away during the length of that series. So we have Robert Taylor playing the younger version of him.
DEADLINE Did you shoot at Pendleton?
NORTH We did not. We spoke about it at one point. We did go down there. Gina and I took our writing staff and went with the director of the two-hour premiere to make sure this was as realistic as possible. We shot in San Pedro to match Pendleton.
DEADLINE Why is it just NIS?
MONREAL Before it became NCIS, it was NIS. There was a restructuring that happened in 1992 and that’s when they changed the name. So it helps us really, even in just saying this is a different time and place. We’ll play that restructuring within the scope of our show.
DEADLINE So why is Mike Franks [played by Kyle Schmid] considered a legend and how did he end up here? He obviously doesn’t fit the classic mold of these investigators.
MONREAL That’s a good question we’re going to answer.
NORTH We know him to be a gifted mentor. We know that he was a bit of a rule breaker. I don’t know how many episodes Frank was played by Muse Watson in NCIS, but it seemed like there was a lot untapped there. It was exciting for Gina and I because we felt we could take that character, who the hardcore fan base know, dig a little deeper and figure out what would’ve made this guy tick in 1991. The younger version in our show is very different than the older retired guy in the original. Frank is blunt, he says it like it is. There’s a little bit of Archie Bunker to him, but he is someone who has a lot of empathy for the people around him, even though he doesn’t always show it.
MONREAL I would describe him as complex because he does do some misogynistic things, but then he also has another side to him as well.
DEADLINESo we see Mark Harmon’s Leroy Gibbs journaling in the premiere! Did we know he journaled?
MONREAL Well, we knew that he brought a journal to Alaska.
NORTH In writing Mark’s final episode of NCIS, Gibbs goes to Alaska and when he gets there, he’s searching for someone. He decides that he has found peace there. When writing that episode, we didn’t really know what Gibbs would take with him when he knew he was never coming back. One of the things was a journal because he’s going to be in solitude. That worked out very well for us here at Origins.
MONREAL David actually wrote that farewell episode for Gibbs on the original NCIS and did such a beautiful job ending that story. So it’s really fun to see him be able to continue that story with our new show.
DEADLINE When we hear from Gibb’s dad in the premiere, he says to his son, ‘you’re not built for this job.’ What did he mean by that?
NORTH Gibbs joined the Marines at 18 and was a sniper his entire life. He was defending his country by hunting the enemy. He was a killer. That’s how Jackson sees his son as, sadly. He did not see him as someone who has the patience to do these investigations. I think any father/son relationship is complex and fathers don’t always see everything that’s there with your son. That’s a really tough moment.
MONREAL Jackson, too, is a military man. We’ve established in the original show that he flew planes in the army and the war. So I think it is really ingrained in who this family is, being in the military. So for him to see Gibbs make this shift sort of unannounced, is jarring for Jackson.
DEADLINE When Gibbs said the phrase ‘old habits,’ it literally sounded like Mark Harmon. You didn’t have Mark do a voiceover, did you?
MONREAL Austin does say it. He has done a lot of research into the way that Mark played this character and he’s really incorporated so many of his mannerism and his speaking patterns. I think his research and his dedication to this role is really evident.
DEADLINE Are you going to try to match the exact tone of NCIS or do you want this to be a little more serious?
NORTH We definitely will find the humor, but the tone of this show is largely darker. It is edgier. We are dealing with some stories that maybe we wouldn’t have had in the original NCIS, but we’re finding that even in the darkest moments of loss and grief, humor always bubbles to the surface.
DEADLINE Will there be a serialized aspect to this?
NORTH It is largely serialized. We have cases each week, but the show really delves deep into character so it’s a very serialized show.
DEADLINE Is Mark super precious about this character or is he giving you a wide berth?
NORTH Both. He cares so much, but it is a really interesting thing. He is Gibbs and obviously Mark infused so much of himself into Gibbs over the years. But he really trusts me and Gina. He wants us to see our vision through.
DEADLINE How would you describe the NCIS fans? Are they going to keep you on your toes or do you think they’ll cut you a break?
MONREAL Oh, they won’t cut us a break and I don’t want them to, either. That’s what makes them so wonderful is they’re so invested and they don’t want us to get this wrong and we certainly don’t want to get this wrong. We love and respect our fans and we want to do this justice for them. We’re so excited for them to see it.
DEADLINE What differences will we see in the way this team investigates cases as opposed to the way the modern-day team operates?
NORTH Forensics takes a long time. Even fingerprints can take six months to run. So it’s much more of a down and dirty, conventional, old-school way of investigating, which from a writer’s perspective is wonderful. It can be challenging in that you don’t have those crutches of just saying, ‘oh, okay, well we will run through fingerprint analysis and find our guy.’ It makes us go back and look at the characters and use our agents and their skillsets in order to solve these cases.
DEADLINE Will we see Mark sitting fireside again, writing in his journal? Or will you put him someplace else?
NORTH Anything is possible. We don’t want to give away too much of what’s going to happen and a lot is still being figured out. Our show focuses on 1991 and these characters, this rich tapestry that we have going with these characters, but certainly anything is possible.
DEADLINE Young Gibbs is a handsome man. Can you see him considering a romance or is that just not in the cards for a while because he’s still so damaged?
NORTH I think you said it. This is a human being and he has suffered a lot of loss, but romance is certainly not out of the question.
Summer is firmly over, and few things ring in the transition into autumn like new episodes of Abbott Elementary. Coming off a strike-impacted third season that coincided with more buzz than ever surrounding the show, Abbott gifts us a solid premiere episode, signifying how ready the cast and crew are for the new season. The show is no longer television’s Rookie of the Year; Abbott is now established in the industry, and with a whopping 22-episode season, the writers and actors have room to breathe and really flesh out story lines in true sitcom fashion. We’re even getting a crossover with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, so it’s safe to say real television is back, baby.
Not much has changed in the halls of Abbott Elementary: Jacob still hates Mr. Morton, Ava avoids work at all costs (she declares that action is her least favorite thing to take), the teachers remind the kids how much better they are than New Jersey, and Janine shares stolen glances with Gregory over their students’ heads. However, these stolen glances are no longer of the will-they, won’t-they variety. Following last season’s finale, which culminated in a Janine-and-Gregory kiss, the pair have moved forward with their connection and are testing the waters romantically. Here is an example of the delicate yet exciting place Abbott finds itself in four seasons in; the choices made now will determine if it makes it through the gauntlet to legacy-sitcom status. I’m particularly interested in how Janine and Gregory move forward since fan reception to romantic relationships can be particularly precarious depending on which way the wind blows. Some fans were already sick of the will-they, won’t-they tension after a mere two seasons, while others, like myself, reveled in the tension. Now, we get to find out if this relationship is in it for the long haul, like The Office’s Jim and Pam, or merely a blip, like Parks and Recreation’s Ann and Andy. Or could this be a classic breakup-to-make-up situation, like New Girl’s Jess and Nick? There are many possible avenues, and watching it unfold in real time is what makes television so entertaining.
For now, we have no idea what Janine and Gregory’s future holds, which is perfectly fine because we get to have fun living in the moment of the early days of their romance. We get cute moments that play on their idiosyncracies, like Janine telling Gregory she would never take him somewhere without buttered noodles and Gregory uncharacteristically wearing Janine’s lipstick kiss on his cheek. They’re adorable as they try to play coy at work despite everyone already knowing the advancement in their relationship, with Ava considering the sneaking around an affront to their intelligence. Their co-workers have no problem humoring them, but once the students start to pick up on the vibes, Ava puts pressure on them to go public so she won’t get in trouble by bringing an HR representative (Warren, one of Janine’s opps from the district) to the school in hopes of forcing their hand. True to their personalities, Janine advocates for keeping things under wraps, while Gregory wants to come clean, noting there’s nothing professionally wrong with what they’re doing as long as they’re honest about it.
After Janine awkwardly avoids a conversation with Warren, Gregory begins to worry that she has cold feet regarding her feelings. Jacob assures him that Janine is deeply in “like” with him, so he shouldn’t have anything to worry about. So when Janine realizes she forgot her presentation for the back-to-school staff meeting (which is very important as she’s pitching a field trip to the aquarium, and “if the kids don’t go to the aquarium, they fail the SATs”), Gregory plays the perfect boyfriend and runs to her apartment to retrieve it during his free period. He barely makes it back in time before bursting into the meeting right as Janine runs out of stalling time and handing her back her keys. The staff starts grilling them with questions about their evident closeness, including coming to and from work together with their overnight duffel bags in tow, until they break under pressure — the pressure being Mr. Morton’s accusation that the duffel bags were being used to sell drugs. Janine blurts out that they’re having sex, officially letting the cat out of the bag.
Janine immediately tries to stuff the cat back in the bag, causing Gregory to initiate an honest conversation about why she wants to keep things private. She admits that she’s fearful because it wasn’t successful the last time she made something official (I can’t wait for Tariq’s first cameo of the season), and she really wants things to work out this time. Gregory pulls Janine into his arms, soothing her anxiety by reminding her that this time is different. They decide to come clean with HR, this time leaving out the sex portion, thankfully. Gregory and Janine finally sit down with Warren and Ava to spill the details of their coupling. Janine treats it like a therapy session, omitting anything about sex but oversharing to the point where she tries to bring the conversation to when she hit puberty in 11th grade, prompting a fantastic Tyler James Williams deadpan. Warren stops her there, saying all he needs to know is their current relationship status. For the first time, Janine and Gregory publicly declare that they are boyfriend and girlfriend. With everything on the table, Warren makes a record of the relationship, giving a backhanded blessing (I love this rivalry) and allowing them to move forward with the romance.
While Janine and Gregory formalize their relationship, the staff deals with the repercussions of a PGA golf course currently under construction a few blocks from Abbott, the first sign of which being a new white student that Ava mistakes for a Victorian-era ghost at the West Philly school. Apart from the influx of white people in the neighborhood eager to live near the course, the siphoning of resources that are necessary to build such a project immediately affects the school. A water pipe bursts, traffic is unbearable, the power is faulty, and the gas shuts off as construction ensues. Ava deflects complaints, claiming there’s nothing she can do since it’s a city-backed project.
When a student’s tooth falls out while they’re trying to chew a frozen chicken nugget since the cafeteria couldn’t heat them without gas, Melissa puts her connections to use to try and improve conditions. Her construction-worker cousin, Tommy, tells her that the golf course is cutting corners by using nonunion workers. She proposes to tattle to the city or have her cousin kill all their pets. Obviously, they choose the former. With word of Abbott’s discontent rumbling, an attorney representing the golf course makes an appearance at the school. He apologizes with the timbre of a politician, persuading them of the value the golf course will add before giving out gift cards, ergonomic chairs, and new computers. Then he promises that the workers will be unionized by the following week. I know when something feels too good to be true, and it seems as though Abbott has introduced a new villain.
• I love this “Jacob can’t read” conspiracy theory. I hope it becomes a running gag along with his hatred for Morton. Speaking of: Watching him take the beef to HR was hilarious, but Mr. Johnson accusing Melissa of flirting via lunch takeout menus takes the cake.
• I’m very biased, as I live next to one, but I’m happy Abbott Elementary is shedding light on how golf courses use an inordinate amount of resources.
• Finally, here are my favorite lines of the episode:
Ava on Janine and Gregory: “We know what two people look like when they’re hunching hard.” I never thought I would hear hunching on network TV, so thank you, Janelle James, for that amazing delivery.
Mr. Johnson after Janine admits that she’s having sex with Gregory — not that she’s a drug dealer: “This is even worse than I thought. What people won’t do for money.”
Barbara, squaring up to the golf-course lawyer: “Your little construction project has put quite a strain on our lives. We got a white child now. You wanna get his parents involved?”
Ava when Warren says she can’t sell jewelry the students make on Etsy because of child-labor laws: “Is it really work if they love what they do?”
Often, while watching Emily in Paris, I shout at my TV to no avail. Despite my cries, everyone stays committed to traditional monogamy. Emily remains committed to doing whatever she is doing with her hair and to saying, “I have feelings for Gabriel!” or “I’m serious about Alfie!” while treating both men as strangers she just met in the grocery store.
And yet, every now and then, the sun slices through the clouds, and I know, I know: The television can hear me, and Emily in Paris is shouting back.
The first time this happened was in season two: I spent an entire season demanding to know how old Emily was supposed to be and was rewarded for my efforts with an episode all about Emily’s birthday. We are all older now — even Emily, I think? — and so my shouts, lately, have been about the fact that Emily thinks she is the protagonist we’re all rooting for but is, in fact, an anti-heroine in the grand Bradshaw tradition. More often than not, I think of her as the villain of the series. (The hero, of course, is Sylvie.)
This is why it THRILLS me to report that our fourth season begins with a sequence I swear was designed with us in mind. Emily ended season three believing she’d lost her great romance, Gabriel, to impending fatherhood and her actual boyfriend, Alfie, to her emotional investment in Gabriel. But we all know what Emily really cares about, and this season opens with the true love of Emily’s life — social media — turning against her.
Remember Camille’s younger brother, Timothée, who was only 17 when Emily hooked up with him back in season one? He has made a viral TikTok in which he argues, quite compellingly, that Emily is a monster. YES. Emily, he alleges, ruined Camille’s life and has harmed his family before. Preach that gospel, Timothée!
We cut to Emily at the café with Mindy, insisting, “I did nothing wrong here, okay?” A sociopath ’til the end; you almost have to respect it. Emily is doing something this show rarely makes her do: facing the consequences of her shortsighted and careless actions. Alfie won’t text her back, and because we have lost Madeline and her pregnancy, it is extremely difficult to know how much time is passing on this show, but Emily is acting as if it has been some unconscionable interregnum since they last spoke. Later in this episode, we will discover it has been three days.
For the ten thousandth time, Emily has decided that Gabriel isn’t an option; I trust that, like every other time she has done this, she will find the closure she seeks and move forward with her life!! The only person here who is being interesting is, unfortunately but intriguingly, off-screen: Camille, who is still having a baby with Gabriel and is in love with Sofia. FINALLY. How potentially juicy and fun and FRENCH. (I assume … I am American, but I watch a lot of movies.)
What can be said about Mindy in this scene? It’s not her tackiest outfit, but her platform heels are a brat-summer green, and as soon as Emily splits, Mindy watches part two of Camille’s brother’s tirade.
Absolutely hilarious to see Gabriel incapacitated by a hand burn at the restaurant — Emily in Paris does not obey the laws of space or time, but it does recognize the Inviolable Rules of Television Health and Medicine, which decrees that injuries are never deforming but are always, conveniently, just debilitating enough to require assistance from a love interest. Gabriel’s burn leaves Emily no choice but to unpack all his groceries and cook an omelet for him. Wasn’t she just saying it was time to focus on work? Emily is setting a new personal record for how quickly she will go back on her word after saying she will do one correct thing, only to pivot and do some other dumb thing instead.
I recently was on the very fun Enemy in Paris podcast talking about our beloved psychotic show. During this conversation, I explained that characters here behave as if they are being lobotomized in between takes, so no one remembers anything anyone has ever said or done. For instance, here we see Gabriel telling Emily that she is always doing the right thing at the expense of herself; she tells him that he is always doing the same. Have we EVER seen either of them do this?! Gabriel is arguably the only person in this series who is even more selfish than Emily, who is saved only somewhat by her unrelenting delusion that she is A Good Person Who Means Well. It really is always two dumb bitches telling each other “exactlyyyy.”
In frankly shocking news to me, Sylvie has seen Timothée’s TikTok. I thought Sylvie was above that sort of thing. I still love her, but I’m a little disappointed. Fortunately, her response is, “The less we say about it, the better.” On the subject of saying less, Sylvie also instructs Emily to keep her mouth shut during the meeting with AMI because Julien is hanging by a thread, as is his right. I’ll be honest with you: I thought he quit at the end of last season. I got ahead of myself because I thought we were doing, like, actual plot development. That’s on me! I won’t make that mistake again.
As you may recall, Emily and Alfie are the face of this campaign — a campaign that Emily pitched, FULLY KNOWING (1) Alfie’s hesitation about moving forward in their relationship because he’d been burned by “going public” in much lower-stakes ways before by women who weren’t really committed to him and (2) that she was, and is, obsessed with Gabriel (this is in the text and not in their actual performance/chemistry/energy, but we are to believe EMILY believes it, and that’s what matters here). As usual, she is in an absolute shitshow entirely of her own design. Are we supposed to feel bad for her? Emily does a beautiful cultural exchange wherein she teaches the French about the concept of the kiss cam. Then she tries to back out of the whole thing, as it will require her and Alfie, the faces of this campaign, to, you know, kiss. Julien, correctly, says it’s a little late for Emily to “not interfere,” seeing as she inserted herself into the campaign. Sylvie, as we all know, warned Emily about the risks of broadcasting her entire life for public consumption. Meanwhile, Alfie not only blocked Emily’s number but also deleted her on Instagram, which, to Emily, surely hits like a war crime.
Let’s leave the kids’ table for a moment, shall we? Maison Lavaux and Baccarat are collaborating on a perfume by Antoine. They wanted an English name, but Sylvie wisely deems “Crystal Heart” too tacky. She asks what Antoine’s wife thinks. Funny you should ask, Sylvie! Antoine’s wife thinks it’s time for a divorce. No one is surprised, but personally, I am concerned by Antoine’s eagerness because I am rooting for Sylvie and her actual husband, Laurent, to make it work, NOT because I am being conventional and American but because I like him more. Remember him in the tux at the opera? Very swoony, and I really appreciated it. Alfie arrives because he still works for Antoine. Antoine uses Alfie to talk about himself, encouraging this young chap to “stick with it” because “the spark could reignite.” Sylvie is … less interested. I am with Sylvie. Antoine seems so desperate.
Ah, yes, Mindy and her boys, dressed like idiots and pursuing their dreams in a parallel universe that has nothing to do with the show we are watching. They are going to Eurovision for France, which feels sort of against the rules (Mindy isn’t French??), but I am not a Eurovision expert, so I defer to those of you who are. They have to fund this themselves. It’s very we-need-a-talent-show-to-save-the-rec-center in terms of plot devices, but remember what I said three paragraphs ago? I’m NOT falling for the trap of caring about the plot again 🙂 I am content, and my brain is blank, and I am glad Mindy’s bandmate is here to provide cute little quips like, “No help from the government? What is this, America?” Mindy is still dating Nicolas, who was a genuinely interesting foil for Emily but then went full one-dimensional supervillain. He is crazy rich, and the bandmates suggest Mindy ask him for the money, but she refuses. “Just because he’s hot doesn’t mean you can’t date him for his money,” says the non-Benoit bandmate whose name I have not yet committed to memory. “Multitask, bitch!”
Alfie tries to go to the gym, but he is confronted by a gigantic poster of him and Emily. Despite having blocked her number, he calls Emily to beg her to remove it. Everyone on this show is so stupid. He cannot possibly think that’s how that works?! She is not in charge of this! Hot off the insight that the gym is the “only place” Alfie can go to escape from Emily in all of Paris, Emily … shows up in the middle of his boxing session so she can destroy his hard-won peace and distract him mid-round so he gets punched in the head. Yet again, the Inviolable Rules of Television Health and Medicine require Emily to be called upon to tenderly apply ice to Alfie’s face and also for Alfie to be shirtless. “You’re more important to me than any campaign,” Emily says, which is truly hilarious because we KNOW this is a lie. Much like Faye Dunaway in Network, Emily Cooper has one love, and it is CONTENT.
Laurent is opening a sexy yacht club in Paris. Louis de Leon — the guy who engaged in some as-yet-defined inappropriate misconduct with Sylvie when she was young and in his employ; also, Nico’s dad — is the backer. Sylvie has not really told Laurent what happened with Louis; we don’t really know if he would still pursue this business venture if he had that information, and maybe Sylvie doesn’t want to find out.
That evening, Mindy laments to Emily that the gig economy is a scam. (Best line of the episode: “I’d sell feet pics, but there’s something demoralizing about doing a job you did in high school.” I feel like this show is SO close to just letting Mindy be their Alexis, and I say run with that instinct!) Emily has such an idiotic idea of salvaging her disaster — using AI Memoji-type animation? Whatever, it’s not even worth getting into it. Mindy is all, “I can’t believe you did all this for work.” Does ANYONE actually know Emily? Have they met her? Am I alone here, hallucinating this entire series?
Nicolas gifts Mindy a JVMA outfit to wear to tomorrow’s event — all the characters will be attending the French Open — and it’s basically a Pepto Bismol–colored Jackie O-type suit. It is very obvious that the purpose of the outfit is to force Mindy to look appropriate, by Nicolas’s father’s standards, and I thought Mindy was a pretty smart cookie, but it takes her forever to figure this out. (Let’s not even get into the audacity of Nicolas’s dad, who we know engaged in some sort of Me Too misconduct in the workplace, telling a woman that she is being inappropriate based on her attire.)
Meanwhile, Alfie puts on a three-piece suit to confront Gabriel in his empty restaurant. This whole interaction feels so flat and sterile; no one has ever really had chemistry with Emily, and these men don’t really have friends-to-enemies chemistry with each other. In fact, I never really bought them as friends in the first place, did you? Gabriel’s insufferable shtick about being some self-sacrificing knight to support Emily’s relationship with someone I’m fairly certain she’s only been dating for … three months? Is not working for me. Literally, everyone here can break up with whoever they want! It’s not that deep for anyone except Gabriel and Camille, who I’m sure can reach some French understanding!
Naturally, Emily did not solve her problem before the French Open began. This is, objectively, a fireable offense, but of course, she will keep her job, and Julien will bail over her shenanigans. Emily is dressed like she is auditioning for The Music Man. Mindy finds out the reason her boyfriend has her dressed like she’s doing bad First Lady cosplay. I know we are supposed to be on Mindy’s side here because men shouldn’t tell women what to wear, her body her choice, etc. etc., BUT what’s very funny about this to me is that I REMEMBER clocking that the outfit she wore to meet her boyfriend’s dad was particularly salacious, even for Mindy, especially considering she was at a work event. (From that recap: “Mindy is wearing basically nothing but nude figure-skater mesh with three strategically placed black swirls.”) I feel like this all could have been avoided with a normal adult conversation. Surely, the event has a dress code that Mindy could have been made aware of. Anyway, Mindy and Nicolas are obviously a bad match because he wants her to be someone she’s not, but I also think her outfit choices are objectively insane 95 percent of the time. AITA?
Julien gets that job offer with JVMA. Sylvie thinks this is all about punishing her. Her self-absorption at this critical juncture is exactly what Julien needed to hear to feel free to abandon ship. Over in Emily’s court, the whole jankiness of this AMI plan is very grating to me. Obviously, they wouldn’t just swing the camera over to Emily if they hadn’t confirmed Alfie’s attendance! What kind of amateur deal is this? But Alfie arrives at the last moment, looking quite sharp. He is trying to do the vulnerable-adult conversation, but unfortunately for him, he is on Emily in Paris, so it won’t get him anywhere.
Emily says, “Look at us. That’s real,” as she gestures toward the enormous ad with their chemistry-free kiss in it. “You can’t fake that.” IT IS LITERALLY AN ADVERTISEMENT. IT IS FAKE BY DEFINITION. THEY HIRE ACTORS AND MODELS FOR THEM ALL THE TIME!! My brain is melting, and we are only 27 minutes into this new season. Alfie says, wisely, that he cannot move past the Gabriel thing, and therefore, he cannot date her. He politely kisses her for the kiss cam. But it’s a farewell kiss, like the kind from The Godfather: Part II(spoiler if you didn’t know how mafia death kisses work).
Alfie reports to Antoine that he is heartbroken. Imagine being heartbroken over a woman who only loves hashtags. Antoine decides “Heartbreak” is a better English name for his perfume, and Sylvie agrees. But she has bigger issues to face: A journalist is investigating Louis de Leon and wants to talk to her. God, what a chic sweater situation. Every time I see how Sylvie looks when she is just at home by herself, I realize I need to do better. In other sartorial news, Mindy sells her JVMA outfit so she has some cash to fund the Eurovision performance. And I’m sorry to side with the devil here, but look at what Mindy wears when she dresses herself. How many Smurfs had to die for her to get that hat?
After assuring Alfie over and over again that he had nothing to worry about in the Gabriel department, Emily basically sprints to Gabriel’s restaurant as soon as her breakup is through. Gabriel has some news: Nobody has seen Camille since the wedding. Emily fails to register that this is important, so Gabriel spells it out for her: Camille is MISSING. Search Partycrossover?
