 with Kevin Fallon Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
This Week:
Annie Live! Made Me Hate Myself I think, perhaps, we have reached peak "it's nice to watch something nice" television.
For a while, this was a holiday treat. A demonically deranged Sound of Music? A Christmas gift. An unhinged Peter Pan? A winter hug. That Hairspray live performance? Well… that was actually brilliant and I refuse to shade it.
But in the last two years (LOL at us now adding an "s" to "year" while talking about our COVID reality) things that we consume from a point of grace because they're cheerful and well-intentioned aren't just annual treats. They are constants.
We've spent these—again—years giving thanks for the diverting, wholesome antidotes to our cynical, nihilistic existence. Quality doesn't matter when the public service is this essential: making us feel happy in spite of [gestures at the world] all of this.
And yet, everything has a breaking point.
Annie Live! was a good version of the musical Annie. That isn't intended as a compliment.
We could convene a salon to discuss the questions that this show brings up from a 2021 perspective. What is Annie, if not government propaganda? Why do we praise Hamilton when Annie pioneered the idea of Cabinet meetings as a musical number? Who will be brave enough to allow Daddy Warbucks to have hair? And, mostly, how have we gaslit ourselves into thinking Annie is a good musical?  This is where the tension lies. I can make fun of so many aspects of Thursday night's Annie Live! broadcast on NBC, but those things are an issue with the material itself and, mostly, not to do with the wholesome enthusiasm with which the production was mounted. And, on this cold December night, it was a genuine hoot to snuggle into my throw blanket with a glass of wine and do as my sexuality compels: Support Megan Hilty's career in any way, shape, or form.
It's rewarding to see that "hate-watching" has evolved to "begrudging appreciation-watching." Those live versions of Sound of Music and Peter Pan were Patients Zero and One of the "hate-watching" phenomenon, where people tuned in with ravenous giddiness to mock and insult.
As a person who adores musical theater and every day wishes he was talented enough to do it, it's a pleasure to have these live musicals broadcasts, both for families to watch and for bitter gay men drunk and alone on their couch. When I scrolled through Twitter Thursday night, I saw people poking fun, sure. But it was mostly in the spirit of "aren't we lucky that this even exists to make fun of?"
The question remains, however, of how long we can just feel lucky, and not feel owed. As in owed something good. Or how long we have to say, "Well, it was nice to see something nice," when something like Annie Live! airs, because everything else about our lives is so horrible.
I did not enjoy being confronted with my sleep-paralysis demon—Harry Connick Jr. in a bald cap—on this unassuming Thursday night. I did not need to reflexively applaud (from my couch?) after the most talented musical theater chorus members in the industry sang a protest song about Herbert Hoover. I did not need to see Mrs. Pugh have her dreams dashed because Oliver Warbucks will be working through dinner and think, "I want to know her story."
And yet, I cried. Yes, I cried while watching Annie Live!. I have become a parody of myself.
Celina Smith, the young girl who was cast as Annie, is astonishing. The beauty of her performance though wasn't just the preternatural belting to "Maybe" and "Tomorrow"—which, to continue my point about this being a worse musical than we remember, both happen in the first 10 minutes of the show—it was in the shocking emotion and pathos she brought to the book scenes. Annie has a notoriously terrible script. This is an award-worthy accomplishment.
We are all blessed when Nicole Scherzinger is performing for us. At some point we will all have to reckon with the fact that Nicole Scherzinger is the greatest entertainer of our generation. That she hasn't been given the showcases she deserves is Hollywood's own embarrassment, but at least she makes a meal out of every morsel she gets. Do yourself a favor and search out her performance as Maureen in Rent on YouTube. Google "Nicole Scherzinger" and "Phantom of the Opera" and prepare for your jaw to drop. I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone watch the TV-musical version of Dirty Dancing, but know this: She was in it, and gave the performance of a lifetime.
I was impressed by just how many different characters Taraji P. Henson played Thursday night. I'm not sure which was Miss Hannigan, but she was having a lot of fun and so was I. Whatever there is to say about Annie, "Easy Street" slaps, so we were lucky enough to see it performed by Henson, Tituss Burgess, and Hilty. Megan Hilty, forever flawless. (Is there a role in the world more fun to play than Lily St. Regis?)
The kids were great. This is 2021 Annie. Being precocious and able to harmonize isn't enough. Now we're flipping. We're doing aerials. We're turning "Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" into such a bop that Kevin is getting up and dancing along with them.
There is a song about New York City called "NYC" featuring tap dancers, a former contestant from So You Think You Can Dance, and who I can only assume was a recent Tisch School of the Arts grad belting for her life. It was a riot. It was lunacy. I will be singing it in my head every time I leave my apartment for the next two weeks.
These things were all… nice. But Annie Live! was bad. And I hate myself for saying it. I feel like I'm not allowed to say it.
We're still in this space where we are supposed to appreciate the effort and intention of anything like this. Everything is darkness, and here are some talented people trying to bring some light.
Well, if they're so talented then why isn't the light a little brighter?
This is a messy review because I'm not even really panning the show. I genuinely loved all three hours of watching Annie Live! on Thursday night. When else can you cancel all plans because you're about to watch Nicole Scherzinger jauntily whisper "we got Annie" and Taraji P. Henson live her life while making a cartoon mess out of Miss Hannigan?
I'm just more curious about when we're going to allow ourselves to have standards again. I've appreciated nice things for a while now. But at some point, Selling Sunset isn't a fun distraction, it is actually the worst show on television. Emily in Paris isn't escapism; it is absolute trash made for you to forget you're watching while you scroll through your phone. And Annie Live! isn't just a holiday event, but something worth adjudicating as television.
That Olivia Colman, She's Pretty Good…
The lazy praise about an actor who is good in everything they do is to say, "I would watch them read the phone book." It's dumb. And also not true. You wouldn't watch someone read the phone book. It's a phone book! It would be boring as hell, no matter who it was. Also, do phone books even exist anymore? Anyway, let's find one. Because, despite everything I just said, I would watch Olivia Colman read the phone book. (Someone find a phone book!)
I would watch Olivia Colman say "I pooed in a cupboard!" with verve, as she does 100 seconds into this Vogue video interview. I would watch her shove her face with delicacies and devastatingly entertain a harem of rabbits, as she does in The Favourite. I would watch her blow a raspberry during an Oscars acceptance speech in front of cinema's most elite and illustrious, a reward for her performance in that film, and I would surely watch her simply say "Lady Gaga!" at the end and blow a kiss. (I rewatched this speech to write this, and obviously cried.) I would watch her tromp through the English hills on a hunting trip in The Crown, and then scream, "Michaela Coel, fuck yeah!" while accepting an award for that performance. (Watched and cried to that one, too.)  This is all to say that Olivia Colman is always good. Always captivating. Always doing something that surprises you entirely, but is also entirely perfect. Which is exactly what she does in Landscapers.
Landscapers is a four-part miniseries (remember when anything wrapped in under four hours!?) that premieres Sunday night on HBO. I don't have to tell you that she is astonishing in it. Maybe I don't even have to tell you how she is astonishing in it is surprising. And yet, here we are, once again gobsmacked by her performance in something, and how she took it in a direction we could never have imagined or expected, and then, again, blew us away.
In Landscapers, she plays a British housewife who claims that she heard her mother shoot and kill her father, and then killed her mother while being provoked. Her husband then helped her bury the bodies and, more than a decade later, they were found out. (Based on a true story!) Reading that description, you obviously can't know what to expect from a performance like this. But I never imagined the one that Colman gives.
She has an uncanny way of flitting between heartbreaking and hilarious with a dexterity that should be studied, especially because the polar points of that range never for a second read as anything but human and grounded. The simple act of being a human being is very funny, just as it is absolutely horrifying and profound. She taps into the extremes of that existence so naturally that it reminds you how regular it is to skate between them.
Landscapers is a true crime series, I guess, but it is also a Hollywood homage—something that really only makes sense when you watch it. (I tried to describe it in words for about an hour before I realized that it's just not possible. Fire me.) But above all it is a showcase for the prodigious talents of Colman.
It's not that this is shocking information. As laid out earlier, she has an Oscar and an Emmy. Of course she's good. But it's just the way that I had no idea to expect a performance like this from her, even after being so pleasantly surprised all those other times, that strikes me. No actor working today is this electric.
I'd Like to Propose a Toast…
Stephen Sondheim died over Thanksgiving weekend, and I'm not sure I was able to process it then because I was surrounded by the chaos of living… which, come to think of it, might be something that he was always trying to parse. I haven't stopped thinking about what his work meant since, or I guess I've been doing that forever. I think I've been working through what it's meant to me and how it's changed me my whole life, but it took a death for me to try to find a way to articulate it. The articulation is hard.
He changed theater and culture as we know it—and as we feel it. The ways in which he taught us—taught me—to process what it means to be a human being, to begrudge but work through your flaws, to yearn for more but find a way to settle and appreciate where you are. To acknowledge that there really are happy endings in life, but they're often just the end of act one. What happens next—the pain and confusion of that all as it unravels—is hard to weather. So absolutely hard. But it makes you appreciate those happy endings you had more, and that's beautiful, if bittersweet.  He taught us—taught me—what it means to be an artist and a creator, to be a human in constant struggle to achieve greatness and want to leave a legacy, and to know that it's OK if you don't but still never want to stop trying, frustrating as it might be. Whether it's love, connection, or art, to want something that will last forever.
That's remarkably exactly what he did. I can't even type that word without feeling its enormity. Forever. And so I'll deflect with this, the perfect tweet, sent to me by my twin brother which, of course, made me laugh, but also realize I am being seen for exactly the person I think I am. That's beautiful, too. 
Have You Thanked God Today for Kenny G?
Back in September, I interviewed Kenny G, not really knowing what to expect or what kind of angle I was going to have. He may rank among my favorite people I've ever talked to.
We all talk about self-awareness and, especially in modern culture with social media and TikTok and whatever the other things are that I'm too old to know about, we commoditize it. Stars are expected to know what people think about them and to make fun of themselves. I wonder if Kenny G pioneered that?  Listening to Kenny G premiered this week on HBO and provides fascinating insight into a person who achieved unparalleled success, became a meme before memes existed, stared down unfairly aggressive backlash and critique, and smiled in the face of it, all because he was certain of one thing—that he was really damn talented.
We talked a lot about what that means in our interview, but it's absolutely worth seeking out the documentary to find out more. Especially if you're a person who rolled your eyes at him, this is a film for you.
Channing Tatum, the Culture We Need and Deserve
The first Magic Mike should have been nominated for Oscars and the second might just be the best sequel that cinema has ever seen. I am not saying these things for controversial attention. They are simple truths. And the fact that we are now getting a trilogy? Blessings we don't deserve. 
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Annie Live!’ Is the Last Dying Breath of Feel-Good TV
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