Happy Friday, everybody! Time for a new installment of Ask Alan, where I take your questions about the past, present, and future of TV.
Our first question — what’s the best spinoff of all time? — forces me to invoke the Ask Alan Simpsons Rule, where even if the obvious answer is The Simpsons (which it very much is here), I need to come up with at least one more answer. In this case, I talked about a bunch of them, though the obvious number two is a more traditional kind of spinoff, in that Homer and Marge never interacted with the other Tracey Ullman Show characters.
After that, we look at the longevity of ER and Grey’s Anatomy, and the way that the former turned over its entire cast more than once, whereas the latter still has four original castmembers, and will likely always have at least one for as long as it’s around.
Finally, some inside baseball leads me to discuss how I decide what shows to review every episode of. In answering it, I mention my longtime difficulty writing about The Americans, which I explained at some length in this recent IndieWire survey.
As always, you can email me questions at askalan@uproxx.com (we had server issues recently, but the address is working again), or tweet at me with the hashtag #AskAlanDay.