Time for another installment of Ask Alan, as I take your questions about the past, present, and future of TV.
First up, I try to figure out historical precedents for the mess Netflix finds itself in with Kevin Spacey and House of Cards. This was recorded on Monday, before the stunning news that Ridley Scott is going to reshoot all of Spacey’s scenes in All the Money in the World with Christopher Plummer, even though the movie is scheduled to be released next month. If that doesn’t tell you how much of a pariah Spacey has already become in the business, I don’t know what will.
(This was also recorded, obviously, before yesterday’s Louis CK news, which may or may not affect the future of Better Things, where he writes or co-writes every episode. If you’re wondering where my review of last night’s episode is, I decided it wasn’t the right day to be doing a straightforward write-up of an episode CK wrote.)
From there, we get a bit esoteric, as a reader wonders if the formula for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 — a Broadway play inspired by a subsection of Tolstoy’s War and Peace — could be applied to turn an episode or story arc of television into a stage production.
And we close things out with a viewer of Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville noting the disconnect between critical opinions of that show and fans — a tale as old as time, if you do what I do for a living.
As always, you can email me questions at askalan@uproxx.com, or tweet at me with the hashtag #AskAlanDay.