The Rundown: Please, For The Love Of God, Look At How Bosch Eats Pancakes

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Genius is rarely appreciated in its time

Bosch is a show about a loose cannon detective who plays by his own rules but also gets results. The sixth season premiered last week. Over the run of the series, Bosch has taken down serial killers, murderous housewives who are in cahoots with crooked cops, meth rings run by international mercenaries, and now, this season, murderous housewives who were kind of in cahoots with crooked FBI agents and a right-wing militia. Bosch is the best. It’s much better than I’m making it sound, as it should be, what with a slew of alums of The Wire both on and behind the camera, but also, as we discussed just last week, it is also a show where someone will tell Bosch to stay in his lane and Bosch will reply “my lane has no lines.” Based only on the amount of time I spend talking about it, there’s an argument to be made that Bosch is my favorite show. I’m okay with it.

But that’s not why we’re here. It is, in a way, but it’s also not. This has nothing to do with the quality or the structure of the show. This is not anything resembling high-level television criticism. No, this is me pointing out that in episode four of the new season, after Bosch’s daughter announces that she’s made breakfast, he does something amazing.

Look at how Bosch eats pancakes.

LOOK AT HOW BOSCH EATS PANCAKES.

Is this… do people do this? Do other people eat pancakes like this? Because I have been alive for over 30 years and I’ve eaten hundreds — thousands? — of pancakes in that time, and been around lots of other people while they were eating pancakes, and I’ve never seen anyone do this. It’s fascinating to me.

It’s also, kind of, genius, right? Instead of dumping the syrup on top and having it slide and slop around the top of the pancake, the entire bottom side gets an even coating. And when you go to cut off a piece with your fork, you can just slide it through more syrup as you pick it up. This is a life-changing development for me. I’m going to have to try this now. I really don’t see any way around it.

I swear to God, sometimes I feel like the show does little weirdo stuff like this just to delight me, personally. Like, and I know bring this up a lot but I love it and will never apologize, look how Bosch puts his hands in his pockets.

What a delightfully strange man. What a beautiful television show. There was no reason to include a closeup shot of Bosch eating pancakes like this. It was not necessary to the plot or anything else for that matter. Someone involved in the show just really wanted to get two points across:

• Bosch is so dedicated to playing by his own rules that he even refuses to eat pancakes by the book
• There are endless possibilities in life if you have an open mind

It’s a beautiful message. I just hope we’re ready to accept it. True genius is never recognized in its own time. Galileo was tossed in prison for claiming the Earth revolved around the sun. Walk Hard and Popstar both bombed at the box office despite being objectively perfect movies. I consider these injustices to be equal. And I will add Bosch’s pancake-eating method to the list if I see any of you mocking it in response to this. The man is a visionary. Let him create.

Probably not a lot of fun to wash that dish, though. Maybe paper plates next time.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Politics is, briefly, related only to this video and not extending one single inch beyond it in any direction… good

This column is and always will be a politics-free operation. There are many reasons for this, but the main ones are that I would never do that to you and I would never, ever do it to myself. Thinking about politics too much warps your brain. I value our time and well-being too much for that. My promise to you.

That said, exceptions will be made very sporadically for politics-adjacent things, in very special circumstances to be determined by me on a case-by-case basis. If a dog wins a race for mayor, it’s going in here. If a sitting Congressman appears on 9-1-1 as the victim of a violent koala attack at the zoo that he or she instigated by taunting the koala with an ice cream cone, it’s going in here. And if Danny Trejo appears in a video that warns people about an ongoing pandemic and is posted on the official Twitter account of the Governor of California, well, as you can see, that’s going in here, too. I have never been more motivated to wash my hands than when Danny Trejo yelled into the camera about it.

This is also a good opportunity to remind you that Danny Trejo is awesome. Awesome as an actor and awesome in general, but also awesome in a very specific “he once ran to the scene of a car accident to help and ended up bonding with a special needs child who was temporarily caught in the mangled wreckage” way. Here, look:

He said he works with special-needs children so he knew how to keep the little boy calm.

“He was panicked. I said OK, we have to use our superpowers. So he screamed ‘superpowers’ and we started yelling ‘superpowers,” Trejo said. “I said do this, with the muscles. He said ‘muscles.'”

“We got kind of a bond. I kept facing him away from the accident.”

Between this and the handwashing advice, it’s not unreasonable to assume Danny Trejo has saved more lives than Batman.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Blessed Beastie Boys

Apple+ is rolling out its big fancy Beastie Boys documentary, Beastie Boys Story, this weekend. It’s a two-hour stage show directed by Spike Jonze that is filled with stories, both funny and sad. Uproxx’s Mike Ryan liked it even though he’s never been a big Beastie Boys fan. I liked it and I am a huge Beastie Boys fan, to the degree that I own Beastie Boys Book in both hardcover and audiobook format. I’ve mentioned the audiobook in this column a few times. It’s great. A bunch of the chapters are read by their famous friends and fans, including one read by Rosie Perez that can only be described as a performance.

The surviving members of the group, Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond, are doing press for the project now. Kind of. If you’re familiar with Beastie Boys at all, you probably know that they don’t so much “do press” as they “screw around with reporters for a while.” They’re rascals, these guys, especially Horovitz. This brings us to their GQ interview this week, which is fun and informative and closes with this exchange.

OK, you guys have to go. Before you do, can I just get some advice, to the people self-isolating all over—

AH: Advice on what?!

How to make it through—

AH: A global pandemic?! What the fuck do we know!!

It’s important to note here that this is good-natured, not him just being a jerk. The man simply refuses to give straight answers to two questions in a row. He’s the best. Beastie Boys are the best. Watch the documentary. Listen to their albums again. Get a little sad about Adam Yauch. Again. That’s what I’m doing this weekend.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Let’s check in with some quarantined celebrit-… GOGGINS

Welcome to the latest edition of Let’s Check In With Quarantined Celebrities. Two weeks ago, we saw The Barefoot Contessa and Queen of America Ina Garten make a cocktail the size of a prize-winning watermelon. Last week, in what can only be described as a smorgasbord, we had three entries: Matthew McConaughey teaching us about proper face mask construction in character as a man named “Bobby Bandito”; Martha Stewart leaving admittedly drunken Instagram comments under pictures of farm animals; and January Jones tap dancing, which was someone the wildest of the three. It’s a scary time right now, but it is also a little hilarious. Silver linings.

Anyway, this week we are highlighting Walton Goggins making cocktails on his Instagram and talking you through both the preparation and this current situation as a whole. “But wait,” you say, impatiently, “didn’t Stanley Tucci just go viral for making a Negroni? Why don’t you talk about that instead of Walton Goggins and his cocktail?”

Well, two reasons, smart guy. One, because I love Walton Goggins. Two, because Walton Goggins made a damn Negroni last week and NO ONE TALKED ABOUT IT.

COME ON.

I hope he does mai tais next. If he does, and you see me on Twitter like 45 minutes later firing off profanity- and typo-filled all-caps drunken tributes to Allen Iverson, just let me be. I’m having fun.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — We must not take Andre Braugher for granted

The seventh season of a Brooklyn Nine-Nine just ended. It is understandable if there’s some fatigue for the show on your part. That can happen with anything. I admit that I’ve fallen victim to it sometimes, which explains why I’m posting screencaps from last Thursday’s episode this week. It was a good episode, though. Really good. Someone stole Holt’s beloved corgi, Cheddar, and he went full-on John Wick to get the dog back.

At one point in the episode, when he was confronting the kidnapper, he shouted “YOU TOOK THE WRONG FLUFFY BOY.” I swear sometimes the writers on this show put the wildest stuff they can think of into the character’s mouth just to hear Andre Braugher say it with his voice. What a great voice it is. Imagine him saying, like, “Acapulco booze cruise.” You can hear it in your head right now, can’t you? I can. It’s beautiful.

Let’s all agree to never take this for granted. There is a very silly show on television that puts very silly phrases into Andre Braugher’s mouth every week and then he says them with the gravitas of a man doing King Lear in a park without a microphone. I know there’s a lot going on right now. There was a lot going on before all this new stuff started happening. There is entirely too much going on.

But this is happening, too. File that away.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at brian.grubb@uproxx.com (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

Landon:

How much time per year do you think you sit around and daydream about what you would do if you were a billionaire? I catch myself thinking about it at least once a week. Maybe more. I bet if I added it all up it would be over 24 hours of the year.

You seem like a guy who has a lot of ideas about what he’d do if he becomes suddenly rich. What do you got? Self-funded reboot of Franklin & Bash? Self-funded Air Bud movie where he tries a case at the Supreme Court? I don’t know why I think all your ideas will involve self-funding projects like this.

Landon, thank you and also how dare you. But mostly thank you. This is a good email. It’s one of those “two things can be true at once” situations. Let’s discuss both things.

THING ONE — I realized a long time ago that I will never be a billionaire. There are a lot of reasons for this (lazy, no good ideas, etc.), but the main one is that at some point I’d wake up and realize I had, say, $50 million and immediately be like, “Well, that’s enough money to last me forever. Time to shut it down.” I doubt I’d even make it to $50 million. I’d probably check out at $10 million. Maybe even $5 million. My greatest dream in life is to do something noteworthy and lucrative and then just disappear, so everyone’s like “What happened to Brian? Remember him?” but I’m just like peacefully chilling in coffee shops and sleeping in a lot. So that’s the first thing.

THING TWO — I would 100 percent build myself a house that had a secret passage. I won’t tell you where it will be or how to get into it but let’s just say you shouldn’t grab the hardcover edition of Still Foolin’ Em by Billy Crystal off the shelf in my library unless you want to be transported to A SECRET ROOM FILLED WITH WONDER.

What’s the point of being a millionaire or billionaire if you don’t have a secret passage in your house? I don’t get it. It’s like these people have never seen a movie.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Ireland!

On Easter Sunday, while on her afternoon stroll, the Irish novelist Denise Deegan realized she still had not yet called her mother. “Hello,” she said cheerily into her phone. “Hello,” a man on the street replied.

Looking at the man’s face, she realized the voice belonged to the actor Matt Damon.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am both sad and ecstatic to report that Matt Damon is stranded in a scenic Irish town where the locals adore him and have become very protective of him. How did this happen? Glad you asked.

The Damon sightings in Dalkey and neighboring Killiney, which together are sometimes referred to as “Ireland’s Amalfi Coast,” began in mid-March. According to an assistant to Mr. Damon’s agent, this was when he arrived in the area to shoot scenes for “The Last Duel,” a soon-to-be-suspended medieval drama directed by Ridley Scott. It was also not long before the pubs closed and the police began checking if people were straying beyond their permitted two kilometers.

Is it crazy that I already think this will make a better movie than whatever exactly The Last Duel is or will become? Matt Damon quarantined in Ireland with a gaggle of locals who are charmed by him? I feel like if this were maybe 1999-2008, this would already be a go project. Like, people in Hollywood would have it greenlit with a script in production and… oh, let’s say Minnie Driver as one of the charmed locals. You know this movie. I bet you can see it all in your head right now. There’s a scene where he gets ready to go home and she gets upset because he’s just leaving them all behind. He goes to the airport. She runs through the terminal to catch him. It’s too late, his plane left.

But wait.

That’s him sitting in the lounge. He never got on the plane. Etc. etc. etc. Basically a big budget Hallmark movie.

Most encounters begin the same way: Matt Damon smiles, and the resident pretends not to know who he is. “I think it’s an Irish thing,” Ms. Deegan said. “We don’t want anyone who is a celebrity to think that we are in any way sycophantic.”

I love this. Tons of Irish people trying to play it cool while Jason Bourne strolls around their town. I hope there’s one guy who has no chill and just shouts like “OI! DAMON! WHEN ARE YA MOIKING ROUNDERS 2?” every single time he sees him.

And not only had Mr. Damon found a relatively safe new home, his new admirers became an army of protectors. This was made clear when the New York Times reporter assigned to write this (me, for better or worse) requested anecdotes via the town’s unofficial Facebook page.

Who needs a security staff when you have an entire town filled with highly protective Irish people? This is something worth filing away, too.