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At this point, Survivor’s audience is pretty steady—as the show contracted from a gargantuan hit to a reliable performer, it became less and less likely that new viewers would sample early episodes without sticking around for the whole season. This year’s linear ratings reflect this: after opening to 4.9 million viewers in the premiere, Season 46 has been pretty steady, with last week’s episode earning 4.72 million. Compare that to Survivor: Panama—which debuted in Spring 2006—which started at 19 million viewers before dropping under 15 million by the fourth episode.

There’s been a lot of misinformation suggesting that the 2007/2008 WGA strike was somehow “responsible” for reality TV gaining a foothold, aka “ruining TV.” Friend of the newsletter Emily St. James has broken down why this is an apocryphal claim at Vanity Fair, but one thing is true: a writer’s strike does increase the relative value of reality franchises to their respective networks. It’s programming that they know they will be able to put onto their schedules, even if a strike delays the start of production for fall shows.

“They’re not just footballers. They’re also people.” At the beginning of this season, Ted Lasso upped a number of Richmond’s players to series regular status. This doesn’t always necessarily mean an increase in attention: Christo Fernandez, for instance, hasn’t really had much more to do with Dani than he did last season. However, for those paying attention to the opening credits, it definitely raised the expectation that we’d be more invested in their lives both on and off the pitch as the season progressed.

Yesterday afternoon, Apple made an announcement: after releasing episodes of Ted Lasso’s third season at 9pm eastern on Tuesdays since it premiered in March, they were switching course for the finale. “So Long, Farewell,” the series’ longest episode yet, would instead be going live at 9pm pacific. It’s a baffling decision, on a number of levels—I know I saw plenty of tweets of frustrated fans who didn’t see the announcement earlier in the day and had clearly organized their evenings around watching it before bed.

Welcome to Episodic Medium’s weekly coverage of The Afterparty, Apple TV+’s genre-shifting murder mystery comedy series. This first review is free for all, but future reviews will be exclusive to paid subscribers. For more information on the site and what else we’re covering, check out our About Page and our Summer Schedule. The Afterparty is practically designed to be uneven. The concept, wherein a series of suspects in a murder case explain their alibi through a range of film genres, is so clever, but it necessitates that there’s a new main character every episode, as well as a new filming style.

While my roommate and I were watching The Curse this week, he made a comment about something I’d been mulling over myself. Sometime around the moment that Asher finally convinces Bill to let him back into the office to show him a viral video, he remarked next to me, “I’m surprised he’s not just kicking Nathan out by now.” Never mind that Asher is named Asher, not Nathan; he had a point.

Tracks: 1) Glad All Over; 2) All Of The Time; 3) Stay; 4) Chaquita; 5) Do You Love Me; 6) Bits And Pieces; 7) I Know You; 8) No Time To Lose; 9) Doo Dah; 10) Time; 11) She’s All Mine. REVIEW It is extremely easy to laugh off the so-called «Tottenham Sound» (which, to the best of my knowledge, was never represented by anybody other than the Dave Clark Five) as a clumsily marketed attempt to build up a commercial counter-proposition to the Mersey Beat — in fact, this is precisely what all the hip-minded artists and their fans had been doing for half a century.

On last week’s review, jk posted a comment that raised an important question. Is it realistic that the servants invest so much of their personal identity, honor, and emotion in the social affairs of their employers? Not all of the downstairs folk in The Gilded Age do, of course—there’s always an Armstrong—but Julian Fellowes clearly leans into the familiar convention from generations of upstairs/downstairs melodrama that it is part of the personal honor of an individual in service to take the wellbeing of the family as seriously (or more so) than their own.

The Opera War and the Brooklyn Bridge serve as the historical linchpins of this season, and it’s hard to think of more felicitous choices. We’ve been reveling in the delicious pettiness of the Opera War all season, but it’s only been in the last couple of episodes—and especially here—that the Brooklyn Bridge has taken the spotlight. As written by Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield, the Bridge becomes a sign of hope that the barriers separating these characters’ lives and worlds will be overcome.