October Recap: 'Only Murders,' Jane and Lily, 'Beverly Hills Noir' and Voting Overseas

Here's a look back at a super busy month with a great combo of TV post-mortems as well as (hold on) dealing with grief and depression!

What a month! From multiple post mortem interviews for some of my favorite shows, looking back on a time in my life when I shook myself out of depression with the help of a surprising voice and going back five years to when I moderated one of my all-time favorite panels with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.

Melissa McCarthy and Martin Short in Only Murders in the Building (Hulu/Disney)

Earlier this week I posted my story on overcoming depression in the early 2000s when my writer career was suddenly stagnant and I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Based on the number of comments and personal notes I’ve received since the story went live, I love how my more personal posts really resonate with you all. I will be doing more of them so stay tuned!

Jane & Lily: Continuing my ‘Joy of Moderating’ series, it was always a thrill to moderate panels with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, which I was able to do four times during the time Grace and Frankie was airing on Netflix. Here’s a look back including the full panel video from one of my favorites at PaleyFest five years ago.

2024 Election: While we’ve been living in Bangkok the last year, Boyd and I have been keeping an eye on the race for the U.S. presidency and made sure we could still vote as overseas voters. Here’s how we did including a fun video of us delivering our ballots to the U.S. Embassy here in Thailand!

Let’s Talk about Grief: It’s not the first time I’ve written about Anderson Cooper’s excellent podcast All There Is which has been devoted to grief and how to deal with it. Given Cooper is going through it now with dealing with his buried grief over the deaths of his father, brother and mother, this podcast is way more than just a reporter covering a topic.

A Variety at Variety: I had a busy month working on several stories for iconic Hollywood outlet Variety including a chat with Mario Lopez just before he received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was a really fun chat about his nearly 40 years (!!!) in the biz including his dimples, the transition from teen to adult actor and whether he’s cool with his kids entering the entertainment business.

There were also several season finales that came along this month so I was glad to talk to both Bill Lawrence and star Vince Vaughan about the first season of Bad Monkey. Also, the second season of Apple TV+’s excellent drama series Pachinko wrapped so I talked with showrunner Soo Hugh about the heartbreaking moments in the finale and whether we can hope for a third season. These are very different shows but I was surprised how much I liked the quirky Bad Monkey and, well, it’s just good TV when it comes to Pachinko. Give both shows a try if you haven’t yet.

I also had gotten an early peek at the current fourth season of Only Murders in the Building and was so blown away by the 7th episode and Melissa McCarthy throwing Meryl Streep over a couch when their characters get into a tussle that I grabbed time with co-creator John Hoffman as well as some email responses from McCarthy herself. Wait until you hear of all the behind the scenes stuff Hoffman told me about that fight and also Meryl being game for it all.

Amy Brenneman and Jeff Bridges in the season two finale of The Old Man (FX/Hulu)

I also talked to Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges as his FX/Hulu series The Old Man ended its stellar second season with some big questions about what happened as well as whether we should be hopeful for a third season (fingers crossed!). Finally, that destination for uplifting programming, UPtv, is celebrating 20 years so I talked with CEO Charley Humbard, also for Variety.

In book news, I always love when a good friend writes a book and nobody loves Los Angeles and all its history, culture and, yes, scandals than Scott Huver. He just released his entertaining book, Beverly Hills Noir so we had a zoom chat all about it.