This week the culture world said goodbye to two titans, Garry Shandling and Phife Dawg. In his remembrance of Shandling, Slate’s Justin Peters revisited his landmark TV show The Larry Sanders Show, HBO’s sitcom about a fictional late-night talk show: “At times dark, at other times beautiful, at all times peopled by deeply flawed characters who made the Seinfeld crew seem like the Muppets, The Larry Sanders Show was the best, most ambitious sitcom of the 1990s,” Peters wrote. (And then there was his prior show, which had the greatest theme song of all time.) Jack Hamilton paid tribute to Phife Dawg, one-third (or one-fourth, depending on how you count) of A Tribe Called Quest and the MC responsible for the single greatest “Yo!” in hip-hop history. ATCQ’s magic was in the interplay between Q-Tip’s intellectualism and Phife’s irreverence, Hamilton writes: “Tip was a genius, and knew it; Phife knew he wasn’t, which often made him one in spite of himself.”
You’d be better off watching old episodes of Larry Sanders or dusting off your old Tribe CDs this weekend, but if you’re dead-set on experiencing something new, Batman v Superman and My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 just hit theaters. Jonathan Fischer called the superhero blockbuster “a sense-numbing, joy-bludgeoning, soul-deadening 152-minute trailer,” and David Ehrlich writes that the family romp is full of generic jokes and broad punch lines—so don’t say we didn’t warn you. If you’re thinking, Welp, that’s what we get when all Hollywood churns out is sequels and remakes, take this quiz to see if you’ve been supporting original storytelling in your moviegoing or if you’re, gulp, part of the problem.
More highs and lows from the week in culture:
- In defense of New York Times trend pieces
- House of Cards’ fascinating portrayal of polyamory
- An Investigationy McInvestigation into the linguistic charms of Boaty McBoatface
- Why is Good Friday called Good Friday anyway?
- The not-so-subtextual gayness of Pee-wee Herman
- An NCAA press conference joke straight out of Airplane!
- The brave new world of “Facebook Fiction”
- The weird rabbit hole of YouTube food-processing videos
- J.K. Rowling’s maddening Twitter feed
- The underappreciated joy of leftovers
- The Audio Book Club takes on Better Living Through Criticism