April 2025 Pop Culture Diary
Rory McIlroy gave me a desperately needed personal win, and more
INTRO
Rory McIlroy is the 2025 Masters Champion. These are words I desperately wanted, but until now could never write - and not just because it wasn’t 2025 before now. To be a golf fan is to be a Rory fan. I don’t know many, if any, who follow the sport and don’t want the best player of this generation to reach the heights he has been trying to reach since a heartbreaking collapse on the back nine of the 2011 tournament.
Rory completed the Career Grand Slam, becoming the sixth player to ever do so, in one of the most dramatic and tense final rounds in history, It had to be this way - it wouldn’t have felt right for Rory to coast to a win with a commanding lead. It had to be a struggle, a cinematic masterpiece that will live on as the most important round he has ever played.
Rory has stared down disappointment and heartbreak so often, and so painfully, but never given up. 2011 was the Masters he let get away, but he was without a Major championship win since 2014. The 2022 Open at St. Andrews, the 2023 and 2024 US Opens at Los Angeles CC and Pinehurst, and hell even the 2022 Masters where his electric final round 65 wouldn’t come close to Scottie Scheffler all stung to various degrees. He’s a hero to many, but that he was this resilient and able to finally conquer the demon in front of him will live on for me personally as an all-time moment.
Golf is the only sport I have ever been and will ever be able to play safely. It’s a connective tissue that makes me not only proud of the continued fight to bounce back from injury after injury - that my back can withstand rounds at a time despite, I think, having permanent micro-fractures in my spine is a miracle - but also gives me common ground with my dad, my grandfather, my friends, and my family. I treasure this sport so dearly not just for the sport, but for the companionship, inspiration, and emotion it brings.
For a variety of reasons, these have likely been the hardest 6 months of my life from late 2024 to now. There are good days and bad, but boy did I need a win. Something to remind me in as concrete a way possible that no matter the frustration, the struggle, the pain, that it could all pay off.
Rory put on a green jacket for the first time this April. It can all pay off.
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TV
I don’t have much interesting to say about The Studio this month, as I am enjoying the show and having fun, but largely what that show reminds me is how much I love Hacks. The fourth season is back and well into full gear with some of the funniest performances on TV buttressed by legitimate emotional stakes. There’s both avenues of come for/stay for here - one of them is likely the increasingly equal and engrossing Ava-Deborah faceoff; the other is, of course, hyper-local jokes about the Americana at Brand.
I wish more shows were as bold as The Last of Us, including other shows on HBO. A quiet plague of some of my favorite shows is watching the creatives fall in love with their characters and refuse to push for the bold, and occasionally, right path for them to take. The plot of season 2, as of writing, is a breath of fresh air for the sheer scope and bravery of it. It’s a conscious rug-pull on audiences that, like me, haven’t played the source material. Two years on from the first season and I am just as engaged as I was for the breakout debut.
Few things this year are going to make me laugh as hard as John Mulaney talking about his ill-fated efforts to book Bone Thugs-N-Harmony on Everybody’s Live. The show is consciously shaggy, but finding its own eccentric rhythm lately with the hottest run of episodes I’ve seen from it yet.
Completely by coincidence, I fall down a rabbit hole of research about plane crashes on Wikipedia and YouTube a few times a year. That Nathan Fielder would make The Rehearsal center around trying to get to the root cause of crashes while working through advocating for himself emotionally makes for some of the most singular, hilarious television I have ever seen.
I’ve been late to The Righteous Gemstones but have been watching for the first time in hopes I catch up before the finale in May. There’s a lot to love about an acid tipped comedy from Danny McBride, who keeps churning out super specific, bonkers shows, but frankly I would show up just for Edi Patterson, who is in a league all her own as Judy Gemstone. This is instant TV hall of fame level work.
I am trying, very hard, to love Yellowjackets but for a second season in a row I am finding myself confused, frustrated, and bored while finishing the season. It feels like the adult timeline is completely off the rails and relying on shock more than earned development. That’s disappointing, because the teen timeline in the wilderness has always worked! There might be a version of the show that works, albeit even closer to Lost, that is just the survival in the woods and descent into madness; but the current iteration is starting to step on its own toes. When characters evolve in the past in ways that undercut their current-day characterization, it breaks some mental connections. The crazier and better Sophie Nelisse gets as Shauna, the more you wonder why anyone would hang around Melanie Lynskey’s adult Shauna.
Does Top Chef want to be in Canada? Despite being just the second season of the US series to film outside the country, Top Chef has felt insanely claustrophobic so far this season. Much has been made about how their exploration of Canadian culture has been basic - I am not Canadian, but I mean I get it with Hockey and Maple Syrup - and the physical exploration has been nearly non-existent. The season is fine, not among the stronger ones competitor wise as of late - following Buddha Lo will do that to you - but I am waiting to hear the “we were denied permits and had to adapt” after the season. Hell, the peak-COVID season in Portland got outside more!
The Pitt has completed their perfect first season and set the bar for all else on TV in 2025. I couldn’t let another month go by without campaigning for this show to all who will listen.
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FILM
Sinners is the latest movie to remind me why I fell in love with this industry and wanted to work in it since I was a kid. What a goddamn feature. Ryan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, and Miles Caton all are giving career-best work in this feature that plays so, so well on the big screen. I’m exhausted by hand-wringing over whether or not the film is a success - it unequivocally is, there’s no good faith argument otherwise - and want the takeaway here to be as simple as this: Investing in talent and originality with a access to the budgets and scope they desire is a good bet. Sinners commands attention in IMAX with their quality and sound. Audiences showed up. This isn’t rocket science. Oh, also, Coogler is now officially 5/5 and should firmly be in any Best Active Director conversation in the first breath.
I caught an early screening of Friendship, the Tim Robinson/Paul Rudd comedy, thanks to the American Cinematheque program here in LA. I laughed to the point of tears multiple times during the movie, and Connor O’Malley specifically shows up for one of the funniest supporting performances I have ever watched. For the love of god go see this as soon as you can in May - if you have found I Think You Should Leave funny in the past, this is scientifically designed to work for you.
Having now caught up on every Mission: Impossible film I am outraged at myself it took me until now to do so. It’s common wisdom that from Ghost Protocol on the series has been excellent - that’s true, but undersells how good Philip Seymour Hoffman is in M:I 3. Quickly, my personal rankings off the top of my head for the series: 1. Fallout, 2. M:I 3, 3. Dead Reckoning, 4. Rogue Nation, 5. Ghost Protocol, 6. Mission: Impossible, 7. M:I 2. I am liable to change the order of 2-6 at any time, but Fallout is #1 with a bullet and M:I 2 the only one I think actively doesn’t work.
Having not grown up playing Minecraft at all, the movie went way over my head for any reference that wasn’t something supremely well known to a layman who knows of the game generally. Look, I love Jack Black, so I didn’t have a bad time with this, but my enthusiasm from the movie moreso comes from seeing it blow way past box office expectations. We needed this!
While it won’t be competing for Best Picture any time soon, seeing Drop on a Sunday night at 9p was a decidedly silly way to spend a night this month. You know what you’re getting into here, but it’s fun enough I would throw this on for friends at my place on a quiet afternoon.
Next month will bring the “live action” Lilo & Stitch which prompted me to revisit the original. I cannot help but get emotional watching this little fluffy alien occasionally speak in heartwarming if broken English. I think the 2025 version might make over $500 million worldwide.
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MUSIC
I have continued to fall in love with TV on the Radio and am excited to see them again in May at the Kilby Block Party. Later this year I will hopefully have a chance to see lead singer Tunde Adebimpe tour his new record The Black Boltz which I found really danceable and scratched the itch for more of his heavenly vocals.
It’s almost annoying how talented Joe Keery is as Djo. His new record, The Crux, is very fun while bouncing between influences. You can hear strong tastes of The Strokes and Beatles through the album. I’m hopeful he will emerge from his present TikTok popularity to generally wide acceptance as a star.
I would like to be an early shareholder in the eventual emergence of Malcolm Todd. His self-titled debut album is a delight and opens in terrific, tongue-in-cheek fashion, sniping about not making the Camp Flog Gnaw lineup last fall. I have few if any doubts he will be invited in 2025.
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READING
The last time my dear friend Maggie Franklin recommended me a book it was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, which finished at #4 in my 2024 Pop Culture 50. When she handed me a copy of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (The Martian) I was predisposed to love it. A few chapters in and I will be attending the day one premiere of the film adaptation next year.
Would Jon Hamm and his dog Murphy like to be best friends? Because I am down.
What About Bob is one of my favorite comedies. Getting to read the oral history from Rolling Stone about the very, very real tensions on set is a delight, even if Bill Murray is sadly absent from the article.
The Ringer’s story on Harvey Silikovitz finally making it to Jeopardy is quite sweet even if, spoiler alert, he lost his second game. At least he can hold the title of “Jeopardy Champion” for life!
My kingdom for John Mulaney’s stage adaptation of the Documentary Now! Co-Op Play.
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GRAB BAG
Last month I said I would be very happy if John Cena was WWE champion by now, and I am - he is now the all-time leader for world championships won in wrestling history. What’s unfortunate is that one of two things happened at this year’s Wrestlemania: 1. The people in charge of booking the main event totally misread the room and left everyone unhappy in a bad way, and/or 2. Unfortunately, it became clear that Cena has lost maybe a step and a half in the ring. If it’s the former, it’s a really bad fluke. If it’s the latter… the main character of the company is the champion and can barely perform up to his previous standards. This is now a fascinating meta-story to follow.
Revisited the Defunctland Disney FastPass documentary in wake of visiting Disney earlier this year and I can absolutely report that this is still one of the most engaging videos I have ever watched full stop.
It is entirely possible that Will Forte is impervious to pain.
We gotta go do top golf or something sometime soon!