Around the Tubes: April 13, 2019

I have gotten a plethora of cool press releases have been flooding my inbox recently that you may find interesting. This post will include blurbs on Black Hole Hunters, Meg Mac, Ladies Night, Noah Kahan, Anna of the North, Our Cartoon President, XY Chelsea, Dark Forces, and Hulu spring/summer premiere dates.

- Smithsonian Channel is putting viewers in the passenger seat of the journey towards a cutting-edge outer space discovery. On the heels of today’s groundbreaking scientific announcement, the network will air a new one-hour documentary following a team of international scientists as they attempt to document the first-ever image of a black hole. Black Hole Hunters premieres Friday, April 12 at 9 PM ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel.

- Meg Mac is thrilled to unveil her new single, ‘I'm Not Coming Back’. Using beautiful harmonies interwoven with an anthemic drum beat, the song explores the idea of letting go of someone who is only around when they need you.

- Rap and R&B royalty holds court with the BET premiere of Ladies Night, starring Salt-N-Pepa (SNP), DJ Spinderella and SWV. With a legacy spanning over three decades, Salt-N-Pepa has landed their biggest career accomplishment to-date, a Las Vegas residency. While simultaneously preparing for their opportunity of a lifetime, the trio has made the ambitious decision to launch the Ladies Night national tour in collaboration with SWV. The stakes are high and reputations are on the line as everyone scrambles to meet expectations and deadlines. We follow along as individual personalities, group egos, personal conflicts and professional obligations all take center stage to discover whether or not the ladies can push it to greatness together. Tune in for the action-packed, drama-filled season of Ladies Night starting Tuesday, April 30 at 10:00 PM ET/PT on BET and BET HER.

- Noah Kahan announces his highly anticipated debut album, Busyhead, will be released this summer on June 14th. In celebration of the release, Noah will be heading out on The Busyhead Tour across North America this fall, returning to headline larger venues coming off of a 2018 sold out tour. The tour kicks off at Granada Theater in Dallas on September 19th and includes dates in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Nashville, San Francisco and more. See the full list of dates below. Album pre-order and ticket on-sale will be available this Friday, April 12th at 10AM local time at noahkahan.com.

- Anna of the North today premieres a brand new track and accompanying video for "Used To Be", the second song to come from her forthcoming record, due for release in the Fall. Having sold out worldwide shows and amassed over 150 million streams so far, Anna is also embarking on her first North American headline tour later this month.

- Showtime will premiere the second season of its animated comedy series Our Cartoon President on Sunday, May 12 at 8 p.m. ET/PT, and will feature an animated appearance from Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness. Additionally, Showtime has released the official key art and trailer for season two, which will consist of 10 half-hour episodes. To watch and share the trailer for the second season of Our Cartoon President, head over to YouTube.

- Showtime released a first-look trailer for XY Chelsea, which will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Wednesday, May 1. Directed by Tim Travers Hawkins, produced by Pulse Films and executive produced by Academy Award® winner Laura Poitras (RISK, Citizenfour), XY Chelsea tells the historic story of whistle-blower Chelsea Manning, whose 35-year sentence in a maximum security prison was commuted by President Obama in 2017. Shot over two years and featuring exclusive interviews and behind-the-scenes verité with Manning, the film begins on the momentous day in May of that year when she leaves prison and follows her through her journey of discovery, while also examining her place in the conversation on national security and the fight of the transgender community for rights and visibility. XY Chelsea will premiere on SHOWTIME on Friday, June 7 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Manning was arrested again in March of this year and remains in custody after refusing to testify in front of a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was arrested in London on Thursday. To watch the trailer, go to YouTube.

- Lexicon today announced that they have cast Orlando Jones (American Gods) to topline Dark Forces, the third film from director Anthony O’Brien (THE TIMBER) who will direct from a screenplay jointly written by Lexicon co-founders, producers Mark Mathias Sayre (WATERLILY JAGUAR; DOE; THE CLEARING, DOUBTING THOMAS) & Justin Foia (POINT DEFIANCE). Dark Forces is a horror film that pays homage to its many sub-genres: “While recovering from brain surgery at a rehabilitation center, acclaimed monster movie director Jerry Graves (Jones) becomes haunted by the ghastly creatures and grisly scenes of his own horror films.”

- Coming to Hulu later this spring and into the summer:
Ramy, all episodes April 19
Into the Dark: All That We Destroy (Mother's Day), premieres May 3
Catch-22, all episodes May 17
Ask Dr. Ruth, premieres June 1
The Weekly, season 1, premieres June 2 on FX, June 3 on Hulu (weekly)
The Handmaid's Tale, Season 3, premieres June 5 (weekly)
Into the Dark: They Come Knocking (Father's Day), premieres June 7
Into the Dark: Culture Shock (Independence Day), premieres July 4
Harlots, Season 3, premieres July 10 (weekly)
Veronica Mars, season 4, all episodes July 26
Four Weddings and a Funeral, season 1 premieres July 31 (weekly)

57 Channels and Only This Is On: April 7, 2019

Supergirl: Weird that the alien hating Ben Lockwood had a very that cannot possibly be Supergirl look on his face instead of an of course all aliens are evil look. I bet he actually starts defending her soon. But I do wonder if the president is in cahoots with Lex Luther.
Supergirl on iTunes.

Billions: I wonder what came first: the Chicken Man storyline or if the writers just wanted to put a Springsteen song in the show and Atlantic City talked about a chicken man in the first line? Or could someone have possibly heard that Chicken Bill song? At any rate, the ending to that storyline was funny. At least finally we got someone who uses old timey pronouns to talk about Taylor. Makes it much easier to tell that someone is not talking about multiple people despite using plural pronouns. And was that Michael Bolton with a bad haircut at the fundraiser? Then we went three for three in Chuck and Axe scenes this season. Are we going to go a full season of them meeting? I do hope that if (when) Axe helps Chuck to become Attorney General, Chuck then does prosecute Axe.

The Walking Dead: My first thought as a blizzard was bearing down on the Kingdom people, my first thought was, why not check the weather first. Yeah, there is no way I could survive a zombie apocalypse or even world without power. I am constantly checking the weather. But when dis Alexandria become the wide open space where people could get lost even in a blizzard? Shouldn’t muscle memory kick in? And I was a bit confused what was going on with Alpha. It sounded like she left for a bit in time and then comes back to be whipped? What is going on there?
You can download The Walking Dead on iTunes.

Black Monday: Well they took about ten minutes to explain how it was Blair and Dawn who were running the Georgina Play on Mo and I am still a little confused. And a pretty cheap reveal that it was Mo’s presumed dead mentor who ended up being the person who crashed down on his stretch Lambo by grabbing Blair’s tie with the pin on it. But so is the other Lehman Brother now dead since the old dude fell on him?

The Act: How ironic after making Gypsy think she was sick all this time, it is DeeDee who has an actual life threatening disease. And earlier I wondered how no doctor did anything about Gypsy not being as sick as DeeDee let on,, I also wonder why no one really questioned why DeeDee said Gypsy was four years younger than what her Medicaid card said? And was that dad on the phone wanting to wish her a happy birthday? I believe that was his first appearance. So what exactly was his deal? He cares enough to call on her birthday, but never actually visits and Gypsy does not seem to know anything about him. Then, just when you thought the show could not get any weirder, Gypsy gets introduced to BDSM. And that was the second guy she met on a Christian dating site, the first sent her a picture of his junk. My goodness.
You can stream The Act on Hulu.

Survivor: Edge of Extinction: Had someone told me before the episode aired that one of the Kama Six would go home even though Devins did not align with his former tribe and neither Kelley or Lauren played their Idol I would have punched them in the face and told them April Fool’s Jokes are not funny and you are two days late anyway. But shockingly three of the Kama six joined Joe’s lackey and Lese to boot one of their own.

I was shocked two weeks ago when Wardog came up with a pretty smart plan of voting for Wendy because if they were tied, Kama would not go to rocks for Wendy and they didn’t. Then this week he came up with a smart plan of going to rocks with Lesu and Joe’s Lackey going to rocks against the six that voted for rocks. And even when Devins stupidly rather be seven in an alliance of six, he somehow orchestrated a better plan that did not even involve rock by convincing the black chick, the redhead, and the hillbilly (I still have no idea who any of these Kama people are to take out one of their own. Wardog is the type of annoying hard head they you do kind of want to sit next to in final tribal, but between these two moves, he does have a good argument to make that he deserves to win.

Still, I want to see the scene where those Kama players actually convinced Kelley and Lauren that they would vote with them to the point where they were convinced enough to not play their Idol. Sure they do not know it, but the redhead making Aubrey thinking she was with her is exactly how she blindsides Aubrey with an Idol in her pocket. But these are truly the greatest Tribal when the people in the dominate alliance act annoyingly smug only to be blindsided. The title of the episodes was the old guy’s most smug quote about how he is the puppet master. And his reaction was priceless when that fourth vote for his buddy came up.

Hopefully he is next although looking at the promo it is going to be a wild one. The brunette Kama chick tell old dude and the blonde she wants David, Lauren tells the black chick she wants Ron, Kelley suggest the brunette to Wardog, the redhead tells unseen people Kelley. This all culminates with Aubrey actively trying to be made into an overtly shocked gif with Probst saying he has never seen anything like it (okay, Probst is the king of hyperbole so it may be over exaggerated). But with three Idols split amongst four people and an Extra Vote floating around three distinct voting blocs (the Lesu 4, the Kama 4, and the three that were blindsided this week), should be a wild one.
You can download Survivor: Edge of Extinction on iTunes.

Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists: So we got our first murder suspect (assuming you do not count the three people who actually talked about throwing the dude off the roof). Although the he chews the same gum is a pretty flimsy thing to pin a murder on someone.
You can download Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists on iTunes.

The Challenge: War of World: Well the no more teams is really going to hurt my Nany/Turbo pick. Although my imaginary bookie still has to pay out if Turbo wins, right? Lucky for everyone else they did get a British person out (and the biggest one to boot) right before the switch and now they are down to three. Now the question how will the voting block break down now that there are no teams? I wonder if the teams will actually stick together. Hunter and Georgia will likely not work together but everyone else seems to be on good term. There is also the question of if the elimination will not be gender specific are will they be able to call out anyone?
You can download The Challenge: War of Worlds on iTunes.

Cloak and Dagger: When Hot Lady Cop saw herself in the reflection; I thought for sure this was a Jekyll and Hyde situation. Nope, actually two of them. This should get interesting. Though I was not entirely sure how Cloak could easily transport the gangs money and drugs with him but was not able to transport a person.
You can download Marvel's Cloak and Dagger on iTunes.

Doom Patrol: After last episode’s loll, though we might have hit a speed bump on the show, but then they follow up their weakest episode by introducing a living street. Awesome. And then Diane may be the most entertaining Crazy Jane personality to date. A nineties rom-com lover who can make anyone, presumably with a heart which is why it did not work on Robot Man, fall in love with her and do her bidding. Again, great. But it looks like next week we are actually going to go inside Crazy Jane’s head, which will likely be another outstanding episode.

Blindspot: It seemed like they were really playing fast and loose with time this episode. Can you really get to upstate New York that fast. They should have had a 24 type clock and had the episode play out in real time.
You can download Blindspot on iTunes.

The Blacklist: Based on last week’s promo, I thought maybe the rest of this season would be Haram vs. Red but the former gave up on his quest for Sammar pretty quickly. Instead this week, it looks like they are finally going back to Red trying to figure out who had him arrested. Maybe at the end of it, Lizzie will finally figure out who Red really is.
You can download The Blacklist on iTunes.