When you've seen a lot of movies where Toronto plays the part of New York, you come to appreciate location shooting. And on today's All Things Considered, you'll hear from the star of one of television's more ambitious series when it comes to location shooting: Route 66, which followed two guys around the country in a cool Corvette as they looked for a place to settle.

The show, which ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963, has just been released in its entirety as a DVD box set, which presents the entire run on 24 discs. George Maharis, who starred on Route 66 with Martin Milner, talks to NPR's Robert Siegel about all that travel.

"We never saw the schedule," Maharis says. "It was week-to-week. We didn't know where we were going and sometimes we wouldn't know what the script was until two days before shooting." In fact, sometimes, it might take a little longer than that to actually get the scripts, since they were sometimes in a city where they wanted to shoot more than one episode, but not all the scripts were done yet. "I remember we were in Cleveland doing the one with Nehemiah Persoff about the Russian Hill, and we were standing on the bridge, and we had no pages — we didn't know where to go yet. Luckily, they had to raise and lower the bridge, and in the meantime, the plane landed in Cleveland, and a car took the script and brought it to us, because we didn't know what clothes we were supposed to be in."

Getting to visit all those places was very much in line, Siegel points out, with the fact that at the time, the drive around the country was a common aspiration; something a lot of people wanted to try. "I can't tell you how many people wrote to me and told me that's what they wanted to do after seeing the show," Maharis agrees. "And they wanted to buy a car and toot around."

It wasn't just a show that tooted around, though. It was also one that featured a startling number of people who later became serious movie or TV stars, including Robert Redford, Martin Sheen, Suzanne Pleshette, William Shatner, Tuesday Weld, Leslie Nielsen, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Ed Asner and Alan Alda.

Oh, and Lee Marvin, about whom Maharis says, "I remember. I went and pushed him off the fence." In fact, you'll find that Maharis can still identify just about any Route 66 clip you want to lay on him, including the one where Robert Duvall plays a drug addict. It's called "Birdcage On My Foot," and if you want to see it, it's right there on the box set.

A strong competition lineup has kept audiences eager inside the halls of the Palais de Festival du Cinema, but if you want to see true movie love in action, look at the crowds just outside Cannes theater entrances.

This is where impeccably dressed young people hold up handmade signs for hours on end, asking or bartering for screening tickets. Sample trades offered include hugs, made-to-order poetry and back flips — though no one has been more convincing than the girl seeking tickets for Abbas Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love by cooing the Ella Fitzgerald standard of the same name.

I was skeptical about this ticket-seeking approach — I have enough trouble getting into screenings as accredited press — but the seekers I spoke to said it's more effective than you'd expect. People in the movie business get plenty of free tickets, but being in the movie business often makes them too busy to watch movies.

And sure, there are ulterior motives involved in this waiting game — it's impossible not to be surrounded by tall drinks of water in Dior while ticket-hunting, and someone has to comfort them when they miss out on that new Cronenberg movie. But who cares? It's the promise, if not the practice, of movie-watching that's bringing people together — and isn't that what film festivals are all about?

I'll refrain from joining in the annual Cannes tradition where critics confidently set odds on awards winners and are proven completely wrong; the random nature of the Cannes jury (sample members this year include Ewan McGregor and fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier) makes guessing Cannes awards way more of a crapshoot than your average awards predictions.

But here, to recap the fest, are a few distinctions of my own creation:

Weirdest Movie-To-Movie Conversation, After The Jump ...

I'll always love big musicals. Shows like Hairspray and Anything Goes just want to make me happy, and if they don't change my life, then so what? There are worse things than smiling for two hours while 35 hotties nail a synchronized tap number on the prow of a boat.

But sometimes, I love a musical that makes me come to it. Instead of singing in my face, a show like that whispers in my ear, giving me a private message to consider on the way home.

And February House is whispering right now at the Public Theater. Strange and dense and heartbreaking, it will never address an audience of millions, but it has lovely things to say.

The subject is an irresistible bit of history: In 1940, fiction editor George Davis invited fellow artists to live with him in a communal house in Brooklyn. His flatmates included the author Carson McCullers, the composer Benjamin Britten, the poet W.H. Auden, and even the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Just imagine a typical day in that house: All those brilliant people trying to manage their talent, but also trying to pay the telephone bill and make coffee before noon.

For February House composer Gabriel Kahane and book writer Seth Bockley, the commune is an experiment in making a family. In one way or another, all the characters hope the house — and the group — can solve their problems. Auden (Erik Lochtefeld) wants Brooklyn to be a paradise where he and his twentysomething lover Chester (A.J. Shively) can avoid the problems of insecure age and reckless youth. Carson (Kristen Sieh) wants to trade her abusive marriage for a liberated life of booze and sexual freedom. And George, poor George (Julian Fleisher), wants to be everyone's mother and father. He wants this ad hoc dormitory to replace his loneliness and sense of failure.

The musical's towering achievement is how carefully it draws each character's desires. Bockley's elegant, allusion-packed script suggests a hundred echoes for every action, hinting at motives and histories that we can understand without literal explanations. It's obvious, for instance, that George has special affection for Carson, that he sees her as a wounded, inspiring bird who needs protection. But there's never a grand speech where George declares his loyalty. We just glean it from the way he brings her food, the way he jumps to her defense, and the way he falters when she leaves the nest.

Working with director Davis McCallum, the cast creates even more nuance. I was especially impressed by Kacie Sheik as Gypsy Rose Lee, because it would have been easy to turn the world's most famous stripper into a blowsy caricature. Instead, Sheik makes it clear that Gypsy's not brassy: She's just comfortable in her body. While her roommates flit around like nervous animals, she flops on the floor, hacking away at a detective novel and laughing without wondering if people can hear. Her ease underscores the house's sadness, and it invites fascinating speculation about what she's doing there.

As much as anyone, though, Kahane gives these people voices. In his score, every character has a distinct musical language that bubbles up in solos and creates sonic conversation in group numbers. Carson's banjo songs are full of plaintive melodies and elegant metaphors, like Suzanne Vega writing before the war, while Auden's devastating ballads recall art songs, defining his bruised heart with lush arrangements. Yet despite all these styles, the score coheres. Kahane blends genres when he needs to, so everyone sounds at home in the house.

Granted, the endless attention to detail can make the show feel aimless. The first act, which runs about ninety minutes, has fewer dramatic events than elegant bouts of character development, but when the world is so rich, it's hard to complain.

Or at least, it's hard for me. Some of my friends disliked the show's meandering structure, but I'd say the journey pays off in the second act, when several characters make bold choices. Because we've spent so long getting to know them, we understand the full impact of their actions.

Cumulatively, then, this rich, slow-burning show carries remarkable weight. When it ended, I felt the loss I sometimes feel at the end of a novel, when I don't want an imaginary world to disappear. It might be desperate and lonely and full of regret, but I still want to keep on living there.

Mark Blankenship edits TDF Stages, the magazine of Theatre Development Fund.

On this week's show, we start with endings — because we're ironic that way. Various shows have ended this spring, and we thought it was a good time to talk about how you wrap up a TV show, a book series, or whatever needs closure. The "visceral need for narrative closure"? We're on it. Whether it "satisfies you upon reflection"? We're on that, too.

Now, when you talk finales, you invariably give away how shows ended, so be advised that we talk about — or at least mention in passing — the finales of the following things: Six Feet Under, Star Trek: The Next Generation, MASH, Calvin And Hobbes (bonus information: I teared up quietly and secretly when Stephen described the last panel!), Barney Miller, Who's The Boss?, Growing Pains, Little House On The Prairie, Friends, Seinfeld (look, it's Stephen's interview with Larry David!), Newhart, St. Elsewhere, The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, ER, Benson (which Stephen remembered accurately) and — inevitably — Lost. (Which I wrote about when it happened.) We also talk about Tales Of The City, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and Superman. Many things! And Turandot! And Kristen Wiig!

And yes, Community and Dan Harmon come up in this discussion, but only briefly.

After that, it's on to summertime, and the fact that this is the time of year when we take road trips. We talk about what to listen to, how to entertain yourself, why you "don't punch the driver"), and how to keep from falling asleep at the wheel. Recommended music includes Biohazard (kind of), Andrew WK's I Get Wet, Japandroid's Celebration Rock (not yet out), and Mahler's Second Symphony. Oh, and episodes of Loveline. You'll learn along the way what happens when Trey has the gall to suggest the most radical activity of all.

Of course, we close with what's making us happy this week, because that's what we do. (And if you haven't looked at the photo of the pottery I made on vacation that everyone made fun of me about last week, LOOK UPON IT.) Glen recommends a comedy podcast (are you shocked?) called My Brother, My Brother And Me. Trey is happy about "a 300-year-old play that is a gigantic hit in at least three cities." And Stephen once again serves up the First Listens at NPR Music. As for me, I violate the Zaxxon rule, and if you don't know what that is, it refers to the time Stephen was really happy about his new Zaxxon machine. I'm sorry! Rules are made to be broken. You can, though, make your own corn dog mini-muffins.

Naturally, you can find us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter: me,Trey, Stephen, Glen and Mike.

And by all means, sign up to get Pop Culture Happy Hour sent directly to you every Friday.

This week, we got our first look at the trailer for The Great Gatsby, the Baz Luhrmann 3-D extravaganza starring Tobey Maguire as Nick, Carey Mulligan as Daisy, and Leonardo DiCaprio as ... well, you know. It will come out at Christmas, so that gives us more than six months to make semi-informed predictions about its quality.

There's an obvious fit between the visual circuses Luhrmann has put on in films including Moulin Rouge! and Romeo + Juliet and the ultra-stylish world of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. It makes sense that he would be drawn to the opportunity to adapt a book about lavish parties, and the parties in the trailer do indeed look pretty lavish. Mission accomplished!

There's some gorgeous stuff here: the dive into the pool, the glimpse of a bespectacled face that brings to mind both elements of the book and the iconic imagery on the cover, and of course, the yellow car. (I read this book a long, long time ago, and even I remember that.)

What do you think? Oscar contender? Legendary flop? Beautiful but terrifying? Or did you, like me, mostly think, "Wow, it's been a while since I watched Tobey Maguire in anything where he wasn't Spider-Man"?

And most of all, WHERE IS THE 3-D LITTLE WOMEN? (Kidding.) (Mostly.)

The movies at the Cannes Film Festival are really bringing the house down — no, actually, that was the thunderstorm.

Having to cope with the elements, of course, makes the press corps think they're Werner Herzog hacking through the jungle with a machete. "Oh, you waited in line for the Resnais for an hour in the rain? I waited an hour and a half for the Kiarostami — and I didn't even have any snacks."

But if being a journalist here isn't exactly roughing it, it does require a fair amount of frenzied problem-solving. There's navigating the maze that is the press area while a press conference is going on, with the festival staff keeping you away from the talent during their entry/exit by rapidly deploying retractable rope lines as soon as you crane your head to see Brad Pitt. (I bet the staff is great at Lemmings.) There are the turf wars that result over the slim amount of available power outlets anywhere. (The best way to make friends here? Carry a power strip.)

And then there are the times when you have to brave the Marche du Film, or Cannes Film Market. Located in the bowels of the main festival building, this trade fair helps pair buyers and distributors for thousands of new movies. Most of these, it turns out, are terrible, making this area a sort of haunted house for film lovers.

'Piranhaconda,' gay vampires and Christian Slater, after the jump ...

Being named "Phillip Phillips" kind of makes Phillip Phillips sound like he was created like a Cabbage Patch Kid, and after his manufacture, someone said, "What should we call him?" And somebody else said, "Phillip!" And then the first person said, "Phillip what?" But by then, the well of creativity had run dry. "Phillip ... Phillips!"

A star is born.

Well, not a star, but the winner of this season's American Idol. Last night, Phillips beat 16-year-old self-styled diva Jessica Sanchez to become the show's eleventh winner, and the fifth consecutive laid-back white dude who plays the acoustic guitar to take the crown, following David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, and Scotty McCreery. In fact, the pattern has become so predictable that just among people I know personally, I know three who predicted when Phillip Phillips auditioned that he would be the winner. (Here's one.) He's just ... he's the kind of guy who wins this show now.

In terms of racial dynamics, it's perhaps noteworthy that until Jessica Sanchez, all the other runners-up to these laid-back dudes were also white — and in some cases were dudes — while the show's first three seasons produced two African-American winners and two female winners. There have also been laid-back white dudes who lost in the finals, including Blake Lewis and (perhaps most famously) Clay Aiken. (Adam Lambert and I have had our differences, in the sense that I have thought things about him that he might not agree with if he had any idea who I am, but I would never insult him by calling him "laid back," as I think I would be struck by lightning.)

I'm not sure this is as much about white men, to be honest, as it is about a very particular kind of singer who's extremely hard to beat given the people who vote and the way they think. Eric Deggans at the Tampa Bay Times wrote about the significance of Phillips' win last night, and he makes the point that the Billboard Hot 100 isn't full of white dudes with guitars. And he's absolutely right, with two caveats. First, while solo singers who are white guys with guitars might not be all over that chart, guys like that who front bands who play Phillip Phillips-y music are there, including Maroon 5 and Train. Moreover, I think the Hot 100 might be the wrong chart.

When you think of American Idol, you need to think "adult contemporary." It's not a contemporary Hot-100 kind of show, and it never has been. Think about some of the people the show has worshiped, and the people to whom the judges have been comparing singers since forever. They're not looking for the next Usher or the next Rihanna or the next Katy Perry or Lady Gaga. They're looking for the next Celine Dion. They revere the songs of Diane Warren and Burt Bacharach.

If you look at the adult contemporary chart instead of the Hot 100, there are three bands — One Republic, Train, and Maroon 5 — in the top ten who are basically laid-back white guitar-dude bands. (And in eleventh place: Gavin DeGraw.) And there is not a single person of color in the top 10.

American Idol is not a "hot trendy stuff popular with forward-thinking teenagers" show. It's an adult contemporary show, and it always has been. That's why they once had Neil Sedaka Week. It's why they brought John Fogerty to sing with Phillips last night on the finale and Jennifer Holliday to sing with Sanchez. They're not trying to tie these singers to new music; they're trying to tie them to old music. (There have been exceptions that threatened to feel a lot hipper: my favorite finale duet in Idol history took place between third-place season 5 finisher Elliott Yamin and Mary J. Blige.) When they bring in actual current acts, like Rihanna last night, they seem weirdly out of place, like someone really famous is, for some reason, playing your prom.

Once you acknowledge that the show's aesthetic is more adult contemporary than young and hot, and once you understand that it skews female, and once you understand that fortune in the realm of voting favors the teenage girl who is willing to learn the tricks of power dialing and wearing her fingers out texting, the emergence of the Maroon Republic DeGraw Train Family Singers as the unbeatable stripe of guys is a little less mystifying.

Plenty of people pointed out that Sanchez and third-place finisher Joshua Ledet were more accomplished technical singers than Phillips with more to show off than he had. Ledet, in particular, is a vocal gymnast who — kind of like Adam Lambert — almost never met a song he couldn't turn into a showcase for huge, loud notes and runs. The problem is that now, the Idol audience has seen that. They've seen technical prowess. They've seen power belters. They've seen people who can crank it up, take it higher, blow it out the box, or whatever else Randy Jackson is praising this week. The format is massively unkind to this kind of style of singing, too — if you have four minutes to build a song, your big finish can seem like it grew naturally out of passion. If you have 90 seconds, it can seem calculated and like you're trying too hard.

[Speaking of trying too hard, please forgive the aside: Last night's on-stage marriage proposal between long-ago contestants Ace Young and Diana DeGarmo was incredibly gross, even for American Idol, especially when Ace shouted out the name of the jeweler as part of what was apparently a sponsored marriage proposal. I expect it to take several showers to get the stink off me.]

That 90-second format with little chance to build is much kinder to someone like Phillip Phillips, whose appeal is just doing a little radio pop with a 12 percent growl factor thrown in. For the purposes of actually selling records, they're clearly aiming to hook Phillip into elements of indie rock — his first single, which he performed on Tuesday night, sounds exactly like what you would get if you threw Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeroes and Mumford & Sons into a blender. It does actually sound, shockingly enough, like something you might hear on the radio.

It's certainly not good for the show that they keep anointing the same guy. "Home" could also have been David Cook's coronation song, or Kris Allen's, or Lee DeWyze's. (Okay, it could not have been Scotty McCreery's, as that was a little bit different and springs from Idol's longstanding affinity for country, which this season lived on in the person of Skylar Laine.) At some point, it's going to be hard to straight-facedly suggest that a gospel-tinged R&B singer in a similar style to Joshua Ledet can realistically win if Joshua Ledet couldn't. Or that a woman can realistically win when Crystal Bowersox and Jessica Sanchez have both lost to men who lacked their musical chops.

What's interesting is that after seeming like a bland Dave-Matthews-alike for most of the season, Phillips teared up during his performance of "Home" last night after they announced that he'd won. Overcome, he just gave up as the backup singers sang "ooh, ooh, ooh," and he walked off the stage and hugged his family. He didn't finish the song — he didn't give them their moment where he sang that last, "I'm going to make this place your home." You know they wanted it.

Suddenly, he seemed emotional and human and involved in what was happening, qualities that the show had completely failed to bring out in him over a period of months. I liked him. I liked the song. All of a sudden.

It's entirely possible that there's a much more interesting guy in there, and that they just made him seem like a weighted average of the last four winners. Next season, if they wind up with a laid-back white guitar-playing dude in the auditions, they might want to bring out whatever nuance he has a little earlier.

Cannes is generally a pretty classy place, often to an intimidating extent — at some point, the bow ties and Gucci and diamond cuff links make you want to hang up your dress shirt as a white flag and wear pajamas to all your screenings. (Props, though, to the Italian press bro rocking the T-shirt-and-bow-tie look.)

But the festival's refined peaks are also accompanied by astonishing displays of tackiness. The Cannes Carlton Hotel, with its $1,000-a-night price tag and starlets cocktailing on the patio, sure sounds nice, until you walk by and see Sacha Baron Cohen's giant Dictator face plastered all over the palatial architecture. (Spend a few hundred thousand advertising dollars, and it could be your face!)

Fireworks displays over the water are fun, until you're on the sixth consecutive one and you realize it's just studios attempting to show that theirs is the biggest. (Not sure if the wimpy M80s and bottle rockets issuing from one yacht were a parody or an indicator that someone's getting fired.) And don't get me started on Shia LaBeouf's hair: At the Lawless press conference, a Polish reporter asked me, "What do you call that American animal that goes through trash and bites people at night?"

So it's fitting that one of the best films at Cannes is about the true power of tackiness. You might even say that Pablo Larrain's No was filmed in Tacky-Vision; Larrain painstakingly re-creates the bleary colors and VHS fuzz of cheapo '80s TV for his satire of media culture and politics.

The film focuses on the election into which Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced during the late '80s, when a transitional committee mandated a daily 15 minutes of TV advertising both for and against Pinochet's re-election.

At first, the "No" team wants to run a campaign based on facts, research and footage of the horrors of Pinochet's rule. But a whiz-kid ad man (Gael Garcia Bernal) thinks that the advertising needs to match "the context of the times," and starts creating a truly effective campaign — one based on jingles, raunchy humor and frolicking celebrities. The "Yes" team soon adapts, starting an ad war that becomes as momentous as it is frivolous.

Larrain strikes a tricky balance here. On one hand, this is a story of true heroism: Facing steep odds in an election generally assumed to be fixed, the film's ad team fights against constant government intimidation as it creates a campaign to inspire millions. On the other hand, this is a team that's fighting political corruption with cultural corruption: Though Bernal's character and his company try to maintain a substantive thread in their work, you get the sense that we're seeing the birth pangs of a scarily familiar and substance-free political discourse, one whose dumb power is thoroughly evident. (I still can't get their pro-freedom jingle "Happiness is Coming" out of my head.) It's a viciously funny satire anchored by a smartly low-key performance from Bernal. And the fact that it isn't in competition, but in the Director's Fortnight festival sidebar, is a crime.

A look at 'Lawless' and a love story, after the jump ...

Here's an analogy: Rockstar for games is almost like Miramax was for movies at its prime.

While Rockstar is not as indie as Harvey and Bob Weinstein's company was when it was flying high, Rockstar is indie in spirit from the top down, and it shows in their latest effort, Max Payne 3.

Last week, Rockstar released the mature-rated shooter, which is so obviously inspired by super-heroism and over-the-top action movies that you'd think it would be mired in cliché. That's what happened to the Max Payne movie, which was thus mired, in fact, to the point that it wasn't even watchable as a parody of itself. The less said about that film, the better. [Ed. note: If you must hear more, consider NPR's review from Mark Jenkins, who said, "The movie declines to stoop ... to such tricks as acting and characterization."]

It's genuinely shocking how real Max Payne 3 feels. Most reviewers have said this realism in the face of action-movie super-heroism has to do with "game mechanics." That's a weird phrase, and it has nothing to do with little people in overalls who fix the game when it breaks. What those critics are referring to are the bells and whistles that make the game something special. Indeed, Rockstar game designers and programmers have made an extraordinarily realistic experience for players, even more than last year's L.A. Noire.

Still, as fine as they are, it wasn't the features that kept me coming back for more. In part, it comes down to the story. I would not have enjoyed Max Payne 3 if the protagonist and his story weren't inspired by the best crime novels of the day. Its booze- and drug-abusing protagonist is so down on his luck, he may be a chilling reminder of someone you know who's fallen on hard times to the ... max. [Har.] He's a survivor who has barely endured almost unimaginable pain, and his self-deprecating wit is, in its way, a panacea that helps him survive the loss of love, his greatest challenge. Like a character out of a Toni Morrison novel, Max is so brutalized by his past (the tragic murder of his wife and child), he's not sure if he even wants to survive into the future.

Here's a game that's as grimly affecting as Nick Tosches' boozy, punky Dean Martin biography Dino and as depressing and violent as Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn. Here, a grizzled former cop takes a job as a security agent in Brazil. Not long after he arrives, the trophy wife of a rich Sao Paulo real estate tycoon is kidnapped. With his chatty cohort Passos, also a former cop, they travel through the nooks and crannies of Sao Paulo to rescue her. Rockstar writers Dan Houser, Rupert Humphries and Michael Unsworth must have consumed the best of popular crime fiction to pull off the taut dialogue, which allows the characters to say utterly wry or complex things in satisfying ways.

It's a good thing, too, because I have never been the biggest fan of shooting games. Aiming a gun via a reticle to down a baddie far in the distance in the stands of a soccer stadium usually gets old quickly. For me, it's the humor and satire that keeps this game alive. I found myself continuing on this 12-hour journey of weapon-fire because of Max's razor sharp quips and metaphors. I eliminated the gang members in favelas and the hired goons in speedboats primarily because it was a kick to hear what Max has to say after they die. At the same time, he's never really happy to kill. It's his job, and he believes death carries a heavy, haunting burden.

Rockstar has refined the way a game like this is played in many ways. Max moves like a human and never slides along the ground like a skater (a problem with many similarly structured offerings). Each step he takes looks like the work of a human with 206 bones. They've polished bullet time, their brilliant riff on slowing down time first seen in The Matrix movie, so much so that a physicist would appreciate the smooth motion of ammunition as it leaves the gun and hits the target.

Beyond programming, the attention to minute detail is admirable. As bullets fly in a Hoboken dive, you hear Garland Jeffries' Rolling Stones-like "Wild in the Streets," a jangly rock and roll anthem from 1973 — the perfect song at the perfect time. And the online play is as tense and heart-pounding as that in any game out there today. With all the frenetic action around you, you might not appreciate the hundreds of small touches that make Max Payne 3 a superior game. But that's all the more reason to play it a second time.

Hulu isn't content being your source of Saturday Night Live clips and full episodes of Glee. Like Netflix, they have one eye on original content, and one of their recent announcements is that they're bringing you a movie review show — wait, an anti-movie-review show — called Spoilers, starring Kevin Smith (the writer-director behind Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma, among others).

(Aside #1: I'm sorry that people outside the U.S. can't legally view Hulu stuff. I wish it were otherwise, but for the moment, we're a bit stuck acknowledging the limitation.)

This teaser trailer, I have to admit, already makes me tired, but I think that has more to do with how manic it is than with any problem with what they're proposing. The play here is pretty sensible — they're trying to do with an online show what a lot of people (including Smith) have successfully done with podcasts: get people to follow a personality they like to a product they have to seek out. It makes some sense for Smith, too, since his distaste for traditional distribution methods has led him to do things like releasing his 2011 film Red State without a major theatrical run (focusing on limited showings and video on demand).

The structure seems sound, too: take an audience to see a movie and then talk about it, with special guests added to "talk about how awesome they are."

(Aside #2: I have long pondered a blog feature that would just be called, "What's It Like Being Awesome?" where that I could interview people and acknowledge from the beginning that I, personally, have already decided they are awesome. I also think it would be hilarious if you just asked people, literally, "What's it like being awesome?" Maybe that's what Kevin Smith is going to do.)

Smith can be polarizing, both as a guy and as a director, and combined with the fact that online-only shows have had trouble reaching large audiences generally, that's likely to mean that the audience for Spoilers will probably not be enormous. But it doesn't necessarily have to be; I think at this point, Hulu is looking for proof-of-concept as much as anything, and to start to make a dent with its original offerings. You can see more about the other stuff they're serving up at Hulu's blog; you'll note they're pretty dude-oriented, including something promoted as (urgh) a "bro-mantic comedy."

Will you watch?

Saturday Night Live has always had a stealthily big heart. You can see it when the hosts people really like get hugs from everyone at the end of a show, and you can see it when people come back for guest appearances, and you've certainly seen it in some well-known moments in which the show says goodbye. That includes genuinely sad moments like the night Steve Martin hosted the show hours after Gilda Radner died, as well as considerably lighter fare like singing "So Long, Farewell" when Phil Hartman was leaving.

Saturday night's episode, hosted by Mick Jagger, was the last for Kristen Wiig, who's been with SNL since 2005, when truly, just about nobody had ever heard of her. Now, she's the star and Oscar-nominated co-writer of one of the most successful comedies in recent memory, and she has a full slate of upcoming film roles. Not everybody is a fan, and almost everybody has at least one character of hers that they find agonizingly irritating, but I've always really appreciated her enthusiasm for doing grotesques. She loves characters who are uncomfortable to watch, and while that sometimes means they're just annoying, sometimes it means they're delightfully bizarre. This is a natural point for her to leave the show (and there are rumors, as yet just that, that cast members Andy Samberg and Jason Sudeikis may follow), and they went to some trouble to acknowledge it.

After a tiny bit of business to create the pretext of a graduation sketch, they simply had the band perform the Rolling Stones' "She's A Rainbow" as everyone stepped up to dance with her. The simplicity of the scene was also what made it so sweet; it was pretty easy to see the progression of emotions, because there wasn't much else to look at.

It was beautifully awkward at times — how she misses the kiss with Jay Pharoah because he's bowing to her, how Bobby Moynihan ducks away in a hurry because he's losing it, how seeing Bill Hader is the moment she starts to buckle and the first one where there's no gag to the dance. And then how grateful she is that Kenan Thompson shows up and does a little "keep going" reset for her and makes her smile, how she and Seth Meyers boogie because that's who they are, and how that moment with Sudeikis is obviously completely wrecking — he doesn't look right for the rest of the number, honestly.

And of course, because it's live television, Andy Samberg doesn't realize he's almost pulling her dress up. And of course, because she's not made of stone over here, she sneaks in a hug with Jon Hamm as the credits are rolling.

The whole thing is really pretty perfect, and pretty perfectly human, right down to the fact that it's so emotional that nobody is paying a lot of attention to the fact that they're doing a "Ruby Tuesday" singalong with Mick Jagger. You can see, too, the miracle of people who can instantly make other people feel better — that's what guest Amy Poehler is doing when it turns into that "Ruby Tuesday" singalong. She's the one my eyes kept returning to when I watched it, because some part of me believes that she's somebody who left, and who knows that it's really, really sad to go, but that your life can also get really, really good when you leave something you love to do something else you also might love. And, of course, you can always come home.

Dear Justin Bieber,

If you are at an event — in this case Sunday's Billboard Music Awards — where Gladys Knight is also, and she is dressed like this:

You are not meant to dress like this.

Sincerely yours,

Would Wear Pajamas To Work If They Let Me But They Don't Because Of Dignity DO YOU SEE HOW THAT WORKS?

TV networks have never been accused of doing what's difficult when they can do what's easy. And all other things being equal, it's easier to convince viewers to watch someone they already know they like than it is to interest them in an unknown quantity. So it's no surprise that every roll-out of new fall shows brings back a few people we've seen before. For Sunday's Weekend Edition, I got to talk to NPR's Rachel Martin about some of those faces and where they're popping up again.

Connie Britton is warmly regarded — to say the least — by many who loved her on Friday Night Lights, and now she's back in ABC's Nashville, playing a smart-alecky country singer prepared to drop-kick the ingenue who's keen to take her place as her label's favorite. If you think you hear a little of Tami Taylor in this character, you're probably not wrong. Friday Night Lights may never have been an enormous commercial success, but a deep and abiding love of Tami Taylor runs through many a viewer's pilot-weary heart.

If you want to reach a little deeper, all the way back into your memories of the 1990s (this is a long time in television to remember anyone), Matthew Perry is back, too, on an NBC comedy called Go On. It's about a sports radio guy coming to terms with the death of his wife.

This is, of course, not the first time Perry has been brought back to TV since Friends; he tried drama on Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (as well as a recent, surprisingly creepy guest arc on The Good Wife) and comedy on Mr. Sunshine — neither lasted. Of course, networks are reluctant to give up the dream of reminding viewers of someone they once liked and are ready to like again (as a matter of fact, that's a big part of how Julianna Margulies ended up on The Good Wife). And when you've ever been as popular as Matthew Perry was during Friends, and when anybody thinks that the goodwill audiences once had toward you still exists, they're likely to keep trying until they find something that hits.

Mindy Kaling is familiar to NBC viewers as Kelly Kapoor on The Office, and as the writer of the recent book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? But her new show, currently titled The Mindy Project, will be on Fox. It casts her as kind of a goofy doctor with a loose grip on reality, and her show will be paired with New Girl, which, as you may know, is about a girl for whom "goofy" is a very modest descriptor.

666 Park Avenue is the quintessential ABC show, particularly given the network's recent successes with Once Upon A Time (dark fantasy) and Revenge (wealth-encrusted soap opera). If you were to put those two shows in a blender, you might wind up with something sort of like this show in which Terry O'Quinn (Lost's John Locke) and Vanessa Williams (of past ABC soapy shows Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty) play an evil landlord and his wife. In fact, possibly the most evil landlord. In fact, possibly the devil himself.

In the end, though, it's best not to get overly attached to any of the new stuff. Remember, the broadcast networks have cancelled more than 25 shows that were first put on the air since last year at this time. Statistically speaking and as cold-hearted as it sounds, most of this stuff is toast. In fact, that's part of why you see familiar faces again and again. Making a new fall television show is like opening a new restaurant — the odds are not on your side. Every little bit helps, and sometimes that little bit might be a little bit of Tami Taylor.

On this week's Pop Culture Happy Hour, I am back from vacation and back at the table, and boy, was I glad to be there.

We talk about the winners and losers of the last TV season and do one final check-in on the shows we picked in our TV fantasy segment last fall, which you will recall took place while I was hobbling around with a boot on my sprained ankle. (Remember my injury? IT WAS GLORIOUS.)

My pick was A Gifted Man, which is canceled. Glen's pick was Terra Nova, which is canceled. Trey's pick was Pan Am, which is canceled. Stephen's pick was Revenge. But Tanya Ballard Brown's picks were Once Upon A Time and Grimm and Scandal, and they're all coming back, so Tanya wins! And not Stephen, no matter what he tells you.

If you take an interest in our discussion of just how many shows have been canceled since the start of the fall season, perhaps you'll be interested in seeing the actual Post-It notes from which I read this impressive list.

Of course, we've got plenty of hopes for the upcoming season, and if you can't figure out what Stephen and I are talking about when we get on the topic of touch-screen hair dryers (WHAT?), here's some help.

We also talk about the portrayals of the old and the young in a segment I am playfully calling "Sunrise, Sunset." (Mostly to make my mother cry.) We kick it off with a discussion of Betty White's Off Their Rockers (which apparently is coming back ... sigh), which reminds us that whether you do or you don't carry with you the idea of Betty White as the greatest person game shows ever knew, you should enjoy this compilation.

Believe it or not, Glen manages to tie zombies and vampires to how we feel about aging. Please understand we are talking about the fear of zombification as a metaphor, not actual zombification. Whee!

We also chat about kids and portrayals thereof, calling back to this horror show you might recall, as well as better portrayals in decent films and shows, including a very harrowing, very early performance from Tina Majorino.

Naturally, we close with What's Making Us Happy This Week. Glen enjoyed a little dancing, which he liked a lot better than the Washington Post did. Trey enjoyed this, while Stephen is all about this. And I warmly appreciated my vacation activities and my vacation reading list, including this and this, and I threw in this just because you totally need to read it because it's great.

PCHH Bullet Points:

• The William Goldman quote "nobody knows anything" is from his highly entertaining book about Hollywood, Adventures In The Screen Trade. Goldman wrote The Princess Bride, as well as the screenplays for films including Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and All The President's Men.
• Warren Littlefield's book Top Of The Rock is oodles of fun, and it discusses then-NBC executive Preston Beckman, now at Fox, and you should absolutely follow Preston Beckman on Twitter.
• Did Patrick Wilson really tweet that he was happy his show was over? Apparently so.
• Two great pieces on hate-watching Smash, from Tara Ariano at Slate and Emily Nussbaum at The New Yorker. And Tara's piece on Betty White's Off Their Rockers at Grantland is mentioned on the show, too.
• Did you get confused when Trey referred to Betty White's "dusty muffin speech"? We can help.

So come and find us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter: me, Trey, Stephen, Glen and Mike.

Babies! Babies babies! Pregnancy and babies! Babies and pregnancy! Strollers full of babies!

These are just a few (OK, all) of the themes currently being used to promote What to Expect When You're Expecting, the new film based on the self-help book of the same name, which I believe is the book that compares babies to fruits and vegetables based on gestational age, but maybe I'm thinking of What to Expect When You're Expecting Truly Delicious Produce.

At any rate, there are a few things that make the new film hard to predict, because it certainly seems like it would be ... dumb, but it has some genuinely funny people in it (they include Rob Huebel, Chris Rock and Elizabeth Banks, and they do not include Jennifer Lopez). Moreover, it was co-written by Shauna Cross, who previously wrote the novel and co-wrote the screenplay for the marvelous roller derby film Whip It, so it's tempting to hope it will be better than the poster.

The poster, of course, presents all the women according to the Belly Language of Cinema, in which pregnant women really only have a few dimensions.

On the left, you see Elizabeth Banks, presented here as the awkward, unhappy, about-to-give-birth woman — the one who's about to throw her legs in the air and ask for boiling water and sheets torn into strips so that she can, I guess, make some mummies while she's in labor? Whatever. Anyway, she's certainly got the stupidest clothing on, including that impractical ribbon belt and whatever the flowery stuff on her shoulder is. When you're as close to delivery as she looks, maybe it's not the time for elaborate sweaters you could hide a cat in.

Anna Kendrick is the concerned, anxiously belly-cradling woman who experiences pregnancy as a crisis in which you are forced to mature too fast. Pregnancy in the movies very often is portrayed as the thing that forces people to grow up (to grow .... knocked up, geddit?), and you can tell Anna Kendrick represents not having grown up yet, because she is wearing boho bracelets and her bra straps are hanging out. Adulthood is the process, apparently, of getting pregnant and putting something over your tank top when you're at a party with your friends.

Cameron Diaz represents the woman who's just very cool with being pregnant — you can tell she hasn't worn anything but yoga pants since she conceived. Just lots and lots of yoga pants, which she probably stretches on some sort of a frame, which she bought at Pottery Barn, which allows her yoga pants to fit perfectly at every stage of her pregnancy.

Brooklyn Decker is the pregnant woman who has gone insane. Just look at her sweater. Well, and her ... face.

And then there's Jennifer Lopez, playing the expectant mother [this is a correction from the earlier version, which said she was pregnant, when in fact she's actually adopting in the movie] as the personification of bossy worrying. Where Kendrick is playing nervous ambivalence, Lopez is playing "you better not screw this up, buddy" bad-assery, signaled by her "simmer down" hand gestures, panicky face and large amount of jewelry.

The other amazing thing about the poster is that all these women, based on the gifts lying around, seem to be at a baby shower together. All of them! Are at a shower! And they're all really, really, really pregnant [except J.Lo]. I have to say, if you find yourself at a baby shower where [practically] every single lady there has a giant belly, you might want to consider the possibility that something your particular group of friends served at one of your previous parties has affected the guests in unexpected ways.

Don't get me started on the dads at the bottom of this poster, by the way. Chris Rock is the only one who seems to have figured out that the baby goes in the stroller, and he seems to only have noticed that because he has three babies and was like, "OK, I have to put these other two somewhere. I wonder if I could put them in this thing with the wheels on it."