The Five Spot: Please Chill Out And Watch Detroiters

Also: An anchor heist and my one of my favorite television scenes of the year

The Five Spot is a weekly Friday roundup where I rank and riff on my five favorite things from the week. Most of the entries will be about film and TV, but there might also be ones about weird local news or sandwiches I ate or anything else, really. The whole thing is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to read the top four entries, you can do that by upgrading…

Off we go.

FIVE: Detroiters is good (watch Detroiters)

Not many people are covering it but there is an election coming up soon. Just kidding (lol). Not about the election, though. That, in fact, is coming soon, as you have heard during every commercial break and from every loud uncle you have and from every front yard littered with ALL CAPS signs that you drive by on your way to a doctor appointment where a very nice nurse will take your blood pressure and pulse and then give you a look of concern before asking if you’ve been agitated or under any extra stress lately. Yeah, lady. Lawns shouted at me the whole way here. We’re all a little on edge.

Thankfully, blessedly, the world saw this and stepped in with emergency measures. And by that, I mean Detroiters was added to the Netflix library this week. Detroiters is so good. It is so, so good. It ran for two seasons on Comedy Central back in 2017 and 2018 and it starred a pre-ITYSL Tim Robinson and a post-Veep Sam Richardson as best friends who run a small advertising business. I was mad when it got canceled but I’m kind of over it now because the two of them have done so much cool stuff since, but still. It was pretty much a perfect little show. It still is, actually, which I can confirm because I’ve already started my latest rewatch in the 48 hours since it hit Netflix.

I have yammered about my love of this dumb little show for the last 5-10 years and I guess I’m going to go ahead and keep doing that for the foreseeable future. It’s just fun, straight-through, with a commitment to silliness that never wavers. There’s an episode about a car that poops. Connor O’Malley shows up. There’s a recurring guest appearance by real-life Detroit news anchor Mort Crim that is so solid I got excited just typing that phrase right now. Tim Meadows pops up as a hapless lawyer, which is important to note both because “Tim Meadows pops up” is always a sign of quality programming and because I found a clip from his episode.

Would I have written almost this exact same collection of words even if we weren’t a few weeks out from a stressful national event? I mean, yes. I’ve written something close to this a few times for no good reason other than “because it’s a good show and I want to tell people about it.” But the timing of this is too perfect. You probably need something like this, a little light escapism, maybe at bedtime or over lunch or even in the waiting room of that doctor’s office to help bring your vital signs back into a range that won’t worry that nurse. Lord knows I needed it. This screencap alone does more for my mental health than any medication you can get from a pharmacy.

Detroiters is good. You do not need a reason to watch it. You can watch it even if you’re not stressed out by world events or issues at work or shouting lawn signs. But if you do need it, well, it sure is nice to know it’s there.

FOUR: I am so proud of Christopher Nolan for cashing this massive check