The Drop Issue 19: Two Dying Empires Try To Merge

Two dying empires are trying to merge into one bigger dying empire. Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery want to fuse into a $111 billion thing, and last week the UK regulators forced Paramount to cough up 'major concessions' just to get the deal blessed on their side of the pond. Twelve state attorneys general in America are now suing to block it here, and the anti-merger coalition is pointing at the UK deal saying, see, even the British think this is bad. When the British think your corporate behavior is unseemly, you should probably take the hint.

Meanwhile the guy running WBD has renamed HBO to Max to HBO Max more times than most people have moved apartments. This is the industry that just decided Ted Lasso needed a fourth season after it ended. Nothing ends. Nothing dies. Nothing gets to be a nice self-contained thing. They're going to keep making Ted Lasso until Jason Sudeikis is 78 and doing motion capture from a wheelchair.

House of the Dragon: Season 3 (HBO Max)

The dragons are back and, more importantly, so is the sound of Matt Smith whispering menacingly at his niece-wife. Season 3 landed August 2 with 'The Dragon in Winter,' and after a Season 2 that felt like six hours of people standing on cliffs looking concerned, this one finally moves. James Norton joins as Lord Ormund Hightower. The whole thing still lives or dies on whether they pay off the war they've been threatening since 2022. I'll give them one more season of good faith. Watch it.

✅ WORTH IT

Silo: Season 4 (Apple TV+)

Rebecca Ferguson is still down there. The concrete is still cracked. The mystery is still whether the sky is actually poison, or whether some guys in a bunker just really like being in charge. Silo has quietly become the best sci-fi on television, and Apple keeps making it in absolute silence because Apple doesn't know how to market anything that isn't a phone. Season 4 kicked off August 6 with 'The Drive.' If you liked seasons 1 through 3, this is more of that, which is exactly what you want.

🏆 DROP EVERYTHING

Ted Lasso: Season 4 (Apple TV+)

Ted Lasso ended. That was the whole point. Three-season arc, they wrapped it, everybody cried, Roy Kent got his moment, we all went home. Now it's back, because Apple did the math and realized that a 78% approval rating on the last season means there are still nickels on the ground. 'Home' premiered August 4. I hope it's good. I don't believe it will be. Resurrecting a finished show is never done for artistic reasons.

🐍 SLOP

The Shards (FX/Hulu)

Ryan Murphy adapting Bret Easton Ellis's semi-autobiographical novel about young Bret at Buckley prep school in 1981 Los Angeles, while a serial killer called The Trawler stalks the perimeter. Igby Rigney plays teen Bret. Kaia Gerber, whose entire deal is being Cindy Crawford's daughter and having good bone structure, plays Susan. Homer Gere plays the mysterious new student. Yes, that Homer Gere. Ryan Murphy hits maybe one out of every four swings but the material suits him: shallow rich kids, encroaching dread, plausible perversion. Might be great. Might be American Horror Story with a Reagan-era coat of paint. Worth checking to find out. Grab the novel it's based on on Amazon if you want the source.

✅ WORTH IT

Lioness: Season 3 (Prime Video)

Taylor Sheridan continues to fill Paramount's servers with shows about serious people doing serious things in cargo pants. Zoe Saldaña is Joe, station chief, married to a doctor, always on the phone. Season 3 has her and Cruz continuing to embed and un-embed themselves in various geopolitical hellscapes. It's competent. Sheridan writes women the way a guy who once met a woman writes women. If you liked seasons 1 and 2 there's zero reason to stop now.

🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Sterling Point (Prime Video)

A teenager inherits a remote Canadian island from a grandfather she was never allowed to meet, and discovers 'unexpected sisterhood' and 'buried secrets.' Which is TV logline for: there will be a scene where she reads a letter aloud on a dock. Ella Rubin stars. Keen Ruffalo is in it, and yes, that is Mark Ruffalo's kid. Nepo baby island. Prime's algorithm asked what if we made Virgin River but in Canada with fewer bears, and here we are.

🐍 SLOP

Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi (Disney+)

The Japanese-animated Star Wars spinoff extends its best short film into a full series. Kara and a ragtag Jedi crew hunt for other Jedi to fight a warlord. Animation is beautiful. Voice cast is stacked with actual anime pros. Disney should make more of these and less of whatever the seventh Skywalker cousin show was. If you like anime and you like lightsabers, this is a treat.

✅ WORTH IT

Also on the ledger

Mushoku Tensei S3 (Hulu): The isekai grind continues, still animated beautifully, still weirdly creepy about a 12-year-old. Fans keep watching. ✅ WORTH IT

Bleach (Hulu): The Thousand-Year Blood War arc keeps delivering the animation the original Bleach couldn't afford. ✅ WORTH IT

Futurama (Hulu): Revived, again. New episode 'Catfish Hunter.' Nobody asked for this many revivals but here we are watching an aging Bender do an internet joke from 2009. 🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (Peacock): Still going. Still on. Still not funny. 🐍 SLOP

Pick of the Week

Silo Season 4 on Apple TV+. If you're caught up, you know. If you're not, start at Season 1 Episode 1, block off a couple of weekends, and thank me later. Ten episodes a season, roughly an hour each. Ongoing, renewed, not being cancelled mid-arc. Rare prestige sci-fi that respects both its premise and your time.

The Closer

The Witcher Season 5 got quietly pushed to 2027, which is Netflix corporate for 'we do not have faith in this and hope you forget it exists.' Sugar Season 2 ended with an extraterrestrial twist and everyone is asking Colin Farrell if there'll be a Season 3, and Colin Farrell is doing the polite Irish thing of not saying 'please god no.' Raising Kanan wrapped its five-season run on Starz, which posted a subscriber bump despite raising prices, proving once again that Power fans will pay literally anything. Everything is a franchise, nothing gets to end, and the algorithm is watching you. See you next week.