In a promising move for the future of streaming media, Amazon has released the pilots of a bunch of original shows and allowed users to vote on which ones get greenlit. The way it used to work, TV networks would spend millions making a bunch of pilots, then they’d pick a few (whichever starred former castmembers of Friends, usually), and shitcan all the rest. That always seemed like a waste, not to mention it was based on studio-head predictions of what people would like, so this is a move in an interesting direction.
They could do better on offering easier-to-read descriptions of their pilots, but one such pilot is Alpha House, written by Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, starring John Goodman, Clark Johnson, Matt Malloy, and Mark Consuelos as four senators living in a house together in DC. Sure, it sounds like a wackier take on House of Cards, but on the other hand… John Goodman. In this clip, Bill Murray makes a cameo. I think it goes without saying, I would watch Bill Murray and John Goodman in anything, even a documentary about raping my mother. All Bill Murray does in this clip is swear and yell and brush his teeth, and it’s entirely compelling. That’s the magic of Bill Murray.
