This week was the magical week when advertising executives descend on New York City to hear TV executives tell them about the new series they’re working on. The events are kind of strange because as much as they’re about business dealings, they’re also about putting on a show and impressing people, so TV networks do their best to make them as exciting as possible. There are food and drinks, and often, they’ll bring out a few stars to entertain the audience.

More importantly for you, it’s also the week when TV networks reveal first looks at a lot of the shows they’re planning for later in the year. I really enjoy it because the trailers are all extremely awkward: at this point, the networks have only seen a pilot episode from each show, so the trailers are literarily two- to four-minute synopses of everything that happens in a single episode. Which, generally, is kind of broad and goofy.

There are way too many pilot trailers to include here — though I’ve still got a couple below — so if you’re interested, you can check out these roundups for ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. Highlights include a show where God sends a Facebook friend request to an atheist, creating a feel-good twist on Final Destination, and a show about spies that’s maybe also a rom-com.

Check out nine other trailers from this week below.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Here’s the first trailer for the latest Mission: Impossible, a film where, as best I can tell, a lot of things happen. This trailer is a mix of action shots and foreboding dialogue, with an occasional nuclear explosion mixed in for good measure. I’m really not sure what’s “happening,” but it looks like it’s following the formula for a solid Mission: Impossible movie: clean shots, high stakes, and incredible stunts. It comes out July 27th.

Bohemian Rhapsody

This is our first look at Bohemian Rhapsody, the long-in-the-works biopic of Freddie Mercury. The footage looks fun and pretty enough, but there’s a lot going on outside the frame that has to make you question how this will all turn out. For one, the film’s original director, Bryan Singer, the X-Men guy (who has several sexual assault allegations against him), supposedly stopped showing up to set and was then fired and replaced two-thirds of the way through production. On top of that, many have pointed out that the film seems to incorrectly depict Mercury as heterosexual and ignore the fact that he died of complications from AIDS. Presumably the film will cover all that, but this teaser seems to be hiding the details, which isn’t a great sign. It comes out November 2nd.

BLACKkKLANSMAN

This looks pretty fantastic. BLACKkKLANSMAN is directed by Spike Lee and produced by Jordan Peele, and between their names and the name of the movie, you probably know everything you need to. The film looks like a twist on a ’70s cop movie that turns it into a comedy about a black cop trying to infiltrate the KKK. You can probably figure out where this is all going: it ends with a room of white people chanting “America first!” The film comes out August 10th.

Cosmos: Possible Worlds

Hey, Neil deGrasse Tyson is coming back with a new season of Cosmos. It comes out in 2019.

Magnum P.I.

CBS is rebooting Magnum, P.I. a full three decades after it went off the air. I question exactly how much value the series title still has today, but it’s very clear from this trailer that CBS has a lot of faith in it: it’s making the closest thing it can to a big-budget action movie (with, I have to add, many of the unnecessary, hyper-masculine tropes that come with them). It starts sometime this fall.

The Break with Michelle Wolf

Just off her memorable White House Correspondents’ Dinner set, Michelle Wolf is nearly ready to debut her show on Netflix. It’ll be a weekly mixture of talk show, standup, and sketch comedy. And judging from this teaser, if you enjoyed her political standup, you’ll enjoy this. It’ll come out every Sunday, starting May 27th.

The Passage

Here’s a high-concept sci-fi show coming to Fox, with Ridley Scott and Matt Reeves signed on as executive producers. The show, based on Justin Cronin’s book trilogy, is set in a world where a disease is turning humans into zombie / vampire creatures. The show starts off with a government agent of some kind going rogue in order to protect a young girl who’s supposed to be abducted to become a test subject and maybe save the human race. It’s kind of a weird scenario because... ultimately they’re still living in a world with zombie / vampires? And probably another kid will get kidnapped? I don’t know. I’ll bet the book makes more sense. It should premiere at some point this fall.

Deadly Class

Syfy has a new series coming out from the Russo brothers, the directors behind Infinity War (and many of the best Community episodes). Deadly Class is based on a comic book of the same name about high school students studying to be master assassins. The style of the show looks pretty incredible, so this could be a fun one. It starts next year.

Destination Wedding

Look, I had absolutely no intention of including a rom-com in the roundup this week, but this trailer is just two minutes straight of Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder quietly, bitterly bickering with one another, and it’s kind of amazing. The movie comes out August 24th.

Dystopian stories are often described as warnings, but they can also be Rorschach blots. Readers dive in with specific fears — about technology, society, or the future — and find an allegory to validate them. And Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s classic 1953 novel, is a perfectly adaptable cautionary tale. It’s an elegant high-concept story backed by a complicated web of broad social complaints, critiquing everything from social justice to the zipper. This might be why it’s produced two dramatically different films: one from French auteur François Truffaut in 1966, and the other from 99 Homes director Ramin Bahrani, premiering this weekend on HBO.

As many readers likely know, the novel Fahrenheit 451 is set in a future in which books are illegal, and instead of putting out fires, “firemen” hunt down caches of literature and burn them. The protagonist is a fireman named Guy Montag, who one day smuggles a book home and reads it, setting himself on the path to knowledge and, ultimately, rebellion.

Simon & Schuster

The most overtly ideological target in Bradbury’s original novel is essentially identity politics. Firemen exist because racial minorities fought to ban books that insulted or dehumanized them, then other people adopted “minority” labels to ban books that insulted them, and soon all books were considered offensive. Like most “political correctness run amok” commentary, it’s frustratingly glib, suggesting that any attempt to curb racism is a slippery slope that leads to dangerous places. But that backstory is also isolated to a small section of the book, which people often ignore when they talk about Fahrenheit 451 — perhaps because Bradbury’s takedown of mass media is so much more vivid.

Bradbury’s future is intellectually vacant, but endlessly stimulating. While the government has banned books, few people in Bradbury’s vision of the future would choose to read them anyway. Multi-wall screens play sensational variety shows or programs starring an inane fictional “family,” which captivates Montag’s wife. Thrill-seeking kids entertain themselves at destruction-themed fun fairs. “Talking politics” means discussing which presidential candidate is more handsome. (This was a whole seven years before the famous televised debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, the future “TV president.”) Imagine all the most annoying aspects of television and teenagers, both of which were relatively new developments in the 1950s, and dial them up to unbearable levels.

But Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 isn’t just aiming at clearly vapid forms of media. It criticizes the practice of learning as rote self-improvement, where people churn through ever-shorter news stories and Reader’s Digest condensed novels out of a solemn duty to keep up with the world. “Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals,” says Montag’s superior Beatty, explaining the process of social control. “Chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information.”

Universal Pictures

Bahrani wrote in a New York Times essay that Bradbury’s concerns about headline-scanning and hyper-condensation make Fahrenheit 451 “the book for our social media age.” Readers can certainly use the book as a cudgel against Wikipedia and Twitter, if they’re so inclined. But that’s just one potential set of targets. Any system that encourages frenetically acquiring knowledge without stopping for reflection is fair game — and that covers large swathes of American cultural institutions, past and present.

Truffaut’s version of the story, on the other hand, doesn’t spend a lot of time on this kind of media commentary, and the world of his film doesn’t feel like a society spinning out of control. It’s almost the opposite. His version of Fahrenheit 451 is a more straightforward depiction of suburban malaise, where people are not just distracted, but miserably numb. Truffaut draws out the book’s most surreally boring moments, devoting an entire scene to a hypnotic faux-interactive soap opera about assigning guest bedrooms. He expands a subplot about Montag’s free-spirited neighbor Clarisse, who is given a larger role as a young teacher resisting her school’s stifling educational curriculum. New technology plays a role in the film, but old-fashioned peer pressure and oppressive bureaucracy are the greatest villains.

Behind a striking near-future aesthetic, Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 outlines an extremely 20th-century problem: bourgeois men who chafe at their meaningless jobs and shallow wives, and can only be saved by leaving respectable society with the help of a beautiful young woman. (In this film, that’s literally Montag’s wife with a hipper haircut, since actor Julie Christie played dual female lead roles.) His cultural anxiety feels almost like a punchline today. Wow, remember when people were scared of having an excessively stable lifestyle?

Bahrani’s version of the film doesn’t even try to make that particular anxiety seem relevant. His version of Montag (played by Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan) has no wife and no suburban home. He lives in a sterile apartment with a virtual assistant who’s bristling with surveillance cameras, more like a talking appliance than a friend. Instead of being mid-level functionaries, firemen are stars in a COPS-like internet reality show, where they can bask in waves of floating emoji during busts. His viewers aren’t numb or thoughtless — they’re furious at book-hoarders, who function as a generic hated underclass. And since there aren’t many books left, firemen have turned to torching things like films and old computers, even though the fumes would be incredibly toxic and the whole practice completely unnecessary.

Photo: HBO

This new Montag is a futuristic e-celeb, but he’s shaped by problems that long precede social media. Older versions of the character had middle-class blue-collar jobs, in eras — or at least, futuristic versions of those eras — when that was relatively unremarkable. Those jobs seem almost mythical today, so the best Jordan’s character gets is a nonsensical, performative simulacrum of one. Beatty (The Shape of Water villain Michael Shannon) is grooming Montag to take over his department and lead a new generation of firemen, but it’s not clear that people need their services anymore. The livestreamed performance is all that matters — which is presumably why they still get awesome flamethrowers for destroying computers, instead of, say, very strong magnets.

This might make Bahrani’s Fahrenheit 451 sound unduly interesting or pointed, because its main social commentary is that every hyped-up tech trend from the past several years is awful. Emoji? They destroy literacy, obviously. Virtual reality? Isolates people. Livestreaming? Encourages mob mentality. Alexa? Spies on you and gives you drugs. Social media? Ate the internet. Algorithms? I’m still piecing the reasoning together, but you’d better believe they’re bad.

“Technology is horrible” is hardly an unusual premise, but Bahrani’s Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t even stay consistently technophobic. (Without spoiling a weird and complicated new subplot, let’s just say that DNA data storage is improbably good.) There’s no grounding to any of its social commentary, just a lot of jumbled slogans, as thoughtlessly distracting as Bradbury warned television might be. And for an adaptation of a book so full of possibilities, that’s almost as bad as just burning the thing.

In 1953, Ray Bradbury created a mirror for our worst fears about mass media, conformity, and anti-intellectualism. And we’ve kept those fears alive, updating them to reflect how the details of society have changed from decade to decade. In the 1960s, Fahrenheit 451 reflected a barren world of complacent suburbanites, longing to feel anything at all. Today, the same story in a new form reflects a world where people are trying to recapture a purpose they lost years ago, doing too much and thinking too little. If only that description didn’t apply to the film, too.

There are so many streaming options available these days and so many conflicting recommendations that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

What to watch

“I Sing the Body Electric,” a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone, from late in the show’s third season.

Written by Ray Bradbury, the episode stars Josephine Hutchinson as “Grandma,” a robotic playmate, guardian, and teacher, who is purchased by a widower (Bewitched’s David White) to take care of his three demanding children. Veronica Cartwright plays the most stubborn of the kids, Anne, who refuses to be impressed by Grandma’s gizmos and gimmicks, because she’s certain everyone and everything she loves will eventually abandon her. Bradbury later adapted this script into a 1969 short story (originally published as “The Beautiful One is Here”), which later inspired the 1982 TV special The Electric Grandmother.

Why watch now?

Because Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 has been adapted by writer-director Ramin Bahrani into a movie that debuts on HBO on Saturday, May 19th at 8PM ET. (It plays again Sunday night at 7:15, right before Westworld.)

Bradbury’s second novel (or arguably his first, since 1950’s The Martian Chronicles is more a collection of interlinked short stories), Fahrenheit 451 was inspired by a real-life incident in which a policeman found it suspicious that Bradbury was out walking instead of driving a car like everybody else. Already frustrated and concerned by the decline of reading, the rise of television, and the censorious efforts of anti-communist politicians, Bradbury turned his anger over the encounter with the cop into a dystopian short story called “The Pedestrian,” then into the novella “The Fireman,” and finally into Fahrenheit 451 — a cautionary tale about a future where government goons burn books and punish citizens who read.

The novel has been adapted multiple times, including by the French New Wave director François Truffaut in 1966, for his only English-language film. The new version stars Black Panther’s Michael B. Jordan as one of the book-burners, whose uncertainty about his job puts him at odds with his boss (Shape of Water villain Michael Shannon), an anti-reading zealot. Bahrani — whose recent work includes the fiery social-issue dramas At Any Price and 99 Homes — aims to connect Bradbury’s dark vision of the future with our own era, where people in power dismiss inconvenient information as seditious or “fake.”

“I Sing the Body Electric” has a significantly different outlook on technology and modernity from Fahrenheit 451. The story has more in common with Bradbury’s 1957 novel Dandelion Wine, which combines reminiscences of growing up in a middle American small town with elements of whimsical fantasy. Though the episode shows some of the wild things robo-Grandma can do — like conjuring toys and games seemingly out of thin air — the overall focus is on how humans build our own needs and desires into our machines.

Who it’s for

Anyone interested in the early career of one of science fiction’s most important writers.

Bradbury’s take on TV in Fahrenheit 451 is contemptuous and despairing, but that didn’t stop him from writing the occasional teleplay himself. Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, he contributed sporadically to anthology series like Fireside Theatre and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Writer and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling was a great admirer of Bradbury’s, and Dandelion Wine’s influence is evident in the show’s early episodes “Walking Distance” and “A Stop at Willoughby,” which treat childhood and wholesome Americana as fantastical idylls. Though Bradbury submitted a few scripts to The Twilight Zone at Serling’s behest, “I Sing the Body Electric” was the only one ever produced.

In an interview shortly before he died, Serling explained, “Ray Bradbury is a very difficult guy to dramatize, because that which reads so beautifully on the printed page doesn’t fit in the mouth. It fits in the head.” Nevertheless, “I Sing the Body Electric” works wonderfully, perhaps because it tells the story plainly, and lets its meaning softly resonate. Aside from a poignant final speech from Grandma about the robot factory’s “room of voices” — where retired machines talk to each other, and share what they’ve learned from humans — no heavy-handed point is emphasized.

Even the science fiction elements in “I Sing the Body Electric” are treated matter-of-factly. The creepy showroom of robot body parts, and Grandma’s special powers… There’s no big build-up or stunned reaction to any of the episode’s “wow” moments. Instead, this episode is mostly about Anne, and how the extraordinary grief and upheaval in her life demands a supernatural remedy.

Where to see it

Netflix, which currently has four of the five Twilight Zone seasons available to stream. Hulu subscribers should also consider watching the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode “Design for Loving,” another Bradbury-penned half-hour, from four years earlier, also about how robots may satisfy the human need for companionship.

Catfish host and executive producer Nev Schulman is currently being investigated for sexual misconduct. The Daily Beast reports that MTV has temporarily halted production on the show. “We’re working with Critical Content, our third party production company, to conduct a thorough investigation,” a spokesperson told the publication.

The show, named for the documentary of the same name, is dedicated to exposing the real people behind fake dating profiles. Schulman, along with co-host Max Joseph, helps hopeful romantics learn the truth behind their internet crushes. Schulman has denied any wrongdoing. “I have always been transparent about my life and would always take responsibility for my actions—but these claims are false,” Schulman told The Daily Beast.

Schulman’s past transparency includes a story about the time he punched a woman in the face. In his book, In Real Life: Love, Lies & Identity in the Digital Age, Schulman writes that it was out of “self-defense” — and also because he hadn’t realized that this “short, stocky, crew-cut-styled individual” was a woman. The woman he attacked has a very different account of the events that night. Although the assault took place in 2006, Schulman recounted it as a quirky anecdote in 2014 — plenty of time for MTV to have rethought its hosting decisions in the meantime.

HBO’s science fiction drama Westworld isn’t just known for its talented cast and its philosophical musings about the nature of reality. It’s also become famous for its reveals, from mind-bending bombshells that link two characters to simple pieces of backstory that bring new insight to a storyline. Watching Westworld is like peeling an onion, one layer at a time.

That’s why for the show’s second season, I’ll be diving into one particular spoilery revelation from each episode, to figure out what it means, how we got here, and where things might go in the episodes to come. Some weeks, it might be a huge plot twist. In other weeks, it might be something subtle. Either way, we’re going to spoil the hell out of it. Welcome to the Westworld Spoilers Club.

One of the more notable characters introduced during season 2 of Westworld is the founder of the mega-corporation that runs Westworld and its sister parks: James Delos (Peter Mullan). He first showed up in the second episode, “Reunion,” demonstrating a noted lack of interest in the long-term potential of robotic hosts — until a crafty William (Jimmi Simpson) convinced him otherwise.

As that same episode revealed, James Delos retired, giving William the opportunity to take over and become the ruthless Man in Black (Ed Harris) from later Westworld timelines. But there was a mini-mystery left unanswered, a lingering cough that indicated Delos was facing health problems and might not be long for this world. In spite of the wealth and success he had accumulated, and the technical acumen of his society, he seemed to be fatally ill.

But as last night’s episode, “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” revealed, Delos, Inc. has an answer for that problem, too.

Photo: HBO

The big reveal?

The episode opens on a spinning record: “Play With Fire,” by The Rolling Stones. There are a number of ways to read that song title, but the opening moments of the episode simply follow James Delos going through the routine of an ordinary morning. He exercises on a stationary bike, has a morning cigarette, goes to the bathroom, pours his morning coffee. It’s all utterly banal — except for the slight tremor in his right hand, and the fact that his cough has vanished.

There’s also the matter of where he’s going about this routine. It’s a nicely decorated space with a minimalist aesthetic, but it appears to be a small studio apartment with no view of the outside — not the usual habitation of an extremely rich man. That’s because it’s actually a small medical facility. Soon enough, William shows up to chat, and it becomes clear that James Delos is being held under observation, awaiting for some final sign-off before he can leave. William is there to conduct an interview — a baseline, he says, that will be used to gauge Delos’ mindset, mood, and sense of humor. “I own a biotechnology company, and I’m dying of a disease whose research I defunded 15 years ago,” Delos shoots back. “I think my sense of humor is fucking intact.”

William clarifies that the intent is to measure “fidelity” — whatever that means in this context. “So what’s the idea? That afterwards you and I have the exact same conversation?” Delos asks. “Seems a little far-fetched, doesn’t it William?”

It’s confusing at first, but it’s not far-fetched at all. As the episode repeats variations of the same scene, with William showing up a little bit older each time, it becomes clear that Delos, Inc. isn’t trying to save the life of its founder. James Delos died, and William has been interviewing host clones that look like him, talk like him, have all his memories, and actually think they are him. Each, in their own time, eventually suffers a mental collapse. When older William (Ed Harris) — better known as The Man in Black — visits the James Delos host later in the episode, he reveals that while the researchers initially thought his mind was rejecting the new body, they now think it’s as if his “mind rejects reality… rejects itself.” Each and every time, it leaves them with no other option: scrap the entire thing, including the crippled host himself, and start anew.

Photo: HBO

What does it mean?

From a character perspective, the storyline between the ever-aging William and the series of James Delos clones offer significant insight into The Man in Black. In many ways, this season is serving as his origin story, and in “The Riddle of the Sphinx,” the audience gets a first-hand glimpse at the vast change in his character over the years. William is merciful to the early James Delos clones, reluctant to put them through any unwanted suffering. But by the time we catch up to The Man in Black in a “current” timeline, his cruelty is laid bare. He tells the Delos clone that his son Logan died of an overdose; that his daughter, William’s wife, killed herself; and that Delos, Inc. has created and destroyed countless James Delos clones over the decades. The final one, it turns out, is their 149th attempt — and even he is only able to survive for little more than a month before going mad. The Man in Black even tells the latest clone that he thinks they should stop the program to bring him back altogether, and that the world is actually a better place without James Delos.

Given that this entire storyline seems to be more about William’s transformation than the fate of James Delos, the episode provides another glimpse into his character. The Man in Black seems so disgusted, so filled with contempt for everything James Delos stands for, that it begins to feel that this 149th host clone isn’t the real target of his ire at all. Every criticism The Man in Black levies could also be used to describe William himself, and as he spits his venom, it seems like he’s actually talking more about the way he feels about himself than his former boss. And as the ultimate punishment, The Man in Black leaves the Delos clone in purgatory: stuck in that solitary observation room, awake and alive, so he can feel his mind fall apart one bit at a time.

Photo by John P. Johnson / HBO

It’s cruel even for The Man in Black, and later in the episode, it’s left to Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and the very-much-alive-as-predicted Elsie (Shannon Woodward) to put Delos Clone #149 out of his misery. But even though The Man in Black showed contempt for Delos, something else in him appears to be thawing. Elsewhere in the episode — in what appears to be later in The Man in Black’s own personal timeline — he’s trapped in the town of Las Mudas with Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.), while a host named Major Craddock (Jonathan Tucker) taunts and tortures other hosts for sport. Seeing Craddock threaten the life of Lawrence’s wife reminds The Man in Black of his own wife’s death. He retaliates, taking down Craddock’s men, and allowing Lawrence to take the final killshot on the Major to avenge his cruelty.

Later, Dr. Ford appears yet again, this time speaking to The Man in Black through Lawrence’s daughter. “They might not remember, but I know who you are, William,” she says. “One good deed doesn’t change that.” The Man in Black dismisses the idea that what he did was a “good deed,” but in spite of his protestations, his actions speak for themselves. He wouldn’t have saved Lawrence’s wife earlier in the series, and whatever The Door is, it could be putting him on a possible path toward redemption.

The episode seems to underscore that idea by giving The Man in Black one big opportunity right in the episode’s final moments. As he, Lawrence, and their men ride across the plains, they come across a lone woman on a horse. It’s Grace, the guest who escaped the tiger attack in The Raj last week. But when she greets the men, it’s revealed that she isn’t just some random park guest. She’s The Man in Black’s estranged daughter.

Photo: HBO

Changing the game

Along with the character implications, the revelations about the Delos clone host program opens up the narrative of the series considerably. Originally, William saw Westworld as an opportunity to better understand customers and allow Delos, Inc. to market to them better. But now it’s clear that the company is exploring how to use host technology to create replicants of actual people — to offer up immortality as a product. This season has also revealed that the company has been quietly collecting DNA and other evidence about guests’ visits to the park. With the host clone concept, it’s not inconceivable that Delos could be interested in creating copies of some of its high-profile guests — an idea explored in the 1976 film Futureworld.

But there’s a much more immediate implication, and it should excite Anthony Hopkins fans. Bernard remembers that before Dr. Ford’s death, he had Bernard print a control unit for another clone host. Given that Ford has been making brief appearances, speaking to The Man in Black through hosts like El Lazo and Lawrence’s daughter, the dots become almost too easy to connect: Ford created a host clone of himself before setting off the “Journey Into Night” narrative, and now that host is somewhere in the park, overseeing everything while everybody thinks Ford is dead and gone.

Of course, that’s all just speculation, but if true, it gives the focus on timeframes a new sort of urgency. It was established earlier in the season that the storyline of Bernard scouring the parks with Delos security forces takes place 11 days after the robot uprising. The 149th James Delos host was only able to last 35 days before starting to “degrade.” If there is a Dr. Ford host clone out there, he may have an expiration date — and could be nearly halfway there.