John Schneider‘s production studio lot in Louisiana has been ravaged by Hurricane Ida, and while his life was spared, the actor needs some help.
The ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ star’s movie/TV magic sanctuary in Holden, LA got torn up this week as Ida continues to rip through the area. Among the casualties on his property was a massive tree that toppled over, crashing down onto his orange “General Lee” stunt car.
Don’t worry … it ain’t John’s one and only — he has several models on hand.
John’s rep tells us he’s doing just fine, but was off the grid for a while due to bad cell service … he’s leaving for Nashville in just a few hours.
With that said … JS uploaded a video that’s pretty sad to watch considering the devastation he — and thousands of other Louisianans — are going through right now. He’s asking the public to give him a hand by going to his studio store and buying merch … which is gonna go a long way to getting the place up and running again.
It’s clear … no one is impervious to the wreckage of this natural disaster — not even Bo.
TV docudramas always walk a fine line between illumination and exploitation. But American Crime Story‘s first installment, The People v. O.J. Simpson, broke the mold by doing the impossible: It gave us a fresh perspective on a story we thought we already knew so well. It had depth, it had nuance, it made us rethink the legacies of infamous media pariahs… and I say all that to emphasize that 
The central figure here — you’d hardly call her a “hero” — is Linda Tripp (played by Murphy staple Sarah Paulson), an embittered government bureaucrat who bristles at a demotion and strikes up a creepy bond with new coworker Monica Lewinsky (Beanie Feldstein), preying on her like a spider with a fly. Monica feels jilted when Bill Clinton doesn’t bring her back to work at the White House after his reelection, so she spills all to Linda about her clandestine affair with the President. Linda sees Monica as her ticket out of her gray government cubicle and starts taping their phone conversations, setting in motion a scandal that shocked the country and nearly ended Clinton’s presidency. Impeachment gets too caught up in the build-up, though, and spends too much time trying to wring drama and tension out of banal conversation. Only when the affair becomes public in Episode 7 does the series finally start to show faint signs of life.
I should note that there are a few interesting glimmers here, around the edges. I’d gladly watch the full origin story of Matt Drudge, played here by Billy Eichner as a CBS gift shop cashier turned Internet sleuth, digging through dumpsters for scoop to post online. And despite being saddled with a ridiculous fake nose, Annaleigh Ashford turns in Impeachment‘s best performance as Clinton accuser Paula Jones, finding humanity and sympathy in a much-maligned public figure, a la The People v. O.J. Simpson‘s Marcia Clark. But Impeachment wants to have it both ways: We’re supposed to feel bad when the media treats Jones like a joke in one scene, and then laugh at how dumb she is in the next. (Casting Taran Killam as Paula’s volatile husband was also a mistake: His presence makes their scenes play like a SNL digital short.) It’s this clumsy blend of didactic “weren’t we awful back then?” hindsight and sleazy sensationalism that ultimately makes Impeachment one of the year’s biggest TV disappointments.