A Year of Promoting The People Who Make the Things I Love: Jan 10–Alan Sepinwall

In 2022, I am going to spend some time each day promoting someone who makes the things I love. I started this series because I believe that we, myself included, spend so much time on social media dunking on people (however deserved) and not enough time lifting up people deserving of positive attention.

Today I’m writing about the media critic Alan Sepinwall.

Sepinwall currently writes for Rolling Stone, although he has written for numerous publications in the past, including my local paper the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that after watching an episode of television, one of the first things I do is see if he wrote about it and what he had to say. I don’t agree with him 100% of the time, but it’s probably above 95%, so he’s a good barometer of if I will like something.

Sepinwall mixes together a large knowledge of tv and film history, an understanding of how the mediums are put together, and a style that’s easy to enjoy without feeling like you are doing homework.

For me, his Watchmen recaps are a recent highlight, but he reviews many shows and movies.