The Rundown: Reflecting On A Terrible Week Of Television For People Who Like Pineapple On Pizza

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

My general position on food is that you should eat things you like to eat, within reason. I do not think you should eat, like, poison, or another human being, but as long as you are not actively harming yourself or others, God bless.

I felt this way a few years ago when there was a discourse raging about whether you should put ketchup on a hot dog (it’s your hot dog, do what you want, more spicy mustard for me, etc.), and I feel this way now on the subject of pineapple as a pizza topping. Is it my favorite thing in the world Hmm. No. I’m good with a plain cheese slice, or maybe some sausage and green peppers if I’m feeling fancy. A barbecue chicken pizza is about as far as I’ll take it. But again, as long as you’re not showing up at my house for dinner with a single pineapple-covered pizza you expect us to share… I don’t know. Enjoy, buddy. Don’t let me rain on your pizza parade.

You know who does not share my “live and let live” policy when it comes to pineapple on pizza, though All of television this week. Or at least two parts of television. Which is, I suppose, substantially less than “all” but still higher than zero, which is much closer to the average, I assume.

The first example happened on The Walking Dead. Context will help but is not entirely necessary, so we can hit some bullet points quick:

Ezekiel said… this.

Which seems like a pretty passionate food take for a person who is about to have surgery in a world populated by murderous zombies, but hey, who am I to judge I once woke up from surgery and — still deeply woozy from the sleepy drugs — told my father that I wanted him to murder one of the nurses. It’s fine. I’m fine now. He didn’t do it. I just mention this to point out that things can get weird when you have a lot of strange chemicals bouncing around your bloodstream. Ezekiel might even like pineapple on pizza. The show should update us on this at some point. It’s only fair.

But this brings us to the second example, which is devoid of any medication-related ambiguity. Denzel Washington swung by Desus & Mero for their season premiere. They had a terrific little chat, one that opened with about four solid minutes on public transportation in New York City. If you haven’t already, please take half an hour at some point this week and watch the extended version. It’s a really good time.

And, when you do watch it, when you start approaching the five-minute mark, you will see the discussion move toward pizza, and cost of various slices through time, and then you will see Denzel Washington — Hollywood legend and very intense dude — say “pineapple on pizza” two times in a row with enough disdain in his voice and on his face to blow the top off of a mountain.

A visual will help. This is the face Denzel makes the second time he says the phrase “pineapple on pizza.”

Two things are true here. The first is that if Denzel Washington ever made this face while discussing something I loved, I would probably dissolve on the spot and blow off into the breeze. The second is that I saved this image on my computer as “denzel pineapple,” which is maybe the greatest fake name I’ve ever encountered. I consider these things to be equally important. Denzel Pineapple. Let’s all file this one away for the next time we need to make a dinner reservation or start a new life on a tropical island to escape a sticky situation on the mainland. I mean, dibs, obviously, but you can use it too as long as you don’t abuse it.

Anyway, here’s why I bring all of this up. If any of you have a friend whose three favorite things in the entire world are The Walking Dead, Denzel Washington, and pizza with pineapple on it, and you’ve noticed they’ve been kind of in the dumps this week… well, here’s your answer. Maybe give them a call at some point. They’re going through a lot.

The fact of the matter is that Holey Moley is America’s finest television program. I say this a lot. People think I’m joking. I must once again stress that I am not. It is a perfect little summer series, just one solid hour every week of well-meaning bozos getting clobbered by impossible obstacles under the guise of a miniature golf competition. I love it very much. We should put episodes of it into a capsule and shoot the capsule into the cosmos on the off chance that an alien civilization will discover it. It will tell them more about the human race than an entire set of leather-bound encyclopedias.

But I digress. I mention this all now because Holey Moley is preparing to return in May for a fourth season. And when it does return in May for that fourth season, something incredible is going to happen.