You have questions. I have some answers.

Q: When Comcast spun off MSNBC into its own operation separate from NBC, I thought that personalities who appeared on both platforms would end up on one or the other. Why is Willie Geist on NBC’s “Weekend Today” and MS NOW’s “Morning Joe”?

A: First, it wasn’t just MSNBC (now MS NOW) that separated from the NBC mothership. NBC owner Comcast spun an armload of cable outlets including USA Network, CNBC, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and Golf Channel as well as MS NOW into a separate company called Versant. When it did so, as you said, staffers were for the most part split between NBC News and MS NOW, but Geist has continued with both operations. The reason, as Politico reported back during the news reshuffles: “Geist is too much of a talent for either network to pass up.”

Q: In the 1990s there was an excellent, short-lived TV series named “Nothing Sacred.” Considering its setting was a church and its main characters were priests and a nun, why was it called “Nothing Sacred”?

A: The series you recall aired in 1997-98 on ABC, with Kevin Anderson as an iconoclastic young priest at an inner-city church. As one reference work notes, he was “wrestling with his parish, his belief and his own all-too human failings” – in short, trying to figure out what was genuinely sacred and what was not. There was much praise for the series, and complaints from some Catholic groups (even though a priest was co-creator of the show), but either way it was not a ratings success.

Q: It seems to me that the movies that make it big financially all are rated G (and I’m convinced it would take little effort to convert a PG to G). Doesn’t that suggest that when it comes to salacious content, less is more?

A: According to Box Office Mojo, the biggest movies at the U.S. box office in 2025 included five PG movies (with “A Minecraft Movie” at the top of the whole list), four PG-13s and one R-rated film (“Sinners”). No G’s, not least because there’s still a sense by many moviegoers that a G-rated movie is too childish. Of more significance in assessing movies’ success is how they connect to other films or pop-culture items. “Sinners” is the only completely original movie in that Top 10. And box-office success can be achieved for odd reasons; I know a lot of college students who went to “A Minecraft Movie” because they expected it to be laughably bad, and found it was exactly that.

Q: Will there be a second season of “Boots”?

A: Netflix canceled the drama about a closeted gay man joining the Marines in 1990 after one season. Reviews of the series based on the memoir “The Pink Marine” by Greg Cope White were mostly positive, although not from the Trump administration, where one official complained about “woke garbage” on Netflix. The show’s makers are seeking a new home for the series and had plans for a second season before the cancellation, which reports called “shocking” and “a blow for representation.”

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