Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Katy Steinmetz

Constructor: Katy Steinmetz and Rich Katz

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: "GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL" (58A: Slogan for the Pokémon franchise ... also appropriate for 16-, 21-, 38- and 50-Across?) — things you might catch, or should catch ... don't know if you really GOTTA catch 'em ... [shrug]:

Theme answers:

TOUCHDOWN PASSES (16A: Successful throws to the end zone)
THE EVENING NEWS (21A: Regular 6 p.m. broadcast of daily events)
AIRPORT SHUTTLES (38A: Vans from hotels to terminals and back)
SPELLING ERRORS (50A: Their are fore of them hear in this sentance)

Word of the Day: ELIAS Koteas (46D: Man's name that is an anagram of AISLE) —

Elias Koteas (/ˈɛliəs kəˈteɪəs/; Greek: Ηλίας Κοτέας; born March 11, 1961) is a Canadian actor who has performed in lead and supporting roles in numerous films and television series. He won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film Ararat (2002).
He is known for playing Alvin "Al" Olinsky in the Chicago television series franchise. Among the prominent films in which he has performed are Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Crash (1996), Fallen (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and Shutter Island (2010). (wikipedia)

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Real summer doldrums energy today (and yesterday, frankly). The theme does absolutely nothing for me. I don't care about Pokémon at all, and thus didn't get any great (or even minor) thrill from seeing this "slogan" in the grid (I'm familiar with it, got it easily, but whatever excitement or surprise it was supposed to hold for me ... it didn't). But even if I adored the idea of a Pokémon slogan as my revealer, the theme still doesn't really work. GOTTA catch 'em all? GOTTA? No. No. WANNA, maybe. TRYNA, HOPE TO ... but GOTTA. Nobody but nobody has to "catch" THE EVENING NEWS. That answer is a really horrible outlier. From the gratuitous definite article (THE), to the fact that nobody watches (sorry, "catches") THE EVENING NEWS anymore, to the fact that all the other themers are things it is *good* to catch, whereas catching THE EVENING NEWS is, at best, neutral. If I drop a touchdown pass, bad. If I miss my airport shuttle, bad. If I fail to "catch" a spelling error, bad (apologies for all the times I have failed in this particular way). But if I miss THE EVENING NEWS ... first of all, I never think about such a phenomenon, ever. You know we can get news other ways now, right? And even if it were the 1970s and THE EVENING NEWS was a real source of information about daily events for me, I wouldn't *have* to catch it because there's always the 10 o'clock news (that's a thing, right?) or, I dunno, the morning paper the next day (since we're staying with bygone media). I dislike everything about THE EVENING NEWS, as a theme answer. You cannot let one of your themers be superweak like this. You either have a good set or you don't, and you absolutely don't go to press unless you've fleshed out a tight theme. The one thing that the theme has going for it is that each of the four themers involves a different meaning of "catch." So that's a mark in this puzzle's favor. But as far as I'm concerned, it's the only such mark.

The fill is of the short and bland and overfamiliar variety, with a couple of valiant attempts to liven things up with "Z"s (???). Sadly, shoehorning "Z"s into the grid doesn't actually do much, excitement-wise, so mostly what we have here are stale 3s 4s and 5s. Nothing exceedingly horrible (except maybe the "-IE" spelling of TEENIE), but nothing to get excited about, or even mildly interested in. TSAR ENOLA BTS URL and on and on. The north is particularly bumpy, with NO TIP topping a lineup that includes ACHOO THO, OCD, NAH ... outside the themers, there's nothing (zero, zilch) over five letters long in this whole dang grid. That makes for particularly unspicy fill. Gotta make your grids more interesting than this.

As for difficulty, there isn't any. The toughest answer for me, weirdly, was the one where the clue gave me the letters to anagram!!?! (46D: Man's name that is an anagram of AISLE) (ELIAS). At first I thought it started with "S" because I had DENI- at 45A and thought maybe it would be DENISE (as usual, I solved Downs-only, so couldn't see the Across clues). Then, when I knew it started with an "E" ... I couldn't see any name but ELISA in those letters, and thought they had screwed up the clue ("Man's name???" Uh ..."). If you can't think of a famous person with a name, maybe don't use the name! But that's it for toughness. I got the alphabet soup initialism right at 35D: Situation Room grp. (NSC) (National Security Council) on my first try! I had SLEET before SLUSH (3D: Watery snow), but that's really it for screw-ups. Really rare to have so few screw-ups in a Downs-only solve. There's usually a certain amount of stumbling and fumbling. But not today.

Bullets:

17D: One-named singer of "If I Could Turn Back Time" (CHER) — late-80s "rock" aesthetics were ... something. I watched The Lost Boys (1987) last night for my weekly Movie Club (started during early COVID and still going strong), and honestly you could swap those boys out for CHER's backing band here, no problem, all leather and long hair and ... what not:

32D: Muscle used in pull-ups, informally (BICEP) — still not comfortable with this supposed singular of biceps, since "biceps" is, in fact, singular. BICEP is a back formation (an invented spelling based on the fact that "biceps" looks plural because of its "s"-ending). The clue does say "informally." I'd prefer "substandardly," but that's even less of a word than BICEP.
36D: What two toddlers should learn to do (SHARE) — man I hated this clue. "Should?" What are you, Dr. Spock all of a sudden? There's no reason "two toddlers" (!?) should learn to do anything. Without a clear parental POV here, or some kind of hypothetical indicator, this clue reads weird. Prescriptive in a bizarre, unclear, off-putting way. Why not just [What parents might teach toddlers to do with their toys]. Less wordy, but in that vein. The "two" is also odd, and oddly specific. Honestly this clue looks like it's referring to some imaginary toddler joke, a la "how many toddlers does it take to ..." or "two toddlers walk into a bar ..." or something like that.
58D: Gossip, gossip, gossip (GAB) — no. GAB just means "talk" ("in a rapid, thoughtless manner"), not "gossip three times." Or even one time.
62D: Word on a French wine label (CRU) — often preceded by "Grand" or "Premier." CRU means "growth." CRU is also the informal name of the group of crossword solvers who have a welcome dinner at the ACPT every year (due to its punny connection to "crew" ... I think). Here's a picture of me at said dinner with CRU leader Michael Alpern. I forget why I'm throwing my arms in the air triumphantly. Perhaps because they clapped instead of booed when Michael announced my name.