It was nearly impossible to notice, but there was a glimpse of Duluth in the series finale of the NBC sitcom Superstore. The episode, titled “All Sales Final,” aired March 25. It concludes with a scene of the character Amy Sosa putting her children to bed. For just a few seconds, a piece of Great Lakes Aquarium art by Daymark Designs, a Duluth-based graphic arts company, is shown in the background.
An improvised soap opera about Duluth, featuring actors from around the world connected by Zoom, premiered May 23 on YouTube. Episodes can be viewed on the World Improv Network’s YouTube channel.
As part of Perfect Duluth Day’s long-running quest to document every reference to the city, no matter how minor, I add this entry, discovered today while catching up on the fake internet court podcast Judge John Hodgman, where pressing issues are decided by Famous Minor Television Personality John Hodgman, Certified Judge.
The 1999 movie Los Enchiladas! drops references to both Duluth and Superior. It’s not clear whether the character Driftwood Dan lives in Duluth or merely collects driftwood in Duluth, where his mother resides.
Although Crown Prince Olav and Princess Martha of Norway did visit Duluth in 1939 for the dedication of Enger Tower, the footage in this silent film seems to all have been shot in Los Angeles a month earlier. Nevertheless, images of Duluth News Tribune stories are splashed across the screen at the start of the film.
In what must be the most trivial Duluth reference ever reported on Perfect Duluth Day, we note that season 6, episode 4 of the animated television show Archer includes a scene at a Chicago airport where the flight information display system shows a scheduled Duluth departure as “on time.”
Duluth gets a quick and silly mention in the March 13 episode of Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, a weekly radio show produced by WBEZ in Chicago and National Public Radio. At the tail end of the clip embedded above, the panel talks about the virtues of pizza for breakfast instead cereal and jokes that people never argue about which city has the best cereal, resulting in the crack, “You haven’t had Frosted Flakes until you’ve had Frosted Flakes in Duluth.”
Detective Case is finally on the case. Sing along with Jessica Keenan Wynn in the video above. She plays the role of a meter maid “doling tickets out in Downtown Duluth” until a murder case takes her in a new direction.
Famed actor Sam Elliott plays the role of Wild West, the new mayor of Quahog on the animated Fox-TV comedy The Family Guy. Adam West played himself as the previous mayor on the show; he died in 2017.
In season 19, episode 7, which aired on Sunday, lead character Peter Griffin mentions to Wild West that his brother Adam has “gone on to a better place.” Wild West quickly cuts in to infer the better place must be Duluth. He extends the thought with, “Beautiful country Duluth. The air moves into your nostrils like a welcome guest.”
The historical TV drama The Right Stuff mentions Duluth in episode 7, which premiered Nov. 13 on the video-on-demand service Disney+. The series is loosely based on the 1979 book by Tom Wolfe. There is also a critically acclaimed 1983 film adaptation of Wolfe’s story.
Fourteen minutes into the Netflix comedy special, Aubrey Plaza, playing a shopping channel host, takes a call from a QAnon follower in Duluth who wants to know what her naan order really means.
Duluth is mentioned six times in The Burnt Orange Heresy, a new movie starring Elizabeth Debicki, Donald Sutherland, Claes Bang and Mick Jagger. The fictional Duluth Star Ledger newspaper also appears, featuring the headline “Esko woman goes missing.”
Duluth made a brief appearance in Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update this week. The appearance is at the 2:54 mark.
The Comedy Central sitcom Workaholics, which ran from 2011-’17, featured two references to Duluth.
Academic and Critical Excerpts, collated and footnoted by the Richardson brothers (Jim and Allen Richardson)
