What I'm Watching: A Quiet Place 3, The Sympathizer, Babes, and More

Plus: the end of Evil, a new Laci Peterson doc, ranking every season of Superstore, and an unexpected Dexter riff.

Here’s a quick rundown of everything I’ve been watching, reading, and writing about:

The shows:

• The existentially supernatural Paramount+ procedural Evil finally signed off this week after four delightfully eccentric seasons, and it went out the way it did everything else – on its own weird, wonderful terms. For a while, I wondered if Robert and Michelle King’s show would reveal some unifying wisdom or deep truth in its final hours, but as the last season has wrapped up, I’ve realized it’s first and foremost a TV show that loves being a TV show. Rarely has any series ever more obviously enjoyed writing itself into (and out of!) corners, carefully crafting parallels and teasing major moments before dropping them for something more attention-grabbing or instinctively right. It’s also subverted our expectations for what a show can be at every turn: Evil delivers surreal realities, creative story structures, and spiritual ambiguity to the very end. 
• For weeks now I’ve been planning to include The Sympathizer, HBO’s high-profile adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel, in this newsletter. It took me all that time to finish the seven-episode miniseries, which I found tough to get through thanks to the inordinate amount of time viewers are asked to spend with what may be the most self-indulgent performances of Robert Downey Jr’s career. The actor, who I’ve certainly loved in other roles (I had a whole phase in the late aughts), sucks the energy out of the show, playing multiple over-the-top characters in a series that’s not actually about any of them (it’s actually about a jaded Vietnamese spy adapting to American culture in the 1970s). I typically adore the works of Park Chan-wook, who co-created, co-wrote, and directed some of the show, but unfortunately, I think much of The Sympathizer’s metafictional and political complexity seems better-suited to page than screen. That being said, the show deserves points for ambition and for nailing its ending. Plus, Downey earned an Emmy nod for these roles, so what do I know?
• There’s nothing wrong with the Netflix docuseries American Murder: Laci Peterson, but if you were around during the high-profile missing person case and ensuing murder trial media blitz from 2002 to 2004, it might just make you sad and mad. It certainly made me sad and angry (I muttered “rich people…” incredulously at least three times), but I also came away proud of the doc’s unexpected hero, and am glad I watched for her sake. If you are considering tuning in, Variety has a good piece about the stark differences between American Murder and another doc about this case that just dropped on Peacock.

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