What I'm Watching: Bupkis, The Great, Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 3, and More

Nicholas Hoult, Elle Fanning, The Great, Hulu

NOTE: This week’s newsletter comes a day late because I ended up at the mercy of both a flat tire and a panic attack on Sunday. Last week I skipped the newsletter to instead share this post about the WGA strike. Thanks for your patience!

Here’s the rundown on everything I watched, read, and wrote about this week.

The shows:

• A few weeks ago I mentioned the show Jury Duty, but I hadn’t actually dug into it all that much at the time. Now that I’ve finished all eight episodes, I need to give it a shout again, because it turned out to be one of my favorite shows of the year. The comedy reality series, which you can find on the free app Freevee, is basically a real life Truman Show situation set in a fake court case, with a delightful, unaware man at its core. It’s an ethically questionable idea that somehow works beautifully. It’s also an impressive and surprising feat of extended improv and collaborative experimentation.
• I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about Pete Davidson’s series Bupkis, a show that’s equal parts edgy (the first episode does everything it can to convince you to turn it off), warm, and hilarious. Whether or not you like Davidson, there’s plenty to love here, from a massive slate of guest stars to some visually creative storytelling to a frank discussion of addiction from the perspective of someone who doesn’t want to get better. It’s part Louie (minus the sext pest), part Jackass, part Curb Your Enthusiasm. Here’s my review.
• I’ve been catching up on the British crime show Happy Valley ahead of the new season’s U.S. premiere, and I can see why people get hooked on this one. There’s some copaganda here as with any show of its kind, but it almost feels like a fantasy show to me, in which Sarah Lancashire’s extremely compassionate yet no-nonsense (also: dryly hilarious) detective saves the world from some truly nasty folks by asking one right question at a time. I’m interested to see how the show will evolve in its final season, since it’s been off the air for seven years between seasons – in classic UK TV fashion.
• There was some ethical debate online about whether or not we even should be watching John Mulaney: Baby J after Mulaney platformed persistently transphobic comedian Dave Chappelle on his tour semi-recently. I don’t really have a review of this since I watched the special not as a critic or (former, I guess) huge fan of Mulaney’s, but as someone from a family of addicts who has a near-pathological need to check in on newly sober people for myself to see if they seem okay. He’s fine, I think (and hope).
• The Great is back on Hulu for its third season, and it’s a game-changer. If you’re one of a weirdly large number of people who somehow heard that this show was a girlboss version of the Catherine The Great story, let me correct the record: it’s actually a delightfully nasty, creatively foulmouthed, deeply effed-up enemies-to-lovers plot from the writer of The Favourite. That being said: I think I like season three a bit less than the first two seasons, if only because it was tough for the show to top the high note it recently went out on with last season’s poisonous Graduate-homage ending.
• Class of ‘09 is an FX on Hulu show with a great cast (Brian Tyree Henry! Kate Mara! Mark Pellegrino!), a sleek look, and a weirdly toneless and dull execution of its sci-fi storyline. It’s a multi-timeline story about an FBI supercomputer that’s meant to stop crime, but in the four episodes I watched for review (still to come), it’s somehow way less exciting than it sounds.

The movies:

• I got to go see Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret? with my mom and it’s a moviegoing memory I’ll probably treasure forever. There aren’t nearly enough stories about the pre-teen girl experience that take a warts-and-all approach to growing up (as opposed to the weirdly sanded-down Disney channel style). The dearth of them means that every time I see a great one, like this or Hulu’s PEN15, I end up a puddle of tears, recognition, and belated validation. If you’ve never been a pre-teen girl or a mom to one, this movie is still incredible: sweet, honest, hilarious, vulnerable, and grounded by what might be a career-best performance from Rachel McAdams.
• I finally bit the bullet and resubscribed to AMC+ this week, which means I once again have access to all the great horror films on Shudder. The first one I broke in the new subscription with Huesera: The Bone Woman, a Mexican horror film about a woman who begins to be haunted by disturbing visions after becoming pregnant. I have a deep fear of accidents befalling kids, so for the first time in my life, I actually Googled the end of this movie before finishing it, but it was still plenty suspenseful – and powerful in its messaging.
• I watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 well over a week ago now, and I’m pretty sure my thoughts on it are still best described by Krisin Chirico’s initial reaction. To paraphrase: I’m not sure if it’s a good movie, or just a sad one. I certainly cried a lot – like, a lot a lot – but I can’t decide if I was crying “this is an emotional but good movie” tears or “I feel like I’m a little kid and James Gunn just kicked my puppy” tears.

The reads:

• In last week’s strike explainer, I didn’t get very deep into what mini rooms (which come up in one of the WGA’s negotiation points) are, because I still didn’t quite understand it. Luckily, my friend BJ Colangelo does, and she interviewed several folks with mini room experience to explain what they are, why they suck, and how they’re related to the future of television as a whole.
• BJ also wrote a great piece unpacking an emotional twist from the latest episode of Yellowjackets – one that has personal significance to her, and not just because she’s a total Van.
• I finally caught up with Nicole Chung’s “The Unbearable Costs of Becoming a Writer,” an uneasy read over at Esquire that nonetheless spoke to some of the very real fears and concerns that tend to make so many of us leave this industry – or feel dissatisfied if we stay.
• This Autostraddle piece from Drew Burnett Gregory about the “bury your gays” trope isn’t new, but I just read it and loved it and I thought y’all might love it too.
• I’m not Catholic, and despite having gone to a private college, I still feel like I don’t know much about the religion. I do, however, read through the incredibly thoughtful and often galvanizingly progressive writings of my former classmate Madison Chastain whenever I get the chance. I get the sense that Maddie is shaking things up in this school of thought a great way, and if you do happen to be Catholic, you shouldn’t miss her essays – like this one on the ways marriage prep in the Church can be more harmful than helpful. Outside my typical pop culture wheelhouse, I know, but her writing is too good not to share.

The podcasts:

• This week’s You’re Wrong About episode is a can’t-miss; I shared a link to another podcast covering The New York Times’ misreporting of trans rights issues a while back, and this ep tackles the same subject, but it’s also a master class in generally explaining how reporting should work and how to tell when something’s not right with the news you’re reading. If you know someone who is susceptible to misinformation but is open to learning more about how to spot it, send them this!
• I’ve been on a real Decoder Ring kick after that Columbo episode I told y’all about a few weeks ago. It’s the kind of well-researched and informative pop culture podcast I’m always looking for, and while I’d heard some of it before, I’ve been having fun digging into episodes from the back catalog, like these ones about Bart Simpson, The Cabbage Patch Kids, and McGruff the Crime Dog.
• If you’ve seen Huesera, the film I mentioned above, check out this great episode of the Horror Hangover podcast about it. My colleague Cass Clarke put together a wonderful audio collage of folks speaking about their experiences related to pregnancy and parenting, so you might recognize one of the many voices included in the first five minutes (it’s me).
• I’ve been listening to the audio docuseries Unreformed in tiny increments because the story is so devastating. Josie Duffy Rice’s examination of the history of a “school” for Black children that basically continued slavery until the 1960s is horrific, but Unreformed is also clearly vital journalistic work.
• The Labyrinths miniseries Blood Money is ambitious in its scope – it aims to explore the ethical problems of true crime from every possible angle its hosts can think of – and not everything it tries works, but I love how much it has on its mind. The first episode in particular, which traces the history of true crime from the middle ages to the rise of police procedurals like Dragnet to the modern day, is a winner.

Odds and ends:

• My favorite recent piece is this one I wrote for Slashfilm about all the ways the streaming era is collapsing in on itself and turning back into the TV of decades past.
• I also waxed poetic about the state of television in this piece, about how Barry and Succession are ending on the same day and, while May 28th might not be the end of event TV, it could be the end of endings.
• Speaking of which, I have two weeks’ worth of Succession writing to share this time around. Last week I wrote about (spoilers!) whether or not the show was headed for a fascist takeover, a piece that has only become more relevant now that the series has answered the question. The latest episode left me sick to my stomach because it reflected our real world in the most unpalatable, casually horrifying way possible. I also think it’s among the show’s best hours, and not just because it proves my Cousin Greg theory from way back in 2019 true.
• Over on the Yellowjackets beat, I wrote about Callie’s iconic behavior, Misty’s grief, and a minor twist that could have major repercussions.
• If Barry’s more your style, I wrote about how (spoilers!) it makes sense that Barry’s Christian now, and how damn scary that Sally scene was this week.

This was a long one, and if you’ve read this far, I commend you. While you’re down near the comments, drop me a line and let me know what you’re watching, reading or otherwise into these days!