What I'm Watching: Mrs. Davis, Jury Duty, Evil Dead Rise, and More

Andy McQueen, Betty Gilpin, Mrs. Davis, Peacock

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

The shows:

• Have you heard about Jury Duty yet? It’s a mockumentary/reality show comedy about a jury where everything that can go wrong does, and it has a really creative gimmick: one random guy in the show thinks everything that’s happening is real, but everyone around him is actually acting. Also, James Marsden plays an asshole version of himself. I’m just digging into this one, but so far it’s delightful. You can catch it on the free streaming app Freevee.
• Peacock has a wacky new genre-bending show from Damon Lindelof (my favorite screenwriter) and Tara Hernandez called Mrs. Davis and it’s…really hard to explain. There’s a nun played by Betty Gilpin, an AI system that controls the world, and David Arquette is a magician, and those are actually three of the most normal things about this weird religious, comedic epic. You can check out my review of the show here, or if you’ve already seen the first four episodes, read my deep dive into some of its symbolism.
• I know I called Twin Peaks season 2 bad last week, but having finished my rewatch, I think I was a little harsh — harsh enough to inspire my first-ever Hey, What Are You Watching? retraction. The episodes immediately following the Laura Palmer killer reveal are God-awful, but the show does some interesting stuff in its last couple of chapters, and at a certain point it turns into a series of endearingly earnest love stories. I’m excited to tackle Twin Peaks: The Return – an apparent masterpiece that I’ve actually never finished before (I’m now ducking to avoid getting hit with rotten fruit) – again with this fresh in my mind.

The movies:

• My third watch from the You Must Remember This tie-in series at my local theater was the best yet: Impulse, a 1990 thriller about an undercover cop (played by Theresa Russell, a great, brassy actress who I highlighted last week) who gets tied up in some bad business after she starts taking her role at work home with her. This movie has some insightful commentary about workplace harassment, plus a genuinely compelling plot. It’s also one of the only movies that director Sondra Locke ever made, thanks, apparently, to career stonewalling from her ex Clint Eastwood. I definitely recommend the YMRT episode that tells her story.
• Ahead of the premiere of his semi-autobiographical series Bupkis, I decided to finally check out another semi-autobiographical Pete Davidson project, The King of Staten Island. This movie came out during the height of COVID, and I remember being so excited to see it but also worried I wouldn’t be in the right headspace. In the end, it’s totally not what I expected; the first half is the type of slackly edited Judd Apatow schtick I don’t like (lots of people arguing and sitting around), the second half really grew on me, and the ending blew me away. It’s a subtler, sweeter film than it lets on, but it certainly takes a while to turn into something good.
• I was hyped to finally see Evil Dead Rise, the nasty, hard-R horror movie whose trailers have been making me cringe for months now. I wasn’t disappointed in Lee Cronin’s spin on the Sam Raimi franchise per se, but I also wasn’t particularly blown away by the apartment-set installment. It’s got creative gore for sure, but it didn’t make me laugh like Evil Dead 2, nor did it sink its claws into me like Evil Dead 2013. It wasn’t bad!

Odds and ends:

• I made my debut on The Film Stage Show podcast talking about all things The Super Mario Brothers Movie! If you want to hear me defend the storied tradition of just-okay kids films and promise to dress up as Wario if the opportunity ever arises, you can listen to all that and more here.
• I shared the most personal piece I’ve written all year this week, about a particularly poignant scene from the latest episode of Ted Lasso. I loved this week’s episode after being pretty critical of the first half of season 3, and I also wrote about why here.
• Yellowjackets hive: let’s talk about that deck of cards and the Antler Queen.
• Sunday night TV feels so good with both Succession and Barry back in full swing. If you’re all caught up on both, here’s an essay on how Succession masterfully broke the tension this week with a big Roman moment…
• …and here’s one on how Barry put an end to one of the show’s best comedic dynamics with a bittersweet scene this week.
• I know I’m inundating you all with links this week, but if you have room for one more, I have to spotlight Sydney Urbanek’s newsletter Mononym Mythology. Sydney’s carved out a space for herself writing thoughtfully about music videos, the public image of musicians, and all the artistry that goes into what we see on stage and screen when it comes to our favorite pop stars. Frankly, though, I’d subscribe to this newsletter no matter what she was writing about, because I admire her commitment to deep research and the way she shares her creative process with the world.
• A break for your eyeballs after all this reading: the podcast You Didn’t See Nothin’ is a wild one. It’s about an infamous hate crime that provoked a weird public response that may or may not have been related to organized crime. The pod stands apart from a typical historical retelling because host Yohance Lacour has a complex personal relationship with the story at hand, one that leads him to rightfully question the limits of restorative justice.

That’s about it for me this week. What have you been into lately?