What I'm Watching: The Witcher, The Afterparty, Perfect Blue, and More

Anna Konkle, The Afterparty, Apple TV+

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

The shows:

• I’m finally making my way through Six Feet Under, a beloved HBO show I tried and failed to watch multiple times in high school and college. I don’t know if it’s the funeral home-set series’ metaphysical angle making me get spiritual about it or what, but it feels like this show found me again at the time it was meant to, as I would’ve gotten a lot less out of it when I was younger. I’ve been quiet about my watch-through as if talking about it will jinx me, but I’m really invested this time around and already dreading eventually finishing the series.
• I think the second season of The Afterparty is a pretty significant improvement on the first, which I liked well enough. The Apple TV+ murder mystery comedy series returns later this month with a new batch of episodes set at a wedding where the groom mysteriously kicks the bucket. Like season one, the new installments switch genre and filming styles every episode, but I think the comedic cast and the mystery elements are both stronger this time around – plus some of the more niche genre choices are a total delight. I have a review in the works for this one!
• Netflix fantasy series The Witcher’s third season might be my favorite so far. It’s certainly streamlined the densely plotted series quite a bit, plus it has more Jaskier (a choice I praised here) and an endearing found family element. It’ll be hard to say goodbye to Henry Cavill after this season. Here’s my review of volume one.

The movies:

• I finally caught Satoshi Kon’s nightmarish anime thriller Perfect Blue this weekend. The 1997 film is dark and dazzling, piecing together a jagged-glass portrait of fame, exploitation, and womanhood that grows more relentlessly unhinged with each passing scene. I know I’m the thousandth person to say this, but: Darren Aronofsky could never.
• Before Frameline Film Festival drew to a close, I caught the Brazilian movie Rule 34, an unrated drama about a woman who dabbles in dangerous sexual adventures at night while studying to be a lawyer defending abuse victims by day. I wasn’t overly keen on this one, as any thesis it might have had about the dissonance (or connection) between the protagonist’s two different lives was pretty subterranean.
• I’m sorry to say it, but I am just not an Indiana Jones person. I’ve known this for years having watched the first, second, and fourth installments as a kid, but I rewatched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom this week and caught The Last Crusade for the first time too, and was so very not into them. This classic franchise is deeply grating to me in a way that sets my teeth on edge, but I will say that Last Crusade is now my favorite of the bunch. I’m happy for everyone who loves these movies, but it couldn’t be me!

Odds and ends:

• I used some quotes from Jenna Ortega as a jumping-off point to write about how I admire her tendency to speak up about the ways her experiences on Wednesday have been less than ideal. I didn’t like season one of the Addams Family offshoot much, but I genuinely think her outspokenness will make the second season better.
• I’ve only ever seen one season apiece of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette (I witnessed Hannah Brown get so much clarity), but I’m on a pop culture books kick and I recently sped through Amy Kaufman’s book Bachelor Nation, which demystifies the show and reveals all its behind-the-scenes secrets. Hint: it involves a lot more cult-like manipulation and emotional torture than I expected. Yikes!
• Pride month is in the rearview now, but I want to give one more shout-out to a very cool podcast episode about excavating queer history – queer animal history, that is. You’re Wrong About did an episode titled “Lesbian Penguins” that’s all about how for centuries, scientists observing nature just pretended they didn’t notice when animals were gay because they thought if they wrote about it in their research they’d cause a scandal. Wild stuff that reminds me how much I love historiography!
• I thought this GQ piece about Kevin Smith becoming an unexpected fashion icon was super cute.
• A fellow Substack writer, Mikhail Skoptsov, put together a catalog of film and TV newsletters and included mine on there! It’s cool to know I’m on anyone’s radar at all with this thing.

So, what are you watching lately? Does anyone have Dial of Destiny thoughts? What’s your new “show of the summer” now that The Idol (which, to be clear, was never actually the show of the summer) ended this week? Let me know in the comments, and have a lovely holiday weekend.