May 📺 Watchlist: Finding Humor in Unexpected Places & Crime in the Suburbs
I can admit when my insta-judgement and bias gets in the way of damn good show or two. Here's looking at you Seth and Amy. And here's some additional recos to get you into June.
Two Shows I've Revisited After My Initial 🤮Judgement
“Owning up to your mistakes doesn't cast doubt on your credibility. Admitting you were wrong shows that you care about getting it right.” - Adam Grant (X, 2022)
After hearing how good Seth Rogen’s new Apple TV+ show The Studio [trailer] is—an insider’s look at a Hollywood studio, shot in the famed 'oner' style (meaning each scene or sequence is filmed in one continuous, unbroken take)—I started to soften my stance, especially since everyone* seemed to share the same gripe about the first episode or two. I was assured, it got better and I decided to forego my “life is too short for this shit” mantra and give the show another try, in spite of all the vitrol I threw its way initially [Exhibit A] .
*On Substack, alone , , , recommended it. Offline, my husband.
✅ Hollywood Industry Setting ✅ Short, Mostly Funny and Smart Episodes (~33 mins) 🔥 Incredible Guest Stars That Shined (Ron Howard, Sarah Polley, Zac Efron, Adam Scott, Olivia Wilde, Dave Franco, Ike Barinholtz’s dad, Zoe Kravitz)🎯 Seth Rogen as a villain and someone you are slightly sympathetic to 🌟 Unique visual style 👍 Worth the watch 🏆 Noteworthy Cast: Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn & Catherine O’Hara rocked it
My Top-Ranked Episodes: The Studio
📌 Episode 10 (Finale): The Presentation
WHY: Chase Sui Wonder’s reference to the conceit vs execution of Weekend at Bernie’s was hilarious, as was Bryan Cranston in cosplay Robert Evans’ drug-addled stupor state
📌Episode 3: The Note with Ron Howard
WHY: The Beautiful Mind note reference and how it played out was perfection
📌Episode 4: The Missing Reel
WHY: The neo-noir, whodunnit-of-it-all featuring Zac Efron and Olivia Wilde was a 30-minute arthouse treat
📌Episode 5: The Golden Globes
WHY: The Studio’s VP of Production Sal Saperstein wins the Golden Globes night effortlessly by just being himself, despite Seth’s character, Matt, trying to maniacally prove to the who’s who at the event he’s made it and making himself desperate and unlikable in the process
📌Episode 6: The Pediatric Oncologist
WHY: The timeless debate between science and the arts is brought into frame, and it’s a wild, eventful ride with memorable and smart dialogue.
Seth Rogen POV: Still don’t love him or even like him, but I can stand him and I respect him more for this show. The fact that he pulled in such a diverse range of talent for each episode probably says something about his Hollywood likability. Still, IMHO, he’s a poster child for 2000s stoner-comedy mediocrity privilege; someone who was fortunate to find the Judd Apatow connection early on and rode the wave, creating unfunny shlock films.
Having said all this, I’m now tempted to watch Platonic, co-starring Rose Byrne, his Nick Stoller-directed Apple TV+ show about a man and woman, former besties, who get close again, after the divorce of Rogen’s character. Helps that Apple TV+ auto-queued this show after the season finale of S1 of The Studio.
🖊️ Story-wise, this show should be a self-contained one-and-doner. However given its ratings and popularity, I’m sure it’ll be greenlit for another season.
The Studio Watchers - What were your favorite scenes and episodes?
✅ Dance, Dance, Dance 🔥 No real romance chemistry but some promising family relationship and chosen mother-daughter type themes 🎯 Charlotte Gainsbourg carries this show or saves it
After giving my opinion on the first few episodes of Étoile and vowing never to return unless we were in an apocalyptic situation a la Leave the World Behind and had one show available for rewatch, these comments by
in response to my note about the show Etoile made me reconsider it:Here’s What I Think: Initially, I was not a fan of Gilmore Girls/Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s newest homage to the world of ballet, Étoile as the post below thoughtfully lays out. My gripes with the show’s prima ballerina, Cheyenne, are still founded. She grows on you after a while a little more, but she’s still hard to take and has no real, down-to-earth friend to balance out her frenetic, narcissistic energy the way Lorelei had Sookie or Rory. Luke Kirby’s Jack is painful to take in. In short, the NY ballet company is a mess and I haven’t changed my mind about its flaws.
🇫🇷 VIVE LA FRANCE (en Étoile) In sharp contrast with NY, the Paris crew has grown on me because this is where the show is on some fertile ground demonstrating Palladino’s trademark warmth, humor, and relationship-oriented, stuff-of-life comedy. Below are some characters and stories that I’m digging:
📌 Geneviève (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is a delight when we get to witness her messy and vulnerable bits. The storyline with her going to her sister’s for monthly Shabbat dinner and the charged, fractured dynamic there, including her sister’s inability to acknowledge that Geneviève has a real job and that she’s earned it, had me doing a double take. I wanted to know more!
📌My vexation with the eccentric Kirk stand-in Tobias, the “genius choreographer” has been mitigated by watching him struggle in parts in a new country and in witnessing his budding romance with Gabin.
📌 Mishi, the young ballerina, and victim of “parental affluent neglect” (just looked this expression up) who didn’t want to leave NY and return home to her parents starts to find her voice and an arc in this show and she’s much more intriguing than Jack. Yes, please!
Wealthy People Living in Suburbs Doing Bad Things
✅ Rich people doing bad things ✅ Jon Hamm 🔥 Incredible Cast. Apart from Hamm and Peet, the standout is Hoon Lee as Barney, who plays a good friend to Jon Hamm’s character. 🎯 A man on the edge theme works - each “Breaking Bad” moment builds with the right amount of tension and pace 👍 Worth the watch 🏆 Best show on TV
I stand by my April Watchlist verdict here:
/ Verdict: If you’re into Jon Hamm, this one’s worth a watch. The acting’s strong, the writing holds up, and Amanda Peet—forever queen of Y2K/early 2000s rom-coms—plays his ex, now with a retired basketball player she cheated on him with… Hamm’s far from perfect—he yells, punches his daughter’s boyfriend in the balls (okay, the kid did back into his car), and even robs his friends just to keep up the illusion that he hasn’t totally fallen apart after losing his job. But at the core of it, Cooper has heart. He’s trying. And I get the sense that’s the essence of this show as well.
If anything, watching five more episodes since then has convinced me this is the best show on TV. I’m not the only one, either. Some critics said recently that if this show were on FX, it would be officially crowned as such, inferring that since it’s on Apple TV+, it may not be getting its due praise. It’s not just the Jon Hamm of it all, either. The entire ensemble is that good. The writing is stellar, and the editing is tight. Murder, theft, and muggings aside, it touches upon the universal pain of adulting and middle-age malaise that’s highly relatable, in or outside of gated communities.
😤 A Minor Objection: Both Your Friends and Neighbors and The Studio have wild, drug-fueled party scenes in their second-to-last episodes. I don’t find that kind of chaos funny at our age anymore. But clearly, the target audience does. Why else should we keep going back to it?
Still Watching:
The Last of Us episode this week was a tearjerker and reaffirmed why this show’s magic happens in the surrogate father-child chemistry between Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie. Those flashbacks were difficult to watch, knowing Joel’s dead, but seeing how he celebrated Ellie each year of her life on her birthday for a few years of her life, and arguably the formative ones, gave us the backstory we were craving all season with the time jump between seasons 1 and 2.
I enjoyed reading
’s piece on this show and the etymology of the term “zombies” and its Hollywood past. One thing I keep wondering: Are the zombies in this show meant to symbolize AI, an ominous "other" that threatens humanity’s relevance, or are they more of a warning about how we must learn to coexist with a new, potentially invasive species or technological force?
🔷 The Four Seasons - I binged the Tina Fey Netflix series based on Alan Alda’s 1983 film, The Four Seasons. It's about three middle-aged couples shaken by a friend's divorce and his much-younger new girlfriend. Fast, funny, and packed with sharp performances by a talented cast, Tina Fey, Will Forte, Steve Carell, and Colman Domingo (great in a lighter role). Anne, Carell’s ex, felt flat, but that’s probably on the original script. She barely shows up in the movie, anyway.
To read more about the original, check out:
🔷 Sarah Silverman: PostMortem - Beautiful, endearing, tight comedy on topic of grief. I don’t do standup comedy generally, but for Sarah and
’s recommendation, I make exceptions.🔷 Nine Perfect Strangers, Season 2 - The premise of this show: Nicole Kidman as a Russian wellness guru running a culty psychedelics retreat for mostly rich, troubled people, is enough to get you to tune in, but the ensemble is the reason to stick around. This season’s setting vies for second place as well - Snowed in, ski resort with magical mystery vibes, and Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians), Mark Strong (everything), Murray Bartlett (Physical, The White Lotus S1), Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek, Kevin Can F Himself), Christine Baranski (The Gilded Age, The Good Wife), etc.
Credit: and for the reminders on this show! I am quite sure they will write about.
🔷 Forever - The show is a modern update of Judy Blume’s banned book of the same name from the early 70s. The book was banned because of its subject matter. It’s about a teen boy and girl who fall in love and decide to have sex with one another, for the first time.
While the show’s timeline is 2018-2019, and raising kids looked slightly different before AI, many of the same parenting concerns come into play. Social media bullying, “slutshaming,” blocking and ghosting someone you like in the heat of the moment because of a misunderstanding, and how parents and teens navigate relationships and boundaries. In this way, it’s one of the more empathetic portrayals of capturing the nuanced emotions and challenges at play for high school kids today.
Credit: for the reco.
What are you currently watching?
In case you’re wondering what I’m up to…
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I think the only one of these I’m watching is The Last of Us. Bryan watched The Studio, though. I’m currently obsessed with Andor (finished), and we’re also watching Poker Face as a lightweight wind-down show. It’s fun even if predictable, and the guest stars and quirky storylines are entertaining.
I’m currently trying to avoid being pulled all the way into “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” It’s not working very well.