Mini-series galore! These are my quick reviews of recent TV 📺

Monsterland (Streaming on Hulu) 2020 Horror

*content warning: violence, child sexual abuse

This horror anthology is based on Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters: Stories. What makes a monster? What makes a human monstrous? This series invites us into 8 different worlds (though a couple are tangentially related), 8 different psyches, and gives us a new vantage point on fear. I found this series fantastically acted, Nicole Beharie and Trieu Tran being the stand outs for me. We’re sucked into some truly depraved scenarios and tasked with maintaining our empathy as we watch. A true spooky season treat!

Midnight Mass (Streaming on Netflix) 2021 Horror

*content warning: violence, miscarriage, religious extremism, gore

Midnight Mass is a fascinating equation: small-town Catholic culture meets Islamophobia meets creature feature gore. Despite a great cast and a compelling plot, the second act fell apart a bit for me—things felt predictable and stretched out, the writers clearly had a number of religious rants to get off their chests and as an audience we were forced to sit through a few too many monologues. Nonetheless, I was and am intrigued; if a second season were made, I would watch.

The Chair (Streaming on Netflix) 2021 Comedy

I enjoyed this mini-series—it’s an entertaining mix of quirky humor, sarcasm, and real world politics all in the setting of academia. The characters are all fun in their own ways battling to satisfy their individual egos in the midst of a collapsing star aka an unpopular university department fighting for relevance and funding. Sandra Oh does a great job as a highly qualified woman tossed onto the proverbial ‘glass cliff,’ intended to magically save the department from itself or watch her career die trying. Oh is a great comedic actress, managing to convey a general sense of overeager panic at all times—she’s both relatable and pitiable. I’ve read plenty of valid critiques about the show’s depictions of negligent parenting and modern race conversations, but none of those critiques take away from my glee watching our heroine say and do the things I wish for women of color every day.

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The White Lotus (Streaming on HBO Max) 2021 Satire

I was hopeful going into this viewing that The White Lotus would present something akin to Succession or Big Little Lies, that ideal blend of tongue-in-cheek humor, wealth porn and a glaring absence of self-awareness—when done well, very White shows can be hilarious. Unfortunately, The White Lotus flops spectacularly on all fronts. Entirely too much genuine political commentary is written into the show; very rich White characters don’t lend themselves well to this and the writers clearly over-estimated their ability to discuss real politics in a way that was entertaining to watch as opposed to awkward and stilted. There’s also a failed, yet earnest, attempt to create a theme purely out of the show’s setting, a Hawaiian resort; there’s probably at least an hour’s worth of the show that is just aerial shots of the beach and scans of the cheesy wallpaper. Wasted time is hardly endearing—if you don’t have the content for hour long episodes, please don’t torture us by unnecessarily trying to stretch. We don’t even get to enjoy the protagonists’ wealth—the joy of wealth porn is enjoying a momentary fantasy yet the show lacks any subtlety or mystery about money, characters openly and awkwardly discuss class in a way that shatters the illusion. I consider wealth porn perhaps the simplest fan service to pay (hello The Undoing), and The White Lotus robs us of even that.

Nine Perfect Strangers (Streaming on Hulu) 2021 Drama

*content warning: violence, child death, suicide

The writing here isn’t very strong and while we get a quality plot twist, the overall story felt a bit jumbled. What Nine Perfect Strangers gets right is the selection of a truly remarkable ensemble cast. Regina Hall, Nicole Kidman, and Bobby Cannavale are just a few of the bright spots. The actors are almost a little too good for this project—they light up their disparate storylines so well that the cohesive narrative becomes an afterthought when watching. Plot payoff aside, the show is too long with more minutiae than is strictly necessary to tell the story.

And that wraps another #FastFive Have you watched any of these shows? Have a recommendation to share? Drop a comment & share your thoughts! 💬

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