Movies & TV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT7Yj3eYx3U

The Leftovers is the best drama I've ever seen. 2% of the world's population suddenly disappears and the series follows the psychosocial collapse of society in the wake of that. The acting and writing are above any other HBO drama and should have won every main performer a dozen Emmys. The way it handles its religious themes from an absurdist standpoint is extremely compelling and unique. It feels like the polytrauma of living through COVID but they anticipated that by a few years.

Spoiler scene:

Venture Brothers is easily my favorite show.

The Good Place

Legion is really good.

Also super obvious but Andor.

Rewatching Avatar the Last Airbender with my kids. I don’t think there has ever been a more perfect cartoon series.

True Detective is the greatest show ever made

Midnight Mass. it’s far and away the most incredible thing Netflix has ever released, and it is only 7 episodes.

What We Do in the Shadows

Dark. It's on Netflix. I don't want to say anything about it because I want you going in blind. It's really good, though. Bring your 4-dimensional thinking to the game.

Mobland, it's not particularly clever but the entire cast nails it

Andor- what if Star wars but political (good)

HBO's Rome- what if game of thrones but with history's greatest man children

Star Trek lower decks

Common Side Effects - Adult Swim show attempting to take a fantasy scenario about the pharma industry to its logical conclusions

Wolf Hall - BBC Masterpiece series from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, who advised King Henry VIII throughout his reign.

Pee-Wee as Himself - 2 part documentary about Paul Rubin's crazy life.

Barry - Batshit insanity about a hitman who decides to become an actor in LA.

Trailer Park Boys. Julian is the looks, Bubbles is the brains, Ricky is the wildcard.

deadwood

I've only watched one season of White Lotus but it captures bourgeois social pathologies like nothing else I can think of. Except maybe Succession.

Penny Dreadful is one of my guilty pleasures I like to rewatch every few years

How to With John Wilson - guy goes around New York filming a documentary on whatever he found more interesting on that particular day

I watched Ludwig. Great little series.

I watched an obscene amount of TV. Barely watch any now but one that really sticks out is Hannibal

Star Trek Lower Decks, The Orville, Deep Space 9 and also all the other Star Trek shows except Discovery and Picard.

The Expanse is a wonderful show. It’s a slow burn with how they rearranged some things, but seasons 3 & 5 in particular are some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen. They take the great premise but questionable execution of the books and turn it into something truly amazing. It also has a hard sci-fi foundation that is quite rare and follows it pretty faithfully.

Battlestar Galactica is another I'll always recommend. It has plenty of issues, but despite those flaws it manages to achieve incredible heights. You can still see its influence on sci-fi today. People love or hate the ending and last season and what they did with some characters and blah, blah, blah. There is a reason people still argue about this show nearly 20 years later. It’s worth arguing about.

Big Superman fan, so right now my absolute favorite show is My Adventures with Superman. Also, I'd say it's the best Superman animated series to date. Yes, even more so than The Animated Series from the 90's (which is still a great show).

However, a very very close second (probably a tie at this point) is an anime I found randomly through some thread online called Mushishi. About a man named Ginko who is a wandering "mushi master". Mushi are basically like concentrated living energy that take different forms and Ginko travels from village to village encountering new mushi and issues to solve resulting from people's exposure to a particular mushi. But the core of the show is in the poignancy of the character's stories and their particular backstories and personal issues that intertwine with the pressing mushi issue. It's a very slice of life kind of show and the best anime series I've seen so far. Incredibly well written and interesting characters even if they're only seen for an episode. I highly recommend you check it out.

How To With John Wilson and The Rehearsal are two of the best shows I've watched in years

Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, & Twin Peaks: The Return - seminal to so many other TV shows and video games. Had a trans character (played by a cis man fwiw but still) in the 90s that was not meant as a joke and they return in 2017's The Return where Lynch gives the (arguably) famous "Fix your hearts or die" line. Great soundtrack throughout. And all around amazing cast of actors (many of which, sadly, never anything better afterwards). Can still be debated to this day about certain themes, the meaning, etc. If the theme song doesn't evoke something in you we can't be friends (I knew my best friend was my best friend when we used to live together back in 2016 and I was rewatching through S1-2 in prep for The Return & they came out of their room one night and went "alright tell me about this damn show, I've heard this theme song every night from my room for like the last week")

Mad Men - One of the shows that really ushered in the current 'golden age' of TV we're in at the moment (although I'd argue that ended basically; so maybe 'last golden age of TV' is more proper). The last show I remember getting really popular before streaming was big. Seven tight seasons of 1960s American advertising, the cynicism that dwells within it, and one man's struggles. This isn't exactly a communist show or anything & is set in the late 50s-60s, so there are moments where you'll go 'wtf is this' but the show never really tries to use the era for shock value. Also has an amazing soundtrack. Both Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Moss' big breaks & they never have a bad scene or episode. I will always recommend this one to people who haven't seen it because, like how Breaking Bad (which aired basically concurrently to Mad Men) and Game of Thrones were a lot of people's first 'prestige' TV show they watched as it aired, Mad Men was mine. Watch the Carousel pitch from the first season's finale if you want some idea of what the show is about.

The Rehearsal - I think Nathan Fielder and I would get along (or hate eachother) if only because we are very weird but also strangely sincere. Nothing like Nathan For You, which was more comedic but that isn't to say The Rehearsal doesn't share a lot of the same roots - it just goes in a different direction.

Station Eleven. Based on a novel. Really hit me hard, it's a beautiful show.

Lot of the good ones have already been mentioned.

Other shows I've rewatched at least once:

Barry

Bojack

Black Sails

Pantheon

Search Party is hilarious and the first 2 seasons are some of the best TV I've ever watched. Season 3 is okay, 4 is a MASSIVE dip in quality, 5 goes back to being great but in a much different way than the earlier seasons.

jet lag is game show that (with the exception of a few seasons) is mostly played on public transit. they play tag, hide and seek, risk type games, races, and i think the current season is based on snake.