Quarantine Week 8: Top Streaming Recommendations

I previously highlighted some of my favorite shows/movies from HBO [view that list here] and Netflix [view here]. This edition is a mixed bag across platforms, but primarily Hulu and Amazon. 🎶 Everybody get your motherfucking stream on🎶 [Big Tymers voice].

Contagion [HBO]
I rewatched this over the weekend, and let me tell you, it hits on literally every single aspect of COVID right now. Director Steven Soderbergh and writer Scott Burns strove of a hyper-realistic movie. It may be too realistic for some, but it's still a high-quality movie.


POWER [Starz]
Power is a TV show at the intersection of high class and drug money. One of my favorite shows from the past 10 years. Omari Hardwick and Joseph Sikora are amazing, the writing is strong and the story is engaging.


Killing Eve [Hulu]
A dark comedy (and I mean dark) about a cat and mouse dance between an America MI-6 agent and the deranged serial killer who falls in love with her. Sandra Oh won a Golden Globe for her work, and Jodie Comer won an Emmy the same year. The craziest thing? Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who created, wrote, and starred in Fleabag (below) was the showrunner for season 1!


American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson
American Crime Story is an anthology series from mega-producer Ryan Murphy. It chronicles the OJ Simpson murder trial and the entire vibe and race issues surrounding it. It's one season, so it's a quick watch. It has an all star cast and it's an all star show

Fleabag [Amazon]
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is amazing. She created Fleabag. She was the showrunner for Season 1 of Killing Eve. She wrote the newest James Bond movie. And Fleabag is all her comedic talents laid bare for everyone to see and enjoy. The good and bad thing about the show is that it's only 2 seasons/12 episodes total, so you can binge it in half a day. There's a great Obama joke in season 1 and Obama included Fleabag on his 2019 best of list.


Upload [Amazon]
Man, I ate an edible last week and binged this entire show. At first, I thought it was workplace comedy a la The Good Place, and the further into it I got, the more I realized this show was going some dark places. What happens when you go to digital heaven, but you don't want to be there? What happens when you have to pay for it, but someone else is controlling the purse strings? It's got some really interesting ideas and I can't wait for S2.


Love is Blind [Netflix]
My wife and I's guilty pleasure. Super bingable. I hear it's like Married at First Sight but I wouldn't know as I've never seen it. I will say, this show, more than any other reality show I've ever seen, actually has tension and drama and high stakes. You feel for the participants because so much of the interaction is one-on-one and relatable. This show also has one of the wildest proposals I've ever seen. Sooooooo extra.


LOST [Hulu/Amazon]
A classic. If you haven't seen it, I consider the first 3 seasons to be some of the best broadcast television ever produced. The ways they showcase each character - each episode focus' on a different person's backstory - was innovative at the time and the shows influence can be found in nearly every major high-end sci-fi series since.

Assassination Nation [Hulu]
A revenge thriller/satire of what happens when an entire community goes lynch mob against 4 high-school women who decide to fight back.

Quarantine Week 4: Top HBO Recommendations

Click here for Netflix picks. Fuck covid, I won't even put any respek on its name. Won't capitalize it or list the whole thing or nothing. These are some of my favorite HBO shows and my top recommendations for series to watch during quarantine. No particular order (but The Wire will always be #1):

The Wire (2002 - 5 seasons)

I really feel in my bones that this is the greatest scripted television show ever created. The realness, the writing, the story, the impact, the social commentary - it has everything. Watching this show is like reading a book; it's methodical. Every character has their purpose and all the pieces matter.


Westworld (2016 - 3 seasons)

One of my favorite shows right now, Westworld is a high-brow sci-fi show like The Matrix, Ex-Machina or Blade Runner. Westworld is an adult playground where you can do whatever your mind can think to whomever you want to do it to because all the workers in the park are robots. But what happens when the robots develop consciousness? What does morality say about that?

Insecure (2016 - 4 seasons)

I love when black comedies get national love. Issa Rae is a star in front and behind the camera. A modern day tale of awkward and insecure people who don't have their life together.

Watchmen (2019 - limited series)

One of the finest 9 hours of television you'll see this year. An all-star cast led by the fabulous Regina King, Watchmen is an adaptation of the beloved graphic novel series. Part thriller, part sci-fi, part racist revenge drama and origin story. I loved it.

The Outsider (2020 - limited series)

Based on the Stephen King novel, The Outsider is both a crime show and a supernatural thriller combined in one. Cynthia Erivo delivers another quality performance.

Avenue 5 (2020 - 1 season)

Maybe it's because I watched nearly every episode while high on edibles, but this show is probably the funniest, driest, dark workplace comedy I've seen in a long time. The trailers never really conveyed it, but the show is basically about what happens when a space cruise gets knocked off its course and takes an additional 3 years to get back to earth. Oh, and everyone on the crew is an imbecile.

Chernobyl (2019 - miniseries)

Every limited series you've ever seen? This rivals it in quality. It won the Emmy and Golden Globe for best limited series. Absolutely gripping.

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

I didn't think I was going to like this movie because the special effects make it look like an anime, but strong emotional development and action had me pleasantly surprised.

Quarantine: Top Netflix Recommendations

COVID-19 aint no joke. And neither is sitting inside the house all day with nothing good to watch. It's the cable channel paradox. We're overloaded with options and as a result, it's difficult to make a decision. Here are some of the recent Netflix shows and movies I've watched and loved. Hopefully you enjoy some of them, too. In no particular order:

Pose - LGBTQ Ballroom culture/drag scene in 1980s NYC. More heart and soul than 99% of TV shows out there

I'm Sorry - Andrea Savage plays herself, a raunchy comedian living her life and raising her daughter. If you like Curb Your Enthusiasm, you'll like this. The first episode is about how her 5 year old daughter might be racist.

Don't Fuck with Cats - A guy posts a video online of him killing cats. The internet tries to find out who he is before his actions escalate to murder. 

Tiger King - You've heard about it. You may have seen some of it. I will say, it's as wild as it's portrayed as. 

Bodyguard - A BBC limited series about a former Army officer-turned government bodyguard who gets wrapped up in a terrorist plot...and an affair.

Altered Carbon - No one ever really dies (shout out to N.E.R.D.). In this series based on a graphic novel, your consciousness lives in your "stack," an implant in the back of your neck. If you die, your stack goes in a new body, unless someone destroys your stack. Joel Kinnaman plays the lead in season 1, and Anthony Mackie plays the same character, just in a new body, in season 2.

Giri/Haji - A Japanese detective travels to London in search for his brother, a Yakuza hitman wanted for killing someone from the wrong family. I really like how it shows Japanese culture/actors mixed with a western style.

Always By My Maybe - This is just a really funny fucking movie. A romantic comedy written and starring two Asian comedians (Ali Wong and Randall Park), directed by the creator of Park's Fresh Off The Boat, which Wong was also a writer on. And don't forget Keanu Reeves flexing as a version of himself.

The Perfection - A horror thriller that goes places you do not expect. I'll just leave it at that.

Netflix's Stranger Things: A [Not So Positive] Review

So, after all the hype I've been seeing around my social channels (not to mention the activities that didn't happen bc folks were stuck on the couch), I binge watched Netflix's latest series, Stranger Things over the weekend.

For those who aren't super aware, the show is about a group of kids who's who get into some shit that they shouldn't. Abductions and government conspiracies type shit. Set in the 80s, it mixes whimsical adventure and supernatural elements with a coming of age story and (from what I hear, because I didn't see it) suspense and horror aspirations. After joining the I'm-on-the-couch-all-day-so-don't-call-me-cuz-you-already-know-I-won't-be-doing-shit-else-club and running through the entire 8 episode first season, I can see why people liked it.

I mean, when you grow up on Steven Spielberg 80s movies, this is like a godsend because it brings back that same feel and vibe. But I didn't grow up on those Spielberg and John Hughes 80s movies, so when I saw them 20-30 years after the fact, they really weren't shit to write home about — they were just regular-ass movies to me, because all that was left was the movie itself + everyone's hype.

Because when you really think about it, so much of what feeds into great movies and their effect on people is the cultural zeitgeist they create. Everyone feels a gravitational pull to participate in the discussion. But when you remove that cultural convo from it, all you're left with is the hype. I mean, it's why they people flock to Thursday midnight showings — in the age of social, you gotta see it first so you can talk about it first; so people can't ruin it for you later. When you add 10 or more years of hype to a movie someone hasn't seen yet, it nearly guarantees a let down. (Sidebar: that was my Star Wars 1-3 experience, but that's a separate article.)

And that's what this show is — a regular-ass show. That may be a little harsh, and it may overstate and simplify things a bit, but that's kind of where it's at for me. The casting and the acting was spot on (the connection to the characters, and their believability, is why I kept watching), but bruh, people are saying there's a lot of Stephen King in this — there was not a single scary moment in that show.

A hallmark of Spielberg films, for me at least, and this is not a positive, is their sometimes comical lack of tension. This isn't LOST or Game of Thrones — you know the main characters aren't going to die halfway through the film. And they get put in situations where the scene is paced so fast that the character is in and out of danger before you can even get settled into (and suspend your disbelief from) this supposed dangerous situation. (I'm looking at you, Bridge of Spies.) The lack of drama and tension for a series that supposedly relies on these genre tropes it is an absolute death knell. The same thing is what has made HBO's Ballers borderline unwatchable. It's well acted and produced, and Dwayne Johnson is always fantastic, but ultimately, it's a comedy that isn't funny, and there isn't any real drama for its backup generators to rely on.

And that brings us back to what Stranger Things is: A well-written, wonderfully-acted throwback to the your favorite adventure 80's flicks, that sorely lacks any semblance of tension or horror. Or adventure. Or a CGI budget. (really, this is 2016. Your CGI should never be on Sharknado-level.)

I give this TV series a rating of a 5th of whiskey and a 6 pack of beer, because that's the amount of alcohol you'll need to get through and enjoy eight straight hours of it.