What I'm Watching: Daisy Jones and the Six, Perry Mason, Netflix's "First" Live Event, and More

On three comedy specials, two shows, a movie, a book, a podcast episode, and some great articles from people who are smarter than me.

Matthew Rhys, Perry Mason, HBO

Here’s everything I watched, read, and listened to this week, and what I thought about it:

The shows:

• The second season of HBO’s dark Perry Mason reboot hits HBO tomorrow, and I caught all eight episodes ahead of time to review it over at Film School Rejects. Mason is a morally and stylistically rich show that rewards viewer patience, and I like it a lot. But HBO has also changed significantly since its first season aired three years ago, and I can’t help but notice that it now feels a bit like a dying breed even as it airs.

• Netflix aired its “first” live event* ever this weekend, and I was on hand to write about how the streamer’s big, real-time experiment went for /Film. I watched two other Chris Rock specials – his breakout, Bring The Pain, and his latest, Tamborine – to prepare for Chris Rock: Selective Outrage. I came away with a pretty complicated take on the comedian, whose sharp edge and intellect when it comes to race and class falter when he passes off some of his more insidious generalizations (and specific jabs!) as truth-telling – as he does pretty damn often when it comes to women. I think this piece from David Dennis Jr. revisiting The Chris Rock Show grapples with that persistent issue pretty thoroughly.

• If you couldn’t tell by my already-tepid response to the book last week, I was not a fan of Prime Video’s new faux-rock and roll biopic Daisy Jones and the Six. My full review is here, and it’s definitely more of an outright pan than I’ve written in a while. The whole show feels like it’s trying way too hard, telling us again and again that this fake band was legendary while just not delivering the goods to make me care or believe it.

The movies:

• It was a light movie week for me, but I did catch the Vietnamese drama Ròm. It’s a frenetic film about street life told from the perspective of a lottery bookie. Ròm purposely feels like sensory overload at times, but it delivers striking visuals and emotional beats in its best moments – I especially dug the ending.

• I might not have watched much this week, but when I was bouncing back from COVID (again–I guess it never really left) I did make a big old watchlist to look forward to for when I felt better. The catch is that instead of a digital watchlist, I printed out slips of paper and put them in a big mug, so I can choose my next movie night pick at random. If you’re a paid subscriber, you can even add your own suggestions to the big mug of movies! Don’t be shy!

Odds and ends:

• Here’s my full review of that great new book about pop culture adaptations (But Have You Read The Book?) by Kristen Lopez, which I mentioned in last week’s newsletter.

• Speaking of good books, I listened to the audiobook for Erin E. Adams’ Jackal this week on a friend’s recommendation, and whew, it blew me away. It’s a story about a Black woman who returns to the mysterious woods near her hometown, where Black girls have been disappearing in the summertime for years. Part missing persons mystery, part cultural commentary, part something even deeper and darker, the book is 100% a must-read.

• And more to read: I consistently love and look forward to Matt Zoller Seitz’s words about television more than pretty much any other writer’s, so I was ecstatic to see him cover something else I love and never shut up about this week: the M*A*S*H series finale.

• Switching gears, the podcast If Books Could Kill did a great Patreon episode trying to explain what the hell is going on with The New York Times’ weird coverage of trans kids’ healthcare. There’s an abridged version here that still contains plenty of great info – co-host Michael Hobbes is so diligent and thorough when it comes to building a solid foundation of foolproof research for his explanations. If you want to learn more about how extreme the panic around trans personhood has gotten, this ridiculous situation from the UK is another example.

• Finally, I’ll leave you with a bit more of my writing, all of it on a show that you know I always have to mention: The Last Of Us. Last week I went long on the set decorations in Ellie’s room for a piece you DEFINITELY shouldn’t read until you’ve played all the games, and I followed up tonight’s super-intense episode with an ode to Bella Ramsey’s performance and a breakdown of the episode’s truly horrifying climax.

Some of these links above are definitely related to heavy topics, so take care if you do go clicking around, and maybe pick something fun to watch after you’re done! Make sure to come back here and tell me about it in the replies – you know I always love to hear about what y’all are watching.

*CORRECTION: As a reader who previously worked with Netflix pointed out, “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage” isn’t actually the first Netflix live event, despite being branded in official press materials as “the first-ever Netflix live-streamed global event.” In 2020 they presented a special live Pride event with proceeds going to charities supporting trans rights. Interesting that that’s no longer being mentioned!