What I'm Watching: Good Omens, Reservation Dogs, The Witcher Again, and More

On six great reads, five TV shows, a Youtube series, a podcast, and an eclectic range of topics.

Michael Sheen, Good Omens, Prime Video

Here’s the rundown on everything I watched, read, and wrote about this week:

The shows:

• Good Omens season 2 is finally here, and it’s (mostly) a charming, fluffy romance anchored by two utterly winning performances. Personally, I like this season of the fantasy comedy series about a demon-angel friendship more than the first thanks to the way it leans fully into rom-com territory, though I had a couple of relatively small qualms about the climax. Once you finish watching season 2 (and not a second sooner!), you can check out this piece I wrote about Michael Sheen’s performance for IGN and another for Slashfilm in which I processed the finale and aggregated all the info we have about how a potential third season.

• Reservation Dogs is also back for its final season this week. This FX and Hulu series about four Indigenous teens living in Oklahoma is beautiful, funny, unique, and far and away one of the best shows on TV. I’m sorry to see it go, and frankly frustrated that more people didn’t show up for it to begin with, but it’s not too late to start watching. The first four episodes of season 3 definitely capture everything I love about the series and then some. Full review to come.

• Part two of The Witcher season 3 is out, and weirdly, I liked it a lot less than part 1. There are some good scenes in here, but also a lot of inadvertently corny or lackluster ones. Plus, I just wasn’t that impressed with Henry Cavill’s sendoff. I wrote about that here.

• Alas, I didn’t watch any movies this week, but I did sink even deeper into my inexplicable second emo phase (IYKYK!) by making my way through the back catalog of TAI TV, a ridiculous, hilarious, and deeply of its time web show the pop-punk band The Academy Is… made during the peak touring days of the genre. Emo never dies, and apparently, neither does 2008 Youtube humor.

The reads:

• Queer indie fiction publishers Space Fruit Press just came out with their latest collection, Binary Stars, which I was lucky enough to grab a copy of thanks to a friend who worked on it. The short story anthology is a quick, entertaining read featuring four smutty and romantic (and sometimes very funny) sci-fi stories set in space. This book is definitely for adventurous adults only, but if you find yourself gravitating towards stuff like spicy Star Trek or Firefly fanfic or some of the freakier works of Octavia Butler, this could be your exact cup of tea.

• This piece from my coworker Jeremy Smith about the bravery of Sinead O’Connor’s protest of Catholic church abuse made me cry, as did this beautiful Twitter thread about O’Connor from Russell Crowe (who I’ve somehow never realized is an incredible writer).

• Over at Slashfilm, Ryan Scott put together a very good deep dive into exactly what’s up with the movie Sound of Freedom, a Christian box office hit that has inspired conspiratorial chatter from all sides of the political spectrum. He clearly came at this with an open mind and put a ton of research into it, and it turned out to be a super informative and nuanced look at a movie that’s been surrounded by misinformation.

• On a totally different topic, I also learned a lot from this 2020 New Yorker piece about a highly motivated, secretive America-based civilian who apparently spent years tackling the daunting task of trying to liberate North Korea from its current regime. This story has been making the rounds again because, believe it or not, it was shared on Twitter by writer Aaron Stewart-Ahn, who was once an extra in a Batman film with the man in question.

• It’s been a big week for interesting writing on topics I know nothing about: despite having not seen the Netflix documentary The Deepest Breath yet, I really dug this Slate piece from Sam Adams about the uncomfortable narrative manipulation of docs that withhold important truths just to make us feel something.

Odds and ends:

• Here’s my review of How To With John Wilson season 3, which I talked a bit more about last week.

• And here’s a piece I had a total blast writing, about the psychology of Justified’s Raylan Givens and his ongoing struggle to be a good dad in a world full of bad ones.

• Let’s round out an eclectic newsletter with an eclectic podcast pick, shall we? This week I listened to Wilder, a still-ongoing iHeart podcast about the life, works, and legacy of Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder. I had the Little House books as a kid but never actually got into them, so I was intrigued to learn about their appeal, their problems, and their widespread cultural influence. My one problem with this podcast is that it’s heavy on the preamble and summary, but the meat of the story is so interesting on its own that it’s still a worthwhile listen.

I caught up with a friend last week who told me that she can tell I have a lot of fun writing these newsletters, and honestly, that’s pretty much the highest compliment I can get. I don’t have many rules here, but one is to never let this feel like work. So far it hasn’t and I hope that shows!

As always, feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you’ve been watching (or reading, or listening to, or playing). Otherwise, have a lovely week, y’all.