THERE'S TOO MUCH TV - Roundup March 2025

“What are you watching?” is pretty much the automatic question I get when I tell people what I do for a living. Usually I lie to people so I don’t get into a massive debate about the police while I’m trying to hang out. But to you, dear patron, I shall never lie!

February was a short month but after a pretty down 2024, I think TV might actually be back! I’m going to save Severance for a lil skippy this week, once I’ve gotten closer to catching up. I put Yellowjackets last on this roundup because there are some spoilers.

The Pitt (Season 1) — Max
CW: medical gore, very intense, death

Without a doubt, The Pitt is one of the most intense TV-watching experiences you’ll ever have. It’s like that one-shot episode of The Bear with all the tickets coming in, but for 16 episodes, and where the stakes aren’t sandwiches, they’re life and death. It’s an intensity that comes from every facet of the show. The acting is impeccable (Noah Wyle in particular) and the editing keeps us plugged into any number of different patients and storylines across the ER. I’m not sure if I’m more impressed by how quickly the show’s scripts have established so many fully fleshed out characters or its ability to explain complex medical concepts.

But what I really appreciate the most about The Pitt is its ability to make the experience of an ER doctor relatable to its audience. Not many of us watching at home are doctors. We’ll never work in a place as stressful. But The Pitt isn’t just about medicine, it constantly intersects with the sociopolitical issues of our day, from fentanyl overdoses to COVID to aging baby boomers to unhoused people to gun violence to the masculinity crisis. A hospital is an incredible setting to see the downstream effects of these issues, and the show articulates them exceedingly well, but they never linger on any of them for too long. They simply don’t have the luxury to stop and think.

And I think that in many ways, this is the modern American media environment. We are constantly bombarded with bad news—from fascism to genocide to the housing crisis etc.—but for many of us, the stream of horrors is too fast to ever catch up. We’re all just trying to make ends meet anyhow. We all have to do some kind of triage just to get through the day, choosing where to spend our limited emotional resources. But at the same time, while we might compartmentalize certain problems, either personal or societal, we’re not immune from the trauma they inflict on us. Just because there’s a mass casualty event doesn’t mean that Robby isn’t still struggling with the trauma of the pandemic.

The White Lotus (Season 3) — Max
CW: language, nudity, cringe, self-harm

Although I haven’t seen the most recent episode yet, I remain high on The White Lotus this season, even though I haven’t seen the most recent episode. I’m especially interested in the ways in which the show is exploring the concepts of success. As we hear early and often this season, “Anyone who moves to Thailand is either looking for something or hiding from something.”

Later a Buddhist monk tells a character, “Everyone runs from pain towards the pleasure. But when they get there, only to find more pain. You cannot outrun pain.”

For many of us, at least in America, there is a sort of quest for something that will provide safety or fulfillment. Perhaps that’s getting the girl of your dreams or building a million-dollar business, but regardless of what the thing is, it never actually brings peace. It can’t. Pain is a constant in life, and some of the most potent kinds of suffering—that of self-worth, insecurity, or jealousy—cannot be escaped no matter what kinds of dreams we accomplish.

Even if you choose to run towards something that seems pure like Buddhist enlightenment, that alone can never provide peace, because the very idea that some kind of accomplishment can free us from the human condition is a false narrative.

I think we can see this manifest in each character’s identity crisis, trying to figure out who they are outside of their quests—quests that can never provide lasting peace because all things change, except that we’re all stuck with ourselves.

The Studio (Season 1) — AppleTV+
CW: language

The Studio is the new AppleTV+ show from Seth Rogen and his creative partner Evan Goldberg, somewhere between a scathing critique of the modern blockbuster studio system that dominates Hollywood and produces boring cash-grab after boring cash-grab and an homage to the Golden Age of Cinema—whenever that was. Or maybe it’s not in the middle at all, maybe it’s just both of those things.

The aesthetic of the show is very reminiscent of the 60s and 70s, or at least the kind that was portrayed in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Rogen drives a classic car and wears suits that feel like they’d fit into the later seasons of Mad Men. Their office is alternately called a temple to cinema and its tomb, the place where film has turned into a purely profit-driven business and good art goes to die.

The series begins with Rogen’s character becoming the new studio head and immediately being set to work producing a film adaptation of Kool-Aid, ohhhh yeah. He has bold dreams of a high-brow Barbie-esque film that makes millions and wins Oscars and even gets Martin Scorsese on board, although he thinks he’s making a very different movie about the most famous event to ever include Kool-Aid: Jonestown.

The Studio lives in a place that desperately wants to remain optimistic about the state of film and Hollywood while being very clear eyed about the ways in which corporate greed has destroyed it (like everything else in this country). Can you still make good art in this modern studio system? I guess we’ll find out, but the first episode was very entertaining.

Common Side Effects (Season 1) — Max
CW: violence

It’s a premise right up my alley. A show painting corporate elites as the Big Bads of society? Check. A twinge of supernatural mystery? Check. Trippy animations? Check. Characters trying their best to change the world for the better, despite all odds? Check.

Common Side Effects surprised me as a show that tackles both the very real and broken health care industry, while also zooming out and using language that can talk about how “sick” our entire society is. The animation style is not exactly graceful (outside of the trips) and the ending of the season left me with a little bit of a “wait that’s the end” energy, but all-in-all this show gets two big thumbs up for being about big, real world problems while still being compelling TV by adding a dash of adventure.

Yellowjackets (Season 3) — Showtime
CW: violence

Two weeks behind on this one so I’ll do a bigger catchup at the end of the season.