Quarantine streaming has been a weird dance. Yes, we have more time. But Twitter, a pandemic, and underlying anxieties about what the future holds can do a number on the brain. This is my attempt to write about what we’ve watched in our time since It All Began.

Devs (FX)

Ex Machine and Annihilation – both also written and directed by Alex Garland – are two modern sci-fi classics that have stuck with me since first viewing. Throw in Nick Offerman – the spirit animal I wish to claim, the man I desire to be – and you could not possibly get me any more excited about a new show. For nearly a good 9 of the 10 episodes, I was all-in. The characters felt removed with a purpose. It embodied the filmmaking eye Garland had perfected since Ex Machina – evocative music with tranquil camerawork and shiny objects clashing with the sprawl of nature. Even as it moved slowly through its story, I held my trust it would stick the landing. 

The problem with putting so much weight on an answer that comes in the final episode is that it runs into the same problem the LOST finale did: how can you tie up so many different strands of ideas in an emotional, evocative way? Devs is a fertile playground for Garland to touch on things that clearly compel him. But as they funnel towards the final episodes, I…I don’t know. Something seemed amiss. It didn’t land for me. It felt almost like Garland himself realized the explanation couldn’t support the weight of what he had built, so he added layers that only confused the ending rather than deepened them. It may just be me (it probably is!). It may also just be a rare, gorgeous misfire from one of our best cinematic storytellers. 

GLOW (Netflix)

The word thing about our age of binging shows is that you’re sometimes recommended something on the promise it gets better. “It will pick up by the third season!” they say. I know this happens with shows – I distinctly remember how one of my favorites, Parks and Rec, didn’t click in place until the second season. But the result is that you can sometimes feel like you’re given homework. And as a writer who hears every other day how “you need to grab the readers by the first page!” – it can be hard to dip those toes in the water. 

I say all of that because, well, I started watching this show on the promise of how great the 2nd season was supposed to be. The first season started out a bit slow, carefully building its world, but after a couple of episodes, I began to appreciate the difference between vertical and horizontal storytelling. Horizontal storytelling is what we often think we want from our shows – a continually moving, ever-forward plot. Cause and effect. One thing after another. But vertical storytelling makes it look like the story isn’t progressing when, in fact, it’s going deeper and deeper into the characters. We see this a lot with “bottle episodes” that shows may have. Or where unusual character matchups are created to bring out new colors in them. When the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are stuck in a shitty hotel, wondering if this show they’ve got themselves into is ever going to see the light of day, GLOW starts to pick up steam. It builds its characters. It strengthens its conflicts and contrasts. And then by the tail-end of the season, it starts running with the confidence of knowing what it is and wants to be. 

That only further continued in Season 2, where it grapples with a #MeToo situation that nearly tears the team apart before they slowly build each other back up again. And Season 3 does some really interesting things when the team moves to Las Vegas, combining its vertical and horizontal storytelling in interesting, emotional ways. It just so happened that we watched the final Lynn Shelton-directed episode, “A Very Merry Christmas”, the day after she died. I could see her fingerprints all over it, most especially in the love you can see she has for her actors and the difficult conversations they still need to have. This episode made me cry more than once and it hit me just how much I had grown to know and enjoy such a wide spectrum of characters over 3 seasons. 

Never Have I Ever (Netflix)

I wasn’t crazy about the first episode. It felt too busy, too clever, too…a lot of things. But here’s the thing: it also rather deftly set up every conflict – between friendships, parents, cliches,  and the overlying trauma story – all with a John McEnroe narration that, baffling at first, made total, perfect sense by the end. Too many shows love to hint at what’s to come without ever revealing anything. They prize mystery over clarity. It may be enough to draw a viewer in, but what makes you emotionally invested in what’s to come is a clear sense of everyone’s relationship to each other. It’s a large cast with a lot of dynamics. Never once did I misunderstood how they related to each other. And because of that, seeing characters start to collide with each other only further increased the investment. 

And there is so much to say about this show. That it 110% feels like Mindy Kaling’s brain injected into a high school teen comedy. That it’s the most diverse show I’ve seen. That it’s empathetic towards all of its characters in a way that feels like a combination of the best of James L. Brooks and any of Michael Schur’s TV series (some of which Mindy has written on). What takes this show up several notches is the overarching thematic work done with Devi’s recently passed father. We get caught up in the hilarious character interactions and then bam: we’re reminded why Devi is emotionally stuck where she is and what she needs to do to work past it. By the end, when it all comes together and Devi and her family can have a cathartic moment? My wife and I were crying just as much as the people onscreen. 

Atlanta (Hulu)

As I was nearing the end of Atlanta, grappling with all the storylines and cultural observations this brilliant show had weaved together, I was also working on my own feature script. Atlanta motivated and crippled me in equal measure. I made me want to create and yet presented a level of clearance I wasn’t sure I could even approximate. On one afternoon walk as I eyed traffic and scrolled through Twitter, I stumbled upon some screenwriting wisdom from a professional script reader. He said to be wary of I or T pages in your script. All of a sudden, everything I loved about Atlanta crystallized. You see, a script that looks like a towering I or T of text means it’s nonstop dialogue with very little action written in.

In other words: your characters are doing a lot of talking and not a lot of moving. This creates a long, tall pillar of centralized text making it look like one giant I. And before you start to think about dialogue-heavy movies you love, I’d challenge you to actually read their scripts. There’s a lot more action written into them than you’d expect. 

By the time my wife and I funneled towards the end of Season 2 (the last currently available), the masterfulness of the writing became even more evident. This is a show that uses action and movement as well as any out there. Before a character really expresses in words how they feel, you’ve seen several scenes of them sulking or screaming or being dismissed or condescended to. You’ve seen microaggressions and doors slammed in their face. You’ve seen actors that have been trusted, time and time again, to not use their words but instead their face and their body as their sole acting instrument. So when they finally do say how they feel: you see it coming. And the accumulation of emotion you feel for them as it finally lands? It’s brutal. There’s still a part of me that sinks when I think about Earn (Donald Glover) telling Darius (LaKeith Stanfield), “You’re so even keel usually, but my world is falling apart.”

Another example of this is how Al (Brian Tyree Henry) keeps talking about how successful the manager of another peer rapper is. Al especially mentions it to Earn, his current manager, hoping it will light a fire in him. And this goes on and on without every expressly stating the obvious: that Clark County’s manager is largely able to secure all these endorsements, connections, and great gigs for his client because he’s white. It’s not until that same scene in which Earn tells Darius his world is falling apart that Earn finally asks a Hasidic Jew at a passport center (it will make sense when you see it) if his Jewish lawyer friend is better than all the black lawyers. The man’s response lays out what’s been hinted at for nearly two seasons: “No, but he gets the kind of opportunities Black wouldn’t because of systemic racism.” 

There is so much you can learn about writing with Atlanta, and I still think, many months later, about how well they set up their core conflict between Earn and Al. Al doesn’t think Earn is getting him enough gigs or enough money. Earn doesn’t think Al is understanding how he has to work his way up to better gigs. It all comes to an explosive head after a gig completely, disastrously falls apart.

The construction of the moment is key: it gives just enough fault on each side of each character for us, the audience, to have an opinion that could go either way. We can see how hard Earn is working to get everyone situated and have a profitable gig, yet we can also see how some of the corners he cut endangered them. We can see how angry Al is with the gig falling apart, but we can also see he’s looking too high while sitting too low and how he completely overlooks how untrustworthy and dangerous his own cousin is. What’s so beautiful and heartbreaking about this is how Earn and Al can’t take it out on each other. It’s why Earn has to pick a very ill-advised fight with Tracy, a man who towers over him and beats him up badly. Earn’s gotta take all of his anger out on Tracy because there’s no way he can stomach doing it to his true cousin Al. The way all this works together and leads up to the final scene of Season 2 is just *chefs kiss*. 

Few works of art have taught me as much about writing as this one. And as much as I’m dying for another season, I want them to take their time.

If writer/producer Stephen Glover’s tweet, written in the midst of June’s Black Lives Matter protests is any indication, it’s gonna pack just as much of a vital punch as each season before. 

Ramy (Hulu)

There are two unmistakable influences on Ramy: Alan Yang and Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, and Donald and Stephen Glover’s Atlanta. All three shows examine the microcosms of their characters in their own unique ways, with Master of None showing what it’s like to be Indian and Asian in 21st century New York, Atlanta what it’s like to be Black and in the juxtaposition of Atlanta proper and the Deep South of white America, and Ramy with the ongoing battles of being a New Jersey Muslim in this day and age. 

Ramy also shares a heavy similarity with them in the way it surrounds its core with delightful supporting characters that challenge and support the main character. We get to see such a spectrum of the Muslim experience throughout, in ways both expected and unexpected (such as an entire Season 2 episode involving expensive cars, an expansive estate, and an always clothed porn star – you will not see any of it coming). Very few shows gave me as much to think about. And Ramy, like its spiritual predecessors, is truly a testament to how the more specific the storytelling gets, the more universal and relatable the characters are. I could see a little of myself in each episode. One of the most entertaining mirrors around. 

What We Do in the Shadows (Hulu) – 

When I first heard they were making a TV series out of Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s 2014 mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, I was unsure just how much more they could get out of the premise. What I should have remembered is that Taika has made a name for himself making terrible-sounding ideas work beautifully (Thor 3, Jojo Rabbit).

This is a masterfully-written show delivered by a great bunch of comedic actors in Kayvan Novak (Nandor the Relentless), Matt Berry (Laszlo Cravensworth), Natasia Demetriou (Nadja), Harvey Guillén (Guillermo), and Mark Proksch (Colin Robinson aka the energy vampire). It’s pretty amazing just how many wrinkles the cast and writers are able to mine out of the premise, which sees vampires of different types and time periods trying to make a living in Staten Island, New Jersey. Sometimes you get simple, yet delightful ideas like Nandor getting a ‘mail daemon’ email and being convinced he’s been sent a curse he must send to 15 other people, and other times you get to meet a Vampire Council made up of Tilda Swinton, Evan Rachel Wood, Wesley Snipes, and Pee-Wee Herman. 

The best sitcoms are the ones that are effectively a group of people you want to hang out with (at least figuratively) and What We Do in the Shadows in its two seasons has shown just what delightful, entertaining company they are. I already miss them.

Quarantine streaming has been a weird dance. Yes, we have more time. But Twitter, a pandemic, and underlying anxieties about what the future holds can do a number on the brain. This is my attempt to write about what we’ve watched in our time since It All Began.

Spaceship Earth (Hulu) 

The best thing this documentary does is give you a picture as expansive as space itself. I only knew beforehand the vague details, that this was about a crazy experiment done in a desert in 1991, in which 8 researchers committed to self-sustainability within a biodome. What I did not expect to learn is how this expensive, deeply ambitious project wasn’t the beginning but rather the culmination of many years of mind-expanding experimentation. When you meet all the members who made it happen, you see that it really all began way back in the ’60s, when a charismatic man (yes, you’ll wonder if it’s a cult) brought together a group of free-thinking artists. They started off with their own theater, The Theatre of All Possibilities. From there, they understood the best way for them to learn and change the world was by taking matters into their own hands. They partnered with the billionaire heir of a Texas oil dynasty, who gave them the necessary money to dream bigger. 

If you’re not convinced this group can pull something like Biosphere 2 off, just know they once built their own boat, the Heraclitus, in the docklands of Oakland, learning and building as they went, creating a ship that, 45 years later, still sails around the world conducting scientific and cultural projects and experiments. The idea that they could build something sturdy enough to brave six oceans and sail over 270,000 nautical miles over the years is just…it’s as inspiring as it is brain-breaking. 

The history of the John Allen-led group is so rich and fascinating that the actual Biosphere 2 experiment almost feels anticlimactic. Director Matt Wolf deeply understands that the problem was never really with the idea or the aim – it was always going to be with the people involved. At some point, tensions would develop in the crew sealed in with each other. At some point, dangerous situations would occur that would strain things further. At some point, the higher-ups would make decisions that badly angered those doing the real work. And at some point, unfortunately but not completely unexpectedly, a dark figure would stride into all of this and destroy every bit of scientific evidence that had been painfully collected.

If that last sentence made you stand up, it should. Even more when you find out this person was behind some of the more devastating policies and decisions in our country’s recent history. Spaceship Earth, in the end, is a fascinating look at the power of dreams and the all-too-present danger of them being shot mercilessly, callously down. 

The Last Dance (ESPN/Netflix) – 

I knew Michael Jordan as a cultural icon before I knew him as a basketball player. His career started the year I was born, and I never quite caught up to him – beyond accepting the universe’s general given he’s the best basketball player of all time – until he dismantled my precious John-Stockton-and-Karl-Malone-led Utah Jazz in the NBA Finals two years in a row. I did, however, grow up with LeBron James. I still remember his first Sports Illustrated cover as I thumbed through the issue at the kitchen table. It seemed preposterous for someone to be anointed that early, and to be asked if he’d ever meet the bar of being Like Mike. Since then, LeBron has gone on to have quite the outstanding, long-lasting career, one that regularly, in the midst of his prime, asked others who they got: MJ or LeBron. 

For the longest time, I only had one true dog in the fight: the King himself. Countless times I have dropped everything I’m doing just to catch bits of his games, especially in his Miami and later Cleveland years. Every time we thought he was washed, he found another gear. Even more, he embraced the community, goodwill, and politics in a way MJ never quite did. I could accept the argument that Michael was the fiercer player and LeBron the more complete. But still: those in MJ’s camp never waivered, and those in LeBron’s camp often moved back and forth. I wanted to better understand just what made everyone want to be Like Mike. 

Enter The Last Dance. Director Jason Heller and his team did a pretty incredible job at poring through thousands and thousands of hours of footage to distill it down to these ten episodes. The way they combine music with what’s on the screen makes it one of the purer audio/visual delights out there, nearly long-form videos for a band you’d happily follow across the country. By the end, I felt like I much better understood what made Michael Jordan so great, what made the Bulls the dynasty they were, and just how infuriating it was the way management broke that team up. 

But there’s one catch. 

As fun as it is to see everyone pitch in with their interviews, it can’t be overlooked who one of the key producers is: Michael Jordan. While there are definitely a few parts that are more critical of Jordan, they’re often followed by explanations that cast him in a better light. Jordan is in full control of the narrative. By the end, what should seem like a man at peace instead feels like a man still chasing a ghost. The difference is that the Last Dance gives us a hugely entertaining chance to chase along with him. 

The Speed Cubers (Netflix)

Every time a rather bloated film sinks into the streaming ocean, an argument goes around about just how necessary the length is. Some will argue the extra time nails down necessary character development. Some will argue it’s just narrative fat in need of more muscle. Inevitably, the conversation leads to someone piping up about just how nice it is to see a full, satisfying story told in 90 minutes.

Well, what if I told you there existed a hugely satisfying, deeply emotional story in just half that time, a meager 40 minutes? It’s called The Speed Cubers and its essential viewing. We get a glimpse of the longtime Rubik’s Cube-solving champion, Feliks Zemdegs, a jovial young Australian. We then get a glimpse of his emerging rival, Max Park. The narrative path leads us on a collision course that will center around the 2019 cube-solving World Championships in Feliks’ own backyard of Melbourne, Australia. It may sound like a predictable little sports documentary. I can assure you it is most definitely not. The joy is in the details. As beautifully told a story as I’ve seen all year.

Hannah Gadsby’s Douglas (Netflix)

Gadsby’s 2019 special, Nanette, was meant to be the final note in her stand-up career. She explained how comedy had really kept her from growing past her trauma, threw in some amazing bits of art history that dispelled the dangerous myth of the tortured genius, and took a well-deserved bow. That was supposed to be it. But as it made a plethora of Best-Of lists that year and sent Gadsby’s popularity skyrocketing, it became obvious she was going to have to find another way to do the stand-up comedy she swore she was done with. 

I find Douglas to not only be a fantastic follow-up but to be on-par with Nanette. She is just as truthful and bracingly honest. She is also just as masterful with form, illustrating to the audience beforehand the exact structure of her show and all the minefields she’ll be walking around and into, and the way the audience catches onto all of this as she indeed climbs the aforementioned structure is a thing of beauty. She peppers in some art history again, this time taking aim at the ridiculous artistic aims of the patriarchy as well as cracking on the names of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (trust me – it’s worth the watch).

She wraps all of these observations and stories up in an artfully designed bow about what it means to be Hannah Gadsby, a lesbian stand-up comedian with autism. What’s so beautiful about this bow she wraps for us is how deeply empathetic it is to herself. We know it took her a long time to work towards self-acceptance. And as you see her grow more detailed about her own life and feelings, it becomes even more relatable. Who hasn’t felt like a pufferfish, blowing up whenever we’ve been slighted or a certain button was pushed? You’ve never quite seen the world explained the way Hannah Gadsby does and we are so fortunate to have her share it with us.

The thing about a hand offered out of pity and a hand offered to help is that they look exactly the same to the receiver. In both cases, a hand is being thrust towards them, awaiting their response. The difference comes in how they perceive themselves. Do they feel worthy of genuine support or do they believe people only reach out because they feel bad for them? Paul Downs Colaizzo’s Brittany Runs A Marathon illustrates this question beautifully. 

Often in movies when we see someone reject an offer of help, it results in the offerer upset they weren’t received better and then it just further escalates from there. It’s a movie trying to create conflict, but it often feels manufactured. As if the writer wrote the whole movie and went “Shit, I do not have enough conflict in this act to force the movie into the ending I badly want!”. What makes Brittany so special is that every person around her is offering their assistance and she rejects every one of them at some point in the movie, convinced it’s all out of pity, and every single one of them absorbs the blow. They don’t lash out. They don’t storm out and slam the door. They simply absorb her sharp edges, recognizing they were once like her, and hope she’ll come around. They’re not bummed that she didn’t take their offer; they’re bummed she didn’t find herself worthy of it. It’s a subtle distinction that makes a lot world of difference. And it makes this movie far more deeply empathetic than you’d ever expect. 

Early in the movie, Brittany (Jillian Bell) runs into Seth (Micah Stock) in the middle of a 2-mile run as they’re both dying on a steep hill. He tells her he’s running because he choked in a potato sack race and couldn’t stand his young son’s disappointment. So he signed up for a 5k race 6 weeks later. “Why are you doing that to yourself,” Brittany asks, “you’ll lose. “

“You don’t do it to win it,” Seth says, breathless. “You do it to finish it.” 

It’s just enough of a mindset shift for Brittany that she soon after signs up for the same 5k. Brittany and Seth run together and again they’re dying as a group of young kids pass them. “We’re going backwards”, she says. But they persist. As they get to the finish line, Seth runs into the arms of his husband, holding their son. Brittany looks around her. Everyone has someone. Everyone but her. She then spends most of the movie accepting and then pushing back against people, as if she lets her guard down just enough before reminding herself she’s not good enough. It leads her to push away so many people she has to fall into an old crutch of moving in with her sister. After a particularly bad blowup in which Brittany attacks a woman she feels threatened by, her brother-in-law (Lil Rel Howery) lofts it to her: “It was never about the marathon”, he says. 

Late in the movie, Brittany finally does run this New York marathon. But she’s doing it alone. As she hits Mile 22, she comes down with a disastrous pain she’s convinced she can’t surmount. She wants to continue, but she’s slowly being persuaded by the medic to give up. It all looks like it’s over, like the movie will stretch into some kind of “You don’t have to run a whole marathon to be successful!” message until she hears a familiar scream. It’s her neighbor, Catherine (Michaela Watkins). Then further down is another scream. It’s Seth. And then it’s her brother-in-law. It’s everyone who offered a hand she once bit – sometimes more than once – and all they want for her is not just to finish the race, but to believe she is worthy enough to have friends who would wait until she got to the last 4 miles of the most punishing race she’s ever ran.

In the closing moments of the film, Brittany kisses a man she previously pushed away and goes for a run. But this time, as she strides down the street, you can see it all in her relaxed yet determined face: this isn’t about a marathon anymore; this is about self-acceptance and running because she genuinely enjoys it. It’s a face that’s ready for the next challenge because she feels worthy and has embraced a net that will catch her should she fall. 

There’s a lot of streaming out there. It’s not just that there’s Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and many others. And it’s not just that they each have vast libraries, both with licensed and original programming. There’s also the matter of just about every movie you can think of being available to rent or purchase, all at your fingertips. These times of quarantine have shown us just how many entertainment choices we have within our home. And sometimes it can be pretty exhausting. 

This has happened to me many times before, even in the pre-streaming days, where the options are so plentiful and widespread that it all starts to bleed into one, long, every-scrolling title. The abundance of choice taxes the brain. And then the desire to watch something, anything really, sinks. From there, TV shows sound better. Shorter, punchier, and maybe even something you’ve seen many times before. 

All it takes, though, is for something really original to burst through the noise. What’s equally interesting is how both these films are, like all art, remixes of what came before. What makes them stand out is that they’re willing to take chances. They’re willing to take a perfectly serviceable, entertaining story and throw some mad brushes at it, either taking you out of it or endearing you further. 

It would appear you’ve seen something like Alice Wu’s The Half Of It before. There are the familiar elements of the burgeoning high school love triangle, when Ellie (Leah Lewis) agrees to help David write love letters to a girl she maybe likes herself. You may have even seen Roxanne (with Steve Martin) – itself a play on Cyrano de Bergerac and also filmed in a small Pacific Northwest town. But Wu introduces a thematic element in her story that’s stuck with me ever since: the idea that most people are satisfied with good paintings, but that the difference between a good and a great painting is simply 5 bold strokes. At the heart of that fact is a central question: are you willing to ruin a perfectly good painting for the chance at greatness?

Wu guides us through a number of delightful conversations and inconveniences, learning about this trio of characters and their unexpected depth. Wu isn’t interested in playing with a cookie-cutter except as a form to experiment within. She draws your attention to the shapes as she sneaks in unique flavors and ingredients. Then slowly but surely, it dawns on you that this was never meant to be a love triangle at all; it was meant to be a collision of three stuck-in-neutral teens who stared greatness in the eye and decided not to blink. They learned to stay true to themselves, with messy yet perfect endings. It’s a delightful inversion of what we’ve come to expect. 

Enda Loughman and Mike Ahern’s Extra Ordinary has a premise that’s designed beautifully. You take a character like Rose (Maeve Higgins), the daughter of a former paranormal doctor who, through tragic circumstances, is intent on keeping that part of her past behind her. Then you collide her with Martin Martin (Barry Ward), a single father struggling with his teenage daughter and the literal ghost of his ex-wife haunting their house and daily rituals. Martin, further pushed by his daughter, is desperate for a solution, which leads him to Rose. Throw in a wild-card satan-worshipping one-hit-wonder played by Will Forte and you have quite the batch to work with. 

This is a movie full of great lines and gags, but it never loses sight of its characters, as wild and crazy as they may get. The story builds and builds, and even as you may see what’s coming, you have most certainly not seen a final act showdown quite like this one brandishes. It’s a movie full of bold strokes that somehow all work due to the conviction of its filmmakers and the actors who inhabit the story. 

The Half of It and Extra Ordinary are two of the most original movies I’ve seen in all of 2020. That may seem like it’s grading it on a curve, considering our current cinema situation. But when you match it up against the endlessly-scrolling reel of streaming options, it rings true. They became the signal within the noise. These filmmakers taking such bold strokes with their own movies makes me want to take bolder strokes as a film viewer. And be all the richer for it.