The Pitt Returns and Everyone Else Should Go Home

Slow news week in the industry. Nobody got fired. Nobody renamed a streaming service. No executive went on a podcast and said something that ended a career. Which means, for once, we have to talk about the actual shows, and folks — I regret to inform you that Netflix has released a series called Cash Queens. It is about five French women who decide to start robbing banks. That's the pitch. That's the show. Five women. Guns. Banks. I don't know what's more depressing, that this got greenlit, that it got made, or that somewhere in an office in Los Gatos a 34-year-old with a Peloton subscription looked at a slide deck and said "yes, this is the one, this is what the algorithm is hungry for." The algorithm is always hungry. The algorithm has a tapeworm.

Anyway. Here's what dropped.

The Pitt, Season 3 (HBO Max)

Noah Wyle is back in scrubs, which is the most Noah Wyle thing a man can do. The Pitt is the Pittsburgh ER show that actually works — 8.7 on TMDb, 644 people bothered to vote, which in the current climate is basically a mandate from the American people. It's what happens when you take a guy who spent fifteen years on ER and say "do it again but this time we pay you in HBO Max money and also the hospital is crumbling and no one has insurance." It's bleak. It's real. It's the one show this week where the chaos on screen is less absurd than the chaos of the business that made it. Watch it.

JUJUTSU KAISEN (Netflix)

New season of the anime where a high school boy eats a demon finger and becomes the vessel for an ancient curse. I am not being glib. That is the premise. A kid eats the finger. This is consistently one of the highest-rated shows on any platform and I think that tells you everything about where we are as a civilization — the youth have fully tapped out of the American sitcom and are over here watching hand-drawn Japanese teenagers fight ghosts, and frankly, good for them. If you're already in, you know. If you're not, this is not the season to start. Episode one was five years ago.

Unfamiliar (Netflix)

German spy show where two former spies discover their biggest challenge is "telling each other the truth." That's the actual logline. Two spies. They can't communicate. This is a couple's therapy show with silencers. It's not bad — 7.1, small sample — and if you like that Netflix Europe thing where every scene is shot at dusk in a kitchen and somebody's drinking wine ominously, this is your Tuesday. It's fine. It's European. It has a Josef in it. You know the drill.

The 'Burbs (Peacock)

Keke Palmer and Jack Whitehall move into a cul-de-sac where the neighbors are hiding something. Couple things. One — this is not the Joe Dante movie, they just took the title, because we live in a society where nothing can be new and also nothing can be old, everything has to be a ghost of a thing you vaguely remember. Two — it's rated 4.99 out of 10 on TMDb, which is the rating you get when a show is so perfectly forgettable that fifty-two people watched it and collectively shrugged into the void. Keke Palmer deserves better. Jack Whitehall — I don't know, Jack Whitehall seems like a guy who's going to be fine no matter what. Peacock is the platform nobody remembers they pay for, so this'll sit there, untouched, like a jar of olives in a divorced dad's fridge.

Salvador (Netflix)

Spanish drama. An ambulance driver rescues his injured daughter from a soccer riot and discovers she has joined the racist, homophobic ultras. Which is, you have to admit, a dramatic family dinner. Luis Tosar is in it, he's a legitimately great actor, and if you're willing to read subtitles this is the kind of show that will make you feel something other than the low hum of digital despair. Good premise. Good lead. Would actually watch.

Madam Beja (HBO Max)

Brazilian period soap about a woman who gets ruined by society and responds by opening an elite brothel that becomes the power center of imperial Brazil. Forty episodes. Forty. If you lock in on this you are not coming out until April. I respect it. The Brazilians know how to do a soap. They're not afraid of it. In America we make nine episodes of something, cancel it halfway through, and the showrunner goes on Twitter to cry. In Brazil they say "forty episodes of a revenge brothel" and hit the ground running.

Quick hits

Cash Queens (Netflix) — covered. Five French women, bank robbery, I'm begging you. Unveil: Jadewind (Netflix) — Tang Dynasty detective duo, 34 episodes, for the c-drama heads who already know. The Rookie season 8 on Hulu — Nathan Fillion is the oldest rookie in the LAPD and at some point the joke has to stop being the joke but it won't, because 3,100 people keep voting on it and ABC will make this show until Fillion is 90. Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med all returning on Peacock — Dick Wolf has built a factory in the Midwest and the assembly line does not stop. The Tonight Show — still happening. Apparently.

One movie worth mentioning

The Muppet Show special on Disney+ with Sabrina Carpenter. It's 32 minutes. It's Muppets. Sabrina Carpenter shows up and sings. There is nothing cynical to say about the Muppets and I won't try. Watch it with a child or, if you don't have one, a houseplant.

Pick of the Week

The Pitt, season 3. It's the best show on television right now about people who are tired, and we are all people who are tired. Noah Wyle has been saving fake lives on TV since 1994 and he has earned the right to do it in better lighting. Go watch it.

See you next week. Somebody will have gotten fired by then. They always do.