Issue 9 - The Pitt is back and Apple wants you sad again

Nothing from the industry this week. No cancellations, no layoffs, no executive falling out of a yacht in Croatia. A dead news week in Hollywood is like a dead news week at the Vatican — something is still happening, they're just not telling you. Somewhere in Burbank a man in a vest is explaining to a room of writers that the new show needs to be forty percent shorter and also appeal to India. He goes home. He sleeps fine. That's the week.

So instead we're going to talk about the shows. And folks — it's a week. The Pitt is back, Invincible is back, Grey's Anatomy is on season twenty-three which is longer than most marriages and all of my leases, and Apple TV+ has rolled out another beautiful woman in another beautiful house with another terrible secret. Buckle up.

The Pitt — Season 3 (HBO Max)

Noah Wyle has spent his entire adult life in an emergency room. At this point I think he legitimately believes he's a doctor. Someone's going to collapse at a Starbucks and he's going to crack their chest open with a ballpoint pen and nobody will stop him because he radiates authority. The Pitt is the closest thing to must-see TV that currently exists in the wasteland, each season is one shift in real time, and season three just dropped. It's the show where nobody is having a good day, ever, and somehow that's comforting. Everyone watching it is tired. Everyone on it is tired. It's a national mood board.

Invincible — Season 5 (Prime Video)

Steven Yeun is still being hit through a building. JK Simmons is still doing that thing where his voice alone makes you rethink your father. This is the best superhero show currently running, largely because it understands that punching someone at Mach 3 would in fact turn them into a mist. If you are new, don't start here. Start at season one and prepare to flinch.

Imperfect Women (Apple TV+)

Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, Kate Mara. A murder shatters their decades-long friendship. Betrayals, shocking truths, the whole IKEA catalogue of prestige-drama nouns. Apple TV+ has essentially one genre now and it's "attractive woman in a cardigan learns her husband is a monster." I'm not even knocking it. Sometimes you want to watch Elisabeth Moss whisper at a kitchen island for ten hours. The show is new, the reviews are lukewarm at best, but Apple will spend another hundred million on it and put a billboard over the 101 regardless. Will I watch? Yeah. Will I remember it in six weeks? Absolutely not.

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat (Prime Video)

The original Jury Duty was a minor miracle — one unsuspecting schmuck in a fake courtroom, surrounded by actors, producing one of the nicest guys in television history. The sequel premise: a real temp gets hired at a fake hot sauce company called Rockin' Grandma's and has to survive a corporate retreat where a private equity firm is circling the founder's idiot son. Reader, that's a show. That's the exact shape of modern American work. Whether they can catch lightning twice with a different civilian is the only question, and I'm optimistic because the setup — private equity eating a family business in real time — is already the funniest thing on television and it happens in every town in America every Tuesday.

Radioactive Emergency (Netflix)

Brazilian drama about physicists and doctors racing to contain a radiological disaster. Based on the actual 1987 Goiânia incident, probably, where a discarded medical device poisoned an entire neighborhood — one of the most nightmarish true stories of the last century. Early ratings are genuinely strong. Netflix quietly puts out foreign-language stuff like this all the time and then buries it under another season of some competition show where people get married inside a fish tank. Worth a look.

Jujutsu Kaisen, Grey's Anatomy, NCIS, Family Guy, The Rookie, Monarch

The backlog refills. Jujutsu Kaisen is the anime your nephew has been screaming at you about. Grey's Anatomy has outlived the hospital it was filmed in. NCIS is in its twenty-third season and is, statistically, what your parents are watching right now. Family Guy is on season twenty-four and has become a kind of ambient radio — it's just on, somewhere, always, like NPR for divorced dads. The Rookie keeps Nathan Fillion employed, which is a public service. And Monarch: Legacy of Monsters returns on Apple TV+, which is the Godzilla show that is somehow mostly about a family's inheritance drama, which is the most Apple TV+ thing ever attempted.

The rest, briefly

Rooster Fighter (Hulu) is an Adult Swim anime about a rooster who fights ten-story demons while screaming Kokekokko. I have no further notes. It rules. Unicorn Academy: Secrets Revealed (Netflix) exists for your children, leave it alone. O11CE: New Generation (Disney+) is a Latin American soccer teen drama about Golden Hawks on the verge of relegation, and honestly that's real stakes, good for them. Chiraiya (Hulu) is a Hindi-language drama about a wedding-night secret that fractures a family — five votes on TMDb, which means either nobody's seen it yet or the algorithm has already buried it. ANIMAL LOVE (Prime) is an Argentine drama where a trap artist from the outskirts falls for a rich kid with existential angst and this somehow triggers a gang war, which is the most "a writer pitched this at 4am" logline I've read in a month.

Movies, quickly

Agent Zeta (Prime) is a Spanish thriller with Mario Casas where four ex-spies get whacked on the same day over a Colombian black op from the 90s. Standard airport-novel stuff, watchable. The Red Line (Netflix) is a Thai thriller about three women taking revenge on the phone-scam network that robbed them. Fun premise, I've been waiting for someone to make a movie where the grandma who got scammed for forty grand gets to shoot her way into the call center. BTS THE COMEBACK LIVE | ARIRANG is on Netflix for the Army. You know who you are. And a quiet one — The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson, Marina Zenovich's doc about the murdered cyclist. Zenovich is a real filmmaker. If you're into the genre, it's the real thing.

Pick of the Week

The Pitt, Season 3 (HBO Max). It's the best drama on television, it makes you feel grateful to be in the waiting room instead of on the gurney, and Noah Wyle has fully ascended. Watch it. Then go hug a nurse. They need it more than you do.

See you next week. Somebody is going to get fired at Warner Bros before then, I can feel it in my teeth.