Early Thoughts on the Best TV of 2022

It’s early to look at the best of the year, but I always like to take stock of my choices before the deluge of awards-bait. For film awards cycles, most audiences won’t get a chance to see half the nominated movies for 2022 until months into 2023. (I’d argue that makes them 2023 films, but that’s another conversation.) Thankfully, series come out already as accessible as they’ll ever be. That means we’ve already seen (or at least had the opportunity to see) most of what’s come out this year.

When I look at the shows we’ve had in 2022, there are probably more that I like this year than in any other. I’m just not sure there are any I’ve unquestionably fallen for beyond multigenerational drama Pachinko. My top choices for 2021 – Arcane, Made for Love, Sonny Boy, Reservation Dogs, and Evil – would all vie for the top spot had those seasons come out this year. So there’s more that I like, less that I love.

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WHAT HAPPENED TO 2021’S BEST SERIES?

Of course, four of these five were renewed. Anime mind-trip Sonny Boy was designed as only one season, so what happened with the other four? Well, indigenous comedy Reservation Dogs is my #2 show this year behind Pachinko, so it hasn’t fallen off. It continues to take big risks, delivering satire alongside emotionally resonant experiential comedy, and its ensemble has only gelled more.

Evil is still in my top 10, it’s just that its second season last year was the best season of horror I’ve seen since early X-Files. It featured experimental episodes like the nearly dialogue-free “S is for Silence”, jaw-dropping social commentary like “C is for Cop” and scalding parodies like the Amazon metaphor “Z is for Zombie”. Katja Herbers was asked to deliver one of the most emotionally wide-ranging performances I can imagine. This year’s season 3 is even scarier and continues to show off just how much Aasif Mandvi has developed as an actor, but last year’s walked a nearly-impossible balance between the horrific and absurd that elevated both elements into something unnervingly new.

Made for Love is the only one of these five to get canceled after this year’s season, and I can see why. The show is still important to me and its unique blend of the comedic and disturbing is rare, but the second season’s focus shifted to characters and relationships that were not necessarily the first season’s strengths. I’d still strongly recommend it, and there are concepts that draw in beautifully even as they repulse, but the show works best when translating its ideas through the experiences of Cristin Milioti’s Hazel. The more it becomes an omnisciently-presented universe, the more it leaves her ability to emotionally anchor its most disturbing concepts.

That leaves Arcane, which I will continue to argue is one of the best seasons of anything ever made. Its experimental and exacting animation is built on years of development and production work, with exquisite writing that loops its ideas and concepts together to create interweaving metaphors and conceits. It’s an awe-inspiring amount of work conceptually and visually, and it’s been clear since its renewal that the next season may take years to develop.

So was everything better in 2021? Not necessarily. Like I said, there may not be as much that I love this year, but there’s a lot that I like. If 2022 had some rarely matched shows I’d rate as a 9 or 10 out of 10, then 2021 is overflowing with quality 7s and 8s. There’s not as much bowling me over, but I feel like there’s a lot more choice for whatever mood I’m in at a given moment.

2022 IS A BANNER YEAR FOR COMEDY

Comedies in particular have excelled. I covered Reservation Dogs, an indigenous comedy that hops between the stories of a stellar ensemble cast led by Devery Jacobs. As outlandish as it can be, it also feels incredibly real and consequential. I’ve heard it compared to the 90s golden era of indie comedies, but I think this risks diminishing the cultural origins of its comedy.

When Black comedy fought its way into the mainstream in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, there were many comparisons to earlier white comedians. The reality was that it felt fresh because these were voices that many audiences had been discouraged from listening to before. They weren’t successful because they were somehow building on the work of white comedians, though, that was a myth. They were successful because Black comedy had always been successful – white audiences just hadn’t listened to it on a large scale before then.

The same concept applies to Reservation Dogs. It’s not successful because it’s building on earlier eras of comedy that saw white creators get the biggest platforms. It’s successful because indigenous comedy has always been successful – it’s just that now other audiences are bothering to pay attention. Re-writing the root of that success not only ignores an important lesson, it removes agency from the people creating that comedy. Reservation Dogs is funny and touching because it’s built on successful Native American and First Nations comedy before it. It feels fresh not because it reminds us of something familiar (how would that even make sense), but because it platforms something already successful that many audiences just haven’t thought to open ourselves up to before.

I’m also a big fan of small-town, community-building comedy Somebody Somewhere. It deals with concepts of loss, depression, and othering in unique ways that feel particularly timely given where the U.S. is at. It also throws in the occasional hauntingly beautiful musical performance. Bridget Everett and Jeff Hiller offer an off-kilter, rocky but loyal friendship.

Knife-sharp gig-satire Killing It features Claudia O’Doherty and Craig Robinson as an odd couple of snake hunters. The series is a biting class comedy that depicts how late-stage capitalism weighs on workers, with characters living out of cars, 24-hour-gyms, and fusing together odd gigs. The most memorable episode becomes a modern cyberpunk take on “Cyrano de Bergerac”, a comedy of manners both uproarious and hideous.

Abbott Elementary has become my favorite of the mockumentary sitcoms, combining the precise banter of a Modern Family with the workplace focus of The Office. It solves what I’ve always viewed as the biggest pitfall of the format: mockumentaries tend to develop comedy by making their characters awful, ignorant, and inhumane. That can work for What We Do in the Shadows, which continues to be a strong show where most of the lead characters are vampires and their inhumanity is the joke, but even there the thing that keeps us returning is the bond of their found family.

When a mockumentary is about people in an office being horribly passive-aggressive to each other, I’ve always wondered why I would spend my free time in that if I’d spent my day in it already. Modern Family might be one of the best written comedies of our time, but even there you’ve got a lot of the situational comedy arising from characters’ toxicity toward each other. Abbott Elementary finds a way to deliver a near-perfect mockumentary while doing it with characters I actually like, admire, and want to spend time with.

Komi Can’t Communicate might get overlooked by audiences who don’t watch anime, and that’s a shame. It started as an emotive slice-of-life anime with streaks of lightning-fast visual humor. Its second season has elevated it into one of the best things on TV, doubling down on its irreverent satire of some of the weirdest parts of slice-of-life anime, while filling the screen with visual gags. Yet through it all, the show also acts as a profoundly peaceful and accepting safe space for neurodivergence.

Our Flag Means Death starts slow and a bit broad in its comedy, but when it gets going it delivers an incredibly touching story without giving up its punchy pirate parody. It has some of the best improvised elements on TV, largely thanks to Taika Waititi’s performance as Blackbeard. The best episodes are directed by Bert and Bertie, and I hope they ask the duo back to helm a greater portion of the second season.

I’d also mention Angelyne, which uses its comedy to describe the appeal of those who are famous simply for being famous, and how this mirrors the rise of the con artist celebrity. Does 80s icon Angelyne fit only into that mold, or does she extend into the territory of feminist icon and pioneer of the camp aesthetic that offers marginalized people acceptance? That’s the central question of a series that offers several answers from several conflicting perspectives – all of them holding degrees of truth and untruth. It’s a complex portrayal within a series of heightened realities, none of which you can be sure are accurate, and Emmy Rossum’s performance as Angelyne is one of the best of the year.

A League of Their Own encapsulates a lot of what I want to see on TV, recounting the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s. You can criticize it for being a remake of the 1992 film starring Geena Davis, Lori Petty, and Madonna, but a film made 30 years ago couldn’t honestly tell the stories of how the league served as a space for LGBTQ+ members to be themselves at a time when they found acceptance nowhere else. It’s one of the best reasons I’ve seen for remaking something, and the remake is both funny and poignant.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is one of the best things out of the MCU. I’ll confess, like its main character Jennifer I also hoped for more of a legal comedy than a superhero one, but She-Hulk hardly has to answer to me. What it does become is the most successful comedy in the MCU alongside Thor: Ragnarok. It’s also a drastically needed change-up for a cinematic universe that is far too often repeating its ideas and plot structures.

SCI-FI, FANTASY, AND THE MCU

The MCU as a whole has had an extremely good year, regardless of what incel tupperware parties want to whine about. Moon Knight delivered some really different elements into the MCU, crafting a supernatural archaeological adventure around a few brilliant Oscar Isaac performances.

Ms. Marvel returned the MCU to the YA space, which is dearly overdue three years after you have Spider-Man shouting “Activate instant kill” so he can somersault his blade suit to gut dozens of henchfolk. I do feel like Ms. Marvel felt a little condensed and could’ve paced itself better with two additional episodes, but that’s true of most MCU series, and wanting more is pretty favorable as criticisms go. Ms. Marvel also boasted some stellar setpieces – including what might be the single best sequence in the MCU to date: a searing and heartbreaking portrayal of the last train out during the Partition of India.

Outside the MCU, sci-fi and fantasy are also at high points, depending on what you’re looking for from the genres. Andor is the best piece of Star Wars we’ve had in years, rejoining the franchise with a 70s storytelling ethic that asks the audience to be patient with a slowly unfolding, atmospherically dense story about complicated, morally gray characters.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds stands as the best of the new Treks. They’re all pretty high quality, but Strange New Worlds features strong episodic writing and directing that cleverly foreshadows longer arcs without needing you to take notes on them. That shouldn’t seem too difficult, but given that very few other series can balance episodic writing with such a soft touch for arcs, maybe it is. Either way, SNW gets it done and its ability to swap between the storytelling approaches of different eras and styles of Trek is a treat for fans. It shifts smoothly between speculative sci-fi original Trek stories, DS9 cultural critiques, Next Generation diplomacy quandaries, DS9 and Voyager comedy, Voyager and Enterprise action, Discovery emotional connection, some good old submarine episodes, and adds in better horror than we’ve seen in the franchise previously. It manages to do everything that every other Trek was able to do, while reinforcing it all as part of a cohesive whole.

In fantasy, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power might be the single most overwrought series I’ve ever watched, but damn does it earn it. If you don’t like flowery monologues melodramatically captured in front of bazillions of dollars of set design, costuming, and CGI backdrops, you might not like it. If you want fantasy to be grim and gritty betrayal-incestatheater you can’t see half the time because apparently no one invented torches just yet, other options are available. On the other hand, if you want some achingly designed classical fantasy that actually uses its fantastical elements to world-build and argue for notions of hope, perseverance, and equality, The Rings of Power is a beautiful option.

For modern gothic fantasy, let me recommend Polish series Cracow Monsters. It’s informed by the same cultural folklore that shapes the world of The Witcher, but the contemporary series also recalls the intimate aspects of early 90s horror like Flatliners and Jacob’s Ladder. Its sumptuously gothic aesthetic continues a uniquely Eastern European view on horror that reflects and refines the Prague horror boom of the 2000s. Its shadows are deep, pops of color rich, and it’s always either raining or muddy in Cracow.

I’d also mention Turkish series Midnight at the Pera Palace. What starts out as a comedic light mystery builds out an intriguing and consequential time travel lore that intersects with a key moment of Turkish independence and leadership. While there are many Turkish series that serve partly as propaganda for its autocracy, there are several that creatively argue for racial equality, feminist values, and recognition of its full history. Midnight at the Pera Palace fits into this, perhaps not as outspokenly as something like The Club, but in a way that is unmistakable nonetheless. As someone who far prefers outright mysteries to light mysteries, I’m surprised how much I like Midnight at the Pera Palace and its ability to bridge into well-developed time travel sci-fi and some social commentary.

IS THERE STILL ROOM FOR DRAMA?

This doesn’t leave a ton of room for more traditional drama, but I don’t want to overlook that Pachinko is still my series of the year thus far. Its directed about as exactly as something can be, yet without ever feeling like it’s aesthetically suffocated. Often, highly designed and precisely planned images can reroute our emotional connection away from actors and through the director’s vision. It’s an approach that can evoke some unique things, but often introduces a certain distance from the story. We begin to observe rather than feel in the moment. Instead, the emotion of Pachinko feels released by finely honed direction that puts performances first. Its gorgeously realized and acted, and I’m endlessly impressed by how breathtakingly cinematic its direction is without ever taking away from the actors for a visual.

Under the Banner of Heaven is also in my top 10. It’s been compared to True Detective, but its focus on how fanaticism can feed on religious history for its justification – and on how organized religion can in turn aid, abet, and even participate in that fanaticism – goes beyond some of what the HBO show does. There’s a unique sense of escalation and rhythm in Under the Banner of Heaven, a surge that accelerates into pacing crescendos.

The Bear doesn’t approach things in a traditional dramatic sense – it feels very new. The story of a chef trying to save his late brother’s restaurant features one of the best ensembles of the year. I have to admit, I only watch it one episode at a time. While brilliant, it presses on some triggers that make it something I appreciate in measured doses rather than as a binge watch. In a curious way, its focus on the connection and community-building aspects of food remind me of Pig, last year’s Nicolas Cage feature. The two couldn’t be more different in terms of energy or storytelling approach, but they plumb similar territory on a subject that isn’t often portrayed with appropriate depth in drama. They make a very appropriate pairing in my mind, Pig seeing with patience and consideration what The Bear sees through frenzy and chaos.

Bel-Air also stands out as an incredibly smart re-invention of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It’s another remake with a point, and with a depth that seems to have gotten overlooked. In particular, the retelling of Carlton’s story delves more deeply into the internalized racism and impostor syndrome Carlton puts himself through (never being accepted as white no matter how much he rejects his Blackness). The original is one of the best sitcoms ever made, but in the 90s it could only touch on these themes briefly, and made them an easy joke as much as it ever explored them. Beyond this, Jabari Banks’ Will is as accomplished a portrayal of Will Smith’s Will as we could possibly ask for.

WHAT HAVE I MISSED?

There are a number of other shows I’d recommend this year. The animated Harley Quinn has become more focused and consistent without losing its moments of chaotic absurdity. Alien-out-of-water Resident Alien features some great comedic acting. Shows like Reacher and Heartstopper are good binge-watching choices even if I feel they could have gotten more breathing room by reaching beyond their choice aesthetics.

That’s not everything, and there’s obviously some series I haven’t mentioned. I still need to finish one or two like Severance, and I haven’t found the time to get started on Trinity of Shadows, The Essex Serpent, Irma Vep, Dark Winds, or The Peripheral. I’ve been saving The Sandman for one of the holiday breaks so I can just absorb into it without having to come back out for a time. I haven’t watched the second season of Only Murders in the Building yet.

I’m also woefully behind on this year’s anime. If Sonny Boy director Natsume Shingo’s Tatami Time Machine Blues is anything like his longing and melancholic masterpiece last year, I’ll watch it late at night when everything’s quiet and I have time to reflect and process it. It’s part of a incredibly strong, introspective universe of adapted Morimi Tomihiko novels that also include The Tatami Galaxy and the phenomenally animated The Night is Short, Walk on Girl.

I’ve heard great things about Spy x Family, and need to make time for it. While Akebi’s Sailor Uniform isn’t my kind of show, I think Komi Can’t Communicate made me open up a bit to slice-of-life stories, and its stunning animation of nature does have me wanting to see if it echoes that peacefulness. And of course, I need to finish this year’s continuation of Pacific Rim: The Black, whose first part was one of the most unexpected surprises last year.

I’m also behind on Korean shows, such as the musical The Sound of Magic, and the contemporary crime adaptation of Little Women. I’ve been holding off on All of Us Are Dead because zombie series have felt too…dire and on-the-nose for me to watch in our current political environment. Maybe if the election goes well I’ll watch it, and if it doesn’t I’ll make a Best Show I Didn’t Watch award. I’m also excited mystery Flower of Evil just finally made it stateside. One of the most qualitative television industries in the world, two Korean series made my top 10 last year: Squid Game is obvious, but I felt vengeance actioner My Name was even better.

Remember to VOTE, encourage others to VOTE, and help them get to their polling places if you can.

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Why I (Almost) Never Skip the Opening Credits

Life is short and there are more good shows out there than we’ll ever have the time to see. So why do I almost never skip the credit sequence? Some shows take care of it themselves, either by not having one or having one so short that it’s over before you can even hit “Skip Intro”. It’s the long ones I’m talking about, though, the ones with a whole musical composition and listing the names involved.

OK, I will skip some credit sequences. It’s never a long road from there to here for me on “Star Trek: Enterprise” because I always take the shortcut. No, that song hasn’t gotten better, ironically or otherwise. I’ll also skip the openings on reality competitions, and this is what gets me thinking that my taste for credits has more to do with storytelling. The credit sequences I like most – the ones that stay with me and that I’ll seek out on YouTube to watch an extra few times – are the ones that establish an atmosphere and feeling that the scenes around them can play with.

Take the opening credits for “Evil”, centered on a small team investigating supernatural and mythological occurrences for the often unreliable Catholic Church. The show is a rarity as an actually scary horror series, boosted by one of the best ensembles on television. More than this, it’s got a palpable vein of humor running through it. It’s quick to incorporate current activism, criticize toxic trends, and has a talent for building tension off meta and meme humor. The opening credits have evolved from season to season so that the visuals reflect internal crises the characters are facing.

The credits capture a balance between the creeping suggestion of terror and the wry, smirking humor that gives it contrast. Is this going to be a funny episode, or a terrifying one? Will one turn into the other? Few shows are as good at putting you off-balance, and I watch the credits every time as the portal into that feeling. You’re looking at this curious, enigmatic, suggestive, escalating impression of something strange, which puts you right alongside the characters who do the same every episode. It’s a perfect introduction.

Of course, it’s not the only good one out there. The less said about “Severance” going into it, the better. Step in with no foreknowledge and you can have an exquisite time. Of course, the title sequence tells you a lot without your knowing it, so your impression can change as you get deeper into the series.

The blending of influences from Salvador Dali, Hieronymus Bosch, and German expressionism presented in the regimented, symmetrical, fractal manner of early computer art turns those opening credits into a moving painting, an evocative poem before the story itself.

Those are both pretty creepy openings. It’s not the only way opening titles can set a tone, but they don’t get to their unnerving places in the same way. They don’t even incorporate humor in the same way. “Evil” accelerates, increases the feeling of threat and pairs it with its macabre sense of humor. It portrays internal character struggles against the contrast of an exterior, unknowable, existential threat.

By contrast, “Severance” portrays its external plot with an internalized progression – the music is almost cautious, the images all center on its lead character and the things happening to him. Whereas the opening sequence for “Evil” is an escalating tone poem of impressions and visual humor built on our discomfort at the unexpected, the opening sequence for “Severance” is a journey of endurance filled with details and a visual humor built on schadenfreude. “Evil” invites us in to see things from the perspective of its characters. “Severance” points the finger back at us in a way that asks us to observe not just the show, but ourselves.

The best opening sequence of the year has a completely different feeling, though. For a series that witnesses characters endure such historical hardship, the joyous opening of “Pachinko” is a way of shaking off the narrow vision of one perspective, of asking us to see more in the characters than what they suffer. It’s also a way of treating survival, of diaspora itself, as a joy, that the only way for a culture to survive attempted genocide is for it to celebrate itself unabashedly.

By putting actors together who play characters in different eras, it also reminds us that actors playing these roles is in itself an acknowledgment, a celebration, an act of survival, of keeping alive those who didn’t make it, of reclaiming stories that someone else tried to erase. Few shows have been as utterly, breathtakingly beautiful as “Pachinko”. Every time, the opening titles open us up to seeing so much in each character.

Sometimes it’s not the opening that sets a tone, but the closing credits. Many shows opt for the title slam that sits there for two or three seconds to separate its cold open from whatever follows, but no opening sequence otherwise. It’s just straight prologue to action. Disney+ has favored this with its various original series in favor of more complex closing credits – which you sit through, of course, because of their post-credit stinger scenes. They often make this worth your while, such as the sumptuous concept art they show after each episode of “The Mandalorian”. It’s not just gorgeous art, it also shows you how something was changed from concept to filming.

And while the closing credits for “Moon Knight” and “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” are both powerful, my favorite from Disney this year goes to “Ms. Marvel”. It contemplates through a child’s eyes the cultural impact of a billion white heroes on film with a few scattered heroes of color. What is the impact of that on a child of color? How do they see a world that prizes a certain type of person, and how do they see themselves in that world? How do they see their access to that world and how do they want to change it? How do they envision themselves as a hero in that world when it’s tooth and nail just to get the world to envision them that way once?

My favorite closing credits this year go to “Komi Can’t Communicate”. I’m pretty indifferent to slice-of-life anime, it’s just generally not my thing. I prefer sneaky cosmic horror anime, or post-apocalypse rock people, or Witcher-as-superchill-mythologecologist, or avant garde interdimensional survival. But people just existing? Ugh.

Yet “Komi Can’t Communicate” captures a serene sense of being, in the face of social anxiety so bad its title character can barely say a word to those she wishes would be her friends. It’s a deeply empathetic show built around the moments of opening up and learning to be happy with yourself that keep people going, and it also works as a satire on anime tropes that’s equipped with a lightning-quick visual humor.

The best compliment I can give it is that once, after watching a pair of episodes, I found myself just not doing the compulsions that are part of my OCD. I felt no pressing need to check the lock several times or that the faucet and stove were off over and over again. I could be where I was at peace, without a thousand things running through my head. Whatever anxiety drives those behaviors was just…gone for a time. My best guess is that part of it’s because the show manages to find what’s peaceful amidst chaos, and more keenly because it empathizes with the experience of anxiety at a core level that makes me feel understood. I can’t recall anything else I’ve watched ever having this effect on me.

As an anime, it has a few different opening and closing sequences depending on the style of episode, but its new closing credits capture moments frozen in time from the classroom across two different parts of the year. Aside from its sense of calm and well-being, it finds a way to describe each character. Every time you watch it, you can focus on a different character being themselves, evoking what you like or find interesting about them, their relationships with each other, and their own compulsions. You can see something new by following a different character or relationship every time you watch, or you can just let your eye wander across the scene. It captures what’s fulfilling about the series as a whole, and what connects about each character individually.

There’s often so much to a title or credit sequence. If series are connected short stories, these sequences are poems and interludes that join them, that evoke a different part of ourselves. We understand short stories with an analytical, even logical eye. Title and credit sequences are an opportunity to open up another part of ourselves that’s more willing to soak in the world, to appreciate the impressions it leaves in our memory and not just its plot. The title sequence sits outside of chronology or logical explanation. It gets to follow different rules, and it keeps attentive the part in each of us that views with those different rules. That’s why I (almost) never skip the intro on fiction. I want that part of me anticipating, enrapt, searching for feeling and atmosphere as much as I am for plot and character development.

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“Ms. Marvel” and the Order of the Fainting Couch

Let’s talk about conservatives, how we measure viewership, and “Ms. Marvel”…by talking about an extinct creature that once roamed the earth: the newspaper. For a long time, newspapers followed a rule. You needed regular features to keep your subscribers happy, and you needed fresh headlines to accumulate rack sales – people buying at newstands and in checkout lines. As print media has faded, you might say that this guideline no longer matters – and what could it possibly have to do with the MCU? Well, look around.

Do you read news online? You probably have a few regular sites you frequent, but you’ll still click on big headlines – sometimes even before checking the source. 24-hour news networks balance regular features and weekly programs with breaking news and specials. Even something like ESPN has their daily shows – usually all talking about the same few stories over and over again – balanced against unique documentaries and timely interviews that will speak to narrower bands of their audience.

That’s all legacy media, though. OK, the biggest streamers run regular, familiar content at the same time each week, but create and jump on other special events. Many devote time to playing one game they’re working through one day each week, and then leave other days up to new games and IRL content. YouTubers balance recurring features on a regular, predictable basis (usually weekly or monthly) with forays into new content to see what material hooks (and can eventually become the next regular weekly content).

Why should the MCU be any different? Reaction to “Ms. Marvel” has been both wonderful and horrible. Many viewers love it, and my Muslim friends have been speaking out about mainstream representation in a way they’ve rarely been able to discuss in the U.S. At the same time, reviews are being brigaded by racists pulling scores down and complaining about woke casting shoving diversity down their throats.

Let’s be real: Islam accounts for 25% of the world’s population. We’ve had 28 films and 18 series in the MCU. “Ms. Marvel” means that one of them has centered on a Muslim character. That’s about 2% of all MCU films and series. Two-percent to represent 25%, and this is somehow overrepresentation? It’s too much for you? Are you a Great Gatsby character – you need a fainting couch and some pearls to clutch? The only amount of representation that is less than one out of 46 is zero out of 46: complete erasure.

Let’s be clear what that argument really is. The complaint isn’t about overrepresentation, it’s about hate. It’s about being angry a group of people has been made barely visible. It’s about fearing that they are happy and feel represented, when before you could enjoy some small emulation of self-importance making them feel unseen. One out of 46 and your shit has been lost because some people feel seen.

If white replacement theory is scandalized by the notion that the quarter of the world that is Muslim is represented two-percent of the time, then I can’t imagine any way of thinking that’s smaller, more fragile, or more cowardly.

Ah, but the news about viewership proves them right, right? Full steam to the S.S. Fainting Couch, bowtied conservolads! “Ms. Marvel” is the least viewed MCU debut on Disney+. While Disney+ doesn’t release numbers itself, TV analytics companies assess a viewership range based on a lot of other data. According to SambaTV, “Ms. Marvel” only got 0.8 million viewers compared to the next least-watched of the Disney+ MCU shows: the 1.5 million of “Hawkeye”. Of course, those other shows are being produced at $25 million an episode – I’d be shocked if this were the case for a YA series like “Ms. Marvel”.

Oh look, I’m on the defensive already! I’m making excuses! You’ll steal my fainting couch for yourselves yet! So let’s talk about subscription vs. rack sales in terms of the MCU.

Chris Hemsworth is 38. Sebastian Stan is 39. Tom Hiddleston is 41. Chris Pratt is 42. Oscar Isaac is 43. Anthony Mackie is 43. Benedict Cumberbatch is 45. Paul Bettany is 51. Paul Rudd is 53 going on 30. Jeremy Renner is 51 going on 140. Hemsworth, Stan, and Hiddleston could be doing this another decade, but if Robert Downey Jr. was getting too old for this at 54 when most of his action scenes were being done through CGI, then how long are some of those actors going to be able to keep playing these roles?

And as much as we’d like to think that Brie Larson at 32, Elizabeth Olsen at 33, and Evangeline Lilly at 42 have plenty of time left, the franchise was willing to cut bait with Scarlett Johansson – the biggest star left in the franchise – when she was 36. It’d be great if the MCU sees women heroes return into their 50s the way it lets men, and it’s something we should insist on seeing, but what we’re fighting is a long precedent for major franchises retiring women a lot younger than they retire men.

The MCU needs more than Tom Holland, Simu Liu, and Hailee Steinfeld. It’s got the subscribers – Gen X and Millennials. We’re hooked in, by fandom or by sunk cost fallacy. If we’ve devoted this many hours of our lives to the MCU, I guess we’ve got to see what happens next. Sure, “Spider-people vs. Lokis” is just going to be 25 stunt-castings of each re-enacting the battle royale from “Anchorman”, but what else is a Millennial like me going to watch? A “Game of Thrones” spin-off? “Halo” season 2? I’m 20 movies and a dozen series deep into the MCU, I’ve got to see how Rob Schneider-man fights off Kevin Hart’s Loki #5.

The point is that the rack sales don’t make up the core of your audience. They won’t match the spending or numbers of your subscribers – but a subscriber base that never adds new subscribers will dwindle and fade. It can only be kept up so long. It’s those rack sales that convert new audience into subscribers. To convert them into subscribers, you’ve got to give them new reasons to show up.

The MCU isn’t going to get much more penetration into white America than it already has. It’s not going to get more Gen X and Millennial viewers, especially in terms of topping out its male viewership. It’s hit the point of diminishing returns on both.

SamboTV is saying “Ms. Marvel” doesn’t have the audience of the other Disney+ shows. So? The other thing they’re saying – that gets conveniently left out of The Fainting Couch Report – is that its audience is very different from those other Disney+ shows, with a much higher rate of Gen Z viewers and viewers of color. That’s new audience. That’s the group that’ll keep the MCU viable over the next decade-plus. That’s the audience you need to start showing up reliably in the way Gen X and Millennials have if you still want an MCU at this scale in a decade.

Some defenses rightly cite that there’s resistance by viewers who won’t watch a Muslim superhero. I’m sure that impacts the viewership numbers and needs to be talked about, but it’s not some proof that’s going to make a point to Disney. Disney isn’t sitting there saying, “Oh boy, our profit margin on ‘Ms. Marvel’ really depends on racists liking it!”

Others say that MCU shows on Disney+ weren’t released at the same time as a new Star Wars show, as “Ms. Marvel” is debuting opposite “Obi-Wan Kenobi”. I’m not sure that defense is accurate. Disney+ may see a spike in subscribers at this time, and the streaming service’s paid subscribers had already grown 33% year-over-year by early May – before either show debuted. More to the point, I’m not sure this defense is needed.

Here’s what I think is more relevant. Paul Rudd’s Ant Man has the 21st and 25th highest ranking movies in the MCU. Both films combined don’t reach the box office of 7th ranked “Captain Marvel”, but I don’t hear anyone arguing it’s proof Paul Rudd shouldn’t be part of the MCU.

Chris Hemsworth’s three Thor films rank 16th, 22nd, and 24th in the MCU. Why aren’t the review brigading fans insisting this is proof he shouldn’t be included?

Rudd and Hemsworth are by far the two worst-performing leads remaining in the MCU, unless you want to include mid-pandemic debuts. But they’re fan favorites. Odd how that works.

Rack sales convert into subscriptions, and you can’t make rack sales to an audience that’s already subscribed. You need new viewers. You need new types of viewers. You can’t produce either out of old viewers.

The MCU’s been going for 14 years, since “Iron Man” came out in 2008. I’m sure it wants to keep going for another 14. Are they going to trot out Benedict Cumberbatch at 59? Paul Rudd, vampirishly young as he stays, at 65? Are we going to be watching 55 year-old Tom Hiddleston re-unite with a 52-year old Chris Hemsworth? Some of them may still exist in the franchise, but I have my doubts most will be leading films or series. Are we going to stick with a 40 year-old Peter Parker? Will those actors even still want to play those roles at that age? And as great of a decision as it would be – as needed as it would be – if the MCU is groundbreaking enough to center movies on a woman superhero in her 50s, I will eat some kind of hat.

“Ms. Marvel” lead Iman Vellani is 19, making her the youngest superhero lead in the MCU by five years. A more diverse, younger audience is more important to the next 14 years of the MCU than a bunch of Millennials who’ll be in our 40s and 50s come 2036. The show has half the audience of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”, but I guarantee you that the MCU isn’t banking on Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, or their primary audience 14 years from now. It’s not even banking on Holland or Steinfeld at that point. It’s banking on actors like Vellani and a number of people we haven’t even heard of yet. It’s banking on characters they’ll need to build up before they judge the current ensemble has aged out. It’s banking on a broader range of viewers so that it doesn’t need to rely on pleasing a narrower range. The more aggressive and demanding that narrow range of viewers is, the more it just proves how quickly the MCU needs to diversify its viewership.

“Ms. Marvel” is good, too, by the way. I’m enjoying it a lot more than some of the MCU series and movies that’ve preceded it and that just keep on doing the same things. A “Where’s Waldo” of Spider-men may engage me now, but new perspectives, new voices, and new storytelling will contribute much more to keeping me interested over the next decade. The MCU is one of the few things that plan that far ahead, and that’s how its series and films should be measured. They’ve got countless projects to slow down current viewers from leaving – maybe too many. If you wonder why they’re making series like “Ms. Marvel” and the upcoming “Echo”, it’s because they need to start getting new audiences in quickly if they hope to convert them into diehard MCU fans a decade from now.

You can watch “Ms. Marvel” on Disney+. I highly recommend it.

If you enjoy articles like this, subscribe to Gabriel Valdez’s Patreon. It helps with the time and resources to write more like it.

New Shows + Movies by Women — June 10, 2022

I’ve written about review brigading before and the MCU’s newest series “Ms. Marvel” is getting some of the worst in a while. Apparently eight films centered around white actors named Chris and four projects for the Tom H.s of the world isn’t enough to balance out one lone series that represents a quarter of the world’s population.

We’ve had 25 MCU films centered on white characters, three centered on non-white ones, 13 series centered on white characters, 5 on non-white ones (I’m treating “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and “Cloak & Dagger” as half a count each).

Nearly 25% of the world’s population is Muslim, but making two-percent of your projects about someone who’s Muslim is too woke and pandering? Who do we think they’re pandering to if 78% of their output centers on a demographic that accounts for only 10-to-20 percent of the world’s population? Because that’s what they’ve done for their white audience. White viewers are overrepresented by a factor of four, while Muslim viewers are underrepresented by a factor of 12, yet this is somehow pandering to Muslims?

The only thing less would be erasure, but that’s the point when this kind of review brigading happens. You might say to ignore it, but a lot of people decide on whether to watch a series by checking the aggregated user scores on Metacritic or IMDB. Right now both have been deflated because some people are offended Muslim people aren’t staying invisible.

I don’t know about you, but when something like that happens, I watch the shit out of whatever they’re brigading. I watched the premiere – it’s a great start to a coming-of-age superhero series and the best premiere among the Disney+ series outside “Loki”.

But that’s not even the point. I mean, we kept the MCU going after extremely subpar films like “Thor: The Dark World” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. That we have to prove something like “Ms. Marvel” is exceptional when we don’t even have to prove projects like “Dark World” or “Ultron” are passable – that’s the point. What if it were average? Would that mean it shouldn’t exist? Cause I’ve seen a couple of average pieces come out of the MCU, and what I always hear about them are the arguments for the parts that are good, or how they tie into other projects we’re hopeful for.

It’s the film directed by Chloe Zhao or the series starring a Muslim woman that have to prove their exceptional nature in order to be granted legitimacy to a group that already lionizes the exceedingly average. The thing is, the parts of the MCU that are new, inclusive, that tackle new ground with characters who haven’t gotten their moment yet – that’s the part of the MCU that still excites me. The crap that worships the average and seeks to repeat it over and over again, that’s the part of the MCU that feels like a bunch of unrewarding homework. That’s the part that needs to prove it’s exceptional, because I’ve already seen 20 movies like that already – if you can’t do something different, include someone you haven’t before, then I’ve seen you already. I haven’t seen anything like “Ms. Marvel”, which gives me a reason to visit the MCU again.

NEW SERIES

Ms. Marvel (Disney+)
showrunner Bisha K. Ali

While attending Avengercon, Kamala Khan discovers that she possesses her own superhero powers.

Creator and showrunner Bisha K. Ali was a data scientist and domestic violence support worker before she shifted into stand-up comedy. She moved into screenwriting on Mindy Kaling’s “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, and worked with the MCU previously as a story editor on “Loki”.

Four of the six episodes are directed by women, with two apiece from “For All Mankind” director Meera Menon and documentary producer Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.

You can watch “Ms. Marvel” on Disney+. The premiere is available now with a new hourlong episode dropping every Wednesday for a total of 6.

Intimacy (Netflix)
showrunners Veronica Fernandez, Laura Sarmiento Pallares

A revenge porn video threatens the career of an up-and-coming politician. This Spanish series follows four women who see their lives upended by similar attacks.

Veronica Fernandez and Laura Sarmiento Pallares are both experienced writers in Spanish film, with Fernandez winning a Goya for “El Bola” and each seeing Iris Award nominations for different series.

You can watch “Intimacy” on Netflix. All 8 hourlong episodes are out.

CW: brief imagery of mass shooting

Queer as Folk (Peacock)
co-showrunner Jaclyn Moore

A new adaptation of the onetime BBC (and then Showtime) series, “Queer as Folk” follows a group of LGBTQ+ friends recovering after a mass shooting incident.

Jaclyn Moore showruns with Stephen Dunn. Moore previously wrote as co-showrunner on “Dear White People”. She famously left that show in opposition to Netflix’s support of Dave Chappelle’s transphobic remarks.

You can watch “Queer as Folk” on Peacock. All 8 hourlong episodes are out.

First Kill (Netflix)
showrunner Felicia D. Henderson

Juliette and Calliope fall in love. The only problem for the two students is that one’s a vampire, the other a vampire hunter. The series is based on a short story by V.E. Schwab.

Showrunner Felicia D. Henderson brings a lot of relevant experience to the table, with a writing and production history that includes “Fringe”, “Gossip Girl”, “The Punisher”, and “Empire”.

You can watch “First Kill” on Netflix. All 8 hourlong episodes are out.

Baby Fever (Netflix)
co-showrunner Amalie Naesby Fick

This Danish dramedy follows Nana, a fertility doctor who drunkenly inseminates herself with her ex-boyfriend’s sperm. This leads to a pregnancy she now has to explain to friends and family.

Obviously, the premise intersects with issues of donor consent and fertility fraud. I don’t know how responsibly the series handles it.

Amalie Naesby Fick created, writes, and directs the show with Nikolaj Feifer.

You can watch “Baby Fever” on Netflix. All 6 half-hour episodes are out.

NEW MOVIES

Trees of Peace (Netflix)
directed by Alanna Brown

In 1994, four women are trapped together during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. They work together to endure and survive.

Writer-director Alanna Brown has written on “Blindspotting”. This is her first feature.

You can watch “Trees of Peace” on Netflix.

Take a look at new shows + movies by women from past weeks.

If you enjoy what you read on this site, subscribe to Gabriel Valdez’s Patreon. It helps with the time and resources to continue writing articles like this one.