This Week: Stuffed Animals for the Win

What are you all watching this week?

I just finished the first season of Severance (on Apple TV), and it's unique, clever, and exceedingly creepy science fiction. I bet you've all seen it already since it's been getting critical buzz.

If you haven't seen it, it's about people who have taken a job where their work lives are completely severed from their home lives. A chip in their brain switches them while they're in the elevator to and from work. The "innies," trapped in the office, don't know who they are or anything about their home lives. Ditto the "outies," who have no idea what they do all day at the company, which is called Lumon. (No meaning to that name, huh?)

The season finale – there are nine episodes – is just gripping, edge-of-your-seat stuff. If I weren't already committed to two other shows that are returning next week, I'd have to review it.

Adam D. Jones: We just finished a mega season of the Arrowverse (watching the whole ball of wax from the beginning) and nothing will ever top the Bebo finale in Legends. That show continues to be the best.

But the most unintentionally funny part was The Thinker, one of the Flash's villains, when he uses his power of switching bodies to send his mind into the body of a young woman. Why is this funny? Because while he's using her body he shows up in the most ridiculous updo I've ever seen. He must spend 45 minutes every morning doing his hair only to spend the day chastising his wife every time she's not wholly focused on their stupid take-over-the-world plot. We can only assume that this detached and cold villain has secretly always wanted to live as a woman and intends to live it up while he can.

I'm happy that Arrow has abandoned the flashbacks. They were getting laborious.

Meanwhile, I finished the original run of Gilmore Girls and Rory became more insufferable with every season. When a scene switched to her, I found myself picking up my phone and doomscrolling Instagram until she was gone. I'm going to dive into the revival soon, and I've been warned it's rotten. I assume it's people telling Rory she's The Chosen One while she ignores everyone's problems.

Also, there's a lot of fat shaming on Gilmore Girls. Rory callously compares someone to a hippo in the Yale newspaper. This person actually shows up and looks completely normal, so apparently if you're not a size zero Rory is going to tell everyone you're ugly and don't belong on stage.

Victoria Grossack: I'm traveling this week, and have limited screen access, but before I started my travels I binged on the last ten episodes of Manifest. They were not able to answer all my questions, but I still enjoyed it. Also, on my most recent hop across the pond, I watched the movie, The Whale. It was a bit contrived in parts, but still a good movie. Although I do prefer Brendan Fraser's good looks in his earlier works.

Billie Doux: I'm about halfway through Manifest season 4B and liking it so far.

Josie Kafka: I watched Severance last summer during my first Apple TV binge and really loved it, especially by the end of the first season. It stuck with me, too.

I recently wrapped up Ted Lasso, which I'd recommend to anyone looking for an after-school special for adults. It's cozy. I liked it even though I don't care about sports.

I've hit a few duds recently. I watched Sharper, an Apple TV movie with Sebastian Stan, Julianne Moore, and John Lithgow, and I just felt dirty afterwards. Con artist shows are so tawdry.

I tried to watch Based on a True Story, a new series on Peacock, about an LA couple in need of money who start a true crime podcast about an active serial killer... and they know who he is! It's not as funny as it wants to be, and like Sharper, just left me feeling sad about the state of human existence. People need to remember that the question "Is this plan a good idea?" cannot be answered only with information about how much money they'll make if they go through with the plan.

I also watched Three Pines, a Canadian murder-mystery series starring Alfred Molina, based on a series of Louise Penny books. It was rather blah – not nearly as good or meaningful as it wanted to be, although I did watch the whole thing, so it was good enough.

I have, however, read some fun stuff recently, including two cozy haunted house mysteries, both set in the Carolinas: T. Kingfisher's A House with Good Bones about an adult daughter and her aging mother dealing with a presence that likes to garden and has strong opinions on manners.

Grady Hendrix's How to Sell a Haunted House, in which two adult children return home after their parents' deaths to discover their childhood home is haunted by their mother's puppets and dolls. Puppets and dolls are terrifying, but I really liked the detail that the stuffed animals (what I think of as "the normal toys") would just turn their back on the most evil puppet. Stuffed animals for the win! (So far, at least. I haven't finished the book yet.)

Samantha M. Quinn: Severance is indeed excellent, and it consistently remained unpredictable until the end. I am glad I stuck with it because those first couple episodes were so weird and confusing.

Manifest 4B is also shaping up nicely, I'm not quite done with it but I do like most of what is going on save for Zimmer and Angelina, who are just awful. I had some hope that Eagan might reform. I guess we'll see.

Adam, while I didn't care for some of Rory's choices in season six, and the less said about season seven the better, I thought the revival was perfectly fine. I haven't watched it in a while, but for the most part it was a pretty good conclusion for the characters.

I'm about halfway through Star Wars: Rebels season three and it is still consistently good. I'm looking forward more and more to the upcoming Ahsoka series which seems like a pseudo-sequel to Rebels.

I finally just started watching Harley Quinn, the R-rated cartoon on Max, and it is really, really good. I blitzed through most of the first season in a day and I really love the characters and the writing. I also know what's coming later in the series and I'm very excited to get there.

Josie, I absolutely love the idea that stuffed animals are inherently good. I still have one surviving stuffed bear (it's a large black bear with brown paws) sitting in a prominent place in my office.

With The Witcher season three coming soon, I'm gonna have to catch up through season two. (When season two came out, I watched almost all of season one.) I don't have a lot of hope that Hemsworth will be a good fit after Cavill leaves at the end of the season, so I'll probably stop watching then.

Josie Kafka: I still have my most important childhood bears. When I was in college, one of my parents (I don't remember which one) gave them all back to me when they were cleaning out a closet.

I can't throw them out! They're my bears! And I can't donate them, because these bears are middle-aged, and so obviously would not connect to a small child. Also, they're probably made with some sort of carcinogenic fur from the 80s.

I don't display them, because that would be... odd. A couple bears would be cute. But we're talking about six or seven bears here. I keep them in a cubby. It's a bear cub(by), I guess.

Anyway, I did finish How to Sell a Haunted House, and the stuffed animals [highlight to read the spoiler] didn't help defeat the big bad, because they were so scared they hid under the bed. That's okay. It's not their job to defeat evil.

Billie Doux: I wish I still had my teddy bear. He was small, pale yellow, with orange button eyes, and quite boringly named "Teddy." I don't know what happened to him, but I would have never thrown him out. Clearly, someone broke in and stole him.

Samantha M. Quinn: I lost my beloved Rucy, I think it was supposed to be Lucy after "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," but I was a kid and that's objectively adorable now that I think about it. She was some kind of long-eared dog or rabbit, I can't really remember. It was after cross country move and we had stored some boxes with a relative and the storage space got flooded. No one's fault, but I still miss her.

On a brighter note, I just finished Harley Quinn season two and it was exactly what I wanted.

Mikey Heinrich: My beloved childhood dog Bingo is still at my dad's house where I grew up. I haven't visited him in ages. Bingo, that is. I see my dad all the time.

I've been watching Lovecraft Country finally, and man, is it intense. Your mileage with Jonathan Majors might affect your feelings about it as well. It's good, but it's a lot.

Finished the final season of Ted Lasso while I was sick last week. Hooray for a show going out of its way to normalize men getting help for psychiatric issues, amongst so many other positive messages.

In between those I've begun The West Wing, and... oh, 1999 optimism for the role of government. I have such terrible news for you...

I do feel obligated to point out regarding Lovecraft Country – that's not what it looks like inside a burning house.

But everybody gets that wrong.