Mostly Screen Time: May 2026
What I watched so you can watch it too.
This month: Little horror movies that could, the smartest movie characters are indeed sheep, and one of the best series finales in modern memory.
⭐️ Starred items mean… get on it!!
⭐️ 🎤 Hacks S5 (HBOmax) - It should be noted above all else that this series NAILED its finale and if I was doubtful at all of these creators/writers/directors, that has flown out the window. BUT I’ll say this season (of one of my favorite comedies ever) as a whole felt weirdly paced. Each episode tiptoed up against jumping a shark, then pulled back and hit me with an emotional moment. The season-long goal felt like it was not at the forefront and thus we had some episodes of silly filler (necessary to some degree to wrap up various characters’ storylines). Tonally, it makes me more certain last season’s finale should have been this season’s premiere to set up the season-long reckoning with Deborah’s legacy. In the end, I’ll never forget the opportunity to watch this series finale in a crowded theater with hand-paining applause and tears. If Heated Rivalry had the longing-in-the-club scene of 2025, Hacks takes that title for 2026. I’ll miss Deborah and Ava and Jimmy and Kayla so much and can’t wait to see what this team creates next.
⭐️ 📹 Margo’s Got Money Troubles (AppleTV) - I hate that the first thing I want to say here is: Nicole Kidman wig not bad?? It’s heavily styled of course but fits with her character and tanned skin tone and looks to be good quality. I had read this book earlier in the year and while it made a boatload of changes, this show was very good. The only show so far in 2026 to make an elegant story about OnlyFans perhaps? It’s not easy to make a compelling and different courtroom scene but the way that judge handled this case in the final episode had me tearing up! Help! Elle Fanning and Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman (and Greg Kinnear 👀) Emmy nominations incoming!
⭐️ 👩🏻🦰 The Comeback S3 (HBO) - Admittedly I jumped in very late to this series, fully diving in two months ago to a series that started in 2005 (it has aired a new season approximately every 10 years, as Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish has grown with us in somewhat real time). This final season’s storyline all around AI’s forced interruption in Hollywood resonated so much because it was mostly heartbreaking: all Valerie wants to do is make television, and she’s hit with roadblocks at every turn. The easy way to describe Valerie is “cringe” in her pursuit of success (and money, perhaps my association) but more so I think she’s earnest. While she did sign up for a job on a show written by AI, she soon took her role as the biggest voice on the production to try to stop it. She’s only one woman, but she never underestimated her own power and heart.
🏀 Running Point S2 (Netflix) - No one can accuse a Mindy Kaling produced show of not having her voice. So bright and cozy and smooth, if not to a fault with some storylines not getting enough time to develop (Brenda Song’s Ally moving to a Canadian team for only 1.5 episodes, casting Ray Romano as a head coach for barely any screen time). I will be sat for any and all future seasons of these looney tunes trying to figure out sports (relatable).
🏝️ Survivor 50 - Literally what can I say that’s not biased lol. If you’re new here, here was when I wrote about my history with this show. For this fiftieth outing, CBS made a big deal about it, and I’m interested to know if it might finally get that Emmy, 25 years into its run (that would be some kind of record, no?). The game itself left some to be desired— these all-star seasons start so exciting with their casting that I find if the final five and first five voted out were swapped, it would be equally exciting! Anyway Jeff hi hello cast me soon?
🎭 Saturday Night Live S51 - Any writing by me is a safe space against people who say “SNL has not been funny in X years” GROW UP! EMBRACE SILLINESS! Yes many sketches flop but that has always been the nature of it, even in whatever peak years you remember. ANYWAY, with season 51 wrapped, with Bowen Yang setting sail to future projects, it’s important to use this space to highlight Ashley Padilla. A featured player that joined in the 50th season, she was given room to shine this year after the cast lost two other longtime female performers in Ego Nwodim and Heidi Gardner. And she’s slowly emerged into the Kristen Wiig spot of “I just laugh when I see her on screen.” Highlights include Haircut (new vocal stim unlocked), Surprise, and Kathy. Summoning circle for Ashley Padilla Emmy nomination?????
🦸🏼♂️ The Boys S5 - In a show that has worn its metaphors and themes on its sleeve, whew this was a slog of overwrought satire, misogynistic jokes, and gratuitous violence that felt more exhausting in 2026 than it ever has before— am I crazy to posit that this fifth and final season felt more “relevant” simply because it’s been over 6 years since a season has aired during a Trump presidency? And that’s not a compliment!! The only thing that would make this more bonkers is if Donald Trump himself tweeted about how much he likes it. Perhaps in the past a satirical storyline of dictatorship was a laughing matter but HERE WE ARE AGAIN (do you recall November 2024?)!! When all is said and done, we should just be thankful that Chase Crawford got to be employed this long in a comedic role with no sleeves. Maybe I need to write something new for him.
💎 The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills S15 (Bravo) - I likely won’t stop watching this show (I say that as if I’m a lifetime viewer and I am not— I really jumped in during the height of the novel coronavirus COVID-19) but I wonder in retrospect if I found my way to these delusional ladies during a peak that we’ve been coming down from for years. The Beverly Hills I recall had Erika Jayne airing all her legal troubles and dirty laundry aloud for us to follow along! And now, with arguably the two main characters Kyle Richards and Dorit Kemsley in marital distress… they still don’t give us anything. A complaint from last season and not much has changed: Tell us about your lives or leave the show if you don’t want to! Hinting at a divorce is not enticing for the viewers! The equivalent of a podcast episode where co-hosts say “I’ll tell you off mic”. It’s frustrating to be left out of secrets while knowing they exist! Just don’t bring it up at all! Rachel Zoe good cast addition.
🥊 Daredevil: Born Again S2 (Disney+) - In May last year, I wrote: People often complain of villains in Marvel movies being boring or unmemorable but I promise the answer isn’t to have the same villain for 40 episodes across 4 seasons. Disney went through the trouble of rebooting an established Netflix show with three seasons, spinoff characters, etc and rehashed the same political dictator villain whose voice makes my throat hurt. Also what was the point of having Daredevil meet She-Hulk (good show!!!) and never cross them over again? And that is still all true. This show is so boring to me and yet very well produced so that may be why I keep showing up. This season of repeated political corruption at least took on an ICE allegory, added Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones, and did the whole “I am Iron Man” bit at the end by having our hero publicly reveal himself. Will I watch again… Sigh.
📚 Rooster (HBOmax) - a show about people uttering a scene-ending joke button while we watch their back as they walk away across an overcast college campus. I had a hard time grasping onto the tone of this series; some characters are sitcom caricatures while some are incredibly earnest and serious, and that took me out of the story. Co-creator Bill Lawrence has made his name on feel-good comedies about tight knit groups of adults Going Through It, so this carried some of his DNA but I also didn’t think the main premise executed on its promise; I think there was more to be wrung out of Steve Carrell’s main character being a pulpy mystery novelist (as opposed to a notable academic author); it all felt too serious (and Carrell’s Greg Russo assimilated into higher education too easily) when it seemed setup to be a fish out of water story. Academic shows always look good though; Ivy League architecture!
🏥 Grey’s Anatomy S22 (ABC) - While I went to bat for this show in season 19 when the show brought in a new class of internet, mirroring the pilot and first season, there’s not much to compliment this show on anymore. The highest I felt was hearing that Kevin McKidd’s Dr. Owen Hunt and Kim Raver’s Dr. Teddy Altman (a couple in the show) would be leaving… I had to stay seated for this hallelujah milestone. This show may serve better in 2026 as a weekend-long binge instead of single weekly episodes, so perhaps I’ll change my viewing style for season 23. The show really does suffer without Meredith Grey, who now only serves in narration and pops in every few episodes.
⛳️ Beef S2 (Netflix) - People said the quality of this season did not compare to the first (Ali Wong, Steven Yeun, won a bunch of awards, etc. you recall) and I just think the genre of rich people being bad in California (see Big Little Lies) is so specific that it felt like a different show, and if it wasn’t titled “Beef,” I may not have put them in the same anthology. With the main cast expanding to four beefers, plus a few secondary storylines, this season felt a little more packed and convoluted (This season involved actual life-changing stakes—Money! Death! Divorce! Murder!) whereas the draw of the first season was how such a tiny little thing like road rage can blow way out of proportion. We could have drilled into any of these main stories to get granular make a whole season. Charles Melton plays hot and dumb very well, without being obnoxious (I usually don’t find lost-in-translation jokes funny but I did laugh at Melton’s Austin pretending to understand Dr. Kim’s important monologue in the finale then thinking it was about soup). Cailee Spaeny Emmy nomination incoming-- star!! Unrelated minor praise: I’m always interested in shows trying to innovate how tech is shown on screen to make texting interesting to watch, and I think this show iterated the art form!
⭐️ 🐑 The Sheep Detectives - Hey Siri, categorize this motion picture among my evidence that family-friendly movies can be good—No: GREAT. Whodunnits don’t need to be complicated, they just need one element to stand out, like, for example: all of the main character being sheep. I particularly loved the structure of this in contrast to most family movies that it didn’t save the saccharine lessons for the very end; these sheep had to figure out death and grief and what it all means early on, before deciding to embark on this journey of… solving murder. As a boy who identifies as having a Februrary birthday, perhaps I mapped myself onto the character known as “winter lamb” and then cried about him.
⭐️ 👩🏻❤️💋👨🏻 Obsession - Retreading a familiar Fatal Attraction-like storyline has to bring something new to the genre and thank god this movie introduced us to star Inde Navarrette… in a post Amy-Madigan-winning-an-Oscar-for-horror world, it’s not insane to think this is one of the performances of the year so far!! As Nikki, a cool girl who becomes way too into her boyfriend after he makes a wish for her companionship, she takes the prompt of co-dependency and sprints with it. Jump scares expertly dropped in, and a wonderful use of sound editing to waver between her screaming/crying to talking softly to her sad boy, who feels so passive in his own story it felt like a different kind of “yelling at the screen when someone makes a bad choice in a horror movie.” Any moment where I wondered where this was going immediately pulled me back in with her performance. Anyway I immediately checked Hinge when I left the theater.
⭐️ 👠 The Devil Wears Prada 2 - Perhaps the biggest and best thing I can say about this movie is that it doesn’t feel weighed down from everything that connotes a sEqUeL these days. There’s a little more flair in the fashion, the subtlest amount of fan service in the production design (every blue, cerulean or not, just pops!) and references that don’t make or break the movie if you blink and miss them. And to think, this could have been a Sex and the City 2 disaster! At least, that’s where my expectations were. It felt real and lived in, in the coziest of ways, just revisiting this fashion magazine office 20 years later. God I never anticipated this being so good.
🚪 Backrooms - I understand the intent, the scale, the thought, but haunting cinematography and esteemed actors does not a horror movie make! Before this movie was released the buzz was “wow can you believe it was direted by a 20-year-old?” And now, in fact, yes I can believe it was direction by a 20-year-old.
🧟♀️ Hokum - We love horror that messes with the tropes! Equals parts murder whodunnit and haunted house that takes itself seriously while also letting the main character act like a human might in these supernatural circumstances. The jump scares felt earned and not cheap, and I leaned forward when the story wasn’t nearing resolution as the sun came up— so many haunted house movies hinge on the premise of “survive until dawn” but that’s when this one turns the heat up.
🐉 Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu - It’s hard to turn a television show into a movie!1 And while this had lots of fun set-pieces, the pacing felt off perhaps due to the usual TV format of its origins. I would like to know how much time Pedro Pascal spent on this because there is precisely one (1) scene in which the titular Mandalorian removes his helmet, otherwise it is a voiceover role for this king. Thank GOD they were able to make Grogu (nee “Baby Yoda”) an animatronic because you know there was an executive who thought a CG buddy comedy would be just fine!
🐙 Remarkably Bright Creatures - A New York Times bestselling book but not in my household! I was bored by the book which left much more room for this movie to excell past the source material. Let’s tone down the octopus narrator which always felt like a disconnected metaphor to me and tone up the family story, which one should do when Sally Field and Lewis Pullman are on call. Anyway I got distracted during part of this because I think Lewis Pullman should have the career that Glen Powell has.
👚 I Love Boosters - Perhaps not a better example this year of “the sum of its parts is greater than the whole” (paraphrasing to fit my narrative). This movie had a LOT going for it! Bright colors, costumes, Keke Palmer, jokes, Demi Moore saying “bitches” through her gritted teeth and yet… it didn’t all work in the end. I was way more into the story told by the trailers than the actual storyline, which turned out to just be a nugget of the final movie.
🎸 Power Ballad - Paul Rudd is funny and Nick Jonas is not and the subject matter (aging star claims he wrote a song that is propelling young pop star to fame) needed to pick a lane because I truly could not get on board with the shifting tone of this.