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There are roughly 47,000—oh, wait, a new Netflix Original just dropped; make that 47,001—TV shows and movies coming out each week. At Obsessed, we consider it our social duty to help you see the best and skip the rest.
We’ve already got a variety of in-depth, exclusive coverage on all of your streaming favorites and new releases, but sometimes what you’re looking for is a simple Do or Don’t. That’s why we created See/Skip, to tell you exactly what our writers think you should See and what you can Skip from the past week’s crowded entertainment landscape.
See: The Curse
The Curse is exactly the kind of cringe comedy we’ve come to expect from Nathan Fielder, now turned up to 100, put in a blender, and baked to perfection courtesy of a wickedly game Emma Stone, who brilliantly co-leads the twisted series about an odious fictional HGTV show.
Here’s Nick Schager’s take:
“Give Showtime credit—they granted David Lynch full artistic license to make the wildly unconventional and amazing Twin Peaks: The Return, and they provide similar freedom to Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie with The Curse, a 10-part series that’s the apex of cringe comedy, a bizarre satire of home improvement shows (and, by extension, reality TV), and a nightmarish portrait of marital dysfunction and individual and professional insecurity, bitterness, need, and hatred.
There’s no way to properly stress the sheer strangeness of this out-there affair, nor to prepare audiences for the surprises it has in store. Led by Emma Stone in what may be the finest performance of her career, it’s simultaneously choke-on-your-laughter weird and squirm-inducingly terrifying, the two climaxing in a finale of mind-boggling insanity.”
Young Darby and investigators at river’s edge.
FXSee: A Murder at the End of the World
A Murder at the End of the World is the kind of whodunit audiences rarely get anymore: sharp, inventive, and completely original. With an icy atmosphere and a talented ensemble cast with varied motives, this mystery will keep you guessing for weeks.
Here’s Coleman Spilde’s take:
“Several times throughout my three-night binge of A Murder at the End of the World, which premieres Nov. 14 on FX and streams on Hulu, I found myself pondering a question that I rarely ask anymore: ‘I wonder what happens next?’ I’ve often found that consistency is one of the most difficult things for a modern television show to maintain. Multi-season programming has all but lost the ability to hold a decent dramatic arc, likely because so many writers have come up writing limited series, and even those are usually bloated misfires. They’re overlong, yet somehow, almost always underdeveloped—even with all of the flashy tricks they use to convince you otherwise.
A Murder at the End of the World is the diametrical opposite, a show that succeeds in spite of being stuffed to the gills with all of the things that so many limited series arm themselves with to glamor the unassuming, average television viewer. It has a surplus of characters, a convoluted plot, a distinct location to set itself apart from the crowd of other programming, and a handful of recognizable actors with large enough names to sell to the general public. And still, it’s the rare show that uses all of those things to its advantage.”
Justin Long and Jane Widdop in It's a Wonderful Knife.
RLJE Films/ShudderSkip: It’s a Wonderful Knife
It’s a Wonderful Knife is a silly enough spin on the classic holiday film that this holiday horror novelty borrows its concept from, but that’s about it. Unfortunately for Christmas horror fans, a solid pun is not enough for an angel to get its wings this year.
Here’s Charles Bramesco’s take:
“The title of It’s a Wonderful Knife (in theaters Nov. 10) doubles as the film’s elevator pitch: It’s Frank Capra’s classic of Yuletide magnanimity, reimagined as a holly-bedecked horror flick. Easily enough said and sold, but actually following through on the snappy logline proves more convoluted than in the recent ready-made slasherfications of Groundhog Day (Happy Death Day), Freaky Friday (Freaky), and Back to the Future (Totally Killer).
A masked assassin stalks the snow-blanketed hamlet of Angel Falls, and when he strikes at a house party on Christmas Eve, area teen Winnie (Jane Widdop) gets the drop on him with a pair of jumper cables and a car battery. As dictated by the code of Scooby-Doo, the culprit is the grabby developer (Justin Long) with the displeasing Joel Osteen dentures, and he’s dispatched in short order. One year later, however, Winnie’s not feeling all that jolly. Her workaholic dad (Joel McHale) gifts her annoying brother (Aiden Howard) a car while she’s stuck with an insulting monogrammed scale. Then she catches her beau doing mistletoe-type things with another girl. While staring at the aurora borealis—at this time of year, in this part of the country?—she wishes she’d never been born, and finds herself in a still-terrorized town that makes Pottersville look like Pleasantville.”
(l-r) Annemarie Wiley, Erika Girardi, Dorit Kemsley, Kyle Richards, Garcelle Beauvais, Sutton Stracke, and Crystal Minkoff.
Emily Shur/BravoSee: Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 13
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is known for its melodramatic meltdowns. But nothing has been quite so funny as watching a Housewife go full holier-than-thou just because she wasn’t picked to be humped on stage by a stripper. Finally, the rich are relatable!
Here’s Kyndall Cunningham’s take:
“After spending last weekend in Las Vegas, an utterly tasteless city, for this year’s BravoCon, the last thing I needed this week is to watch the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills partying in Sin City and reminding me of all the things I hated about it. (The landscape, the inflated prices, the endless chain restaurants, the traffic, the MAGA crowd, everyone walking at a snail’s pace!)
I’m guessing if you have enough money to fly private to Vegas and be chauffeured everywhere, you’re probably having the best experience possible. Still, tonight’s fairly eventful episode made me feel just like Dorit, a glamorous woman plagued with PTSD. It also made me wonder how long I (and the audience) can deal with Sutton’s meltdowns before we’ve finally had enough. Are her overly sensitive reactions amusing, or are they just Karen-ish at this point? I’d say a little bit of both.”
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