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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.
Skip: Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire
Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire is a Star Wars knockoff so blatant, it’s a shock Lucasfilm isn’t halting the release. Those similarities only highlight how generic Zack Snyder’s copycat fantasy is, and how wearying it is to know that there’s still a second and final part to endure.
Here’s Nick Schager’s take:
“Putting ‘Part One’ in a movie’s title simply forewarns audiences that they’re about to watch an incomplete affair—a misguided decision that plagued Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 1, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1, and Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One. Zack Snyder falls into the same trap with the excessively punctuated Rebel Moon—Part One: A Child of Fire, the maiden chapter of a two-film science fiction saga (in theaters Dec. 15; on Netflix Dec. 21) whose lack of originality is only matched by its humorlessness.
Cribbing so liberally from Star Wars that George Lucas deserves hefty royalties, this misbegotten attempt at creating a new out-of-this-world Snyderverse is merely a knockoff dressed up in its director’s stylistic signatures, and all the more depressing for not even properly concluding its painfully shallow tale.
While Lucas’ Episode Four was famously inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, Snyder instead mimics Lucas as well as the Japanese master’s Seven Samurai (and its progeny, The Magnificent Seven and A Bug’s Life). This appears to be some sort of deliberate double homage, but it speaks to the threadbare derivativeness of this endeavor, whose plot and designs come across as faded photocopies of photocopies.”
(l-r) Dorinda Medley, Luann de Lesseps, and Kristen Taekman.
Clifton Prescod/PeacockSee: The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: RHONY Legacy
The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: RHONY Legacy is not just a delightful throwback to the golden age of the franchise’s best city and cast members, but a fascinating study of how women in reality television regard their legacies after their show ends.
Here’s Coleman Spilde’s take:
“The holidays have come early for fans of Bravo’s best Real Housewives franchise. Sorry to my beloved Real Housewives of Atlanta and Season 2 of Real Housewives of New Jersey; you are merely my forgotten stepchildren when it comes to the original Real Housewives of New York. The first 13 seasons (well… let’s be honest here: the first 12 seasons) of RHONY were a constant masterclass in reality television, with each season somehow one-upping the last in terms of petty drama and earth-leveling fights. It’s only fitting that the spinoff series, The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: RHONY Legacy, now on Peacock, dusts off some of that inimitable magic.
Though RHONY as we once knew it has been retooled with an entirely new cast, fans still hold the original franchise near and dear to their hearts. I stand firm in my assertion that no other series on television has so deftly captured the inner lives and untapped profundity of a certain demographic of older white women. But after documenting the highs and lows of their lives for over a decade, there was only one thing that the stars of the original RHONY hadn’t properly revealed: how they’ve dealt with living their lives after the cameras went down.”
Walker Scobell in Percy Jackson & The Olympians.
David Bukach/DisneySee: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Percy Jackson and the Olympians is the adaptation that fans of the beloved YA novels have always wanted: a fun, faithful expansion that brings the Greek-mythology-for-teens construct to life with absorbing characters and action-packed fights.
Here’s Fletcher Peters’ take:
“Although the correct title is ‘demigod,’ Percy Jackson makes for a perfect Disney prince. Author Rick Riordan’s series, a modern-day, YA twist on Greek mythology, as written for kids, has maintained Disney-like heights of popularity with young readers for nearly 20 years. Although its fanbase has aged up since the first novel’s 2005 release, The Olympians books still exposes kids to fantasy at a young age.
It’s fitting, then, that the new Disney+ series—entitled Percy Jackson and the Olympians (premiering Dec. 20 with its first two episodes, before debuting new chapters weekly)—is perfectly suited to welcome youngsters into the realm of fantasy television. Enjoyable for not only established fans and young newcomers, but also folks of all ages, the series is a wonderful feat of adaptation and genre storytelling.”
(L-R) Martha Kelly as Carol and Bridget Everett as Elena in Carol & The End of The World.
NetflixSee: Carol & the End of the World
Carol & the End of the World is a ridiculously charming animated series that flips the exhausted apocalyptic genre on its head with a novel concept about a woman whose cherished, humdrum office routine is inconvenienced by an impending doomsday
Here’s Vikram Murthi’s take:
“What would you do if you knew the world was ending in the near future? After the initial wave of panic and terror subsides, it stands to reason that, with a finite amount of time left on Earth, many people would feel free to live the life they had always wanted to live. They’d check off items on their bucket lists, maximize quality time with friends and loved ones, and generally embrace all kinds of pleasure, even if it’s just a way to avoid confronting the total end of humanity.
The animated limited series Carol & the End of the World (streaming on Netflix Dec. 15) treats this outlook as an assumed, majority-held worldview: The giant planet that will collide with Earth in seven-and-a-half months renders jobs a thing of the past and allows people to fully embody their most indulgent, impulsive selves. Yet the series takes a decidedly different approach to the apocalypse story by following a person who doesn’t feel liberated by the end of the world. Carol Kohl (voiced by stand-up comedian Martha Kelly), a mild-mannered middle-aged woman, doesn’t have any grand dreams to live out and has no interest in embracing a hedonistic lifestyle. What she craves is something society has done away with after realizing they’re all doomed: the routine of the workaday world.”
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