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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: The Morning Show Season 3
The Morning Show is back, and with it comes the wildest twists, wigs, and ripped-from-the-headlines plot beats this side of Law & Order. But by trying to recreate every major news story, the show muddles focus and loses sight of its own original characters.
Here’s Fletcher Peters’ take:
“An insurrection. A global pandemic. A racial reckoning. Billionaires jetting into space and spending $40 billion to acquire media companies. Russian data hacks. The overturning of abortion rights in America. Any of these news bites sound familiar? Most (if not all) of these global catastrophes have made headlines in the past four years. It’s been an exhausting time—the beginning of 2020 feels like an entire decade ago.
And somehow, The Morning Show manages to pack all of that and more into just 10 episodes in its third season.”
See: The Super Models
The Super Models might be an account of ’90s fashion from the four industry superstars who lived it, but don’t call it superficial. The models’ tales are fascinating, particularly those from Linda Evangelista, who makes this four-part doc a must-watch.
Here’s Coleman Spilde’s take:
“I’ve often found that fashion industry documentaries fall into one of two categories. The first is your gold standard, the kinds of docs that can transform a vast, intimidating world that’s often deemed as shallow and arrogant into something wonderfully resonant; the type of film that can change both minds and lives. The September Issue, the 2007 film about the months-long development of the then-largest issue of Vogue ever, is still the paradigm, capturing an industry on the cusp of another major shift, as digital media breathed down its Harry Winston-encrusted neck.
The second category of fashion documentaries are works that only manage to skim the surface of a more significant idea. These films—like 2010’s Valentino: The Last Emperor, 2018’s 7 Days Out, and 2019’s Halston—are no less important or lovingly made, but their tighter focus tends to dwindle the film’s emotional impact. Beyond the beauty of the clothing or the models, there’s little to make a lasting impression. But such is the nature of the business: new seasons come and go, while others are embedded into the fabric of culture and commerce. Apple TV+’s new four-part series The Super Models, which premieres Sept. 20, is the rare documentary that skillfully moves between these two categories.
See: Wrestlers
Wrestlers is not merely a docuseries for fans of the sport, it’s a show for anyone who loves an underdog. The scrappy fighters of the regional wrestling scene fight to save their underfunded pastime while exuding enough star power to aim for a spot among the greats.
Here’s Laura Bradley’s take:
“Wrestling might be choreographed, but in his latest docuseries, Cheer and Last Chance U director Greg Whiteley proves just how real the emotions that form its foundation really are. Thanks to his past hit Netflix series, Whiteley has risen to prominence as a devout chronicler of underdogs. That impulse is alive and well in this riveting seven-part documentary which made its debut on the streaming service Wednesday. The series observes the many, many triumphs and challenges unfolding within the Louisville, Kentucky-based Ohio Valley Wrestling—which has given us legends like John Cena and Dave Bautista.”
Run by former WWE legend Al Snow, OVW is part of America’s crumbling regional wrestling infrastructure, and as such, it’s also chronically underfunded. In 2021, Snow sold a majority stake to Lexington, Kentucky attorney and radio host Matt Jones and his business partner Craig Greenberg. As seen in Wrestlers, the three men’s temperaments and interpersonal styles are quite different, and the wrestlers within OVW are understandably leery of their new, collared-shirt-wearing overlord. In keeping with his prior projects, Whiteley declines to judge any of his subjects or to frame any of them in a two-dimensional light. His characters are rich, idiosyncratic, and often bewitchingly charismatic even in spite of their shortcomings. In other words, they’re human.”
Skip: Southern Charm Season 9
Southern Charm Season 9 is off to a start as slow as a Southern drawl, with its cast doing little to prove that a reset for Bravo’s declining series is a worthy use of time or money, even if the premiere does end with the exciting callout of a juicy cheating scandal.
Here’s Kyndall Cunningham’s take:
“The most one can hope for in this very awkward, barely recognizable era of Southern Charm is for one of the show’s fiery women to call out their male co-stars on their ‘Good Ole Boys’ bullshit.
Luckily, that’s exactly what we get at the end of Thursday’s otherwise underwhelming Season 9 premiere of the Bravo reality series, which mostly serves a reset following the demotion of O.G. cast member Kathryn Dennis and departure of fan-favorite Naomie Olindo. After several dull scenes of the cast milling around their homes, we end on Taylor Ann Green (not to be confused with Marjorie Taylor Green) going off on Craig Conover for supposedly enabling her ex Shep Rose’s cheating. She even airs out what could be the juiciest infidelity news since #Scandoval.”
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