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Joel Deleōn is continuing to establish himself as a solo artist outside of Latin boy band CNCO with his “IDK Y” video. The Mexican-American singer released the striking video for his new single today (December 16). In an interview with Uproxx, Deleōn opened up his comeback with “IDK Y,” the music that he’s working on, and his relationship with his former bandmates.

Deleōn first rose to prominence as Joel Pimentel in the boy band CNCO. In 2015, Ricky Martin helped put him into the group alongside Richard Camacho, Erick Brian Colón, Zabdiel De Jesús, and Christopher Vélez. After years of success, Deleōn decided to exit the group in May 2021. He launched his solo career later that year with the debut single “La Culpa.” Following the release of his second single “Coco,” Deleōn remained mostly quiet on the music front this past year.

“There’s been a couple of setbacks, but we’re good now,” Deleōn said. “I’ve been up to a lot of music-making. I’ve been in the studio for awhile. Over this time of me being a solo artist for the past year and a half, I’ve met people that I’ve gotten close to and I’ve made really fire music with them. Even though everything has been pushed back, I feel like it all happened for a reason.”

After nearly a year away, Deleōn returned with his alluring single “IDK Y.” He blends pulsating influences of house music with a bit of a rock music edge. Deleōn’s music is more grown as he sings about satisfying all of his lover’s needs. The song also reflects his bicultural upbringing as he sings a few lines in English. It’s definitely Deleōn’s most adventurous release yet.

“Lately I’m an artist that’s willing to risk anything as long as I’m happy and I’m enjoying it,” Deleōn said. “I really want people to catch that with this song. I also want anybody that’s trying to do anything different to feel inspired to do it. At the end of the day, you got to do what makes you happy.”

Deleōn sports some fashion-forward looks in the captivating “IDK Y” video. He actually handled his own styling and hair. As a solo artist, Deleōn is taking more control of his music career in every creative aspect.

“I’m actually very happy to be taking control of almost 100 percent of my project,” he said. “I feel like a lot of people are going to be able to connect with me a whole lot more. It’s going to be a very close connection with fans where they can feel where my creativity comes from. It’s going to be super cool once I get to have a lot more music out.”

Deleōn promises more new music in 2023 with his next four songs already lined-up. The bit of English he sings in “IDK Y” is a tease of a few songs that he has recorded fully in English that he mentioned will be “coming someday too.” For now, he’s proud to embrace his Latinx roots and push Latin pop to new places. Deleōn added that he’s dabbled with R&B, more house music, and reggaeton music in his “own flow” that will be a “surprise” to his fans. There could also some collaborations with his ex-CNCO bandmates now that the band will be breaking up next year.

“I was actually quite surprised because when I was in CNCO, and I had told them that I was going to leave, they were like, ‘What? No! We’re going to stay together for a couple of more years,’” Deleōn said about the band’s impending split. “I know regardless that they’re also going to be very strong, close friends just like I am with them still too. I’m really happy that they’re taking that step and seeing where they can really take their artistry to.”

Deleōn revealed that he has stayed in touch “with all of them.” He’s recently been in contact with Camacho about working on music together. “I already talked with Richard about just going to the studio and just doing some stuff,” he said.

When asked if there could be a CNCO reunion in the future after everyone has had time to pursue solo careers, Deleōn quoted a Justin Bieber classic.

“I think there could be a possibility,” he said. “There could be. Never say never.”

Donald Trump’s “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” turned out to be a major grift, to the surprise of no one. “My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here! These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life & Career! Collect all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting,” the “pathetic” former president wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. The poorly-Photoshopped trading cards can be purchased using a credit card or cryptocurrency, which is rich (or poor), considering Trump’s previous stance on crypto.

“I never loved it [cryptocurrency], because I like to have the dollar. I think the currency should be the dollar,” Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo last year in a resurfaced interview. “It’s building up bigger and bigger and nobody’s doing anything about it. I know it so well. I want a currency called the dollar. I don’t want to have all these others, and that could be an explosion someday, the likes of which we’ve never seen. It’ll make the big tech explosion look like like baby stuff. I think it’s a very dangerous thing.”

Though NFTs can’t be exchanged or traded like cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, the tokens are still considered cryptographic assets since they are created using the same type of blockchain technology programming. In recent years, the market for NFTs has expanded greatly, with digital artwork becoming one of the most popular forms of the tokens.

It’s not dangerous to Trump if he can make it a buck (and call himself better than Lincoln and Washington) from it.

(Via Newsweek)

From 1983 to 1985, more than 1 million people in Ethiopia died from extreme famine. A few months after a BBC report on the famine that triggered the U.K. Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” the biggest stars in the American music industry came together in 1985 to record a charity single to help those suffering in Ethiopia, Sudan and other impoverished African countries.

The collection of entertainers called themselves USA for Africa, and their single, “We Are the World,” sold more than 7 million records worldwide and has generated $60 million over the past 37 years.

The song was written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and produced by Quincy Jones. The vocals were recorded after the American Music Awards in Los Angeles on January 28, 1985, in a single 8 p.m. to 8 a.m session at Hollywood’s A&M Recording Studios.

The list of those who appear on the song is impressive: Dan Aykroyd, Harry Belafonte, Lindsey Buckingham, Kim Carnes, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Sheila E., Bob Geldof, Daryl Hall, James Ingram, Jackie Jackson, LaToya Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Michael Jackson, Randy Jackson, Tito Jackson, Al Jarreau, Waylon Jennings, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, Huey Lewis and the News, Mario Cipollina, John Colla, Bill Gibson, Chris Hayes, Sean Hopper, Kenny Loggins, Bette Midler, Willie Nelson, John Oates, Jeffrey Osborne, Steve Perry, The Pointer Sisters, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Dionne Warwick and Stevie Wonder.

A video going viral on TikTok shows behind-the-scenes footage of the entertainers singing the song and what’s incredible is just how great their voices are. Even though it’s just a run-through, every one of them sounds pitch-perfect. It’s a great reminder that in 1985, you had to really know how to sing to be a famous singer.

In a post-autotune world, it’s hard to know which singers can actually sing and sadly, not a lot of people care if they can.

When Michael Jackson hits the line, “We’re down and out, there is no hope at all,” in the bridge, it’s spine-tingling. It’s believed that Prince was supposed to appear on the song but didn’t show up at the session, so Huey Lewis got his line.

@musicvarietyclips

Replying to @jhcharcoots more rehearsal footage (notice Lionel “fix” Kenny’s part) #wearetheworld #rehearsal #80s

A funny video from the sessions is always making the rounds on social media. Bob Dylan looks completely out of place in a room full of flashy ’80s celebrities and appears to have no idea what everyone is singing. Dylan’s “mood” in the room has become a universal representation of what it feels like to be part of a group project without having read the book.

u201cCurrent mood: Bob Dylan singing We Are The Worldn#shouldntyoubewriting #phdoggammit #TRENT #trentuniversity @TrentUniversityu201d

— Basilisk (@Basilisk)
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The USA for Africa project didn’t stop with “We Are the World.” Since 1985, it has raised more than $100 million for people struggling with poverty and malnutrition in Africa and the U.S. It also encouraged many to become an agent of change in their own right.

“‘We Are the World’ motivated millions to become activists in their own way. Their bold, individual and collective power brought change to their communities and beyond. Lives were transformed,” Marcia Thomas, USA for Africa’s executive director said. “Access to food, education, health care and peace became a reality for many who had been left out. ‘We Are the World’ became a movement…your movement. And… it still resonates.”

You might not know the name James Vicary, but odds are you know about his experiment, at least indirectly.

In 1957, the market researcher claimed to have exposed thousands of unsuspecting moviegoers in a New Jersey theater to a series of phrases like “Hungry? Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coca-Cola” that flashed across the screen in the fraction of a second as they watched a film. These images allegedly increased the sale of popcorn by 57.5% and Coca-Cola by 18.1%, despite passing far too quickly for viewers to consciously notice them.

Vicary’s findings soon became publicized and induced a widespread, decades-long dystopian fear that secret messages lurked beneath the surfaces of our favorite songs, movies and TV shows, insidiously coercing us to do things without conscious consent. Primarily, to buy things we probably don’t actually want.

In an age where we are now inundated with ads, this kind of manipulation understandably feels quite plausible. Especially when you take into consideration those highly sus product promotions that always seem to appear right after having an adjacent conversation about said product. I cannot tell you the amount of times I have suddenly seen ads for washing machines after telling a friend it was “laundry day.”

However, while there is a deeper meaning hiding beneath Vicary’s experiment, it might not be nearly as doomsday-centric as people may think.

In 1962, Vicary revealed that his findings were falsified as a gimmick, having next-to-no supporting evidence. Subsequent researchers would find that, at best, subliminal messaging was effective with already well-known and at least somewhat popular products, and in very strict laboratory conditions. If anything, the discovery of hidden messages were more closely linked to confirmation bias than an uncovered agenda.

But still, the damage had been done, and panic over mental autonomy ensued.

This fear remains so prevalent today that a study published in 2021 revealed that people shared a “remarkable agreement” that their minds are being actively manipulated by supermarkets, car dealerships, political campaigns, scientists and researchers, therapists, and social media, all outside of their conscious awareness or control.

via GIPHY

That said, the topic is not so black and white. Even if companies aren’t sneaking little “eat me, drink me” captions into our newsfeeds, there are a million clever tactics used to get our attention and make us become emotionally invested in their products.

And sure, maybe Coca-Cola isn’t performing Jedi mind tricks on our psyche, but it would be naive to disregard the power that social media holds in terms of its influence. Take a look at how many more young girls today with unbridled access to Instagram report feelings of low body image and depression, if there’s any doubt. Or at how many more conspiracy theorists there are. The way we think might not be controlled by outside forces, but it is certainly impacted by them, especially if we don’t practice awareness and literacy.

via GIPHY

Even if Vicary’s experiment was a hoax, it has illuminated some kernels of truth that remain important, especially as the need to weed out potential misinformation becomes more of a daily necessity. Whether evil corporations want to steal our souls, or we simply want to not live in fear, discernment is key.

Sixty-one years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to make it into space and probably the first to experience what scientists now call the “overview effect.” This change occurs when people see the world from far above and notice that it’s a place where “borders are invisible, where racial, religious and economic strife are nowhere to be seen.”

The overview effect makes man’s squabbles with one another seem incredibly petty and presents the planet as it truly is, one interconnected organism.

In a compelling interview with Big Think, astronaut, author and humanitarian Ron Garan explains how if more of us developed this planetary perspective we could fix much of what ails humanity and the planet.

Garan has spent 178 days in space and traveled more than 71 million miles in 2,842 orbits. From high above, he realized that the planet is a lot more fragile than he thought.

“When I looked out the window of the International Space Station, I saw the paparazzi-like flashes of lightning storms, I saw dancing curtains of auroras that seemed so close it was as if we could reach out and touch them. And I saw the unbelievable thinness of our planet’s atmosphere. In that moment, I was hit with the sobering realization that that paper-thin layer keeps every living thing on our planet alive,” Garan said in the video.

“I saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life,” he continues. “I didn’t see the economy. But since our human-made systems treat everything, including the very life-support systems of our planet, as the wholly owned subsidiary of the global economy, it’s obvious from the vantage point of space that we’re living a lie.”

It was at that moment he realized that humanity needs to reevaluate its priorities.

“We need to move from thinking economy, society, planet to planet, society, economy. That’s when we’re going to continue our evolutionary process,” he added.

Garan says that we are paying a very “high price” as a civilization for our inability to develop a more planetary perspective and that it’s a big reason why we’re failing to solve many of our problems. Even though our economic activity may improve quality of life on one end, it’s also disasterous for the planet that sustains our lives.

It’s like cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Actor William Shatner had a similar experience to Garan’s when he traveled into space.

“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered,” Shatner wrote. “The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna … things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind.”

“We’re not going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality,” Garan said.

However dire the situation looks from the surface of Earth, the astronaut has hope that we can collectively evolve in consciousness and wake up and embrace a larger reality. “And when we can evolve beyond a two-dimensional us versus them mindset, and embrace the true multi-dimensional reality of the universe that we live in, that’s when we’re going to no longer be floating in darkness … and it’s a future that we would all want to be a part of. That’s our true calling.”

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE – Everyone loves holiday cheer

Did you watch the Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special? It’s okay if you didn’t. It was fine and cute and I’m only mentioning it here to get to the point I want to make, which is that more big franchises should do holiday specials like this. All of them, if possible. They can be short little one-offs like this or big-budget versions set at the holidays or whatever. I’m not here to tell anyone how to do their jobs. Except for the thing where I’m telling them to do the holiday things. I am definitely telling them to do that. But the specifics of it are in their court. I am a reasonably benevolent king.

I think this all works for a few reasons. One is that, presumably, Christmas exists in all of these various universes and it would be fun to see how characters we’ve watched over multiple movies handle the holidays, which are a big stressful time for everyone and take up something like 10 percent of the year. Just using math alone, odds are that the action in one of the films would take place in December if you make enough of them. So that checks out.

Another reason: It would be fun. Action movies set at Christmas are usually fun. The Die Hards are fun. The Lethal Weapons are fun. Hell, Shane Black has made a whole career out of it, between those and Iron Man 3 and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Let him direct a Fast & Furious movie. Or a Mission: Impossible movie. Or a Magic Mike movie. Especially a Magic Mike movie. Give me a slew of male strippers in Santa hats and have them rob a casino for… actually, I don’t care why. We can say “to raise money to buy toys for orphans around the country” if it makes you feel good and fuzzy, but they could just do it to get rich. Let my greased-up boys thrive.

The John Wick franchise might be the one best suited for a holiday movie, actually, if only because of the loss he dealt with in the first one. The holidays can be hard, man. It makes you think about people you’ve loved that aren’t around anymore. People like, to choose an example at random, the wife who passed away and left you an adorable little puppy to keep you company that was then killed by freaking Theon from Game of Thrones because you wouldn’t sell him your car and then it all sends you on a globe-trotting revenge spree that eventually features Halle Berry. So… that could work.

Or just get weird with it. Have Santa’s sleigh break and force Ludacris and Tyrese into action in that NoS-powered Pontiac they took to outer space in F9. Have someone take Santa hostage and send Ethan Hunt to the North Pole to liberate him. Make an Indiana Jones movie where Harrison Ford has to find the scene of the actual Nativity. Make a Knives Out where a reindeer gets murdered and Daniel Craig has to figure out who did it. Maybe not that last one. Or maybe definitely that last one. Let’s see how this all plays out.

This brings us to the final reason we should do it, which is that I would like it. A lot. Even the stupid ones would be fun. Do them as cartoons and make them 30 minutes long and fling them on a streaming service tomorrow, if it makes it all easier. You can’t expect me to type “Tyrese and Ludacris playing Santa in a flying car” and not spend the next 6-8 months thinking about it.

Give it to me. As a Christmas present. Come on. I’ve been good. Kind of. I’ve been kind of good.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – CAKE RUINED

Okay, before we discuss the video up there, which I adore, we need to cover a little background information. This pains me, as context is for nerds and dweebs, but I have chosen this life and must face the consequences. Here we go.

Every year for like a decade now, Tom Cruise has been sending this one specific cake to almost everyone he knows. It’s a whole thing. It’s kind of taken on a life of its own now, with writers asking for and receiving cakes and lots of A-list types gushing on lots of red carpets about how great it is. Here’s the description of it from Goldbelly, where you can order it if you do not know Tom Cruise well enough to get a free one or if you do know him but he hates you so much that you worry the cake he sent you might be poisoned.

The White Chocolate Coconut Cake is Doan’s most famous creation and for good reason. They start with a ring of moist, luxurious coconut bundt cake, mix in chunks of sweet white chocolate, layer on rich cream cheese frosting, and then dust it all over with toasted coconut flakes. The result is a delicious, pillowy cake good enough to derail the strictest Hollywood diets.

Despite its worldwide renown (Doan’s Bakery is a favorite among Hollywood’s A-listers), this California bakery is still a family-owned and operated business, with a single location in Woodland Hills, California. Founded by Karen Doan in 1984, the bakery to the stars is now run by Karen and her son Eric, who bake all sorts of cakes together, including this beloved signature.

I do not super love white chocolate or coconut and would probably prefer a chocolate chip pecan pie — Tom, if you are reading, please consider — but good for everyone involved, especially the Doan family, which really hit the jackpot with this one.

This is all the context I am going to give. Feel free to Google or click here or here if you need to know more about cakes that Tom Cruise likes. I just said all of this so I could make three points:

• Imagine being the Doan family the first year Tom did this and you suddenly get an order for like 100 of the exact same cake that you are supposed to ship to like “Jimmy Fallon” and “Ellen Degeneres” and a bunch of other very famous people
• There would definitely be a little voice in your gear that would think it’s for sure a prank and would tell you not to fill the order, which would turn out to be the worst financial decision you ever make
• It is funny in ways I cannot articulate that Michael Bay’s cake showed up all mangled inside the box and he chose to go online and complain about the FedEx of it all when he could have just placed his own order for replacement cake with a very small portion of the many millions of dollars he has

I love it. More than I would love the cake, I bet. Not as much as I would love the pie. Merry Christmas to me.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – This is now the second-best discussion about mind-altering drugs on Late Night With Seth Meyers

A few weeks back, White Lotus star Meghan Fahy went on Seth Meyers’ show and told a funny little story about the time she and her co-star Aubrey Plaza went hiking in Hawaii and got lost. It was a perfect talk show story in that it was entertaining in the moment and a little humanizing and absolutely no one remembered it as quickly as five minutes after it happened. Nobody except Aubrey Plaza, that is. Who went on the show this week. And revealed the reason they got lost. Which was that they were tripping balls on mushrooms.

There are a bunch of things we can take away from this story. The main one is that you should not tell Aubrey Plaza a secret because she will tell Seth Meyers and everyone else who will listen. Another one is that maybe you should not do mushrooms and then go on a hike on an unfamiliar island. Or maybe that you should do that. I don’t know. I guess that one is more up to you and whether you consider “getting lost in Hawaii while tripping on psychedelics” to be a good way to spend an afternoon. It doesn’t seem like fun to me. I would probably just stay at the resort and drink a mai tai or two. But again, your call. Not here to judge.

Anyway, the real reason I’m telling you all of this is that I wanted to post this video again…

… and it felt like a reasonably good excuse to do that. I’ve posted that video a million times since I first saw it seven years ago. I’ll probably post it a bunch more. The twist halfway through is a blast. Vanessa Bayer is the greatest. Get her in the next season of The White Lotus. Send her and Edi Patterson and maybe Sam Richardson to a fancy ski chalet in the Alps and let them solve or maybe commit murder.

Thank you.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – … Okay

What we have here is a teaser for an upcoming show on TLC titled MILF Manor. This is important not because the show has any cultural value to speak of, but because it is the payoff of a joke 30 Rock made over a decade ago. It is really kind of funny, in a “laugh while you circle around in the toilet bowl” kind of way. We all really went ahead and made MILF Island and put it on a cable network whose initials once stood for The Learning Channel. Explain this to one of your grandparents over the holidays. Explain it to your most judgmental aunt. It’ll be fun. Be your own agent of chaos this year.

People broke down the trailer a little bit, which was nice because I can just blockquote them instead of transcribing this mess, so let’s do that…

The women include a competitive 47-year-old fitness studio owner from Mexico currently living in Miami, a spontaneous 50-year-old “disco mommy” from Orange County, a 44-year-old Jersey girl who’s relocated to Los Angeles, a 59-year-old fitness instructor and singer from L.A. and a 50-year-old event planner who used to be a B-Girl back in the day.

Hmm. This might almost be a better show without the dating aspect. Just put these people on an island and let them run amok. Worth considering.

“Life has given me some curveballs,” one hopeful says at the beginning of the teaser. Another declares, “It’s my time to find love.”

Good for you, lady.

One woman explains her reasons for going on the show: “I was married for 14 years. I want to get a chance to do me a little.”

On a show called MILF Manor.

Everyone is doing great!

Given their age range from 40 to 60 years old, the women have the advantage of years of relationship experience to leverage as they try to find a lasting connection with men who happen to be younger.

“Young men have much more energy,” one lady notes. “They think out of the box. I want that.”

Okay, a few things, also via bullet point, just for efficiency:

• A bunch of people have said this but my position here is that the twist should be that the young men are their own sons, matched up with other women on the island, which is so diabolical and wrong that it now has to happen on another show if it doesn’t happen on this one
• It is wild that this trailer dropped the same week the woman who was the first MILF — Jennifer Coolidge, way back in American Pie — went on a clumsy boat rampage in the season finale of The White Lotus
• It would be funny if the twist is that the island they’re on is Jurassic Park

We lost the FBoys but we gained some MILFs. Let’s call this a wash.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Please do this and record it and maybe invite me

Women Talking is a 2022 film from director Sarah Polley that stars people like Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand and Rooney Mara and is described as follows: “Women in an isolated religious colony struggle to reconcile with their faith after a series of sexual assaults.”

Jackass Forever is a 2022 film from director Jeff Tremaine that stars (among others) a man named “Poopies” and is described as follows: “Celebrate the joy of a perfectly executed shot to the groin as Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O and the rest of the gang return for another round of hilarious, wildly absurd and often dangerous displays of stunts and comedy.”

On paper and in practice the two films have very little in common. Or rather, they had very little in common. Until this week. When this happened.

I need to see this happen. I need them all to become friends. I need to see Frances McDormand on a jet-powered unicycle and I need to see Chris Pontius in the next Sarah Polley movie. These are my demands.

You have 12 months, Hollywood.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Aaron:

Here’s the situation.

We’re remaking A Muppet Christmas Carol in 2022. Everything else stays pretty much the same, but we need new human actors. The important one is Scrooge, but we also need new actors to play his nephew and his nephew’s wife. I know you won’t let me down on this one, buddy. What do you got?

Hmm. Pretty good question here. It’s tough to top Michael Caine as Scrooge, though. The man played a cranky old cheapskate perfectly and is still around today, a full 30 years later. Part of me says we should just let him do it again. But I will abide by the rules you provided. This time. Kind of.

Scrooge: Jason Statham or Hugh Grant, in old man makeup. We know Hugh can act with adorable talking fuzzballs because we all saw him In Paddington 2, so that’s a layup. Statham would be fun, though, both because we know he has range after watching Spy and because I like the idea of a take on this story where there’s a constant lingering threat in the air that Scrooge might roundhouse kick Gonzo right out of the frame.

Nephew/Niece: Let’s go with Nicholas Braun and Aubrey Plaza, mostly because I want to see Cousin Greg sing a massively depressing song while wearing a top hat and I want to see what Aubrey Plaza says about the Muppets on various talk shows while promoting it. Maybe she did peyote with Miss Piggy. I would want to know about that. These are reasonable requests.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To North Carolina!

An overturned tractor-trailer spilled “various meat products,” including hams, along Highway 74 in Monroe on Monday morning, city officials said in a statement.

MEAT SPILL

The truck was going eastbound on Highway 74 and ran a red light at the intersection of John Moore Road and the highway just before 7 a.m., according to the city. It “collided with a vehicle then left the roadway and overturned in a parking lot” just off the highway.

Imagine you’re sitting in an office at 7 a.m. just getting settled in at work and you hear a loud crash and you step outside and the parking lot is absolutely covered in ham. How would you get anything else done that day? I would be sitting at my desk all afternoon just thinking about the hams. Who is going without ham now? Will this make ham more expensive going forward because of a shortage? Are any of the hams still wrapped and in good condition? Can I have the ham? Is there a general legal principle of Finders Keepers when it comes to loose parking lot ham? Does anyone in the office have an omelette pan? Do we even have the other ingredients for an omelette? Do we need to cross our fingers that an egg truck crashes into the parking lot next? If an egg truck crashes, do you think three would survive to make the omelette? Do we have cheese? What if the egg truck slips on the ham and crashes into a cheese truck? And what about some potatoes?

It is a good thing I do not have a desk job.

The Charlotte Observer’s news partner WSOC reported Smithfield hams were among the meats that spilled over into highway in the wake of the collision. The wreck and resulting spill became number 45 on WSOC reporter Joe Bruno’s “Spill Tracker” list of various goods and liquids that have taken a tumble onto local roads in recent years.

Local news is the best news.

Yellowjackets was a word-of-mouth hit for Showtime, with ratings that gradually but steadily increased as season one went on (culminating in a devastating finale). The network quickly renewed the dual-timelines horror series for season two — and before season two even premiered, renewed it again for season three.

“With Yellowjackets runaway success in season one and the pent-up anticipation for season two, we wanted to maximize the momentum by fast tracking season three now,” said Chris McCarthy, president and CEO of Showtime, in a statement. “The show’s ambition is only exceeded by its execution, and I thank the incredible creative team behind it, including [creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson], Jonathan [Lisco], eOne, and the Showtime team, for turning this into such a success.”

Much of the season one cast will return in season two (and hopefully season three, for their sake), including Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, Courtney Eaton, Liv Hewson, Steven Krueger, Warren Kole, and Kevin Alves, as well as newcomers Lauren Ambrose (adult Van), Simone Kessell (adult Lottie), and Elijah Wood.

Yellowjackets will return to Showtime for season two (now with Nine Inch Nails songs?) on March 26, 2023, followed by season three in late 2024 or 2025.

In Kendrick Lamar‘s new album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, the Compton rapper extols the virtues of therapy. So it makes sense that in his video for “Count Me Out” from the album, he visualizes what his typical therapy sessions might look like. A bonus for movie buffs: his therapist in the video is played by none other than Dame Helen Mirren, who also narrates on the album and provided her voice to his tour for it.

The video is shot partially in greyscale and partially in vibrant color, depicting the average stresses of Kendrick’s life, from mundane disputes over grocery store parking spaces to relationship breakdowns with his wife, who also cameos in the video. There’s also (naturally) some Christ-figure imagery, continuing a metaphorical kick Kendrick has been on for a while.

Kendrick had some big moments in 2022, beginning with his appearance alongside Dr. Dre for this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show and including no fewer than six Grammy nominations for Mr. Morale. The album, which completed his record deal with Top Dawg Entertainment, was featured on Uproxx’s Best Albums Of 2022 list and also featured the videos “Rich Spirit” and “N95.”

Watch Kendrick Lamar’s “Count Me Out” video up top.

A chef under pressure, a CIA operative on the run, and a crew of lovable Canadians sharing their problems in a town of only 5,000. These are just a few of the colorful figures that you can find on Hulu these days. The platform has exploded as a source of original programming and the place to watch live TV and library selections. Sometimes we even stream the TV shows on movie-sized screens, because Quinta Brunson and the Abbott Elementary gang are even funnier on a bigger screen.

Aside from heavyweights like Abbott Elementary, Hulu has plenty to pick from so here are our choices for the best 25 shows.

1. Only Murders in the Building

Year: 2021-present
Cast: Selena Gomez, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Amy Ryan, and Cara Delevingne
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Mystery
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 20 episodes
Created By: Steve Martin, John Hoffman
Trailer: Watch here

Emerging from a pile of ten thousand true crime podcasts, this absolute gem of a show puts three strangers in a posh New York apartment building into a real-time murder investigation. All they have to do is make sure they don’t bump their heads on the boom mic and ruin a take. Charles, Oliver, and Mabel are an odd trio that worship and break as many true crime tropes as they can manage while hunting the hidden corridors of the historic Arconia to find out who murdered Mabel’s childhood best friend. They stumble through twists, cliffhangers, and the occasional pop-in from Tina Fey playing a Sarah Keonig-esque crime podcasting queen. Plus, the show won’t try to sell you a mattress or home security system every five minutes.

Watch it on Hulu

2. The Bear

Year: 2022
Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Abby Elliott, and Lionel Boyce
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Christopher Storer
Trailer: Watch here

It’s rare to find a fish-out-of-water show about someone returning to their old stomping grounds. Storer’s stress-inducing series pulls wunderkind fine-dining chef Carmy out of the rarified air of Michelin stars back down to earth at a family-run sandwich shop in Chicago following his older brother’s suicide. He brings that elite culture and perfectionism to the ragtag crew slinging Italian meats. Not only did his brother leave behind debt and some shady deals, Carmy’s return to the shop brings a heaping pile of personality clashes, emotional calamity, and a line of demanding customers that wraps around the block. It’s a pressure cooker dark comedy, and you’ll feel like you’ve run a marathon after watching an episode, so stay hydrated.

Watch it on Hulu

3. Reservation Dogs

Year: 2021-present
Cast: D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Devery Jacobs, Paulina Jewel Alexis, Lane Factor, and Elva Guerra
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 18 episodes
Created By: Sterlin Harjo, Taika Waititi
Trailer: Watch here

In this winning coming-of-age comedy, four best friends are stuck in Oklahoma, wishing for the illusory freedom of the West Coast. Elora, Bear, Cheese, and Willie Jack want to make it off the reservation and out to California to honor their dead best friend (and to escape their monotonous lives) but getting out isn’t so simple. They pull some petty crimes to raise money, clash with the paintball gun-wielding NDN Mafia, and Bear is visited by the spirit of a non-fighting warrior at The Battle of Little Bighorn who keeps giving him “advice.” Harjo, Waititi, and a stellar cast have made idle days into comedic gold.

Watch it on Hulu

4. The Handmaid’s Tale

Year: 2017-present
Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Samira Wiley, Ann Dowd, and Alexis Bledel
Genre: Drama, Science Fiction
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-5: 56 episodes
Created By: Bruce Miller
Trailer: Watch here

If you haven’t joined the resistance yet, there’s still time before the sixth (and final) season lands in 2023. Based on Margaret Atwood‘s novel, this Emmy powerhouse is set in a near-future United States where fertility rates have plummeted, and a fascist government of religious zealots demands that women not read, handle money, own property, or have any power whatsoever. It focuses on Offred (as in “Of Fred”), a woman assigned to powerful military commander, Fred Waterford, so that he can get her pregnant and continue a lineage along with his pious wife Serena Joy. It is a harrowing, stark vision of female subjugation, so it’s no wonder the iconic red costumes have found a place in real-life protests.

Watch it on Hulu

5. What We Do In The Shadows

Year: 2019-present
Cast: Matt Berry, Kayvan Novak, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillen, and Mark Proksch
Genre: Comedy, Supernatural
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-4: 40 episodes
Created By: Jemaine Clement
Trailer: Watch here

This is the true story of four vampires and one familiar picked to live in a house, and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when vampires stop being polite and start being hilarious. Okay, so this spin-off from the film of the same name is not a “true story,” but the documentary style and world-class awkwardness send up the immortal blood-suckers by making them all too human. Nandor the Relentless, Laszlo Cravensworth, Nadja of Antipaxos, Guillermo, and Colin Robinson all live an occult lifestyle (deathstyle?) but still have to figure out how to pay parking tickets and and the bureaucracy of vampire orgies. Not only is it one of the funniest shows on television, it’s also the only show in history to cast Mark Hamill as a vampire that demands back-owed rent from another immortal being.

Watch it on Hulu

6. Justified

Year: 2010-2015
Cast: Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins, Nick Searcy, Jacob Pitts, and Erica Tazel
Genre: Drama, Action, Adventure, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-6: 78 episodes
Created By: Graham Yost Trailer: Watch here

Modern crime dramas have a lot of shows vying for GOAT status, and Justified has justifiably (sorry) earned its place in the conversation. Based on Elmore Leonard’s stories, Raylan Givens is a deputy U.S. Marshall who always plays exactly by the rules! Just kidding. He’s got his own way of handling things. That squares him off against the Crowder crime family, as well as a slew of guest baddies anchored by the Batman-and-Joker-like tango with Boyd Crowder. It evolved and deepened over 6 seasons, often due to stirring performances, a sharp focus on its villains, and the blurry line between doing what’s right and doing what the laws prescribe. If you start now, you can binge all of it before the limited series revival, Justified: City Primeval, drops.

Watch it on Hulu

7. Ramy

Year: 2019-present
Cast: Ramy Youssef, Mohammed Amer, Hiam Abbass, Amr Waked, and May Calamawy
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-3: 30 episodes
Created By: Ramy Youssef
Trailer: Watch here

When Ramy Youssef won a Golden Globe for the show in 2019, a lot of people sat up and took notice because they’d never even heard of the series before. Three years later, too many people are still in the dark about this immaculate comedy about a Millennial Muslim guy trying to do his best while being stuck between the traditionalism of his parents’ generation and the nihilism of his friends. Its superpower is relatability — finding the universal human experience in the specifics of Ramy’s comic struggles. It’s also the rare comedic alchemy that produces belly laughs while still wearing its heart on its sleeve, whether Ramy’s Ramadan devoutness is challenged by a lonely widow or drinking Mia Khalifa’s breastmilk to curb his sexual urges. It’s an incredible show, and it’s incredible that few know that it exists.

Watch it on Hulu

8. Dopesick

Year: 2021
Cast: Michael Keaton, Rosario Dawson, Peter Sarsgaard, Kaitlyn Dever, and Will Poulter
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Danny Strong
Trailer: Watch here

Based on Beth Macy’s revelatory book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America, this series starts at the heart of the American opioid crisis and spirals out into billion-dollar lawsuits and a shocking number of destroyed lives. The villains at the top are the Sackler family, the founding owners of Purdue Pharmaceutical, a company sued for its major role in pushing highly addictive painkillers. Impossibly timely, Dopesick premiered just a few weeks after Purdue was dissolved in order to pay out billions in legally-forced restitution to aid recovery programs in multiple states. At 8 episodes, the poignant, Emmy-scoring series is fantastically digestible if you can allow your blood to boil for long periods of time.

Watch it on Hulu

9. Fleishman Is In Trouble

Year: 2022
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Lizzy Caplan, Adam Brody, and Meara Mahoney-Gross
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Trailer: Watch here

Jesse Eisenberg has been playing middle-aged characters since he was a teen, so playing Dr. Toby Fleishman in this excellent series is a bit of a return to his old soul roots. Adapting from her own book, Brodesser-Akner has crafted a compelling look at modern masculinity, marriage, and what it means to wade through the hell of dating apps after divorce. Dr. Fleishman has a lot of success on those apps, but then his ex-wife disappears, and he has to juggle his children, a blossoming career, and the mystery of confronting his past failings as a husband in order to find out where his wife has gone. Fair warning: the full season isn’t out until the end of December 2022, so if you get sucked in you might have to, gasp, wait a week before a new episode comes out. Can you even imagine?

Watch it on Hulu

10. Snowfall

Year: 2017-present
Cast: Damson Idris, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Carter Hudson, Emily Rios, and Michael Hyatt
Genre: Drama, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-5: 50 episodes
Created By: John Singleton, Eric Amadio, Dave Andron
Trailer: Watch here

Los Angeles. 1983. Cocaine hidden in hot tubs. It turns out dealing kilos of coke may not be worth the trouble that comes with it. Grounded by stirring performances, this series has pushed past its roots as a generic crime escapade and grown into something approaching masterpiece status. Franklin Saint is only 19, but he’s a budding drug kingpin with ambitions beyond slinging weed to white kids. He convinces a notorious dealer to front him a kilo of cocaine, which turns out to be a pretty bad idea. Other shows might stay laser-focused on Franklin, but Snowfall zooms out to show what how the Feds are funding foreign insurgents by selling drugs even as cops are making newsworthy busts for young men like Franklin for doing the same. While Breaking Bad fans have been preoccupied with Better Call Saul, this dynamite show has been waiting in the wings for the nation to turn its lonely eyes and recognize its bouncy brilliance.

Watch it on Hulu

11. Under The Banner Of Heaven

Year: 2022
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Gil Birmingham, Sam Worthington, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Denise Gough, and Wyatt Russell
Genre: Drama, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1: 7 episodes
Created By: Dustin Lance Black
Trailer: Watch here

The spiritual successor to True Detective, this astonishing series pushes one detective’s faith in God and people to the breaking point. Garfield is superb as Latter Day Saint Detective Jeb Pyre, who is tasked alongside his Paiute partner Detective Bill Taba with investigating the horrific murder of a woman and her infant daughter. While the woman’s husband is arrested, it’s possible that the killing goes far beyond a simple, violent truth into something conspiratorial that could rock the small Mormon town. Based on Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction book, Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) wrings every last ounce of drama and terror out of the subject matter, offering a challenging, vital story born from real-life horror.

Watch it on Hulu

12. Abbott Elementary

Year: 2021-present
Cast: Quinta Brunson, Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, Chris Perfetti, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Lisa Ann Walter
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-PG
Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 23 episodes
Created By: Quinta Brunson
Trailer: Watch here

If you’ve watched all the other shows on the list so far (congrats!), it’s time for a much-needed palette cleanser. Thank you, Quinta Brunson, for this amazing little show that can do just about anything (except steal potatoes from the school cafeteria). Brunson also stars in the show as Janine — a teacher at the elementary school where an Office-style documentary crew follows the staff and students. It’s earned high praise for portraying teaching life as it really is, all while finding a metric ton of laughs. And there’s a lot of humor to be found in a noble profession filled with people trying to do their best as the underfunded system crumbles around them (and the kids). If “Just trying to get by” is the big mood for the last few years, Abbott Elementary is a hilarious emblem of our era.

Watch it on Hulu

13. The Patient

Year: 2022
Cast: Steve Carell, Domhnall Gleeson, Linda Emond, Laura Niemi, and Andrew Leeds
Genre: Thriller, Drama, Mystery
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 10 episodes
Created By: Joe Weisberg, Joel Fields
Trailer: Watch here

Not to condone the behavior, but if you’re a serial killer, taking a psychologist hostage until he cures you of wanting to kill people makes a certain amount of sense. That’s the central concept behind this explosive series, where Carell plays therapist Alan Strauss, dealing with his own grief after his wife’s death and, you know, also dealing with the serial killer keeping him captive. It’s not only smart, but wicked and masterful at cranking up the tension as Strauss navigates a nightmare scenario flavored by the conflicting feeling of wanting to help his captor. Carell embodies sympathy, and Gleeson is almost completely unrecognizable in the role, having melted completely into a deeply twisted mind crying out to be saved.

Watch it on Hulu

14. Atlanta

Year: 2016-2022
Cast: Donald Glover, Brian Tyree-Henry, Lakeith Stanfield, and Zazie Beetz
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-4: 41 episodes
Created By: Donald Glover
Trailer: Watch here

Surprising, atypical, and peerless. It’s no exaggeration to say that there isn’t another show like Atlanta, but that also makes it hard to describe. It follows Earn, a Princeton dropout jumping between staying at his parents’ house and staying with his ex-girlfriend/mother of his child while scrounging together a new life. When he gets wind of his rapper cousin Paper Boi gaining popularity, Earn sees a chance to jump on the bandwagon as his manager. While Earn and Paper Boi (alongside their Shower Thought-producing best pal Darius) take a stab at musical success, the show is largely uninterested in sticking to its linear plot, instead delivering a gorgeous series of short stories that revolve around this group of characters and the colorful figures in their orbit.

Watch it on Hulu

15. Rick And Morty

Year: 2013-present
Cast: Justin Roiland, Sarah Chalke, Spencer Grammer, Chris Parnell, and Kari Walhgren
Genre: Comedy, Adult Animation, Adventure
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: Seasons 1-6: 61 episodes
Created By: Justin Roiland, Dan Harmon
Trailer: Watch here

Rick is the smartest man in the universe, a perverse riff on Doc from Back to the Future, and his Marty is Morty, a nervous grandson drawn into his grandpa’s mad, wondrous intergalactic adventures. The animated series is a massive love letter and surgical dissection of every genre under the sun, and each episode typically pushes the absurdity to its breaking point. Fortunately, characters rarely learn anything. It was already three seasons deep before Adult Swim ordered 70 new episodes, so it’s also not going anywhere soon. That should allow Roiland and Harmon more opportunities to test whether we can laugh while our jaw is on the floor.

Watch it on Hulu

16. The Americans

Year: 2013-2018
Cast: Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Noah Emmerich, Margo Martindale, Holly Taylor, and Keidrich Sellati
Genre: Drama, Spy, Crime, Mystery
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-6: 75 episodes
Created By: Joe Weisberg
Trailer: Watch here

The true magic of The Americans is taking a well-worn spy genre, housing it in the completely-worn Cold War period, and pulling off something impossibly fresh. Elizabeth and Philip Jennings are a bland couple raising two kids in a Virginia suburb outside DC and struggling with all the normal middle-class nonsense of the Reagan era. At least, that’s a nice cover story. They’re actually KGB officers deep, deep, deep undercover, and those aren’t the only identities they have to keep straight. The show is an outstanding drama that attaches us to the baddies and adds complexity to the standard game of spy vs spy. Come for the subterfuge, but stick around for Margo Martindale owning every scene she’s in.

Watch it on Hulu

17. The Great

Year: 2020-present
Cast: Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult, Phoebe Fox, Adam Godley, and Gwilym Lee
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 20 episodes
Created By: Tony McNamara
Trailer: Watch here

If nothing else, know that in this show Emperor Peter III of Russia throws a Pomeranian strapped with a parachute off a balcony into a crowd of people after shouting, “This is science. Enjoy!” The Great is a satirical, madcap sendup of excess, power-for-power’s sake, and it’s all based on true facts of 18th century Russia (with a huge pile of asterisks next to that claim). Hoult is handsome dynamite as the mad leader, but the show’s true focus is on Fanning’s Catherine The Great, who comes to Russia from Prussia as a new bride who balks against the constraints of her place in courtly life. Both she and her husband toy with the idea of assassinating each other, as wry modern sarcasm is applied to an increasingly outlandish series of events. It’s a marvelous comedy, but be careful of seeing spoilers in a world history textbook.

Watch it on Hulu

18. The X-Files

Year: 1993-2002, 2016-2018
Cast: Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, and Mitch Pileggi
Genre: Science Fiction, Drama, Horror, Detective
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: Seasons 1-11: 218 episodes
Created By: Chris Carter
Trailer: Watch here

The one, the only, the original. This sci-fi series is beloved by fans around the globe, and it’s ripe for re-binging or discovering fresh for anyone who missed the 1990s. In the show, FBI agents Fox Mulder (the conspiracist) and Dana Scully (the skeptic) work together to uncover the truth about bizarre phenomena. Is it Bigfoot? Or just a perpetually blurry bear? With a monster-of-the-week structure, the show also managed to build its characters’ mythologies while fighting aliens and cryptids and things that go bump in the night. The Godparent of modern genre TV, The X-Files has inspired countless shows, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Supernatural and far beyond.

Watch it on Hulu

19. Welcome To Chippendales

Year: 2022
Cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Murray Bartlett, Annaleigh Ashford, Dan Stevens, and Juliette Lewis
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Robert Seigel
Trailer: Watch here

Continuing the new trend of mining real-life scandals and true crime for artistic prestige, this raucous show peels back the curtain on a male stripping icon of the 1980s and 1990s. Powered by his idolization of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, Somen “Steve” Banerjee opened a club that featured women mudwrestling, but soon pivoted to providing some highly choreographed raunch for a man-hungry audience. Despite turning his concept into a global phenomenon so recognizable that SNL mocked it, Banerjee did not ride into the sunset. Far, far from it. There’s a reason this comes with the true crime label, after all, and the series explores the baser human frailties that push Banerjee to commit some truly heinous acts. The story has been brought to life before — most notably in 2000’s The Chippendales Murder — but this series offer all the gloss and production value of the modern true crime age.

Watch it on Hulu

20. Candy

Year: 2022
Cast: Jessica Biel, Timothy Simmons, Melanie Lynskey, Pablo Schreiber, and Raul Esparza
Genre: Crime, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 5 episodes
Created By: Nick Antosca, Robin Veith
Trailer: Watch here

Awash in a sea of true crime, Candy is another standout thanks to Biel’s fearlessly creepy performance as a suburban Texas housewife and church lady who gets accused of killing her neighbor with an ax. This stellar series takes its time developing the familiar faces of the town, inviting us to the baby showers and potlucks before drawing us into Candy’s need for something more in her life. It’s a slippery slope toward infidelity, shame, and a spiral downward leading to shockingly tragic events. Lynskey, as ever, is incredible and should be cast in every single show as long as she wants. But beyond its performances, the show smartly refuses to let its audience drive away after rubbernecking, compelling us into the intimate personal lives of villains and victims so that we feel like we’re living right next door to them.

Watch it on Hulu

21. Pam & Tommy

Year: 2022
Cast: Lily James, Sebastian Stan, Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman, and Taylor Schilling
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Robert Siegel
Trailer: Watch here

The illegal release of model Pamela Anderson and Motley Crue rocker Tommy Lee’s sex tape was the tabloid story of 1995. Pam & Tommy explores the tumultuous marriage of the iconic pair through the lens of their private honeymoon recording’s theft, following the fallout of it getting dumped onto the internet as revenge from a contractor who Lee spurned. The comedy of the series comes primarily from Rogen’s character being an oaf who seizes his moment without a clue or plan in the world for its ramifications. The drama stems from everywhere else — powder keg celebrity personalities, expensive whims, and a revenge porn threat in its most nascent days. The series is sharp, and it’s unbelievable how much every inch of James and Stan are made to look like their famous characters.

Watch it on Hulu

22. The Old Man

Year: 2022
Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, Alia Shawkat, and E.J. Bonilla
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 7 episodes
Created By: Jonathan E. Steinberg, Robert Levine
Trailer: Watch here

Based on the novel by mystery master Thomas Perry, this game of cat and also-cat asks what happens when the best federal agents are tasked with tracking down a seasoned espionage veteran. Former CIA operative Dan Chase goes into hiding after killing an intruder, and a former colleague high up at the FBI is given the dirty job of bringing him in. With Bridges facing off against Lithgow, the show has earned an unsurprising amount of critical praise, appealing to the old school noir vibes of a master tracker going on the run while diving into the thorny past of two men who might otherwise be seen as long past their prime. It’s a twisty, taut chase worthy of attention, and the story continues with a second season coming soon.

Watch it on Hulu

23. Letterkenny

Year: 2016-present
Cast: Jared Keeso, Nathan Dales, Michelle Mylett, Dylan Playfair, and Andrew Herr
Genre: Comedy, Sitcom
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-11: 74 episodes
Created By: Jared Keeso
Trailer: Watch here

“There are 5000 people in Letterkenny. These are their problems.” Time for another refreshing break from all the misery of prestige dramas (as much as we love them!). It makes no sense that there are 11 seasons of a show that premiered 6 years ago, but that’s how this crew of Canadian comedians rolls. They morphed a YouTube-beloved short series into a streaming show that’s hilarious and goes down easy as a Molson Light. The show is loose and nimble, focusing on a group of friends living in a rural town, killing time and navigating sitcom-worthy shenanigans. Like if Kids in the Hall made Schitt’s Creek, it’s irreverent but heartfelt, and you’d better get bingeing, because another 11 seasons will come before you know it.

Watch it on Hulu

24. Woke

Year: 2020-2022
Cast: Lamorne Morris, Blake Anderson, T. Murph, J.B. Smoove, and Aimee Garcia
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 16 episodes
Created By: Keith Knight, Marshall Todd
Trailer: Watch here

Cancelled too soon, Woke is a blend of silly and serious mostly missing from TV screens. Keef Knight is a Black cartoonist cautious about avoiding controversy because he’s just about to break into the mainstream. All that changes when he’s hassled by racist cops and develops the ability to interact with cartoonified inanimate objects. No longer able to “keep it light,” Keef has to figure out how to balance continuing to make anodyne art for the masses or come out swinging against injustice. It’s a unique, surreal experience propelled by Morris’ penchant for playing it equally cool and awkward. It also achieved instant greatness by casting the Keith David as the voice of The Bible and has give us the chance, finally, to hear Cedric The Entertainer play a trashcan.

Watch it on Hulu

25. The Dropout

Year: 2022
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews, William H. Macy, Laurie Metcalf, and Elizabeth Marvel
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Elizabeth Meriweather
Trailer: Watch here

In 2015, Elizabeth Holmes was the youngest and richest self-made woman billionaire due to her company Theranos’ claimed ability to do a range of health screens with as little as a pinprick of blood. All of that wealth was based on a lie, and in November 2022, she was sentenced to 135 months in prison for her role in a massive fraud. The Dropout takes us inside the pressure cooker of keeping the lie afloat, starting in Holmes’ early years to attempt to sus out a reason she might go to such astronomical lengths to defraud investors. The gilded cast is comprised of dozens and dozens of incredible actors, and Seyfried owns the part so thoroughly that it convinced Jennifer Lawrence to drop out of a project where she would have played Holmes.

Watch it on Hulu

December 15 marked the first day players who were signed this offseason were eligible to be traded, which meant trade season in the NBA has officially begun.

There are plenty of teams that figure to be involved in the trade market between now and the deadline, but there isn’t too much anticipation of any deals happening immediately, in large part because a lot of the potential sellers are still hanging around close enough to the play-in that they aren’t willing to be sellers just yet. One team that we know will pop up in rumors until they finally actually do something is the Los Angeles Lakers, who have been at the center of trade speculation since June.

However, the most recent report from Jovan Buha of The Athletic on players the Lakers have interest in includes one of the funniest sentences we will get to read all year. After rattling off all the players L.A. has discussed as possible trade targets — Bojan Bogdanovic, an Evan Fournier-Cam Reddish package, DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Kuzma, a Myles Turner-Buddy Hield package, Kyrie Irving, and Doug McDermott — he also includes this gem.

In the ultimate pie-in-the-sky scenario, the Lakers have interest in Kevin Durant, Damian Lillard and Bradley Beal if any of the three stars were to become available.

I mean, come on now. Stop it, Lakers. Of course you would be interested in any of those three superstars for Russell Westbrook and two first round picks. I am interested in trading my 2014 Jeep Compass in for a Maserati, but I don’t go around telling people that because they’ll just laugh at me and I have some semblance of self-awareness to not even float my “pie-in-the-sky scenario.”

At least we’ll get the 100th interview in which Damian Lillard explains why he doesn’t want to leave Portland because of this.

[h/t Silver Screen and Roll]