The New York Times top 100 TV shows and the always slippery TV canon
In: Exit Party, Forgotten Island. Out: the idea that it should be easy to build a TV canon!!
Latest
Resident Evil's world doesn't care about you
The best cosmic horror in years? In a video game movie directed by Zach Cregger? It's more likely than you think
Episodes Book Club: Infinite Jest, Week Nine
Lily and Emily consider the impossible: might Infinite Jest be... self-involved?
Beyond Bedford Falls: 15 other fictional small towns we'd love to live in
Including towns full of cartoon ducks, free health care, and monstrous vampires who provide low, low housing costs
Zach Cregger's Resident Evil made the game's fans mad. Good.
Widow's Bay is a comedy?! (Yes.) Pan's Labyrinth is good?! (Yes.) Plus: Meet Derek!
September mailbag! (preview)
A little preview of this month's mailbag!
September mailbag!
This month: the Criterion Closet, a live-action Infinite Jest adaptation, and what we'd do if *we* ran the Emmys.
Episodes Book Club: Infinite Jest, Week Eight
Is Infinite Jest why we got prestige TV? Honestly, maybe!
What It's A Wonderful Life's George and Mary Bailey can say to us here in 2026
The fun things Emily and Lauren Theisen learned when working on their new It's a Wonderful Life book
Peacock's Ponies and when streaming enters crunch time
Plus: Damien McCarthy's horror movies, Some Like It Hot, and true fashion.
Submit your September mailbag questions!
It's that time again!
Angel Down, Whalefall, and the phantasmagoria of manhood
Why do people love Daniel Kraus' novels? Maybe it's because he's not afraid of a big metaphor.
Beth March Returns from the Dead
Preorder Emily's next novel! Save big money! Now!
Plus: The e-book of Woodworking is on sale too? Remember Woodworking?
Episodes Book Club
Episodes Book Club: Infinite Jest, Week Seven
This week: the enthralling and the exhausting kind of become one singular thing.
26 Episodes
Atlanta saw America more clearly than nearly any TV show of its era
Watching the show's first season in 2026 is an exercise in seeing just how far Hollywood "progressivism" has fallen across a decade.
Monday Digest
Is Coyote vs. ACME the perfect movie for the moment?
Also: Paranormal Activity on stage, the Furious finale, and a good comic about a cat.
movies
The Invite, Obsession, and the runaway success of movies for straight people to argue about
Who is responsible for your own unhappiness? The answer may disappoint you.
Episodes Book Club
Episodes Book Club: Infinite Jest, Week Six
We're talking irony, sincerity, and, of course, Randy Lenz.
it's a wonderful life
The memories of a deadly pandemic hidden in one of America's most beloved films
Art about pandemics and plagues rarely gets made after the fact. Yet here's the Spanish flu in It's a Wonderful Life.
Dolly Parton never met a song she couldn't make her own
Also: A trip to the Minnesota State Fair, The End of Oak Street, and America's reigning Garfield princess
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Tim Curry's major scenes in Rocky Horror, ranked by their potential to awaken something deep inside of you
Or in me, specifically.
Episodes Book Club
Episodes Book Club: Infinite Jest, Week Five
Is careful observation the same thing as love? Lily and Emily investigate.
26 Episodes
It's The Leftovers' afterlife. We're just living in it.
Over a decade after its debut, HBO's cult series about an ambiguous apocalypse only grows more prescient.