Hi,
Welcome back to Continue Watching! We have a confession to make. We have not been able to watch too much TV consistently in the last month. This is inconceivable to us, but sometimes life gets busy or it gets tough and you just have to deal with it. So we’ve been dealing by making reels for our Instagram (have you seen the one where we completely embarrass ourselves?), watching some WAIT A MINUTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
We had to take a break because Issa Rae just posted the trailer for the new season of Insecure. Here, watch.
October 24 - we finally have a date for the FINAL season. October is going to be super busy with a bunch of exciting-looking TV shows dropping, so it looks like our involuntary TV hiatus is OVER. Look, we won’t bore you with details of why both of us look like we haven’t slept for 10 years right now, suffice to say that we didn’t have the time or energy to even write our essays for this issue. But that’s totally fine, no need to panic, because the amount of TV news we have gathered for you is next level (and, as a bonus, we are answering multiple recommendation questions in this issue!). So, open the notes app on your phone so that you can start listing down everyone you need to remember and let’s dive in!
First and foremost, QUEEN Addison Montgomery is coming back to Grey’s Anatomy. Shahana doesn’t give a crap about the show but watched the initial seasons and Kashika keeps wanting to stop but can’t, so this is a huge deal in our world right now. Addison was the best character on the show and when Kate Walsh left in season 4, things started to instantly go downhill. Neither one of us has watched Private Practice but maybe we should? We don’t know which episode or episodes she’ll show up for, but rest assured that Kashika will be screaming about it nonetheless.
Maid drops tomorrow on Netflix and we haven’t read the memoir the show is based on but we’re entirely sold on this stunning trailer that thankfully gives away nothing.
Then the day after tomorrow comes a show that has earned Kashika quite a reputation—Bigg Boss 15. She’s worried because she didn’t have the time to watch Bigg Boss OTT last month, but there’s no doubt in her mind that BB15 is unmissable, just like the last 14 seasons.
In exactly two weeks, on October 15, the third season of You drops on Netflix. Having read the third book earlier this year, we can tell you that the show has completely deviated from its source material, which is good because the third book was unbearable.
Another MAJOR EVENT that is happening on October 15 is the release of season two of In The Soop BTS ver. If there are any ARMYs who have subscribed to this newsletter, please make yourself known so we can all squeal together! We tried to keep our BTS love separate from this newsletter but now it has spilled over to all aspects of our life, and season two of BTS’ staycation-reality show is literally the highlight of October for us. We even made a reel about it! Let’s look at the trailer now.
LOOK AT THEM. POOL AND GYM. Listen, you need to buy these damn episodes but we, um, know our way around these things. But if any of you would like to buy this show for us as a way to declare your love, we will not even pretend to say no!
Okay, moving on. Right in time for the spooky season, I Know What You Did Last Summer, the show, premieres on Amazon Prime Video on October 15. We have no feelings about this but you might.
Season 3 of Succession is out on October 17 on Disney+ Hotstar and Kashika is stressing out about not having seen the first two seasons, even though she knows that this is not her jam.
Colin in Black & White drops on Netflix on October 29. Directed and co-created by Ava DuVernay, this scripted series is the story of football star Colin Kaepernick, who was shunned by the NFL for protesting police brutality. Kaepernick himself narrates the show and if you’ve followed the story around him taking the knee during the national anthem at an NFL game, you know that this will be worth your time.
Mindy Kaling is coming back with a new show, curiously titled The Sex Lives of College Girls. Mindy knows her shit but she can also make her characters extremely irritating. College Girls looks interesting though and releases on November 18 on HBO Max (mail us if you don’t know how to watch it).
Finally, one of Shahana’s absolute favourites, Dickinson, is back for its final season on November 5 on Apple TV+. Her hope is that maybe now people will wake up to its genius.
Some other things are brewing as well. It was announced that the second season of Emily in Paris will be released on Netflix on December 22, which is just a fact that we all have to be okay with. Sex Education, which recently finished a very strong third season (was it just us or did Otis and Eric’s friendship become lovelier, more tender this season?) has officially been renewed for season 4. This is good because literally nothing was resolved at the end of season 3! Something INSANE happened on Money Heist season 5 (we don’t want to spoil it here so mail us if you are also shook)! Brooklyn Nine-Nine finished its eight-season run with the perfect finale that somewhat made up for its shaky last season. The Derry Girls creator also announced that the show will end with the third season in 2022 and while we’re sad about it, we understand that all good things need to end.
We are not Bridgerton fans in this house. Kashika couldn’t care less about this old-timey show and Shahana was severely disappointed in its first season, but so many of you care, so here’s the first look at its second season, which features Sex Education’s Simone Ashley in the lead role (AT LEAST DAPHNE’S TINY BANGS WILL GET LESS SCREEN TIME).
We’ve been waiting for a new season of Stranger Things for A LONG TIME, and now we finally have a teaser and we know it’ll release in 2022.
Another massive 2022 release is Sandman, the TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 1989 graphic novel series. This is HUGE in the comic book world, and studios have been trying to adapt it for YEARS (since the 90s).
Phew, that was a marathon! And we know that we said we aren’t watching too much TV right now, but we’re definitely watching enough to be able to do our next section.
CURRENTLY WATCHING
Kashika
Only Murders in the Building: Fun murders is an actual genre and I love it. That is what I thought Only Murders would be. I’m three episodes in and I’m not sure what to think of it. There is too much randomness in every episode and I’m getting impatient. I’m finding it hard to care about any of the main three characters—Selena Gomez’s character seems like a red herring, Martin Short’s is super annoying, and Steve Martin seems to hate that he’s on the show. They’ve somehow managed to make even the true crime fandom sound boring. I like the witty dialogue of the show but it takes me about three days to get through one half-an-hour episode so I’m guessing that’s not a good sign. Then again, Shahana has written a wildly different description of the show below, so I don’t know what to think. Streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
Bade Achhe Lagte Hain: I will not rest until I can find another Hindi daily soap to obsess over, even if I have to watch a hundred terrible shows to get there. The last show I was intensely into was Ishqbaaz, so when Nakuul Mehta signed on for the second season of BALH, I had to check it out. He joins his former co-star Disha Parmar this season and I wish I had better things to say about it. Nakuul plays Ram, a rich sadboi who loves his family even though they treat him like trash. He is also in love with his married ex. Disha plays Priya, who decided to be the biggest buzzkill in the world after her sister married her ex (don’t blame her). She’s 32 and unmarried so everyone keeps trying to set her up and she keeps screaming that love means nothing. If they’d made her less pathetic and not shown her silently sobbing after saying this sentence in every episode, it might have had an impact, but right now everything just falls flat. Ram and Priya are getting married on the show right now for REASONS and I have no idea if I’ll continue watching (lol). Streaming on SonyLIV and airing on Sony TV.
—
Shahana
Squid Game: A bunch of adults play children’s games. The stakes however, are higher. If you win, you win a lot of money. If you lose, you die. I started watching it because I read something online about Squid Game becoming the most watched show on Netflix, and I wanted to know why. So far, I’m enjoying it, and Squid Game is doing a really good job of keeping me at the edge of my seat. I do, however, get extremely creeped out at times, because I recognise quite a few of these games from Run BTS where the stakes are stuff like “if you lose, you get spanked (it’s BTS, just go with it, this is normal for them) and “if you win, you get a ramen cooker,” but on Squid Game, you just straight up die. If you like thrills, definitely watch Squid Game. Streaming on Netflix.
Only Murders in the Building: Starring Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin, the basic premise here is this: three people, who have nothing in common but an obsession with a true crime podcast and have apartments in the same building, form an unlikely alliance to start their own true crime podcast as they investigate and “solve” a murder in their building. The plot so far is so satisfying and doing a great job at keeping me guessing and wanting more, and every reveal about the characters’, whether big or small, answers some questions and also leads to more—just like a good murder mystery should. Only Murders in the Building is funny and irreverent, but it takes the murder as well as the characters seriously. I don’t know if I’m explaining this right, but the show treats everyone with such care that they all feel very, very human and real. Streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
That’s all the TV news we have for you right now (yeah, it’s a lot), but the LAST QUARTER OF THE YEAR begins tomorrow and it’s always busy. There is so much to do and, even in a terribly tough year like this, we have to try and find our joy in simple things. Thankfully for the both of us, our joy can be found in television (and in each other—we met for the first time since starting this newsletter last month!), and we’re so grateful that we get to share that with you. We promise that we will be back with our essays in the next issue. Until then...
Continue Watching (and reading!),
Kashika and Shahana
RECOMMENDATIONS
We get so many requests for TV show recs from friends, so we’ll get to them here in every issue.
I love watching TV but haven't been able to concentrate on anything for the last couple of months. Please help me.
So you need something to get you out of your TV slump. There are two ways to go about this; one, you can start by watching something super comforting and chill, like MasterChef Australia (streaming on Disney+ Hotstar), or you can watch something that requires your complete attention, like Servant.
Produced by M. Night Shyamalan, Servant follows a rich couple from Philadelphia, Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and Sean (Toby Kebbell) Turner and Leanne (Nell Tiger Free), the live-in nanny they hire to look after their baby, Jericho. Without giving too much away, we realise at the end of the first episode that something is very, very wrong with the baby, and Leanne isn’t the innocent and naive young girl she seems to be either. There’s an eeriness that follows all the characters on Servant, making us wonder constantly if there’s a supernatural force at play here or there’s a logical reasoning for every weird thing that happens.
Streaming on Apple TV+.
I watched Clarice (yeah I know you said it’s bad and I shouldn’t but help me now pliss), and god it was so not Silence of the Lambs-level. Give me a good psychological thriller type show so I can cleanse my mind of this. Keep in mind I’ve already watched The Fall (pls don’t rub in the fact that you recommended it).
AND
Recommend a good horror show to watch, something which provides a good scare and chills instead of cheap monsters and jumpscares.
Um, excuse me, we are offended that you’d assume we wouldn’t rub in the fact that we recommended a GREAT show and warned you off the travesty that was Clarice. For those who don’t know, Clarice was based on Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs, following her life as an FBI agent after the events of the film. Clarice was just...not good, let’s leave it at that.
To forget Clarice, watch Hannibal. Hannibal tells the story of Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), forensic psychiatrist and also sometimes-cannibal (Hannibal is set before he’s caught for his crimes), and Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), an FBI special investigator. Graham finds it difficult to come to terms with his ability to empathise with psychopathic murderers, which is exactly what Lecter finds fascinating about him. Mikkelsen’s Lecter is a mix of charming and brutal that makes him impossible to look away from, and Graham’s hesitant resistance to Lecter’s seduction makes this cat-and-mouse game one of the most thrilling, and strangely erotic, things to watch. The world Hannibal’s characters exist in seems rooted in reality, but one where dreams and nightmares seem to habitually bleed in, one where an immaculately dressed Lecter has free reign to tempt and manipulate everyone around, playing on their traumas, insecurities, and hidden desires. If you’re reading all this and thinking that a show about murder and cannibalistic serial killers isn’t for you, I’ll leave you with the same question Hannibal asks Will: Don’t you crave change, Will?
Get creative and find it.
I got absolutely HOOKED on Magnificent Century because of you, and I finished that and Magnificent Century: Kosem as well, so now my life feels completely empty. What do I watch next?
Watch Dirilis: Ertugrul. In Magnificent Century, we met the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and Dirilis: Ertugrul follows the life of Ertugrul, who was the father of Osman I, who in turn was the founder of the Ottoman Empire. Dirilis: Ertugrul is equally addictive, has plenty of drama the way royal families with wars to fight usually does, and it’s nice to see Muslims in the media being portrayed as something other than violent terrorists. If you’re looking for something that’ll keep you occupied for a long, long time, Dirilis: Ertugrul has almost 500 episodes.
Streaming on Netflix.
Hi, how are you? Please recommend a show. I recently binge rewatched HIMYM and now want another similar romcom to binge watch. Thanks, frunz.
Hello, we’re good. Haaaaaave you met the best romcom we’ve watched recently?
If you’ve already watched Starstruck, it’s time to dive into the world of K-dramas, friend.
What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim? is about rich guy Lee Young-joon (Park Seo-joon), who literally thinks he’s God’s gift to the entire world, whose life is shaken after his trusty longtime secretary Kim Mi-so (Park Min-young) quits her job. The two have always had a simmering undercurrent of sexual tension, as well as a shared traumatic past, all of which comes to a head when Kim Mi-so decides to leave. Her decision to quit leads the two to get to know each other as people instead of colleagues, bringing that sexual tension to the fore. Park Seo-joon is a very good romantic lead, and Park Min-young is great at everything she does, so this is a chill, fun watch. There’s other workplace romances, hilarious colleagues, some heavy emotional trauma, and a lot of romance.
Streaming on Netflix.
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