TV Obsessive
Hey everybody! We’re back to offer you recommendations. This week, Robin Moon is binging RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Hawk Ripjaw is revisiting Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Caemeron Crain is diving into the archives of Seth Meyers’ CORRECTIONS.
If there’s a throughline here, it might be that we’re all watching things that are fairly low stakes. I can’t imagine why! Everything in the world is clearly fine and awesome.
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7
Robin: Look, as much as I like to write somewhat serious reviews of fictional TV shows, I must admit I’m partial to a bit of reality TV. Who isn’t? During lockdown, I binged quite a lot of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and haven’t really revisited it since. But I’ve been working a lot lately, I’ve been tired, and I needed something to watch that could allow me to completely switch my brain off and just have fun. So I went back to watching a bunch of drag queens serve some looks and make some ridiculous jokes.
Drag Race is many things, but ‘thoroughly entertaining’ is the crux of it. Initially, I’d started rewatching Season 5, since I adore Jinkx Monsoon and Alaska. Then, my partner suggested switching to All Stars Season 7, which has just as much Jinkx, but far more wholesome vibes. This season of All Stars includes only previous winners of various seasons: Jinkx (Drag Race S5 winner), Jaida Essence Hall (Drag Race S12 winner), Monet X Change (All Stars S4 joint winner), Trinity the Tuck (All Stars S4 joint winner), Raja Gemini (Drag Race S3 winner), Shea Coulee (All Stars S5 winner), Yvie Oddly (Drag Race S11 winner), and The Vivienne (UK Drag Race S1 winner). It’s a great mix of queens—since they’re all winners, there’s hardly a subpar runway look or performance in any of the episodes. Additionally, there’s not quite as high stakes as usual, because no contestants get eliminated throughout the season. All the better, because it means we get to see every single queen complete every challenge!
Of course, it’s still a competition. The queens have to aim to win the most ‘legendary legend stars’ for winning challenges, as the four contestants with the most stars will be in the final. Plus, the winner of each episode’s lip sync between the top two queens can choose a fellow contestant to ‘block’ from attaining a legendary legend star the following week. Despite the drama of this, since all the queens are already winners, there’s less of the kind of toxic competitiveness that has the tendency to rear its ugly head in shows like this. Everyone just seems happy to be there! It’s a far nicer vibe, with everyone seemingly getting on and focusing on having a fun time. Raja in particular has been bringing me a lot of joy in this season; after being known more for her high glamour looks, she’s now been able to branch out more to comedy performances. Honestly, Raja is unhinged in this season, and you can tell she’s at a point in her career where she’s doing whatever the hell she wants. We love to see it!
I’m very excited to see what else the queens get up to in All Stars S7, and to see who is crowned the queen of queens. If you want to watch something wholesome, entertaining, and a little bit insane, then I’d definitely recommend this season!
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Hawk: I’m out on medical leave for a couple of weeks, so I decided to revisit an old favorite in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and I couldn’t have asked for a better comfort food. Created by Dan Goor and Michael Schur, the sitcom centers on a Brooklyn police precinct and its cops, who are way more competent than you might expect given their antics.
Andy Samberg stars as Detective Jake Peralta, who has a very Jim-and-Pam type rapport with Detective Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero). Stephanie Beatriz plays Detective Rosa Diaz, a perpetually scowling, hard-edged badass. My favorite character is Andre Braugher’s Captain Holt, a gay, extremely deadpan man who gets some of the funniest and most ridiculous lines in the show and delivers nearly all of them with a completely straight face.
True to Goor and Shur’s body of work, which include The Office, Parks and Recreation, and The Good Place, episodes feature hilarious and frequently bizarre humor, with plenty of heart. Episodes are generally formulaic, and dare I say predictable, with a character conflict arising before resolving rather sweetly by the end of the twenty minutes, but the characters are so endearing that it rarely gets old.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine goes down easily, and the rapport between the characters makes it a delightful watch. The first four seasons are on Netflix, and the entirety of the show is on Peacock. As I pass the time churning through episodes, I find myself laughing out loud frequently at Samberg, Beatriz and Braugher in particular, but the entire ensemble is incredibly entertaining. Put it on, and try to stop yourself from marathoning an entire season in one sitting.
CORRECTIONS
Caemeron: I’m sure you’re familiar with Late Night with Seth Meyers, since it’s been on the air for ten years at this point, but are you familiar with the digital-only companion entitled CORRECTIONS? It’s been nominated for an Emmy more than once, though it lost and also it’s not one of those Emmys that people tend to care a lot about.
The basic premise of CORRECTIONS is that Seth offers (you guessed it) corrections in relation to items from that week of shows, but the real charm of the feature is in its laid back vibe. CORRECTIONS feels very casual, as Seth sips on a Negroni and shares his thoughts without a studio audience present (the audience for CORRECTIONS is the Late Night staff). A lot of the material stems from comments made on YouTube, and sometimes Seth’s move is to shoot them down.
This all creates a feeling like CORRECTIONS is a collaborative experience—even if Seth will at times call YouTube commenters “jackals”—and the segment does something really interesting in terms of creating parasocial interaction between Meyers and the viewers. Inside jokes abound, cutting across episodes, and one feels like they’re getting a less varnished version of the TV host, as though this is a more real Seth than the one we see on the regular show.
In truth, it’s a different kind of act, quieter and subtler than a standard late night show, but clearly defined by a particular style of presentation. And it’s a style I quite enjoy! I’ve only discovered CORRECTIONS rather recently, but quickly found myself plumbing the depths of the archives on YouTube. It does get a little weird the further back you go…
CORRECTIONS recently aired it’s 100th episode, which ended on a cliffhanger, and then Late Night took this past week off. I hope to see it continue indefinitely into the future, and maybe even win that Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Comedy, Drama or Variety Series one day.
