BINGE WATCHING THIS THANKSGIVING

I find as I get older, Thanksgiving is the holiday I look forward to the most. The short work week, the Wednesday night parties, Thursday’s all day feast of football and fowl, and the Black Friday deals now moving online, Thanksgiving is truly the epitome of lackadaisical middle-aged bliss. Whether you find yourself hungover or totally bloated, this upcoming holiday weekend is the perfect time to park your ass on the couch and catch up on all the streaming content you’ve been missing. With Disney+ and AppleTV+ now added to everyone’s already substantial subscription addictios, I’ve taken the time to map out the perfect guide for all my fellow Thanksgiving Break couch potatoes! However you find yourself streaming content this week, the RCP has a plan for you.

1. Jack Ryan

Are you planning a traditional Thanksgiving meal, but in a modern sense? I’m not talking about heading out with your blunderbuss rifle to put fresh pheasant on the table (BTW goes great with parsnips and wild onions…) When I say “traditional,” I mean the tighty-whitey’s of all holiday meals: white meat turkey, stuffing, sweet corn, and mashed potatoes. If that sounds like your ideal feast, Season 2 of Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime Video is just the show for you. It’s all the familiar tropes of a Tom Clancy story, but well-crafted with A-List actors and high dollar set designs. The plot lines are predictable, yet the action scenes and one-liners keep it fun. In Episode 1, we follow a caravan of black SUV’s driving down a narrow Third World street. What follows is Ryan attempting to overthrow a corrupt South American presidente. Ultimately, it’s a safe way to kill eight hours, and it’s palatable for just about every viewer. With a storyline straight out of Clancy’s early 90’s heydey, this season of Jack Ryan will keep you hitting “next episode” over your Thanksgiving break. 

2. Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

Does your family take a more non-traditional approach when it comes to the perfect Thanksgiving meal? Are your guests more likely to dine on sushi or empanadas than grandma’s green bean casserole? If that’s the case, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner might fit your cosmopolitan palate. Master chef David Chang’s new show is a clever blend of two parts Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and one part Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Season 1 consists of four hour-long episodes, making it a great show to stream over a long holiday weekend. The first episode matches Chang with Seth Rogan, who take a tour of the local restaurants and eateries of Vancouver. It’s a pretty light-hearted show that also takes the time to dive into the history and cultures of the communities they visit. My favorite episode is Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon in Phnom Penh. Chang is an honest interviewer who is great at getting his traveling partner to give real, heartfelt responses to the questions he feeds them. If you are looking for a great mental vacation for a few hours this Thanksgiving, order up some Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner on Netflix.

3. The Mandolarian

If you’ve ever spent an early Black Friday morning waiting outside Best Buy, I think I have the show just for you. Chances are you’re into Star Wars or the Marvel Universe. Probably both.  Your memory of Thanksgivings as a youth definitely consists of a marathon of Playstation interrupted by a family meal… which you ate in your sweatpants.  

American’s new found leisure activity, Disney+, has a new show, The Mandolarian, which is basically a Western hidden in Star Wars body armor. Unfortunately, Disney+ is only slowly releasing new episodes, so if you’re looking to watch Star Wars content until your eyes bleed, you’re better off rewatching the old movies on the new app. However, if you want to roll into your job on Monday ready to build up your street cred with the IT department, I’d highly suggest catching up on Jon Favreau’s new Star Wars bounty hunter series.The Mandolarian flashes great Disney special effects and costume design, and it gives plenty of head nods to previous Star Wars stories while not straying too far from established Lucasfilm’s party lines. It also features a neophyte Yoda who is as adorable as can be. It’s worth checking out if you enjoy Star Wars. If you’d prefer a Star Trek series, may God have mercy on your soul.

4. Fleabag

Feeling the onset of flu season? Are you always the person who gets sick during the holidays?  This next show will be the perfect binge for anyone quarantined to their bedroom this Thanksgiving. Fleabag was the under-the-radar Emmy queen in 2019. Season 2, streaming on Amazon Prime, stars writer/producer/actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She gained fame for her creation of the BBC’s hit show Killing Eve. She next gained Amazon money that both greelit her anti-heroine comedy Fleabag, but also gave her added exposure to American audiences through the Prime app. In the same vein of HBO’s Girls, Waller-Bridge plays a desperate 30-something who finds she is simply the victim of her own decision-making. Using the trusty Shakespearan aside throughout each episode, the audience gets to see two characters: (1) her own true honest thoughts and feelings and (2) the facade she projects to her friends, family, and (ehhhh) gentlemen suitors. She puts herself in cringe worthy sexual situations that would make even Lena Dunham blush (Note - DO NOT watch this with your parents!) If you are feeling like crap, why not spend some time binging someone else's car wreck of a life? Plus, laughter is always the best medicine. 

5. The Watchmen

Do you and your family play strategy games or solve puzzles during your holiday parties?  When searching for a new show to watch, do you look for a bit of a cognitive challenge? If so, you should check out HBO’s new take on the Watchmen graphic novel. If you’ve never heard of the DC characters from the original cult classic, it may be tough for you to grasp the start of the show. But if you stick out the first two episodes, you begin to develop a better understanding of how layered each character is. Finding their motivation and how they interrelate to the overall story plot can be addictive. I am pretty well versed in the Watchmen DC universe (I mean, my little brother is John Osterman). But even being in tune with the original story line, I find myself engrossed with each new development. Damon Lindelof is the brains behind this show. Fans would recognize his work as co-creator of Lost and one of my recent HBO favorites The Leftovers. The show has powerful female leads in Regina King and Jean Smart, and a very astute and nuanced performance by Jeremy Irons. So far, HBO has released six episodes of this week-to-week show, with each episode getting better than the next. If you want a puzzle of a series to solve, try your luck with Watchmen.

The Holiday Leftovers 

Here are a few series that didn’t make my plate of binge-worthy Thanksgiving shows, but might be something you could nosh on. 

It’s Always Sunny (Season 13 on FXX) - The gang at Patty’s are back for another full season of satire and one-liners. FXX lets the jokes be as crass as ever, making this season possibly their most hard core and hilarious. My personal favorite is the one where the gang tries to solve global warming.  

The Morning Show (Season 1 on AppleTV+) - Apple CEO, Tim Cook, had to call in a few favors for this series. It has the most A-list starpower of any show in Hollywood, with Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Billy Crudup, and Steve Carrell playing journalists in the dog-eat-dog world of morning TV. The drama models itself after Matt Lauer’s #MeToo fall from grace in 2017 and features Carrell as the carousing and harassing morning host who’s sacked for his misogynist ways. This show is the content your iPhones have subsidized. Much like U2’s undeletable free album, whether you think you’ll like it or not, Apple will find a way to get this show into your recents.

Mindhunter (Season 2 on Netflix) - If you are looking for a new crime drama, I can’t encourage you enough to check out Mindhunter. It’s set back in the 70’s when the FBI was first beginning to study the minds of serial killers, and two detectives begin to use the intel gained from their interviews to help solve open murder cases. It’s a dark show, but it’s paced perfectly for you to binge several episodes at a time. David Fincher and Charlize Theron executively produced the series. Fincher also takes on quite a bit of the directing, which gives their characters an incredible amount of depth. This series would make a perfect deep dive for someone who hasn’t had the chance to binge it yet.  

Nailed It! Holiday Episodes (Season 2 on Netflix) - If you find yourself looking to stream content with the whole family, perhaps dark serial killer dramas don’t fit the bill. The new Holiday Episodes of Nailed It! feature more lighthearted content and well known celebrity judges, like Maya Rudoph and Paul Scheer. The show is very fun, and it may inspire your family to warm the oven for some holiday baking of your own. 

~ Resident Couch Potato, Pete Osterman