Seven Shows We Watched to Get Us Through the End of the Year (and the Start of a New One)

The Couch Tamale
22 min readJan 6, 2021
Clockwise from top left: ‘The Flight Attendant’ — Warner Media/HBO Max; ‘Bridgerton’ — Netflix/Shondaland; ‘The Bee Gees-How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?’ — Warner Media/HBO Max; ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Botton’ — Netflix; ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ — Netflix/Flitcraft Wonderful Films

What will the history books say we watched at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021? That period when some among us gave no heed to travel warnings and indulged in international vacations and reunions, while the majority stayed home and with various levels of cheer, fear and resentment, hunkered down. We drank from glasses of despair and tiny teacups of hope as we tried to put the pandemic-stress tensions behind us and looked towards our rectangular screens for immersive escapism or some reassurance of recognizable human behavior. Here are reviews of some of the shows and films we watched and talked about as we wore adult onesies and brandished our remotes. (Reviewed here: Dash and Lily, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Queen’s Gambit, Christmas Specials, The Bee Gees, Bridgerton, The Flight Attendant)

Dash and Lily — Netflix

I heard buzz about this series and watched it holiday-hover in Netflix’ ‘top ten’ but initially didn’t feel tempted; did I want another “clever” series about young people who make constant pop culture references that reflect the musings of an industry young writers’ room? And for the first few episodes, this December-set New York romp, based on a novel by the gifted David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, did indeed feel too cute by half. But just when…

--

--

The Couch Tamale

Film, Music, Peak TV, Diversity— Tom Cendejas is sitting on a sofa and unwrapping Pop Culture with a Latino eye, one husk at a time. tomcend@gmail.com