[ Note: I gave up Instagram for Lent so I find myself with more time to focus on reviving the blog! What that means for you, dear reader, is a lot of random posts of varying degrees of quality. Enjoy! ]

I have been trying to add more intentional time in the week for watching shows or movies after feeling like I was just wasting away the weeknights with mindless scrolling or Youtube videos without making a dent in my endless “To Watch” list. Thankfully, the shows I’ve been watching have been really good, but despite how much time I spend on social media I don’t see many people talking about them?

So if you’re looking for some show recommendations for something that is still pretty new and fresh, read on!

Percy Jackson and the Olympians (the show)

Allow me to preface by saying I was not a Percy Jackson reader when the books came out, so I also did not partake in the movies when they were released and subsequently flopped. But I did finally read the books a few years ago and I understand the hype! I get the indignance of Percy Jackson fans in the face of the overwhelming Harry Potter hype of the early 2000s, further fueled by the letdown of the movies. (Logan Lerman fans, I am hoping for a cameo in the show, I too am manifesting this for us all.)

When the new show was announced, with Rick Riordan — the author of the books — not only on board as an executive producer but as a writer, the hype started growing. I began reading the books in anticipation of a show that would be closer to the author’s creative intent, and the casting was exciting, too. Here I stand as a Walker Scobell fan, having loved his performance in The Adam Project, and I love the casting of Leah Sava Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri, too, in the face of racists who were big mad about it.

I watched season 1 when I was postpartum with a newborn and was rapt, the show was incredible, much better than I thought it would be. If I hadn’t already read the books prior to watching, I would’ve immediately hit up my library to do so after. Any fans of Greek mythology, of the modernization of Greek myths, of strong relationship-driven characters and storylines, of FUN! of WHIMSY! Please watch this show. I’m very excited for season 3, I would absolutely love to have a themed watch party omg I just got even more excited at the thought.

Wonder Man

Listen, before you write me off for recommending 1) a Marvel show and 2) a second Disney+ show… I get it. I, too, have MCU fatigue. As someone who went to see Avengers: Endgame at midnight before attending a comics convention so I wouldn’t overhear some fellow nerd spoil it for me, maybe at the peak of my Marvel fandom? But I haven’t watched most recent MCU things.

When the trailer dropped for Wonder Man, I was so uninterested it rarely registered on my radar. But when I saw someone post effusive praise on Instagram, I decided I’d check it out, if for nothing else then to indulge the part of me who used to always want to be an actor, since the protagonist is an actor within the universe.

Wow. What a fantastic show. First of all, it felt like such a love letter to actors, in a way that I don’t think, say, La La Land was able to capture quite as acutely. And second of all, you don’t need to have watched anything else from Marvel to appreciate this story. I have found that, post-Endgame, most of Marvel’s best works are able to stand alone without any context or homework necessary. (See: Moon Knight but maybe not Eternals) The show has very little superhero stuff going on at all, and I can see some viewers being frustrated with that. But it’s an incredible character study that brings us back to real world stakes, not multiversal ones that don’t even feel tangible anymore. I’m not sure why Marvel/Disney released this one so under the radar, but I highly recommend seeing it. (Plus I spotted some Youtubers from my past in this! Shout out to Alphacat and AJ Rafael.)

You know what, while I have you here:

Interview With the Vampire (the show)

I also have not seen this famous movie (you don’t need to sell me on it, I am eagerly awaiting the day I’m in the right mood to treat myself to 90s Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and Antonio Banderas) and I don’t like horror, so why did I watch this and why am I recommending it? Well, I basically was convinced by Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac, and some buzzy discourse I read about how making Louis a Black man actually enhanced the character and his motivations despite what racists and homophobes said. (I believe Anne Rice and her son were executive producers on the show, for any nervous book fans.) The discourse found me at the right time, as it was spooky season and I was missing New Orleans.

Let me tell you… the acting on this show is phenomenal. The costume and set designs that span decades of New Orleans and Paris and San Francisco and Dubai? Stunning. And the story is, of course, incredible, with a lot of the best lines coming straight from the book. (So I hear, I haven’t read the book but this show has me reconsidering my vampire book moratorium.) It’s truly such a beautifully done show and it feels criminal to me that it doesn’t get more attention. It’s one of those under the radar ones that few people seem to be watching but the ones who do are always eager to sing its praises. The overall series has a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes! The pilot episode alone… I think I sat at my computer with my jaw on the ground for a few minutes after it ended. The Emmy and Golden Globe snubs hurt me every year, this show is so fantastic and it deserves more love.

IWTV is streaming on AMC+, which feels a bit unfortunate as it seems to me a less popular streaming service, but if The Walking Dead could thrive there then so too should IWTV.

As a heads up, the next season will actually feature a title change to The Vampire Lestat as the showrunners turn their attention to that book in the Anne Rice series. I’m beyond excited.

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I realize that the 3 shows I recommended are male-led shows, so please do recommend any women- or non-binary-led ones that you really love! Some other finds I thought I’d share while I have you:

imessage-exporter is a tool created by Christopher Sardegna and allows you to export your iMessage messages to an easily browsable HTML or TXT file. I have been putting off updating my phone’s OS, partly because the copious videos I have of my baby meant I had literally 0.05 GB available for like a 20GB update, but partly because I was really scared to lose my text messages with my friend who passed away. Because our friendship existed almost exclusively in this text thread, I truly could not fathom the possibility of losing it in a technical mishap, so knowing it’s not only stored with my phone backup but as its own dedicated HTML file that I can scroll through when I want or need to is a huge relief.

blahaj goes to waffle house at 3am was served to me by my algorithm at a time when my work team recently rebranded as the Sharks after a reorg. The story is simple and wholesome, the animation is stunning, the score is perfect, and it’s easy to recreate your own Waffle House outing if you have access to an IKEA Blahaj. Look out for all of the cute little details in this little shark’s room!

Our year of Saturday dinners is a post by Amanda Litman where she reflects on her and her husband’s 2025 goal to host Saturday dinner every Saturday of the year – 52 weekly dinners, where they would invite as many different people as they could in an effort to build and strength their local community. It’s a great write-up that immediately hooked me with the premise, as somebody who has been craving more and deeper community, and who has dreamed of hosting more in my home despite the obstacles of a small apartment where my young child goes to bed early. Here’s a section that I have been thinking about a lot:

I do a lot of interviews and podcasts for work and at some point this year, I was asked what I recommend folks to besides running for office or volunteering for local campaigns. My go-to answer became: Host people over for dinner. (Brunch is also OK!)

In fact, I might go so far as to say that having dinner with friends 52 weekends in a row is the most political thing I did in 2025.

I don’t say that lightly. I’m a professional political operative! I spend most of my waking hours recruiting and supporting candidates for office and even outside of my work, I voted in two elections (thanks NYC!), donated money to campaigns and causes I believed in, subscribe to lots of local and independent media, and participate in political discourse.

And yet: as Garrett Bucks puts it: Building “caring, humane infrastructure” is political. There’s a reason there’s been so much discourse this year about building community, or as Katherine Goldstein calls it, “deep casual hosting.”

To get to know your neighbors and build deeper more meaningful relationships is what enables us to not just survive this era but possibly even thrive in and after it.

Also, while I’m still here, I have been working really hard to change my relationship with Instagram. Namely, from dissociating while scrolling for hours at a time every day to reclaiming it as a social media app. I might write a separate post about this because it’s been an embarrassingly big shift, but just know that the most recent thing I’ve done in this respect is give up Instagram for Lent. (We finally brought back Starr’s annual Lenten abstinence from One Vice!)

Do you have any show/movie recommendations for me? (Don’t worry, I watched Heated Rivalry already and yes, it had no business being that good.) Do you want me to talk to you more about any of mine?