The Fascinating Livestreams, Video Games, and TV Series That Got Us Through the Week

First of all, if you haven’t watched any of this sweet show, get thee to a TV screen immediately and stop reading here. (Bring some tissues for seasons one and two.)

Never Have I Ever is one of the rare streaming shows that has not dipped in quality throughout its now-four-season run, and is ending at a natural stopping point; there is no wringing every last bit of content from these storylines. This season picks up directly where the last left off, with Devi and Ben awkwardly attempting to be chill after having sex. Like in previous seasons, the show does not linger on this plotline for a beat longer than is necessary, but their sweet chemistry/friendship/rivalry continues to build throughout the season. (In case it’s not obvious, I’m a Bevi?/Den?/Grosswakumar? stan.)

Much of the season is taken up by college admissions drama, which is one of my favorite high school show tropes. Heartthrob Paxton “the actor who plays me is 32 so your crush isn’t weird” Hall-Yoshida returns unceremoniously from college, and as always, there’s some excellent intergenerational drama featuring the other Vishwakumar ladies. My only complaint is that there’s not enough cringey woke lines from Mr. Shapiro, but as an #ally, he would probably welcome fading into the background in favor of our #strongfemaleleads. —Nora Biette-Timmons

Since I started playing the newish Switch game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I’ve been getting periodic cravings for monster carnage. Just like my brain will signal to me, “Chips would be great right about now,” it signals, “You should go kill some monsters.” My body is urging me to go slap around some Lizalfos and Bokoblins. What’s more, while driving last night, I considered an overpass and thought, “If I had the ascend power I could be up there in a few seconds.”

I’ve never felt more at one with a video game or less disappointed in my own inability to move large objects or fuse materials together simply by waving my hand. I worried about whether the open-platform nature of the game would provide me with mind-scrambling options, but I’m sucked in and never want to get out. I want to explore every inch of Hyrule! I want to do puzzles until my fingers bleed! I haven’t been this into a video game since Animal Crossing, and unlike that one, there’s real action in this one. —Rich Juzwiak

I watched this cinematic masterpiece of a man narrating misspelled questions about pregnancy on Yahoo Answers for the first time in 2021 (thanks, Slate), and I absolutely lost my shit laughing. Like, holding my stomach and nearly crying. It’s not just the enunciation and voices he uses to say things like, “Can u get…~pregante?~” It’s also the silly little game show-esque song playing in the background. A friend sent the link to a group text this week, so I clicked again and, oh my god, it’s just as good the second time. I was doubled over in my kitchen. I’m in no way surprised that it’s racked up 46 million views since 2016. Please, do yourself a favor and watch it. —Susan Rinkunas

Earlier this week, we examined our 18 favorite movies that surprisingly pass the Bechdel test. You know the one—Three Simple Questions for Determining Gender Bias in Your Movie. (Does a movie contain two or more women characters? Do those women talk to each other? And if so, do they discuss something other than a man?)

A surprising number of the Fast and Furious movies pass, as do The Wolf of Wall Street, Deep Throat, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Check them out, then update your watch list for the weekend. -Jez Staff

Brandi Carlile is known for bringing some of the most prolific—some might even say, perfect—singer-songwriters together for performances that have the power to prompt me to pour out my heart to a stranger on the train. Naturally, when she took the stage at the Echoes Through the Canyon festival last weekend, she didn’t do so alone: Sarah McLachlan, Marcus Mumford, Allison Russell, the rest of The Highwomen, Annie Lennox and the legend Joni Mitchell joined Carlile for a set that inspired Variety to reissue the call for a Lilith Fair redux. Obviously, I concur.

I think the entire Carlile-led ensemble performance is required viewing, but if you don’t have that kind of time or emotional capacity, at least watch Lennox and Mitchell sing “Ladies Of The Canyon.” —Audra Heinrichs

The TikTok girlies got me, and I have officially started my Girls rewatch. Let’s not make this a bigger deal than it is, though; I only chose to wade deeper into HBO’s (Max’s? ugh) archives because dating as a 30-year-old in New York is a thankless slog, and I was craving storylines messier than Kim Cattrall’s sophisticated romps about town in Sex and the City. In the first three episodes alone, Jessa misses her abortion appointment, winds up getting her period after all, and is shown hooking up with multiple dudes including the father of the kids she’s babysitting. She later brings said father to a party in Bushwick where he gets punched in the face, and Shoshana accidentally does crack in line for the bathroom and spends the evening hiking up her dress and running all over Brooklyn. If chaos is what you seek, this show’s got it in heaps. —Emily Leibert

Stars on Mars is the perfect antidote to living on Earth in 2023. Once a week I will watch the weirdest group of C-list (and below) celebs gather on a fake Mars set and try to survive. We’re two weeks in, and highlights so far include Ariel Winter mistaking cyclist Lance Armstrong for astronaut Neil Armstrong; Vanderpump Rules’s Tom Schwartz continually being in the bottom three and set for elimination; Housewives star Porsha Williams putting on a full face of makeup to repel down a fake Mars cliff; and former NFL player Marshawn Lynch not giving a single shit but not getting voted off simply because he’s strong. The worst part is the cast insisting on referring to host/mentor William Shatner as “Shatty Daddy,” but if you can get past that, it’s a super fun 42 minutes of nothing. —Caitlin Cruz

I watched Air with my dad earlier this week (happy early Father’s Day!) and I must admit, it made us laugh. There’s surprisingly little Ben Affleck, which I appreciated; Viola Davis crushed it; and Matt Damon’s got a great gut. It’s a win for capitalism that comes off nice and fuzzy if you squint—much like Rich said in his review. —Sarah Rense

Following the unceremonious conclusion of this year’s NBA season on Monday, I recommend stewing in your feelings about all its highs and lows (and oh, were there many) by listening to Katien Heindl’s Basketball Feelings podcast. Even if you aren’t a basketball stats nerd, it’s a cozy, comforting tour through NBA culture—the terminally online players, the charming mythology, the puzzling but addictive world of NBA Twitter, all of it. And as a fan of the pod (and one time guest on it), this week was especially exciting with the announcement that it is being developed into a book with the same name. There really no better time than now to fall into the world of Basketball Feelings, to listen to different fans talk about the endearing and mystifying things that have drawn them to this sport, and usher in the off-season and all its chaos. —Kylie Cheung

As we all know, great art can be forged from great tragedies. Such is the case with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s (PENNDOT) livestream of the I-95 rebuild after it collapsed last week. For those not following breaking (literally) infrastructure news, a section of the highway that connects pretty much all of the East Coast collapsed in Philadelphia after a truck carrying gasoline caught fire underneath the overpass, and the heat from the fire caused the above road to crumble.

The repair of the road is predicted to take months, but because it’s such a vital pathway, work got started on it immediately. They also prioritized creating a livestream of the construction for everyone to watch and, in my household, it has been ON.

—Kady Ruth Ashcraft