What Are You Watching in May-August 2026? - TV Shows or Film!

Continues: What Are You Watching in Jan-April 2026? - TV Shows or Film!

If you caught something in April 2025 (me, for instance) but haven't gotten around to posting, you can do it in this thread.

If you're reporting on a movie not viewed in a theater, it would be helpful to indicate what streaming or cable/network service you accessed, or whether it was a streaming rental, or a DVD/Bluray from your collection (have I missed something?), in case other members want to consider watching/or avoiding as well.

April 29-30, both HBO/MAX:

Dust Bunny (2025; 1h 46m). Director/screenplay Bryan Forbes. Features: Mads Mikkelson (the assassin), Sophie Sloan (Errora/Aurora), & Sigourney Weaver (check out her weapons in the final scene); sort of a call out to Aliens perhaps? Monster under the bed w/nice fantasy visuals. Also if you like dim sum.

Finished Season 2 of The Pitt. July 4th, 15 hour day shift, one episode per hour. Whew! Thought I'd binge when I started but I could only take 1 epi per evening. Very intense, as was S1.

I enjoyed Lost Boys and Fairies on BritBox this week. It's a short 2024 series -- 3 hourlong episodes -- about a Welsh gay couple (Sion Daniel Young and Fra Fee) preparing to adopt a child. Fine performances from both leads, as well as Leo Harris as the potential adoptee, Sharon D. Clarke as a veteran foster mother who's shepherded hundreds of kids through this process, and William Thomas as the father of one of the two men. And though she only gets a single scene at the very end of the three hours, take note of Gwyneth Keyworth, who is spectacular.

There's one plot twist that could have come off as overly melodramatic, but the show is so firmly grounded and the characters so convincing in how they play the aftermath of that moment that they get away with the big swing. I liked this a lot.

A double feature of tonal whiplash at the multiplex today.

The Sheep Detectives is adapted from Leonie Swann's novel Three Bags Full, which I found so cloying and syrupy that I couldn't finish it. But the movie is a delight -- charming instead of twee, cute instead of cutesy.

Hugh Jackman is George, a shepherd. He's a bit of a crank and a misanthrope, but he loved his sheep, and was in the habit of reading aloud from whatever murder mystery he was reading each night. So when George is murdered, the sheep set out to solve the crime themselves. The principal sheep characters are voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chris O'Dowd, and Bryan Cranston, with smaller roles for Regina King, Patrick Stewart, and Brett Goldstein. The human cast is just as good -- Nicholas Braun, Nicholas Galitzine, Hong Chau, Molly Gordon, and a magnificent Emma Thompson as George's attorney, who shows up to read the will.

You might not want to take the very youngest children to this one; it is about murder, after all, and it's blunt about the fact that meat comes from sheep and other animals. But other than that, this really is a movie the whole family will enjoy, and there are several moments at the end that might have your eyes misting over.

For something completely different, Blue Film is a two-hander for Kieron Moore and Reed Birney. Moore plays a 20-ish camboy who has been offered $50,000 to spend the night with one of his fans. He thinks he knows what he's getting into, but when his client turns out to be 30 or 40 years his senior, and opens the door wearing a balaclava, the night heads in unexpected directions. It's an adult movie, which is not to say it's pornographic (though there is sex, and it's slightly more graphic than gay sex is usually allowed to be in American movies), and it deals with challenging topics with rare thoughtfulness and compassion.

Both actors are superb. That's not a surprise from Birney, who is one of our finest character actors (have you seen the 2021 film Mass? You should.), but this is a spectacular film debut for Moore, whose previous filmography totals about 30 episodes of television.

Michael
My husband, my son and I saw the new movie Michael about Michael Jackson. I believe there may be a sequel. I liked it but it will be interesting to see if there is a sequel. Michael was played by his nephew.

Checking in briefly to note that I’m watching Scavenger Reign (2023, animated series 12 episodes) Creators Joseph Bennett & Charles Huetnner. On Netflix; it’s leaving May 30. However, since Netflix is leasing the streaming permissions from HBO/MAX it will still be hanging around in the streaming universe. But if you only access Netflix, last chance this month. I’m on episode 7 I believe. Surviving castaways from escape pods on planet after their interstellar cargo freighter is damaged by a solar flare; one of the group is able to bring down the freighter, which includes both supplies and other crew members in suspended animation. The exotic flora & fauna are the highlight of the series; constantly challenging the survival & autonomy of the castaways, but also ensuring their survival at other times without being the least people-friendly; the wildlife remains wholly other. Wish it had a better title; I have to keep re-looking it up.

Re-watched Fawlty Towers on Britbox, via Amazon Prime. Still find it uproariously funny & always disappointing that it only lasted 2 short seasons.

Also on Britbox/via Amazon tried 2 episodes of A Taste for Murder (2026, 6 episodes). Sounded good: London Met detective & daughter visit mother-in-law & her Italian husband running a seaside restaurant in Italy, with cooking & detection going on in parallel. However, the teenage daughter I found to be so unpleasant (if realistic) that I didn’t find it to be much fun; probably won’t watch the rest of the season. Maybe I just wanted a comedy, which this wasn’t.

On HBO/MAX just starting Wuthering Heights (2026) & Marty Supreme (2025). HBO also has Josh Safdie's Uncut Gems which I ought to watch in conjunction w/Marty Supreme.

In honor/memory of the founder of TCM, exploring my TCM DVR recordings -- a lot of the TCM good stuff is presented in the wee hours, at least on the East Coast, hence DVR: Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) – only seen the opening, but I already can’t wait to also watch The Wedding Banquet if I can catch it somewhere; Lee really has a knack for cinematic cooking & gourmandizing I was not getting from the Britbox series. Plus I’m halfway through Robert Flaherty’s Man of Aran (1934). Can’t remember whether I’ve seen it before, though the giant basking shark looks familiar. Pseudo-documentary I believe, but based on reality of the time I assume. Some others still in the DVR box: No Country for Old Men (read the McCarthy book but never watched the film all the way through) & Onibaba. Recently learned that Turner purchased the MGM library primarily because he loved Gone With the Wind, which I don’t have current plans to watch – caught it long ago at one of the university student society weekly showing of “films you should know” back when I was in grad school. TCM is showing it Sunday night in his memory.

Noticed that HBO/MAX version of TCM also has the Wyler Wuthering Heights (1939) w/Merle Oberon & Olivier, which I might re-watch;

In In the Grey, Guy Ritchie blends the financial "follow the money" thriller with a "blow shit up real good" action movie. It's pleasantly adequate on both counts, though it never quite gels into anything surprising or genuinely exciting.

Eiza Gonzalez is Rachel, an attorney who specializes in collecting debts owed by the world's oligarchs and billionaires to banks and asset managers who have been so foolish as to loan them money. This time, she's after a billion dollars owed by Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem) to a firm represented by Bobbi (Rosamund Pike).

Rachel's sidekicks, the mercenaries who help her set up her not-entirely-legal schemes to get that money, are Sid (Henry Cavill) and Bronco (Jake Gyllenhaal). Also popping up are Kristofer Hivju as Salazar's chief thug and Fisher Stevens as his lawyer.

There is a certain sense here that everyone involved, especially Ritchie, has done this before (and probably better), but the scenery (mostly Spain and the Canary Islands) is pretty, as are the costumes; the dialogue is reasonably crisp and banter-y; and shit does indeed blow up real good.

The most awkward thing about the movie is the relationship between Sid and Bronco. They trade a lot of homoerotic dialogue -- there's even an "I love you" at one point -- but all of it with a dry sense of ironic detachment that leaves it unclear whether we're supposed to think they're a couple or tossing the lines off out of the panicked fear that someone might *think* they're a couple. The ambiguity makes all of that dialogue intensely uncomfortable.

It's an OK movie; it'll kill 98 minutes when it comes to streaming; it's far from essential viewing.

I enjoyed the heist thriller Tuner, which I suspect is not medically accurate about the medical condition of its protagonist, but it makes the most of its version of that condition.

Hyperacusis is a real thing, extremely sensitive hearing to the point that loud noises can make you ill. To cope with it, Niki (Leo Woodall) wears special ear plugs, with larger headphones to cover his ears in particularly unpredictable situations.

Niki's hearing, combined with perfect pitch, makes him an excellent apprentice to piano tuner Harry (Dustin Hoffman). When he stumbles across a dishonest security crew in one rich client's home, he learns that it also makes him a gifted safecracker. And when Harry is hospitalized, Niki turns to helping Uri (Lior Raz) and his corrupt security company as a way to help pay Harry's medical bills.

The broad outlines from there are, to be sure, standard stuff -- Niki gets in over his head, pisses off the thugs, has to outsmart them, yada yada yada -- but writers Daniel Roher (who also directed) and Robert Ramsey play the story out with enough flair to keep it entertaining. And they use Niki's hearing condition very effectively; by the end of the movie, you'll be jumping at anything louder than quiet conversation.

The cast also includes Tovah Feldshuh (oh, I wish we got to see her in more movies) as Harry's wife and Havana Rose Liu as a conservatory student whose romance with Niki is reasonably well integrated into the thriller story.

Strong cast, better than usual characterizations, and clever plotting -- a good solid caper.

For much of the month, I've been working through various collections I've tagged on The Criterion Channel. There's a Hong Kong Action Classics & a John Woo Collection that overlap. Re-watched two of Woo's Hong Kong classics: A Better Tomorrow -- Hard Boiled. The opening of the latter still outdoes anything in John Wick & I've become somewhat reconciled to the over the top hospital war of the ending/climax. Via Criterion Channel, I discovered a Woo kung fu period film from 1979: Last Hurrah for Chivalry -- the martial arts very good, the rest of the film a bit meh -- but the film is mostly martial arts! Just beginning a re-watch of The Killer. The films appear to have been re-mastered, so they seem to look a lot better than my old video rentals (haven't had a chance to compare w/my DVDs).

Anyway, I've also tagged Bullet in the Head for a re-watch. After which I want to take a look at:
Peter Bradshaw. Guardian, 05/27/2026: Bullet in the Head review – John Woo’s Vietnam war fever dream is an explosive masterpiece. I don't own a DVD of this one, but the Criterion version of the opening few minutes looks a lot better than my recollection of the videotape rental.

There is also a Criterion Channel Tsui Hark collection. I re-watched Peking Opera Blues. My favorite Hark, as good as ever & maybe w/a little re-mastering thanks to Criterion? Did I first watch this in a NYT theater? The last scene anticipates a sequel that never came about, alas. Also watched The Swordsman (1990 film) begun by King Hu but completed by Hark & some others, but it looked a bit muddy & took on the scattterbrained comedy bits of later Hark, to my taste. King Hu has done better, it seems to me. One later Hark I do own as a streamer via Amazon -- a good one, a splendid wuxia -- Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, I believe a tribute to King Hu. Which I should re-watch along w/some of my other streaming purchases.

Addendum:
Via CC, also watched The Sword of Doom (1966 film), part of CC's Tatsuya Nakadai collection. Surprised at the loose ends; apparently the director Kihachi Okamoto was reluctant to take on the task of filming an enormously long newspaper serial. Rather disappointed on my part: the narrative arc seemed to be leading up to a duel that never takes place. Due to the popularity of the serial, perhaps the producers were anticipating a sequel (or whatever the equivalent would be of a "franchise" in those bygone days) but it was not to be. Reminder to self: Harakiri still to be watched for the first time.

Enjoyed Song Sung Blue (2025, 2h 12m) Director/writer Craig Brewer; principals Hugh Jackman (Lightning/Mike), Kate Hudson (Thunder/Claire). keithchaffee did an excellent job in his Jan 2 review in the previous thread. 4 handkerchiefs from me, & I'm not a Neil Diamond fan. For me, what was particularly noteworthy was the film's perspective on decent folks overcoming bad earlier decisions & maturing -- & this includes their children as well; people grow (within their limitations). Also liked the friends who stick by & support them. If you missed it on Peacock, it's now streaming on Netflix. As far as set pieces go, my favorite was the minor come back in the Thai restaurant; but the Eddie Vedder drop-in was sweet as well. Usually I can parcel out a movie over a couple of days, but this one held me all the way through. Minor quibble: the little boy doesn't appear to grow older physically as the other principals do. And maybe Jackman is a little too good looking to be believed.

Plus I stayed up late to watch Jalen Brunson win the Knicks their first championship in 53 years. Still couldn't sleep after that movie-sports combination/binge!

Power Ballad is the latest movie about music and musicians from director John Carney; this one stars Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas.

Rudd is Rick Power, lead singer in a Dublin wedding band, who long ago gave up his dreams of being a rock star. Jonas is Danny Wilson(*), ex-boy band singer struggling to get his solo career off his ground. When Danny steals one of Rick's songs and turns it into a career-reviving smash hit, Rich sets out to get the credit he deserves.

(* - The movie's original songs were co-written by Carney and Gary Clark, who was the lead singer of an 80s Scottish pop band called Danny Wilson.)

Rudd's acting and Jonas's singing are as solid as you'd expect. Rudd sings better than Jonas acts, but Jonas is charismatic enough to do a reasonable job with his role. And let's face it, playing a former boy band guy trying to regain the relevance he once had isn't really stretching Jonas into unfamiliar territory.

The song at the center of the movie, "How to Write a Song (Without You)," does exactly what it needs to do. It sounds like a song that could be a pop hit; it's pleasant enough that a movie audience won't get sick of hearing it over and over again for 98 minutes; and it's memorable enough that you may well walk out of the theater humming the chorus. It's the best movie fake pop hit since "That Thing You Do."

I didn't like the very last plot twist, which I thought undercut some of the movie's themes, but on the whole, I thought this was a pleasant little movie.

Stop! That! Train! takes the comic style of the "acting" challenges from RuPaul's Drag Race and stretches it to feature length. The cast features several of the queens from Drag Race, and a long list of cameos from pretty much everyone you can think of with a significant gay following (Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Joel McHale, Nicole Richie, Lisa Rinna, Guy Branum, and Charo are only a few of the folks who pop up).

The story is a parody of 70s disaster films. The Glamazonian Express, American's first bullet train, loses control and is unable to brake as it heads directly for a "stormaganza," a freak confluence of hailstorm, hurricane, and tornado. It's up to underdog train hostesses Tess and DeeDee (Ginger Minj and Jujubee) to save the day, with the help of train traffic controller Donna (Rachel Bloom). Meanwhile, the crisis is bringing up some bad memories for President Judy Gagwell (RuPaul), who may be unable to rise to the challenge.

The punchlines are unrelentingly broad, campy, and childishly risque, and most of the queens in the leading roles aren't good enough actors to carry a movie; Ginger Minj fares the best, and I wouldn't mind seeing what she could do with a decent script and co-stars. The real actors who've signed on for bit parts do all they can, but no matter how hard you work to polish a turd, it's still shit.

To be sure, as part of a 15-minute challenge on Drag Race, this sort of comedy can have a certain charm; enthusiasm and charisma can carry an audience for a few minutes. But at this lenght, it's exhausting; it's like a version of Airplane! in which every character is Johnny the air traffic controller.

Good jokes can help make bad actors look better; good actors can do a lot to sell weak material. But when neither the jokes nor the actors are up to snuff, even 90 minutes feels like an eternity.

Finally caught up with Backrooms, the horror-ish thriller from 20-year-old director Kane Parsons; it's an expansion of his series of YouTube videos which took off on a popular creepypasta meme. (And I sort of know what all of those words mean...)

It's 1990, and Craig (Chiwetel Ejoifor) is the unhappy manager of a pirate-themed discount furniture store. He's in therapy with Mary (Renate Reinsve), but doesn't seem to be taking her advice very seriously.

One night, Craig stumbles through a wall in the basement of the store -- literally, through what appears to be a solid wall -- and finds a maze-like series of corridors and rooms, all with the same sickly yellow-beige walls and bad fluorescent lighting. The rooms, which seem to go on without end, are mostly empty, and everything that is in them is somehow slightly off-kilter.

When Craig tells Mary what he's found, she doesn't take him very seriously, but when he disappears, she feels compelled to go looking for him.

For the first hour, the movie is mostly vibes, but they are delightfully creepy vibes. Parsons makes good use of that awful fluorescent light, the sound design, and the score (which he co-wrote with Edo Van Breemen) to create a queasy, surreal environment that is remarkably unsettling.

The last half-hour, in which there is finally an attempt to impose some sort of narrative onto the vibes, is a serious letdown, and feels like everyone involved giving the audience a dismissive "I dunno" shrug.

Parsons clearly has some skill, and I'm curious to see what he does next. Give him a project with a story worth telling, and he might make something worthwhile.

Still trying to figure out what to think of John Early's directing debut, Maddie's Secret. He also wrote and stars in the movie, and was inspired by a 1986 TV movie, Kate's Secret, which starred Meredith Baxter Birney as a suburban housewife with bulimia.

Early plays the title role in drag. It's not the sort of broad, exaggerated drag you might associate with RuPaul; it's meant to be (and mostly is) realistic and convincing. Not so much drag queen as male actor who happens to be playing a woman.

The story and style are trying very hard to imitate those of a 40-year-old TV movie. Maddie works as a dishwasher for Gourmaybe, a Los Angeles company that makes food content for social media. An unexpected promotion to an on-camera position puts a lot of stress on Maddie, and she relapses into the binge-and-purge habits she thought she'd put behind her.

But today, the earnest sincerity of 40 years ago reads as campy irony, no matter how straight everyone involved tries to play it. That problem is made worse by the casting, which combines people whose strengths and natural tendencies are to play it for laughs (Kate Berlant as Maddie's best friend, Vanessa Bayer as her roommate in rehab, Kristen Johnston as her mother) with people who can play the drama very well (most notably Chris Bauer as the clinic's head doctor). The movie would have been better served, I think, by casting dramatic actors across the board instead of comics. And as good as Early's makeup and prosthetics are, you can never quite forget that you're watching a male actor, which adds another layer of ironic distancing.

So you've got a story that is deliberately modeled after a Very Special TV Movie and a cast that can't decide whether or not to play it sincerely or for camp value (or if it's even possible to play it sincerely in a way that doesn't read as camp), so the tone wobbles all over the place, a strange hybrid of Douglas Sirk and John Waters.

Some of the performances are very good, though there aren't many scenes in which I'm convinced that everyone on screen is trying to make the same movie. Early's commitment to the bit is astonishing, and no matter how far from earnest melodrama the rest of the cast may wander, he is consistently hitting the same tone throughout. I'm not sure it's a good movie, but it's a fascinating one.

I had been mildly disappointed by the two previous installments in the Minions series; I thought the Minions worked better as sidekicks in the Despicable Me movies than as central characters. But after seeing generally good reviews, I decided to take a chance on the new one, Minions & Monsters, and was pleasantly surprised.

This one is an homage to early Hollywood, at the moment when silents are about to give way to talkies. A tribe of Minions (a different group than has been featured in earlier movies, which given their general interchangeability, makes a surprisingly large difference) winds up in California in the late 1920s. One of the group, James, has always been a natural storyteller, and he is captivated by the film industry, eventually conceiving the idea for a monster movie starring his Minion friends. As you might expect, things go horribly wrong, and the Minions have to save the world from a group of real monsters.

Pierre Coffin, who directed this installment, voices all of the Minions, whose speech is slightly less gibberish-y and more comprehensible than usual. As usual for this series, he's joined by a fine cast of actors, most of them not the usual voice-acting suspects: Allison Janney, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, Christoph Waltz, Bobby Moynihan, Trey Parker, and Zoey Deutsch have the largest roles, and George Lucas gets a cameo as a version of himself.

Why does this one work better? A few small changes have combined to great effect. The more comprehensible Minion-talk makes it easier to follow their conversations; the story, while still bouncing from bit to bit and gag to gag, has a more coherent throughline than earlier installments; and rather than focusing on the Minions en masse, three specific Minions are at the center of the story, and they are given enough individual personality to give us a rooting interest. It's an interesting touch that one of the three is deaf, and the Minions communicate with him in what we might call Minion Sign Language.

The movie is filled with parodies and homages to specific moments from early Hollywood, occasionally anachronistically; Eisenberg voices a character who is inspired by Gort from 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still. And there are other plot details that don't get history quite right; a group of suffragists shouldn't still be campaigning for women to get the vote in the late 1920s.

But the slapstick and the gags work beautifully -- an early scene featuring a giant cyclops has some of the energy of classic Road Runner cartoons -- the action battles against the monsters are both funny and thrilling; and the voice work is top notch.

>15 KeithChaffee: I've been waiting for your review. Thanks, Keith.

>16 featherbear: Thank you; that's very kind of you to say.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (opening in theaters this weekend) is the latest comedy from director David Wain, who also wrote the movie with Ken Marino. It's the first of his movies I've seen. It's a little scattershot, but enough of the jokes land that I enjoyed the movie.

Gail (Zoey Deutsch) and Tom (Michael Cassidy) are about to be married when they have a joking conversation about who their celebrity sex passes would be. Or at least, Gail thinks it's a joke, but when Tom actually gets the opportunity to sleep with Jennifer Aniston (playing herself here, as do lots of other celebrities in roles large and small), Gail goes into a tailspin and runs off to Los Angeles with her best friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley). A Hollywood Boulevard psychic (Kerri Kenney-Silver) tells her that the only way to restore the balance in her relationship with Tom is to find and sleep with her own sex pass, Jon Hamm.

Gail is headed to the magical land of Hollywood from Kansas. You don't have to squint too hard at the names Daughtry and Otto to see Dorothy and Toto, and Gail's quest for Hamm takes on the broad structure of The Wizard of Oz.

She gathers a team of apprently dim-witted, heartless, and cowardly companions (Ben Wang, Ken Marino, and John Slattery as "himself," respectively), who (literally) go skipping down the Hollywood Walk of Fame as they make their way to Hamm, who's holed up at the Chateau Marmont. (Missed opportunity: Surely there was some way to have Hamm be found in the giant green building that makes up part of the Pacific Design Center.) Meanwhile, after an airport luggage mixup, a scheming wicked woman (Sabrina Impacciatore) and her henchman (Joe Lo Truglio) are chasing after Gail and her friends.

There's an all-star lineup of comic character actors in bit parts -- Richard Kind, Michael Ian Black, Fred Melamed, Thomas Lennon -- and the movie flings jokes at you so fast you can barely keep up. They aren't particularly sophisticated jokes -- Wain and Marino revel in cheerful stupidity -- but they are, more often than you might expect, stupid in clever ways.

Gail Daughtry is a big, broad, dumb, vulgar comedy, and every one of those words is meant as a compliment. I had fun at this one.

The premise of Fox's celebrity game show Nation's Dumbest is not appealing: Twelve nationally known figures, ranging in prestige and genuine celebrity level from famous wife Hilaria Baldwin to actual actors Ice-T and Anthony Michael Hall, compete in a series of challenges meant to test their intelligence and general knowledge. Each week, the "student" who does the best gets to "graduate" and leave the show, having proven that they are not the nation's dumbest.

The contestants come in with a wide range of perceived intellect and expectations. Fairly or not, you would probably expect more from Dr. Drew Pinsky or Andrew Yang than you would from Steve-O or Carmen Electra. Yang himself is so confident that he tells us he didn't bring any extra changes of clothing for taping of later episodes.

The show's divided into rounds, and contestants can win or lose gold stars in each round. There's an individual logic test which each contestant must solve within a time limit. A classroom round poses general knowledge questions to each student ("Charles Darwin is known for what theory?" "Mixing red and blue paint makes what color?"), and a team challenge allows the contestants to pool their knowledge and work together.

Each student enters the "final exam" round with somewhere between one and three stars. Everyone is asked the same questions. Get one wrong and lose a star; lose all your stars, and you're sent back to the classroom for next week's show. Last contestant with a star left gets to graduate and go home.

And if you're thinking, "oh god, how much further can we sink" right now, I get it. My reaction when I first heard about the show was the same, and there is something tacky about the premise. But everyone involved comes in with an attitude of such cheer and good will; the contestants are genuinely likeable people with the right air of self-deprecation about what they've gotten into. (Yang: "This is my first time on reality TV, unless you count the presidential debates.")

The tone is one of friendly teasing rather than harsh mocking or bullying. The questioning covers a wide enough range of knowledge, both academic and pop culture, that the Pinksy/Yang end of the spectrum isn't necessarily guaranteed to win. Host Jack Whitehall, probably cast for his British accent as much as anything -- we Americans still tend to think "he must be smart" when we hear those plummy vowels -- is charming, and corrects his students with gentle wit.

It's trashy reality TV, yes, and if the very thought makes you run screaming from the room, I don't blame you. But it's significantly less trashy than it might have been, and I kinda liked it.